By Wayne Sayles - Ancient Coin Collecting

Anyone who pays the slightest attention to Washington doings can hardly avoid being struck by the operatic nature of governance. It may be humorous or tragic, by turns, but it can also be mysterious. How do rather consequential things happen? Better yet, who makes them happen? These are ageless questions that have inspired countless authors and playwrights—not to mention political analysts and lobbyists. The Ancient Coin Collecting community is no stranger to the sometimes bizarre world of Washington politics, where the largest cast and most Machiavellian plots are routinely encountered at the U.S. State Department.

It may strike some as humorous that an innocuous group like coin collectors can find themselves pitted against the Hydra of bureaucracy—an event of almost mythical character and proportions. But, not to be outdone by the Greeks, the DOS Hydra is also invisible! Rarely do the State Department and the Defense Department share techniques, but the cloaking of bureaucrats in Foggy Bottom bears all of the characteristics of invisible paint camouflage—making their actions unobservable to the radar of the public and the press. This invisible shield has been recognized for at least a decade, though getting a clear picture is obviously a challenge. The late Steven Vincent, in Art and Auction (March, 2002) labeled Maria Kouroupas, at the State Department’s Cultural Heritage Center as a “Stealth Fighter” who is “Washington’s smart weapon in its shadowy war on collecting antiquities.”

The cloaking of DOS bureaucrats has become readily apparent through (the lack of) documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the numismatic community. In 2007, the State Department negotiated an agreement with the government of Cyprus to restrict the importation of ancient Cypriot coins into the United States. Though a landmark decision, in the sense that no previous Memorandum of Agreement (including an earlier one with Cyprus) had ever included a restriction on coins, this decision was apparently made in a vacuum.

The State Department has repeatedly searched its records and claims that it can find no communication on the subject of coins between its two key players, Maria Kouroupas and Nicholas Burns, or between either of them and the Cypriot government. Further, no communication between either of them and a host of other specified individuals and agencies can be found. Indeed, it seems that the interaction between DOS and the government of Cyprus, lauded publicly by the Cypriot Ambassador to the U.S., is invisible.

The coin issue was hardly obscure to Kouroupas and Burns. The collector opposition to this MOU was so intense that it reportedly caused a breakdown of the fax processing equipment within the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs where Kouroupas is assigned. A few email exchanges involving archaeologist Andrew Cohen, an assistant to Kouroupas, verify the involvement of ECA in the decision to add coins to the list of restricted item. Apparently there was not enough of the invisible paint to cloak Cohen entirely. It seems a bit ironic that the U.S. Senate is presently holding a special investigation into the issue of secrecy among groups like the Cultural Property Advisory Committee. It seems ironic as well that the Republican candidate for president made a specific issue of bureaucratic transparency during his nomination acceptance speech. Elected officials in Washington are quick to support transparency as a necessary element of Democracy. However, the much touted Freedom of Information Act must be a coffee-room joke at the U.S. State Department where ECA audaciously touts the act in its briefings to visiting journalists from other nations and then ignores FOIA requests with impunity.

There is more than a phantom in the opera at DOS, the opera is itself a phantom.