by: Constance Gustke
Buried inside a 109,000-acre U.S. Army post in Kentucky sits one of the Federal Reserve’s most secure assets and its only gold depository: the 73-year-old Fort Knox vault. Its glittering gold bricks, totaling 147.3 million ounces (that’s about $168 billion at current prices), are stacked inside massive granite walls topped with a bombproof roof. Or are they?
It’s hard to know for sure. Few people have been inside Fort Knox, a highly classified bunker ringed by fences and multiple alarms and guarded by Apache helicopter gunships.
When the U.S. finished building Fort Knox in 1937, the gold was shipped in on a special nine-car train manned by machine gunners and loaded onto Army trucks protected by a U.S. Calvary brigade. And the fort has been pretty much off limits since then. A U.S. Mint spokesman said in an email statement to MoneyWatch that the accounting firm KPMG, which audits the Mint, “has been present in the vault at Fort Knox.” The Mint won’t comment on exactly how much gold is in there, though.
That’s why Ron Paul (R-Texas), a 2008 presidential candidate known for his libertarian streak, wants to have a look around. Paul introduced a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, which includes Fort Knox’s gold. “My attitude is, let’s just find out what’s there,” he says.