Chasing Aphrodite

by Jason Felch

  20. LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS

  AFTER DEBBIE GRIBBON abruptly resigned her post, a team of reporters at the Los Angeles Times began investigating the troubles at the Getty. In December 2004, a series of investigative stories detailing Munitz's misuse of Getty resources began hitting the front page. With $1.2 million in total compensation, he was one of the highest-paid nonprofit executives in the country and had demonstrated his "grand appetite" for lavish perks—even as he imposed budgetary austerity on the rest of the trust. A June 2005 story detailed Munitz's use of Getty staff for personal errands, his purchase of the Porsche Cayenne amid layoffs, the Getty grants he steered to friends, his first-class flights around the world with his wife on what appeared to be thinly disguised vacations—expenditures that seemed to violate IRS rules against self-dealing.

  For those inside the Getty, the series displayed an alarming level of access to the Getty's confidential records, including transcripts of Munitz's dictation pool and years of expense records from the CEO's office. More than once during the back-and-forth with reporters, the Getty denied something, only to be confronted with follow-up questions citing specific details about the transaction. At one point, Munitz's top staffers made a list of the most damaging things the reporters could find. Over the course of the next year, the reporters asked about almost all of them.

  Publicly, Munitz dismissed the stories, saying the complaints about his behavior came from a few disgruntled employees angry over the necessary institutional changes he had made. John Biggs, the board chairman, defended the CEO and his spending. But the June story drew a notably tart remark from U.S. senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican from Iowa who chaired the Senate Finance Committee and was moving legislation to overhaul laws governing tax-exempt organizations for the first time in thirty years. "Charities shouldn't be funding their executives' gold-plated lifestyles," Grassley said in the June 23 issue of the Los Angeles Times. "I'm concerned that the Getty board has been spending more time watching old episodes of 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' than doing its job of protecting Getty's assets for charitable purposes."

  The comment caught the eye of attorney Ronald Olson, a tightly wound, square-jawed litigator. Olson was a partner in and principal rainmaker for Munger, Tolles & Olson (MTO), a boutique Los Angeles law firm brimming with former federal prosecutors and attorneys who had clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court.

  He had become one of the most powerful lawyers in California by riding to the rescue in some of the most controversial corporate cases in recent history. He had helped Merrill Lynch atone for its role in Orange County's 1994 bankruptcy—the largest municipal failure in U.S. history—with only the glancing blow of a $400 million settlement. And he had brokered an agreement that allowed Salomon Brothers to avoid criminal charges by paying a $290 million civil penalty for its 1990 bond fraud scandal.

  Now that the Getty was beginning to bleed in public, Olson paid special attention, and not just because of the trust's deep pockets. The Getty board had recently tried to recruit him, and he and his wife were close friends with vice chair Louise Bryson and her husband, John, CEO of Edison International, where Olson was on the board. Olson saw trouble coming for his friend. Grassley was known for his public investigations of errant nonprofits, and after landing a blow on Munitz, it was unlikely the Los Angeles Times would stop digging. Olson placed an urgent call to Louise Bryson. "You're in trouble here," he told her.

  As Grassley had hinted, it was the board that was ultimately responsible for Munitz's behavior. As if to underscore the point, the California attorney general opened an investigation into whether the Getty board and high-ranking trust officials had allowed the misuse of the Getty's nonprofit assets. The attorney general's list of concerns was cribbed directly from the Los Angeles Times reports. Bryson got on the phone to senior Getty staffers. We have to get serious about this, she said, recommending that they hire Olson's firm for protection.

  While the Getty mulled the decision over, the newspaper launched a second salvo of front-page stories, this time revealing True's legal woes and the Getty's long struggle with the issue of looted antiquities. A September 2, 2005, article quoted from the January 2001 memo written by Richard Martin, the Getty's outside counsel, to Munitz, noting that it would take "very little" to link True to the smuggling network and advising the Getty to withhold damaging documents from Italian authorities. When called for comment, Martin attempted to get a temporary restraining order against the paper to prevent the publication of the story, but it was posted on the newspaper's Web site before he could do so.

  A second story later that month went deeper, citing "thousands of internal Getty documents"—including many of the "troubling" documents withheld from Italy—and tracing the Getty's purchase of suspect antiquities. The article detailed how Frel, Houghton, True, Gribbon, Walsh, and Williams had continued to buy such antiquities over twenty years despite concerns about the legality of their actions. It recounted Walsh and Williams's discussion just before the Aphrodite acquisition and quoted Williams as saying, "We know it's stolen, Symes a fence." On its Web site, the Times posted a copy of Houghton's 1985 "smoking-gun" memo to Gribbon, which showed that he had learned from Medici that the Getty's recent acquisitions had been looted. For the first time, it was clear to the public that the Getty's problem with illicit antiquities had neither started nor ended with Marion True.

  The Times articles punctured decades of flat denials by Getty officials that they had never knowingly purchased looted art. An October 2005 Times editorial headlined "Just Say No to Plunder" accused the Getty of not living up to its ideals and called on the trust to swear off buying any antiquity that came to the market after the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Trust officials accused the newspaper of reporting on "privileged documents that have been stolen from the Getty," then hired a crisis management firm and hunkered down behind a series of "no comments." But the Los Angeles Times was not done. Reporters had caught wind of True's $400,000 loan from antiquities dealer Christo Michaelides to buy her Greek vacation home. Now they were asking why the Getty hadn't done anything when officials were alerted to the loan three years earlier.

  Munitz called True into his office. Hadn't Erichsen and Gribbon questioned her about the loan already? True said that Gribbon had asked only whether she had received "a loan from Robin Symes." She had accurately answered no, she said, and Gribbon had let the matter drop. "Anyway," she added, "some friends gave me the money to repay the loan. And I'm paying interest on it. That's all you need to know."

  "Who are these friends?"

  True refused to answer, despite Munitz's insistence.

  The Getty stalled for time with the newspaper. It wasn't until the following weekend that Munitz learned the identity of True's mysterious benefactors. Racing home to change clothes before a business dinner, he checked his answering machine and found a message from Barbara Fleischman. "No matter how late it is, call me," she implored. Munitz dialed her number immediately.

  "I'm only calling because I thought it's important for you to know something," Fleischman told him. "I understand you've been pressing Marion True about this loan. You need to know that Larry and I were the ones who made it."

  Munitz was floored. "Don't say another word," he blurted. "Here's Peter Erichsen's number. Call him."

  Even to the ethically challenged Munitz, the conflict was clear: True, the paragon of curatorial virtue, had taken not one but two personal loans from people who had sold tens of millions of dollars' worth of antiquities to the Getty on her recommendation. Worse, True and Fleischman, now a board member, had apparently conspired to keep the deal secret. Munitz and Erichsen alerted John Biggs at his office in New York. By that time, Biggs had already concluded that it would be necessary to hire Olson's firm.

  IN LATE SEPTEMBER 2005, a team of MTO attorneys began digging through Getty documents, trying to get ahead of the Los Angeles Times. Olson was adamant the Getty had to fire its popular antiquities curator. "I don't kn
ow why you're not just biting the bullet," he angrily told Biggs and Munitz. The Getty chairman polled the other trustees. True had to go. Her answer to Gribbon about the first loan had been an evasion, and she had failed to disclose the second loan from Fleischman on the Getty's conflict-of-interest form.

  Munitz never questioned the decision and volunteered to have Erichsen fire the curator via letter. Biggs was shocked. "You can't do that," he told the CEO over the phone. "I'll talk to her." Biggs flew in from New York for a meeting with Munitz, True, and Harry Stang, the Los Angeles attorney the Getty had arranged to represent True after she was indicted.

  The curator appeared in Munitz's office teary and upset. The loan had been Larry Fleischman's idea, she said, and she had agreed to take it. But there was no relationship between it and the acquisition of the Fleischman collection, which had been completed just two days earlier. True said that it was Barbara who had counseled her not to disclose the loan. Fleischman said that she had called her own attorney and he had concluded that disclosure wasn't necessary.

  "Marion, it's time to give us your resignation," Biggs said, adding that the Getty would continue to pay for her defense against the Italian charges. Technically, True could be asked to repay the attorneys' fees if she was convicted, but that was not likely to happen, Biggs said. She would not get the sizable bonus she had been promised for completing the Getty Villa, but she could keep her pension.

  The deed done, Biggs walked out with the remorseful curator. She turned to him and said, "I know I made a big mistake."

  The Getty announced True's "retirement" late Saturday, October i, just before the Times published a story exposing her first loan from Michaelides. The press release was carefully timed to allow the Getty to take credit for the discovery and made no mention of the second loan or the Fleischmans: "The Getty has determined through its own investigation that Marion True failed to report certain aspects of her Greek house purchase transaction in violation of Getty policy. In the course of the Getty's discussions with Ms. True on this matter, she chose voluntarily to retire."

  The story in the Times reported that Getty officials had known about the first loan since 2002 and done nothing. There was no mention of how True had repaid the loan, something the reporters were only beginning to learn.

  Days after the article appeared, True put her condo up for sale at $949,000. She told her friends that she was leaving for Paris, where her husband had a home, and never coming back.

  TRUE'S "RETIREMENT" STRIPPED the Getty of any claim to the moral high ground, either in its public relations fight with the Times or its legal struggle with the Italians. Stunned at the degree of True's ethical breach, the chorus of Los Angeles museum and cultural leaders who had vocally defended the curator fell silent. Many now quietly questioned whether they had ever really known her. Some felt personally betrayed.

  Within the Getty, True's departure and the hiring of MTO was like a cattle prod, shocking the institution into action. A day after True's resignation hit the papers, the museum announced that it had struck a deal with Italian authorities to return three contested antiquities. The most important was a 2,300-year-old vase painted by the Greek artist Asteas, one of the six pieces General Conforti had asked the Getty to return years earlier. The other two were a Greek epigraph, donated to the museum in the 1980s, and a bronze Etruscan candelabrum, the companion piece of the tripod True had seen in Medici's warehouse and given back to Italy ten years before. For the first time, the Getty struck a conciliatory chord, saying that it was giving the objects back "in the interests of settling the litigation and demonstrating the non-profit's interest in a productive relationship with Italy."

  Desperate to find a win on the antiquities front, Getty officials tried to use the Aphrodite as leverage. Months earlier, the Getty had been quietly approached by Flavia Zisa, an emissary from the Sicilian Ministry of Culture. Zisa, a former Getty intern and occasional consultant to the museum's antiquities department, was now a professor of archaeology in Sicily and adviser to cultural officials there. She suggested that the Getty could get around its impasse with Rome and reclaim the high ground through a wrinkle in the Italian constitution that gave Sicily autonomous control over its own cultural exports. Zisa said this meant that Sicily also could strike its own cultural agreements. Would the Getty consider making a deal with Sicily concerning the Aphrodite?

  The offer intrigued Munitz. He had no personal investment in the controversial piece, and as a student of literature, he had come to appreciate the metaphoric significance of the goddess. The Aphrodite was a totem, a symbol of who was right in the struggle between the Old World and the New World over antiquities. To Munitz, the Sicilian proposal represented another chance for redemption. He set up a meeting with Sicilian culture minister Alessandro Pagano in New York in December.

  After the men exchanged formalities, Pagano wasted no time putting his offer on the table. "We're rich in culture. The Getty's rich in resources," he said. "Let's work together. The Aphrodite is the excuse to do so." Specifically, if the museum agreed to give the statue back to Sicily, the Sicilians would "retire" from True's criminal trial, in which they were named as a damaged party. Pagano also wanted the Getty's help with the conservation and marketing of Sicily's cultural heritage, which attracted few visitors. "Sicily is maybe the richest land" in artifacts, he said, "but there are museums that don't earn one Euro."

  Pagano told Munitz that the Getty would not have to return the Aphrodite to Sicily. It would only have to turn over formal legal title to the statue. "Maybe you could send it back in one hundred years," Pagano joked.

  Weeks later, Munitz sent a note to Pagano saying that the Getty was evaluating his "very intriguing ideas." But the talks grew cold. Erichsen and others feared that the Sicilians didn't have full authority to make the deal—Italian law wasn't clear on this point—and MTO had yet to study the legal case regarding the statue.

  And by then, Munitz was doomed.

  ON OCTOBER 30, 2005, John Biggs had announced the formation of a special board committee to oversee an internal investigation into Munitz's spending, as well as the Getty's acquisition of Greek and Roman antiquities. MTO would conduct the inquiry. Biggs stressed that the investigation was independent of Getty management and would go wherever the facts led. The signal was clear: the Getty board was backing away from its troubled CEO.

  Olson personally took the lead in setting a new tone with the press. MTO would get to the bottom of things and make the results public, he promised. The days of stonewalling were over. Shedding some sunshine on the Getty would go a long way toward restoring its integrity.

  MTO's first task was to investigate the Getty's "governance problems." The lawyers immediately began chewing up billable hours researching Munitz's expense accounts and the legal exposure of the Getty board. They commandeered a windowless room a few floors below the CEO's office suite in the Getty administration building. It became known as the "Batcave," as it buzzed with lawyers and support staff carting in dozens of boxes filled with internal documents.

  The lawyers identified thirty Getty computers, including those belonging to Munitz's staff and secretarial pool, that contained the most crucial information. With Biggs's approval, on a Saturday morning a security guard unlocked the door to Munitz's offices and allowed technicians to copy ten of his staff's hard drives. The data allowed the team to crosscheck the 230 trips Munitz had taken between January 1998 and July 2005, his use of grants and Getty staff, and the cache of transcribed voice-mail messages that detailed Munitz's every thought.

  The team then fanned out to interview seventy-five people, sometimes about delicate matters. One of them was Nana Zhvitiashvili, a married curator from the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, with whom Munitz had nurtured an unusually close relationship. After the two met at a 2001 Salzburg Global Seminar, he steered a $200,000 grant to her museum and arranged to take her to a concert, a movie, and the Tate Modern in London, where she was putting together an exhibit. Mu
nitz even offered to clear his schedule and act as her escort or otherwise "provide sustenance and comfort" during her time in London, even at 4 A.M., if she'd like.

  Although the "chronicles of Nana" raised eyebrows, more problematic were Munitz's dealings with a twentysomething German intern named Iris Mickein. After the CEO addressed a group of interns about museum careers, Mickein made an appointment to discuss hers directly with Munitz. The intern showed up in a miniskirt and boots, which drew suspicious stares from secretaries and Munitz's top aide, Jill Murphy. The meeting sparked a keen interest in Mickein on the part of the CEO. After failing to secure her a one-year job with his friend billionaire art collector Eli Broad, Munitz put her on the Getty's payroll as "senior adviser to the president." He later arranged for a Getty-sponsored job for her at MoMA, facilitated by a $5,000 Getty expenditure to fix her visa problems. When Mickein was through at MoMA, Munitz flew her around the country for tours of graduate programs and personal job counseling by friends such as Dallas art collector Raymond Nasher and Seattle Art Museum director Mimi Gates.

  Even among friends inured to Munitz's manic mentoring of young women, the Mickein episode was excessive. For Murphy and his other senior staff, it was one of several surprises they'd discovered since fielding the initial questions from Los Angeles Times reporters. They realized that their charming, generous, effusive boss had been telling each of them different stories, dividing and conquering with the selective distribution of information.