The Save Our History Distinguished Leadership Award was created to recognize a national leader for his or her commitment to the exploration and preservation of history. Save Our History congratulates Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, our 2006 Distinguished Leadership Award Winner.

Colonel Matthew Bogdanos,
Distinguished Leadership Award Winner of 2006

Matthew Bogdanos has been an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan since 1988. A Colonel in the Marine Reserves, middleweight boxer, and native New Yorker, he was raised waiting tables in his family's Greek restaurant in lower Manhattan. He holds a degree in classics from Bucknell University; a law degree and a master's degree in Classical Studies from Columbia University; and a master's degree in Strategic Studies from the Army War College.

Commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1980, he served as a Judge Advocate until his release from active duty in 1988, when he joined the District Attorney"s Office. Rising to Senior Homicide Trial Counsel in 1996, he lists among 200 felony trials the prosecution of 15-year-old "Baby-Faced Butchers" Daphne Abdela and Christopher Vazquez for their 1997 grisly Central Park murder and rappers Sean "Diddy" Combs and Jamal "Shyne" Barrows for their 1999 shootout. Remaining in the reserves, he has served in South Korea, Lithuania, Guyana, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kosovo.

Recalled to active duty after being forced to evacuate his apartment near the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, he joined a multi-agency, special-forces task force in Afghanistan, received a Bronze Star for his actions in obtaining intelligence on 11 of the "Top 25" Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders in the War on Terrorism, and was promoted to Colonel. He then served two tours in Iraq as the head of that task force, leading the international investigation into the April 2003 looting of Baghdad's Iraq Museum, resulting in the recovery of more than 5400 antiquities in eight countries. Released back into the Marine Reserves in October 2005, he returned to the District Attorney's Office and continues the hunt for stolen antiquities.

He still boxes for the New York City Police Department Widows & Orphans Charity (with an amateur record of 23-3), has been published in legal, military, and classical journals, was included in a book covering the two dozen "great opening and closing arguments of the last 100 years," was named an Easter Seals Distinguished Participant in 2001, and is the recipient of a 2005 National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush for his work recovering Iraq's treasures.

Royalties from his book, Thieves of Baghdad, are donated to the Iraq Museum.