(Stuart Englert, Money Metals News Service) When it comes to U.S. gold reserves, secrecy prevails over transparency.
Attempts to authorize a comprehensive, independent audit of the nation’s gold reserves have proven elusive and futile for decades.
The last two prominent audits, conducted 72 and 51 years ago, respectively, were far from thorough or free of government influence.
The 1953 gold audit was commissioned by Treasury Secretary George M. Humphrey shortly after President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office. While often cited as an independent undertaking supervised by representatives of the presumably nonpartisan General Accounting Office (GAO), the audit’s Treasury-appointed advisory committee was composed of three bankers and a Federal Reserve board member, who undoubtedly had personal and political opinions about gold.
Contrary to some artificial intelligence (AI) and media claims, the audit wasn’t comprehensive either. In fact, it was very limited in scope. Only three of 22 sealed vaults at Fort Knox (KY) Bullion Depository were opened for verification purposes, and only 26 gold bars among some 88,000 in the unsealed vaults were assayed for purity.
“On the basis of assays, your committee can positively report that the gold represented, according to assay, is at the depository,” the audit’s oversight committee concluded. “We have no reason, whatsoever, to believe other than, should all melts be assayed, the results would be the same.”
Despite the convoluted—and seemingly contradictory—assurance, the audit was based mostly on assumptions and not completely assayed and inventoried evidence. The U.S. government reportedly held about 20,000 tons of gold in 1953.
Two decades later, the nation’s gold stocks underwent another partial examination that began with a congressional, media-covered inspection of a single Fort Knox vault on Sept. 23, 1974. The ensuing audit involved—once again—inventorying gold bars in three of the depository’s 13 sealed vaults, weighing a small percentage of the bars, and assaying an even smaller sampling of those bars.
Fort Knox presumably had fewer sealed vaults in 1974 and less gold to audit because U.S. gold holdings by the early 1970s fell to 8,300 tons due to growing balance-of-payment deficits and foreign conversion of dollars into gold.
Thereafter, gold audits devolved into a bewildering bureaucratic morass of unreliability spearheaded by the Committee for Continuing Audit of the U.S. Government-owned Gold, which consisted of personnel from the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and U.S. Mint. Read all about the auditing anomalies and problems in an open letter to President Trump HERE.
Legislative Efforts Have Repeatedly Failed
Efforts to get Congress to authorize a comprehensive, independent audit of the nation’s gold reserves have proven futile ever since. But that hasn’t stopped a handful of Constitution-supporting lawmakers from trying.
Former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a sound money stalwart, sponsored the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2011. The measure directed the U.S. Treasury to conduct “a full assay, inventory, and audit of gold reserves of the United States.”
“For far too long, the U.S. government has been less than transparent in releasing information relating to its gold holdings,” said Paul, chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, during a hearing on oversight of the nation’s gold holdings.
Paul garnered no co-sponsors for his legislation.
In 2019, Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) picked up the audit torch. He introduced the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2019, which required the GAO to audit the nation’s gold holdings and to conduct subsequent audits every five years.
“The U.S. Treasury has neglected to give the American people an understanding and inventory of our nation’s gold holdings,” Mooney said. “After 65 years since the last audit, this legislation would lead to necessary transparency in accounting for our gold reserves.”
Importantly, Mooney’s bill (and in all the versions that followed) included a requirement that any encumbrances, such as pledges, swaps, and leases, placed against America’s gold must also be disclosed. After all, verifying the gold is all there is not the same as determining who has claims on it.
Still, no legislative co-sponsors stepped forward.
Two years later, Mooney tried again, introducing the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2021.
“Given the dramatic levels of debt-financed spending by the federal government and the potential this could trigger an inflationary nightmare, ensuring America’s gold reserves are both secure and fully accounted for has never been more important,” he wrote in a letter to his fellow lawmakers.
Once again, Mooney received no congressional support for his bill.
Renewed Calls for a Gold Transparency
Dollar devaluation, price inflation, and rising gold prices have renewed calls for transparency from the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and a complete accounting of U.S. gold holdings.
On Feb. 15, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the son of Ron Paul, supported the idea of a Fort Knox audit in an online exchange with Elon Musk, then administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), on X.
Six days later, President Donald Trump suggested an audit was in the offing. “We’re going to go into Fort Knox to make sure the gold is there. Do you know about that?” the President asked a reporter aboard Air Force One.
“We hope everything is fine with Fort Knox, but we’re going to go into Fort Knox, the fabled Fort Knox, to make sure the gold is there,” he added. “If the gold isn’t there, we’re going to be very upset.”
Trump, for undetermined reasons, has been publicly silent on the subject ever since.
In June, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced the Gold Transparency Act of 2025. The legislation has four co-sponsors.
Earlier this week, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), citing Trump’s transparency agenda, introduced a similar measure in the upper legislative body. The bill calls for “a full assay, inventory, and audit of all gold reserves of the United States by a “qualified, independent, third-party, external auditor” contracted by the U.S. Comptroller General.
“For over half a century, there has not been a comprehensive audit of America’s gold reserves,” Lee said. “Americans should know whether their literal national treasure is safe and accurately accounted for.”
Lee also wants to know if any outstanding claims exist on the nation’s gold, which, according to the U.S. Treasury, totals 261.5 million troy ounces or 8,133 tons. The draft legislation requires a full accounting of all encumbrances of the nation’s bullion holdings, including those due to leases, swaps, or similar transactions over the last 50 years, as well as a disclosure of gold sales, purchases, disbursements, or receipts during the same period.
In addition, the Treasury would have five years to refine and upgrade the nation’s gold bars to meet market standards. Many of the gold bars stored at Fort Knox are 90 percent fine, whereas international bullion exchanges require gold of 99.5 to 99.99 percent purity.
Sen. Lee’s bill is a credible attempt to achieve a comprehensive, impartial audit. Based on a news release on his congressional website, a number of pro-gold proponents and sound money advocates endorse his proposed solution for accounting openness.
The question remains: Will his proposal, unlike its predecessors, amass sufficient political and public support for passage, lifting the veil on government secrecy and shedding light on gold transparency?
A veteran journalist, Stuart Englert is the author of Rigged: Exposing the Largest Financial Fraud in History, which documents precious metals market manipulation and price suppression. You can visit his Substack HERE.
