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Including a cache of $112 million that was discovered Wednesday in a row of dog kennels, soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division have found about $780 million in makeshift vaults in the gated complex on the western bank of the Tigris River that was once occupied by senior officials of Saddam's government, armed forces and political party.
"They actually thought they were going to survive this [U.S. attack] and go back into their vaults," said Lt. Col. Philip deCamp, 40, of Fairfax, Va., commander of the tank battalion that occupies the Republican Palace.
Left in the kennels and in buildings that appeared to be relatively modest guest houses were nearly 200 aluminum boxes, each riveted shut and sealed with green plastic tags marked "Bank of Jordan." The boxes each contained $4 million in $100 bills, along with a note signed by five Iraqis attesting to the amount and the date the box was sealed, March 16, said Lt. Col. Ken Knox, a civil affairs officer from Riverdale, Md.
On the doors of the guest houses and the locks of the kennels were pieces of tape bearing the signature of a Lt. Gen. Mohammad Ibrahim and the date of March 20, the same day that U.S. troops crossed the Iraqi border from Kuwait in their drive to remove Saddam from power. DeCamp, commander of the 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, a unit of the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade, said Ibrahim didn't appear on his list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqi officials in the ousted government and that no other identifying details are known about him.
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 original money cache and immediately alerted senior officers.
Soldiers broke through walls of cinderblock and cement that had apparently been hastily erected over the doors and windows of guest houses on one of the lots in the sprawling palace complex. In each room they entered, they found 20 aluminum boxes stuffed with $100,000 stacks of $100 bills.