History Decoded: The 10 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

by Meltzer, Brad

  Wait. “Small?” All of our gold is kept in a small room?

  “It is a vault that is about eight or nine feet by ten feet high and fifteen feet deep,” Ganz continued. But when we asked him if the vault could be empty, we were surprised to hear: “It’s absolutely possible,” Ganz replied. “The government could’ve done it. The only way that anybody is going to find out is to go back to Fort Knox and to look inside the vaults.”

  Indeed, unless the vault is opened for inspection, there’s no way of knowing.

  And now you’re seeing the problem. Right now—today—there is no regular schedule for inspecting our gold reserves. No public accounting or anything to produce evidence that the gold is still there.

  “The Treasury Department is required to put out on a monthly basis an asset balance sheet of the U.S. government. I looked at that balance sheet, and it hasn’t changed fifteen cents,” Ganz explained.

  But what makes that so concerning is the fact that the price of gold has fluctuated wildly in the last few years—yet the government says that the value of our gold reserves has been almost exactly the same.

  To go further, let’s stop for a quick economic primer: America’s economy used to be based on the gold standard, which meant that dollar bills were really only deeds for a tiny portion of the nation’s gold. That changed in 1971, when the government moved to a confidence-based economy. That means that for more than 40 years, we’ve relied on the principle of supply and demand, not the dollar’s relationship to gold, to set the dollar’s value.

  And since the government controls the supply of gold, it has far more power to control the value of the dollar.

  You top that off with the fact that there are no public audits, and my nose starts twitching. So what happens if Fort Knox is empty?

  Think back to the national threat that caused Fort Knox to be opened: the Great Depression. The stock market had collapsed. The economy had ground to a halt. A quarter of the nation was without work. Factories were closed, stores were shuttered . . . and lines for soup kitchens and breadlines stretched down the block in every town.

  Those same towns had seen many of their banks fail when depositors rushed to withdraw their savings—withdrawals that vastly exceeded the amounts of cash the banks had on hand.

  To most people, that was far more terrifying than a plummeting stock market whose losses wiped out the millionaires. Imagine that you went to your bank and found it boarded up, your life’s savings vanished. How would you react?

  Anger, right? Followed quickly by fear. Then comes the panic.

  It wouldn’t be much different today. In our confidence-based economy, when you take away the confidence, well . . .

  Banks Fail

  Banks across the country failed when depositors rushed to withdraw their savings, vastly exceeding the amounts of cash the banks had on hand.

  A HUNGRY NATION

  During the Depression, lines for soup kitchens and breadlines stretched down the block in every town.

  According to Ganz, there’d be “panic in the streets. You could have riots, you could have financial meltdown, and you could have people taking dollar bills and tearing them up and throwing them up in the air.”

  OK, that might be a bit dramatic, but Ganz is making a vital point about hyperinflation, which is what happens when money literally becomes not worth the paper it’s printed on.

  It happens all the time . . . the Germans saw it in 1923, when firewood cost 850 billion marks. Greece experienced it in 1943, when milk went to 2 million drachmas a liter. And it happened in Brazil in 1993, when a bottle of suntan lotion cost 800,000 cruzeiros reais.

  Needless to say, the way the world’s economies are interconnected, there’d be the potential for a global financial meltdown. And that’s definitely at least one motive for why the government wouldn’t want you knowing if the Fort Knox gold was gone.

  The Specs

  No civilian has been allowed to see the gold in Fort Knox since 1974, nearly 40 years ago. As for the vault itself, it doesn’t require an enormous amount of space. According to the U.S. Mint, each of the standard gold bars present fits the following specifications:

  Size of a standard gold bar: 7 inches x 35⁄8 inches x 13⁄4 inches

  Weight of a standard gold bar: approximately 400 ounces or 27.5 pounds

  Fort Knox

  The United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox was built in 1936 to store a large portion of official U.S. gold reserves and other precious items. You won’t believe what else was in there.

  Good Luck Getting In

  —or getting out, if you do. Among other things, Fort Knox boasts five-foot-thick granite walls and a blast-proof vault door. They can also flood it full of water so no one gets out.

  To accommodate the 4,500 tons, you’d need 33,000 or so gold bars. Admittedly, that’s a lot of gold bars, but you wouldn’t need the Grand Canyon to store them. The vault at Fort Knox held them comfortably.

  After the 1974 inspection, the vault was closed, the seals replaced, and no member of the public has seen the interior of the vault since.

  Not that there haven’t been plenty of requests.

  All of which have been denied.

  Why deny letting people inside? Isn’t it, after all, our gold? Why shouldn’t designated representatives from Congress or the press be allowed to see it? The official responses are the same as they’ve been throughout the history:

  Tradition: The Mint releases a listing of regular assets—but audits and viewings have never been frequent. Indeed, just months before the 1974 public audit, Mint director Mary Brooks summed up the Mint’s position in this simple statement: “The policy against visitors is long-standing.”

  Cost: More recently, expense has been used as a rationale for keeping the vault closed. Federal officials have claimed that a true audit—including drilling into the gold to check its level of purity—could cost tens of millions of dollars.

  Your Gold Is None of Your Business: This is the most frequent reason for refusal.

  Since 1967, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has permitted citizens to formally request federal documents and other information. The government is required to comply with the request—unless the request runs into one of FOIA’s numerous exceptions.

  So is Fort Knox an exception to FOIA? Of course it is. The contents of Fort Knox are considered classified material.

  But wait, it gets better. Check out this 1976 addition to the list of exceptions to FOIA: “related to information which would lead to financial speculation or endanger the stability of any financial institution.” FOIA isn’t likely to get past that one.

  One Last Look

  Mary Brooks, director of the Mint, led the last inspection of Fort Knox in September 1974. That means the last time anyone was in there, the Jackson 5 were just getting started.

  Thinking ABout Breaking into Fort Knox?

  “Both the vault door and emergency door were 21 inches thick and made of the latest torch- and drill-resistant material. The main vault door weighed 20 tons and the vault casing was 25 inches thick.”

  —The Mosler Safe Company

  The vault at Fort Knox is strong enough to withstand an actual nuclear blast.

  When it was built, the vault door alone was a marvel of engineering. The closed vault is sealed with wax and tape designed to reveal even the slightest breach. And the depository’s location itself plays a large role in safeguarding the gold.

  Fort Knox is landlocked, which rules out both amphibious assault and, more importantly, amphibious escape. So if you’re going to take the gold out of Fort Knox, you’re going to have to do it by land or air. And think about this: Just moving the gold into the depository required 500 railroad cars.

  Today, with more t
han 4,500 tons of gold supposedly stored in Fort Knox, it’s estimated that flying the gold out would require 150 fully loaded 747s.

  And don’t forget that the depository itself is located on a major military base. I went there myself. In addition to the installation’s sniper and machine gun towers—and the armed Apache helicopters—the installation is ringed with the highest tech fences and electronic surveillance you’ve ever seen. When we sent Buddy, McKinley, and Scott there, an unmarked black SUV showed up behind them within a few minutes.

  Plus, even if you did get past the defenses, just opening that vault door

  requires ten separate people performing ten separate precise tasks.

  Oh, and did I mention you probably need to bring some scuba gear? There’s a rumor—neither confirmed nor denied by the government—that in the event of a severe security breach, the vaults at Fort Knox could actually be flooded, drowning any intruders.

  So it makes a bit more sense why supervillain Auric Goldfinger, from the James Bond classic, didn’t set out to steal the gold from Fort Knox, but instead tried to destroy it with a nuke. (P.S. That vast, multilevel space where James Bond battled Goldfinger’s deadly henchman Oddjob? That was a creation of set designer Ken Adam’s imagination and had no reflection of reality.)

  So who would have a chance of removing the gold from Fort Knox? Who else? The U.S. government itself.

  The Hard Facts

  Want to take a look at the Bullion Depository yourself? Here’s what you’ll be facing. According to the U.S. Mint, the gold is protected by:

  16,000 cubic feet of granite

  4,200 cubic yards of concrete

  750 tons of reinforcing steel

  670 tons of structural steel

  Those materials were combined to produce a structure that boasts:

  Five-foot-thick granite walls

  Blast-proof vault door

  Inside the Actor’s Studio

  If the goal was to find out what’s in the vault, there was only one place to make that happen: We headed to Fort Knox.

  Of course, as I mentioned before, there was no way we were getting inside.

  Still, even if we couldn’t get in, that doesn’t mean there aren’t others with eyes and ears inside there. One such person was Craig Hulet, who told us, “I was stationed at Fort Knox after I returned from Vietnam. I was a senior armor, and I issued weapons to those people that guarded Fort Knox.”

  Perfect person to speak to, right? We thought so, too. Especially when we heard Hulet’s real bombshell: “We were told to issue no ammunition. And because I was a returning vet, I questioned it. And the officer in charge was a friend of mine. He pulled me aside and said we don’t issue weapons with ammunition simply because there is no gold in Fort Knox.”

  “We were told to issue no ammunition. And because I was a returning vet, I questioned it. And the officer in charge was a friend of mine. He pulled me aside and said we don’t issue weapons with ammunition simply because there is no gold in Fort Knox.”

  —Craig Hulet, stationed at Fort Knox

  An Impregnable Fortress

  Under construction in 1936, the plan was that there would be no more secure spot in America—and possibly on Earth—than Fort Knox.

  Read that line again: “There is no gold in Fort Knox.”

  It’s one thing for a lower guard like Hulet to say that. But even Hulet asked his superior what was going on. His captain’s response? “He said that he understood that there was no gold,” Hulet added. “And he did give me a reason why because I thought, Well then, this is foolish. What are we doing? There’s people that are going to come to Fort Knox. Let’s assume they believe there’s gold. They’re going to come armed. So either way, we’re stuck with no ammunition. These people believe there’s gold. He said it’s simple: We let them in and we zip it up.”

  Zip it up?

  “In other words, they disappear.”

  So does Hulet think the government will ever come clean about the gold being gone?

  “No. They don’t tell us anything unless they’re absolutely forced to. This isn’t a crime. That’s what’s most important to me to understand it. When you realize that this is a policy of the government. This is not theft, this is not . . . it’s not crooks and liars. We’re not going to catch anybody and put anybody in jail. What we’re going to find is that we’ve got a policy in place still to this day that says we’re not going to be on a gold standard. And now we can never be on a gold standard. There’s not sufficient gold. . . . Your children, grandchildren, your future. You’ve been robbed.”

  We heard the same from a local waitress whose mother was in the military and guarded the gold vault. Did her mom ever mention what was inside Fort Knox? “She said no, there’s no gold in the gold vault.” She went on to say, “There used to be gold in the gold vault. There’s nothing left but dust. And everybody around here pretty much knows that there’s no gold in the gold vault.”

  Worst of all, Craig Hulet and that waitress aren’t the only ones who think that.

  Miltary Base

  How well protected is the gold? The Depository is located on a major military base. In addition to the installation’s sniper and machine gun towers—and armed Apache helicopters—it is ringed with high-tech fences and electronic surveillance. No question, the gold is safe . . . if the gold is in there.

  Then What Was It Used For?

  One of the best people to answer that question was former Kentucky senator Walter “Dee” Huddleston, who also agreed to speak with us.

  Beyond being the former senator from the state that actually houses Fort Knox, Senator Huddleston has one other major claim to gold fame: He was one of the few people that they allowed in Fort Knox when it was audited back in 1974.

  Y’see, back then, there was a similar uproar by people who wanted to see the gold.

  According to Senator Huddleston, “People had reported that they had seen shipments of gold going out of there and perhaps going to a foreign country or something. I guess we’re engaged in activities that are secret. And activities that are believed to be in our best interest and protecting us some. And for those kinds of situations, yeah, I think it should be used, if you want to use it, without publication.”

  But did that mean that some of the gold could’ve been used—whether to protect us or pay off an enemy?

  “I would say it’s possible yes,” Senator Huddleston said. “But as far as the money and the gold, I don’t see any reason why the American public shouldn’t know what we’ve got up there. It’s ours.”

  So what if we find out it’s half empty?

  “I think [it] would be a terrible shock to many people in the country,” the senator agreed. “And the whole economy might go under.”

  So what would Senator Huddleston do then?

  “I don’t know. Run for the border.”

  Ron Paul

  Most people know Ron Paul as a presidential candidate from Texas. But the congressman has long been a loud advocate for a new audit of Fort Knox.

  When we tracked him down, we reached out to him with some questions . . . and the 21-year veteran of the House of Representatives got right back to us. But rather than simply tell you what he said, look at Exhibit 3B and you’ll find the actual transcript of his answers.

  In the end, Ron Paul offered powerful words from an elected official . . . telling us that the public is potentially being duped about the contents of Fort Knox. And the deeper we dug, we kept finding similar sentiments.

  The Man Inside

  Between 1975 and 1986, Doug Simmons was a stack foreman at Fort Knox. That means he stacked gold in the actual vault. He saw at least some of the gold there—and was the one who told us what else the government had stored inside in the past (see right). But when asked what
else could be stored inside Fort Knox today, Simmons told us to “look at the growing array of security that continues to go around that vault, year after year. All the locals know: more fencing, more cameras, more presence of guards. Humvees going around the building on a regular basis . . . people up on the rooftops and stuff. Things you didn’t see so much back in the 1970s, when there was one wrought-iron fence around the building. This is vastly changed since 9/11. If you go onto that property and you don’t stop, they’re going to kill you.”

  See this coin? A few years ago, I was invited to speak at Fort Knox and a colonel there rewarded me with this U.S. Army Challenge Coin for excellence.

  As a result of the friendship we struck—and that I very much respect—he tried to make us the first civilians to get access to the vault since 1974. But even with all that pull, the real boss—the Treasury Department—still wouldn’t let us near it. Yes, we found the answer of what else was in there besides gold. But is the gold itself gone?

  According to the Times of London, not even the auditors who prepare the annual inventory of assets are allowed to look inside the vault at Fort Knox.

  We just have to take the government’s word that the gold is all there.

  It’s called . . . confidence.

  Does that mean there’d be a full economic collapse if it was revealed there was no gold inside? Depends who you ask. But know this: The gold inside Fort Knox is a symbol as much as it is an asset—and once that symbol is destroyed, the confidence the symbol represents goes with it.

  If There’s No Gold, What’s Inside It?