Since 2014 I’ve been investigating the alleged audits of the US official
gold reserves. Of course my goal is to figure out if these audits are
credible, or if they’re invented by the US government to silence the
people that think gold has any value and forms the very material basis
for a well-functioning monetary system.
My first post on this subject, A
First Glance At US Official Gold Reserves Audits, published on March
27, 2014, was purely based on publicly available reports. Not
surprisingly, all those reports together compounded to a logical story.
The US government wouldn’t present anything that’s implausible at the
surface. My first post on this subject was more or less a summary of the
official narrative. After that post I decided to dig a little deeper.
According to the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Inspector General
(OIG), which is responsible for the audits, the vast majority of the US
monetary stock stored at the US Mint had been audited by 1986,
241,247,820.61 fine troy ounces to be precise, as was stated
by Inspector General Eric M. Thorson during his Statement to the House
Financial Services Committee on June 23, 2011:
… the Committee for Continuing Audit of the U.S. Government-owned
Gold performed annual audits of Treasury’s gold reserves from 1975 to 1986. …
by 1986, 97 percent of the Government-owned gold held by the Mint had been
audited and placed under joint seal.
If this is true I would like to see those audit reports, I thought one
day. My first Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA)
request submitted in 2015 at the US government asked for delivery of all
audit reports drafted by the Committee for Continuing Audit of the U.S.
Government-owned Gold from 1975 until 1986. Stunningly, the OIG
couldn’t find all these documents, nor the National Archives, the Government
Accountability Office or the Treasury. The OIG only had three of the audit
reports in question archived. Something was awfully wrong here.
The essence of auditing the US gold stock is to reassure the global
economy that in any extreme scenario all dollars in circulation are supported
by gold providing essential confidence and credibility. Once it’s proven
the gold is there, why throw away the evidence? I wrote about this in my post
US
Government Lost 7 Fort Knox Gold Audit Reports published on June 2,
2015.
In my post from June 2015 I announced I would submit new FOIAs at
several US government departments to get to the bottom of this. And I did,
I’ve submitted countless of FOIAs at the US Treasury, US Mint and the OIG,
next to asking for information through conventional channels like email and
phone calls. Sometimes the FOIAs were not honored, sometimes I
received very intriguing bits of information. What I found out, inter alia,
was that in between 1993 and 2008, 84,671,927 ounces were re-audited.
Meaning, several compartments that were sealed in between 1975 and 1986 had
been re-opened to access the bars inside. And strangely, the OIG cannot give
me a proper explanation for these re-audits. Believe me, I’ve tried to ask
numerous times.
Why was this gold re-audited? Why were sealed vault compartments
re-opened and re-audited? These are just examples of questions my
research is focussed on.
My interest in the subject did not pass unnoticed at the US
government. In recent months I could clearly sense a strong defense by all
departments in concert. Emails are not being answered, phone calls are not
being returned, questions in my FOIAs are dodged, and in my most recent FOIA
an unreasonable amount of money was asked for reports the Mint Director’s
Representative writes every year for “notifying the CFO of the completion of
the verification” of the Deep Storage gold audits.
Through a FOIA submitted at the OIG late 2015 I obtained the Management
Letter for the Fiscal Year 2004 Audit of the United States Mint’s Schedule of
Custodial Gold and Silver Reserves March 10, 2005. I the management
letter we can read:
5. Policy FIN-09, Deep Storage Asset verifications, paragraph 2v,
and MD 8H-3 paragraph 6a, both include the requirement that the Director’s
Representative submit a written report to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
notifying the CFO of the completion of the verification.
After reading this paragraph I thought maybe these reports by the Mint
Director’s Representative would disclose valuable information. As the US
government was barely talking to me anymore, I submitted a new FOIA request
at the Mint that stated:
Dear reader,
In the “Management Letter for the Fiscal Year 2004 Audit of the United
States Mint’s Schedule of Custodial Gold and Silver Reserves March 10, 2005”,
drafted by the OIG, it states:
“Policy FIN-09, Deep Storage Asset Verifications, paragraph 2v, and MD
8H-3 paragraph 6a, both include the requirement that the Director’s
Representative submit a written report to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
notifying the CFO of the completion of the verification.”
I would like to obtain all these reports by the US Mint Director’s
Representative to the Chief Financial Officer written 1993 – 2008.
The Mint replied this request would costs $3,144.96 dollars,
because it would take forty hours to search the documents, as the
requested documents are located at another facility, eight hours to review
the documents and additional costs would be added to duplicate 1,200
pages of responsive documentation. I think this is nonsense; it
shouldn’t take forty hours to search these documents and I would be
surprised if they actually count 1,200 pages. This is just another way of
trying to shake me off.
As some of you know, my real name is Jan
Nieuwenhuijs.
However, thanks to Henry
Young‘s advice on Twitter I decided to launch a crowdfunding
campaign on GoFundMe to
collect the money! If we all donate a few bucks, who knows what comes out!
I’ve started a crowdfunding campaign to collect the money
for the FOIA re Fort Knox!! Please click here and retweet https://t.co/XsNs607zwS
— BullionStar.com (@KoosJansen) August 17,
2016
After I tweeted about the campaign it quickly went viral. The
news was spread on websites such as TFMetals, GoldMoney,
GATA and GoldChartsRus – among
others – and within a few hours the funding was completed, which shows to me
the power of our gold community! I was truly overwhelmed by everybody’s
generous donations and support. As of this moment there is even more
money collected than I asked for at GoFundMe (please stop donating!). The
residual will be saved for when the costs appear to be higher or if they
charge me for any other FOIA I’ve submitted. Naturally, I will publicly keep
a record of expenditures in the
comment section of my GoFundMe page.
Next for me is to transfer the money to the US Treasury and wait what
they’ll sent back. If I’m offline for a weeks in September, that’s because
I’m digesting 1,200 pages of dense jargon.
I will disclose a list with all the names (mostly Turdites) who have donated
in the finished post on the audits of the US official gold reserves. For now,
thanks everybody who donated and I’ll keep you posted!!
