"Show Audit" Was Done To Allay Concerns About Gold Kept in Fort Knox

As of this moment, the United States government (according to them) controls roughly 300 million ounces of gold, which is currently valued at around $900 billion.

Of this amount, 147.3 million ounces is locked in vaults in the Fort Knox Bullion Depository, which is located in Kentucky.

With the recent re-election of President Trump to the White House, the question of exactly how much gold is actually stored in Fort Knox is back up for debate.

In fact, Elon Musk, who is working with DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), has openly wondered just how much gold is being stored in Fort Knox as of this moment, and there are growing rumors that DOGE will be auditing the nation's gold reserves.

We know that Fort Knox is practically impenetrable and that the vaults that are used to house much of the nation's gold reserves can withstand a nuclear bomb blast.

But exactly how much gold is still in the vaults? Why aren't these amounts audited on a regular basis?

The structural integrity of the vaults will be audited often, though actually making sure that the country's gold is all accounted for? That's another question entirely.

Questions have been swirling about Fort Knox for many decades - in fact, the voices of doubt were so loud that the Treasury Department set up a "show audit" in 1974 to quiet politicians and reporters.

On September 23rd, 1974, Mary Brooks, director of the US Mint, opened up the doors of one of the vaults in Fort Knox. A small group of politicians and reporters, including skeptic Rep. Philip Crane, were invited to take a look inside one of Fort Knox's vaults to verify that it held gold.

Brooks, who stated at the time that "we'll probably never do this again", led the group into the vault, where people were invited to handle one of the gold bars that was contained in the vault.

Brooks also chose a random gold bar and weighed it on a balance to show that it was, in fact, real gold.

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Most of the group that attended the "show audit" came away saying that the gold was "probably there".

Some, however, remained skeptical. Fort Knox is supposed to hold 367,500 bars of gold - how about a comprehensive audit done by a non-partisan group to make sure that everything is there? Why was just one vault shown to the politicians and reporters, and not all of the vaults?

Skeptics believe a number of different theories about Fort Knox. There isn't nearly as much gold in Fort Knox as the US government has been stating. There is actually no gold in Fort Knox. The US has been slowly selling down their gold in untracked global trade. People have been stealing from Fort Knox.

With Elon Musk joining the growing group of people who are questioning just how much gold Fort Knox contains, we may be moving closer to a full-blown audit of the secret and mysterious United States Buillion Depository.

Filed under: General Knowledge