Searching for Cambodia's stolen crown jewels

This week, 60 Minutes traveled to Cambodia to report on the looting of ancient artifacts from temples across the country and track their journey to prestigious museums. Correspondent Anderson Cooper and a team visited the world-famous Khmer temple Angkor Wat, as well as several other remote temples, to investigate how this decades-long art heist was carried out. "A lot of these temples have been heavily looted over decades, beginning in the genocide in the 1970s," Cooper explained in an interview with 60 Minutes Overtime. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist group, took over Cambodia. About 2 million Cambodians were killed or starved to death under the regime. In 1979, the Khmer Rouge lost power, but the fighting continued for decades. The instability left Cambodia's temples unprotected and vulnerable to plunder that was often carried out by former Khmer Rouge child soldiers. Priceless artifacts stolen from these temples would then end up in the hands of unscrupulous antiquities dealers. Brad Gordon, an American lawyer hired by the Cambodian government to track down and return these treasures, calls them "blood antiquities." The trade in looted antiquities was a dangerous one that led to violence and murder. "People were killed over these antiquities," he said. …