Last Word on Fort Knox

May 1, 2000 - I got a lot of response to my last letter, which reviewed my correspondence from the US Treasury and its Department of the Mint. I can't tell you the number of people who asked me what do I really think about whether or not the Gold Reserve is safely stored in Fort Knox. So I've decided to re-visit this matter one last time.

My conclusion in the last letter was: "It would appear that the Gold Reserve is intact, safely stored in Fort Knox and the other storage sites."

Note the word "appear". I chose this word purposefully because to reach this conclusion about the Gold Reserve, I had to accept the word of the technocrats in the Treasury Department with whom I corresponded on this matter over so many months. As a practical matter, that is as far as anyone can take this issue. Nothing more can be done.

As discussed in my article "The US Treasury Responds", the Office of Inspector General (OIG) claims that it is an independent third party auditor and that it does inspect the Gold inventory (counting bars, assaying, etc.). So it comes down to whether or not one believes the response I received from the Assistant Inspector General for Audit in the OIG. For now I have accepted this gentleman's statements at face value, but in my lifetime I have seen so many lies coming from our government, I qualified my statement with the word "appear".

While most lies come from the politicians, they do not in my view have an exclusive grip on federal government lying. All one has to do is look at the FBI's sorry record on Waco and Ruby Ridge or the cover-ups revealed by whistle-blowers in the Defense Department and other areas of government to know that the bureaucrats can also lie through their teeth.

In short, I have accepted the Assistant Inspector General for Audit's comments (and also the US Mint's comments in the second letter) at face value because their response adequately addressed my concerns. But because of the federal government's sorry track record of telling Americans only what the government wants us to hear regardless whether or not it is true, it is only prudent to qualify my acceptance of their comments with the word "appear".

So is the Gold Reserve safely stored in Fort Knox? It would appear that it is, but do we really know for sure?

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