Posted on 08/04/2003 7:23:13 PM PDT by chance33_98
Saddam's gold discovered in truck
HILLAH, Iraq, Aug. 4 (UPI) -- A routine Iraqi traffic stop has turned up what may be $90 million in gold bars in this town just over 50 miles south of Baghdad.
While the financial haul is major, U.S. Marines helping to get this town back on its feet say something more valuable has come out of the episode: the notion that Iraqis can begin to trust their government.
"It just shows you the character and integrity of the people will come up and surprise you," said Maj. Martin Casado, the operations officer for the 1st Battalion, 4th Regiment of the Marines, 1st Division, which is headquartered here.
"They will definitely surprise you and make you feel like you are here for a reason, and it's a good reason."
An Iraqi police officer stopped an oil tanker truck on the road in Hillah July 27, part of a crack down on black-market oil. There was a problem with the license plates, and the registration didn't match. The truck was taken to the impound lot.
Three days later, a security director for the governor of Hillah took a call. If he would let the tanker truck go, he would get $15 million Iraqi dinars. The man refused. The caller offered $30 million dinars, about $30,000 U.S. dollars. The man, who earns no more than $500 a month, refused again.
But he got curious.
He went out to the truck and opened the back. Inside, stacked three feet high and 20 feet deep were gleaming gold bars.
"This guy called me. He said, 'Big, big surprise, you love me now. We have metal, much metal," laughs Maj. David Holahan, the boisterous chain-smoking executive officer of the battalion. "I told him, 'You're an Arab. You know if someone offers you 30 million, its worth 90! You're a fool to take the bribe!'"
Holahan asked that the man's identity not be revealed for fear of reprisals.
The Iraqi got five other government workers and six padlocks. Each had a separate key for each lock so none could open the truck without the others. The next day he drove the truck to the American base in an old pistol factory in Hillah and turned over the truck. Holahan took three of the keys, and left the six locks in place. It would be a join U.S-Iraqi project to count the bars.
The Marines are still not sure what the metal is -- other bars thought to be gold have turned out to be brass or other metals. But pictures of the bars show gleaming yellow bricks.
"Whatever it is, it's precious to someone," Casado said.
A group of Marines and Iraqis attempted to count the bars, but after stacking close to 250 of them with probably 75 percent more to go, they gave up.
"In the back of your head, you wonder what you would do," said Lt. Stan E. Bednar, 24, of Anchorage, Alaska. But after he involuntarily weighed the difficulty of getting the gold through customs and then fencing it -- demonstrating a surprising grasp of the details involved -- Bednar shelved any dreams off taking the gold and running.
"Once I decided it was too much trouble, to me it became like lifting 40-pound dumb bells."
"But there was a lot of fantasy stories out there about what we would do with the money," he said. "There were a lot of BMWs."
The gold was under his guard for almost a week.
"I was a multi-millionaire for five days," he said.
The gold will be tested by metallurgists sometime soon and somehow returned to the Iraqi treasury. No matter what the tests reveal, Holahan wants to tell the Iraqis it is gold anyway.
"They need some hope," he said.
The discovery has already paid dividends in civic pride. Holahan commented to one government official that he "got Saddam's gold!" The man answered, "No, we got the Iraqi people's gold."
The only naturally-occuring elements denser than gold are Platinum, Osmium, and Iridium. It would probably be possible to make a tungsten-platinum allow which was as dense as gold; I don't know how the price of the alloy would compare to gold itself.
I meant to comment on that part of the story. These guys are very smart. I think we're going to see great things happen in Iraq :)
I think I saw an old tv movie with that hook. Tungsten something.
Probably worthwhile for the scam, since some mines process 40 tons of ore for each ounce of gold.
I hope the Iraqui people never, EVER forget that!
If the bars weigh as much as gold should, the only nasty thing that could be in them would be beta phase plutonium. A geiger counter should be able to determine of that's the case.
A cubic foot of gold (pure) weighs about 1,400 pounds. So a truck loaded with a 3 x 20 x 6-foot stack of gold bars would have 360 cubic feet of metal, or 504,000 pounds (252 tons) if my head and calculator are working tonight.
Excuse my skepticism. I'm no truck expert but I don't think that's possible. Even it it's 14 karat gold (about 58% pure) it would still weigh 146 tons. That truck must have AWESOME brakes!
I hadn't seen the dimensions given, but you raise a very interesting point. That much volume of pure gold would weigh far too much for a truck. Either the figures are wrong or the space is filled with something besides gold.
$90 million in Gold would weigh something on the order of 20,000lbs. Since even 300 cuft of steel would weigh more than that, I think the image of a 20'x3'x6' space filled with metal is probably erroneous.
You mean "awesome" frame and axles. Realistically there is no such a truck...the mining trucks if my memory serves me right are capable of hauling about 100 Tons (about 200 000+ pounds)at one time. OTOH you can not drive a truck this size on the open road, due to the sheer size of this monster (one wheel is 14 feet in diameter).
252667.041 Ounces (troy) equals 17325.7 Pounds (avoirdupois).
17325.7 Pounds (avoirdupois) equals 8.66285 Tons (short) I think this is easily do-able for a an 18-wheeler. If they distribute the weight across the axles properly.
Whoops...I meant $356.20.
If you read the story above you read this quote. The only dimension I assumed was the 6-foot width of the truck bed. It might actually be greater than that so my weight estimate might be short. Either the dimensions of the load or the dollar value is out of whack.
No, I meant "awesome" brakes. Assuming there's a truck that can carry such a load and get that much mass moving, it would require remarkable brakes to get it stopped again. I speak as someone who used to drive very heavily-loaded trucks in rush-hour traffic in the San Francisco-Oakland area. I was constantly amazed by idiots who pulled into tiny spaces in front of me, not realizing how close they came to being crushed when I had to hit the brakes as hard as I could.
3' high and 20' long would be an amazing site.
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