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We’ve been looking into an extremely complex
and controversial issue over the past two weeks. Does Ft. Knox contain
the historical gold it claims? Gold no longer backs our circulating
money. Still, those who hold fiduciary responsibilities to safeguard
our gold are the ones who actually do issue our money. If you
can’t trust them with the gold, how can you trust them with the money?
As best I can tell at the present time, the Federal
Reserve presently owns the gold that is or isn’t in Ft. Knox. Not
the Treasury and not U.S. citizens! Future articles will deal with this
subject. You can be well assured the Fed is scared witless that its
mishandling of this globally recognized treasure might just become common
knowledge.
Ft. Knox and its presumed contents are part and
parcel of the American legend. The U.S. dollar is under extreme strain
at the present time … and deservedly so, unfortunately. If it
became known that the Fed had also squandered their bounteous hoard of gold,
there would be an incredible outcry against them. They might just, once
again, be thrown out on their arses.
Toss the Fed? Is that possible? Sure it
is. The Constitution demands it. So do their many decades of
total mission failure. They were charged with price and monetary
stability when chartered in 1913. Check out a chart of the dollar’s
purchasing power over the last 95 years. Does it take an entire century
to recognize such a colossal failure? Where do you apply for that job?
If you like a good mystery novel, you will
definitely want to continue reading this essay. If not, it’s time
to push the exit button. We’re going to hit some links for some
extreme “conspiracy theory” stuff this week. Truth is often
much stranger than fiction.
If nothing else, you will learn that the precious
metals arena is one wild, wooly, and murky place.
In case you’re wondering, I don’t
believe Ft. Knox presently holds significant amounts of gold. Our
government continues to prove untrustworthy. The American people and
our ruling hierarchy are not the same thing. It is not
“un-American” to question the actions and track record of an
out-of-control regime. In fact, it is distinctly American.
Last week, I demonstrated how the U.S. government
has uneconomically dumped some five billion ounces of silver over the last 50
years. This week, we’re going to look into the many allegations
that President Lyndon Johnson long ago squandered our national gold
treasure. Once again, this topic is deserving of a book. A series
of articles hardly scratches the surface.
Let’s start with the official denial from Ft.
Knox authorities that the gold has ever been compromised. From the United States Bullion
Depository at Ft. Knox:
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“The security around the Depository has in
part led to a popular and recurring conspiracy theory, as alleged by Edward
Durrell, Tom Valentine and others, that claims that the Vault is mostly
empty, with most of the gold in Fort Knox removed to London in the late
1960s by Lyndon Johnson.
In response, on September 23, 1974, Senator
Walter Huddleston of Kentucky, twelve congressmen, and about one hundred
members of the news media toured the Vault and opened various cells and
doors, each filled with gold. Radio reporter Bill Evans, when asked
if it seemed like the gold might have been moved in just for the visit,
replied that ‘all I can say is that I saw gold there’ and that
it seemed like it was always there.
Additionally, audits of the gold by the
General Accounting Office (in cooperation with the United States Mint and
the United States Customs Service in 1974 and the Treasury Department) from
1975-81 found no discrepancies between the reported and actual amounts of
gold at the Depository. Approximately ten percent of the bullion is
audited annually to ensure the amount and purity matches official
records.
The theory continues to persist, however. In
2007, KPMG will carry out an independent audit.”
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In the sphere of those who tend not to trust the
government, nothing is confirmed until it is officially denied a time or
two. That’s a pretty clear denial above. The mentioned
“audits” of Ft. Knox gold are complete shams. Taking a peek
at a little “show gold” or allowing the fox to inspect the hen
house won’t cut it. The controversy refuses to go away.
Edward Durrell and Tom Valentine are mentioned in
the official denial. They long ago claimed that President Johnson was
snookered out of the gold in a vain attempt to hold down global gold prices
in the late 1960s.
Durrell was a Virginia industrialist and a board
chairman for the Union Fork and Hoe Company. He was a proponent of
honest and Constitutional money and came to believe the gold was disgorged
from Ft. Knox in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There were eyewitness
accounts of Army trucks hauling regular shipments of cargo in the middle of
the night. Durrell forced the Army to admit that some of the trucks did
indeed carry gold. The 1974 hokey gold audit,
mentioned in the official record above, was a result of Durrell’s
investigations.
Tom Valentine, also mentioned in the official
denial, was an independent journalist for a national magazine out of
Chicago. He also clamored for an independent
Ft. Knox gold audit.
An unnamed Army general was also a key player in
this scandal. I have not been able to track down a name or much detail
about him. We’re told the following from this
link:
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“A U.S.
General, at a later date, stated off the record to some, that he headed a
military convey of trucks that took the Fort Knox gold to the East Coast,
where it was shipped to England in the 1960s, to stem a run on the Bank of
England. The British had a lot of trouble caught repeatedly denying
they were going to devalue the Pound Sterling. Amid their bank panic,
some other countries apparently ended up with the U.S. Fort Knox
gold.”
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Another key player on the Ft. Knox gold scene was
Dr. Peter Beter. He was an ultra-successful
attorney and was appointed as General Counsel for the Export-Import Bank of
Washington. His book, The
Conspiracy Against the Dollar, was a bestseller. Beter wrote a series of “Audio Letters” from
1975 to 1982. Many of these letters exposed details of the Ft. Knox
heist. Here’s a link to Audio Letter #2.
Another gold investigator happened to be a 22-year
U.S. Congressman from Kentucky. In fact, Ft. Knox was in his
district. He also claimed gold was being taken out secretly at
night. His affidavit can be found in the Beter
link above.
As you can see, the clear claim is that it was
President Lyndon Johnson who supposedly squandered the massive gold hoard in
Ft. Knox. LBJ is not exactly known as our most honest President (see
Gulf of Tonkin and Vietnam). Did he also lie about U.S. gold?
More recently, James Turk, a true advocate of honest
money and markets, has been hiking the Ft. Knox gold trail: click here (some of the links in this article are defunct) and
here for two of his articles.
The most recent work demanding an independent audit
comes from the honest money and market advocates at the Gold Anti-Trust
Action Committee (GATA). From a 9/19/07 news release:
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“Metal Bulletin's story appended here is
strong evidence that Western central banks are having trouble mobilizing
enough real gold with which to maintain their gold-price suppression
scheme. The story's reference to GATA's being ‘believed’
to have made a freedom-of-information request in regard to the
long-unaudited United States gold reserves is easily clarified: The request
is still being devised by GATA's consultant, constitutional scholar and
lawyer Edwin Vieira, with the hope of making it un-dodgeable
by the Treasury Department.
GATA hopes to submit the request in the next
month.”
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
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I’ll be the first to admit that this Ft. Knox
gold trail is about as winding and murky as it could get. We’ve
just spanned four decades of controversy. Will the truth ever be known?
I think it will in the near future. The global
fiat money system is now centered on the U.S.
dollar. This structure is collapsing and will have to be replaced
sooner or later. The gold of Ft. Knox will either come to the forefront
at that time or it will disappear into a black hole.
It’s
possible the dollars you hold are still
as good as the gold in Ft. Knox.
But that might not be saying much.
Russel McDougal
Investor’s Daily Edge
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