US gold safe and sound in Fort Knox
May 03 2000 at 10:22PM
By Jonathan Rosenthal
The United States government's reserve of gold bars, the world's largest, was all accounted for and safely tucked away in the vaults of Fort Knox and other repositories, said James Turk, the gold market commentator, after an eight-month investigation.
The notion that the vaults at Fort Knox might be empty first emerged in the 1970s when dissident journalists and gold commentators started talking of eye-witness accounts of hundreds of army trucks leaving Fort Knox in the dead of night.
Turk first started asking questions about the security of the US gold reserve last year after he was informed that it had last been audited under the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s.
His suspicions were further aroused after the US government failed to supply him with copies of the most recent audits, despite his written requests.
It was only after he wrote to his congressman, who then raised the matter with the US government on his behalf, that the government finally replied.
But Turk, who told his congressman that "in the absence of a proper audit, the gold reserve at Fort Knox may be at risk", was not satisfied with the government's initial response.
He said according to the information given to him by the government it appeared as if "a proper audit of the gold reserve at Fort Knox has not been undertaken".
But Turk said in his latest report that he had now been convinced that the gold reserve was properly accounted for.
At the end of March the US treasury said that 97 percent of the gold held at Fort Knox had been audited and that the audits included physical counts of the number of bars in particular compartments. The auditors also drilled into the bars to check that they really were solid gold.
Turk said that, when he began his investigation last August, he had an open mind on the question of whether the gold in Fort Knox was really all there.
"I think I have satisfied myself ... It would appear that the gold reserve is intact, safely stored in Fort Knox and other storage sites," he said.
iol.co.za |
