A jackal bites back
From Mr Arthur Houghton Sir: Rod Liddle's article on the hidden agendas of the American Council for Cultural Policy (The day of the jackals', 19 April) provoked peals of laughter on this side of the ocean.
Liddle says the ACCP was formed in some haste 'precisely because of the forthcoming war in Iraq'. A quick telephone call would have revealed that the ACCP was formed in 2001, a year and a half before the beginning of the war. Perhaps Mr Liddle wishes to allege that the ACCP had helped to cause the war for its own purposes?
Liddle goes on to describe his one source, Professor Gibson, as a lone archaeologist at the meeting at the defense department on 24 January: a lamb, as it were, amid a lions' pride of artefact collectors, lawyers and members of the ACCP. Professor Gibson forgets, or Liddle wilfully ignores, the presence at meetings held that day of Maxwell Anderson, president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and Bonnie Burnham, president of the World Monuments Fund.
Liddle also says that the ACCP represents people who 'enjoy a lucrative or aesthetically rewarding trade in stolen historical artefacts'. He must mean Ashton Hawkins, president of the ACCP, who occasionally collects contemporary art. Or could he mean me? If so, he's got me, and I confess_ I collect coins! Ancient coins. many from the UK market, desultorily.
Happily I can say that Professor Gibson is correct on other counts. The ACCP had worked energetically for months to take every possible measure to protect Iraq's cultural sites.
Arthur Houghton Vice President, American Council for Cultural Policy, Washington DC, USA
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