Unofficial Iraq treasure hunt ends
U.S. military recovers money allegedly stolen by troops
By William Branigin
THE WASHINGTON POST
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 25 — The word went out last Friday: Hundreds of millions of dollars in cash were left behind in bricked-up buildings inside one of fallen president Saddam Hussein’s palace compounds. Before long, U.S. officers said, a half-dozen U.S. soldiers had stashed away $12.3 million for themselves. But the windfall didn’t last. Military officials said the accused soldiers all came clean and returned the money after officers shamed them by invoking their fallen comrades.
THE SOLDIERS ARE now under investigation and face punishments ranging from letters of reprimand to general courts martial, officials said. None has been charged, all are cooperating with investigators and nearly all the money that went missing for several hours last weekend has been recovered, they said.
Col. David G. Perkins, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division brigade to which the accused soldiers belong, said in an interview today that a relatively small amount — in the “thousands of dollars” — remained unaccounted for. The soldiers have not yet been disciplined. Their fate, Perkins added, will be decided under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
$780 MILLION IN MAKESHIFT VAULTS
So far, soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division have found about $780 million in makeshift vaults in the gated complex that was once occupied by senior officials of Hussein’s government, armed forces and political party. On Wednesday they discovered a cache of $112 million in a row of dog kennels.
“They actually thought they were going to survive this [U.S. attack] and go back into their vaults,” said Lt. Col. Philip D. DeCamp, 40, of Fairfax, commander of the tank battalion that occupies the Republican Palace.
Left in the dog kennels and in what appeared to be relatively modest guesthouses were nearly 200 aluminum boxes, each riveted shut and sealed with green plastic tags marked “Bank of Jordan.” Each box contained $4 million in $100 bills and a note signed by five Iraqis attesting to the amount inside. The notes were also marked with the date March 16, apparently when the boxes were sealed, said Lt. Col. Ken Knox, a civil affairs officer from Riverdale, Md.
On the doors of the guesthouses and the locks of the kennels were pieces of tape bearing the signature of Lt. Gen. Mohammad Ibrahim and the date March 20, the same day that U.S. troops crossed the Iraqi border from Kuwait in their drive to remove Hussein from power.
“I bet he was probably the last guy out of here,” said DeCamp, whose regiment is a unit of the 3rd Infantry’s 2nd Brigade.
CHAIN OF EVENTS LED TO THEFT
The chain of events that led to the alleged theft attempts began Friday when two enlisted men, Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Van Ess and Staff Sgt. Kenneth Buff, discovered the money cache and immediately alerted senior officers.
Soldiers broke through walls of cinderblock and cement that apparently had been hastily erected over the doors and windows of some of the guesthouses. In each room they entered, they found 20 aluminum boxes stuffed with $100,000 in stacks of $100 bills.
Sometime later, five soldiers of the 10th Engineer Battalion, an element of the 2nd Brigade that is attached to DeCamp’s Task Force 4-64, broke into a similarly bricked-up house up the road and discovered 50 aluminum boxes. But they reported only 47 of them, officials said.
According to DeCamp and other officers, the soldiers pried open one of the boxes and found it filled with cash. They grabbed bundles of money and hid the remainder nearby. They then dumped the two other boxes, unopened, into the water.
The trouble was, DeCamp said, the boxes were each two feet square, and the water was only two feet deep. “So they weren’t very hard to find,” he noted.
HIDDEN CASH RECOVERED
A soldier who knew about the opened box informed investigators about it. The soldiers involved were questioned, and the cash hidden by the troops was recovered Friday and Saturday. The informant has been cleared of any involvement in the alleged theft attempt.
In a separate incident, an Army truck driver, a member of the support platoon charged with transporting money to 3rd Infantry Division headquarters at Baghdad’s international airport Friday, allegedly stuffed $300,000 of the stash into a cooler. The driver “fessed up immediately” when the missing amount was noticed, and that case was solved “within five minutes,” DeCamp said.
The task force commander said officers reminded the soldiers that eight fellow brigade members had been killed and dozens wounded to get the unit to the palace complex they now occupied. To take advantage of that position to “loot Iraq” would dishonor the sacrifices of their fallen comrades, DeCamp said the soldiers were told.
Since the weekend incidents, soldiers have been instructed not to break into any more buildings or pry open any suspected cash boxes, but to secure the area and notify commanders.
“The little treasure hunts got out of hand ... and we put a lid on them,” DeCamp said.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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