resignation – but was reinstated several month later, following a change in leadership and the transformation of the "Egyptian Antiquities Organization" into the Supreme Council of Antiquities. He was promoted to "Undersecretary of the State for the Giza Monuments" in 1998. Hawass continues to be involved in archaeological projects at Giza and other sites in Egypt. Currently, he heads the science committee overseeing the Scanpyramids project. Politics In 2002 Hawass was appointed as the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. When US President Barack Obama visited Cairo in June 2009, Hawass gave him personal tours of ancient Egyptian archaeological sites. Facing mandatory retirement, he was promoted by President Hosni Mubarak to the post of Vice Minister of Culture at the end of 2009. 2011 protest vandalism On January 29, 2011, in the midst of the Egyptian protests of that year, Hawass arrived at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to find that a number of cases had been broken into and a number of antiquities damaged, so police were brought in to secure the museum. According to Andrew Lawler, reporting for Science, Hawass said that he "faxed a colleague in Italy that 13 cases were destroyed. My heart is broken and my blood is boiling". Hawass later told The New York Times that thieves looking for gold broke 70 objects, including two sculptures of the pharaoh Tutankhamun, and took two skulls from a research lab, before being stopped as they left the museum. Minister of Antiquities Hawass was appointed to the position of Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, a newly created cabinet post, by Mubarak on January 31, 2011, as part of a cabinet shake-up during the 2011 protests. A press release including a statement from Hawass stated that he "will continue excavating, writing books, and representing his country," ensuring that archaeological sites in Egypt were being safeguarded and looted objects returned. Regarding the Egyptian Museum looting, he said that "The museum was dark and the nine robbers did not recognise the value of what was in the vitrines. They opened thirteen cases, threw the seventy objects on the ground and broke them, including one Tutankhamun case, from which they broke the statue of the king on a panther. However, the broken objects can all be restored, and we will begin the restoration process this week." Hawass rejected comparisons with the looting of antiquities in Iraq and Afghanistan.