Auric Goldfinger.
For James Bond fans, Goldfinger’s obsessed-with-gold villain in the Bond movie that bore his name way back in 1964 was, to say the least, memorable.
Life magazine memorably ran an immutable image from the film of a “Bond girl” (as such were called in the day) stretched out on a bed quite naked and dead, painted, from head to toe, in gold paint. Dead at the hands of Goldfinger, of course.
The essence of the plot was Goldfinger’s nefarious plot to contaminate Ft. Knox, the American repository of gold bullion. Making it worthless, and so too the American economy based on that gold. And making Goldfinger in essence the world’s dictator. Thus it was James Bond’s mission to stop him. (No spoiler alert here.)
Now, here we are a full 61 years after the film, based on Bond creator Ian Fleming’s novel, and the status of what’s really in Ft. Knox is, no kidding, at issue again. This time for real.
Here’s but one headline, this one from Newsmax (where, full disclosure, I am a contributor): “Sen. Rand Paul Tells Musk, DOGE to Check Fort Knox Gold.”
The story reports:
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., encouraged President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency to audit the country’s gold reserve at Fort Knox.
Elon Musk, whom Trump put in charge of DOGE, responded to an X user who said it “would be great if @elonmusk could take a look inside Fort Knox just to make sure the 4,580 tons of US gold is there. Last time anyone looked was 50 years ago in 1974.”
“Surely it’s reviewed at least every year?” wrote Musk, who later received an answer from Paul.
“Nope. Let’s do it,” the senator wrote Sunday morning.
Fort Knox, located south of Louisville’s gold reserves, houses gold reserves worth an estimated $425 billion.
Say what?
This is not a scene from Goldfinger. And who knew Senator Paul or Elon Musk would be cast as the James Bond substitute in this version of a story revolving around rescuing America’s gold in Ft. Knox?
Yet there it is.
The New York Post reports: “Elon Musk encouraged to crack open Fort Knox and audit the $425 billion gold reserves inside — and Rand Paul wants to help.”
It’s unclear the last time the facility underwent a comprehensive audit, as the vaults were totally off-limits for decades.
The first tour of the facility came in 1974 when journalists and a Congressional delegation were allowed in following claims the stores had been looted. The vaults were opened again in 2017, during the last Trump administration, for Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to view them.
The Post story goes on, and, yes indeed, even references the legendary Bond film, saying:
But the vault’s relevance is not what it used to be since the U.S. left the gold standard in 1971. For about a hundred years before then, all U.S. currency was backed by stockpiles of gold kept safe in places like Fort Knox.
But since the U.S. left the gold standard, its holdings in Fort Knox are merely another asset held by the Federal Reserve.
Nevertheless, Fort Knox’s hold on the public imagination has been strong — and was solidified when the fictional criminal mastermind Auric Goldfinger attempted to break in but was thwarted by James Bond in the iconic 1964 film “Goldfinger.”
The real vault has at least 147.3 million ounces — 9.2 million lbs. — worth of gold sitting in its vaults, according to the U.S. Mint. That’s about half of the Treasury’s reserve gold.
(The largest gold vault in the world is actually in Lower Manhattan at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Building, but that also houses gold from other governments.)
The government assesses the book value of $42.22 per ounce, totaling about $6.2 billion worth of gold in Fort Knox.
But that’s almost a comical undervalue; gold is currently trading at nearly $2,900 per troy ounce after skyrocketing in the last year — meaning the stash is worth hundreds of billions.
Got all that?
What makes this story particularly interesting — and decidedly relevant — is the involvement of Elon Musk. Musk, thanks to President Trump, is the guy who is making it his task in life to turn the federal government of the United States inside and outside to understand if it is doing what it is supposed to be doing. Asking pointed questions and demanding answers.
In this case, questions like these two:
- Is the federal Department of Education really educating America’s kids? And if not, why do we need it?
- Is the Pentagon really about American military defense — or has it, as newly Trump-appointed Secretary Pete Hegseth maintains, taken to “following the rest of our country off the cliff of cultural chaos and weakness.”
Not to be underestimated in all of this is the conspiracy mindset that periodically surfaces in American life. As the debate over the exact contents and worth of the gold in Ft. Knox proceeds, the conspiracy theories revolving around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are surfacing. And not for the first time.
In that case, President Trump has joined the voices of those demanding an answer, a final answer, to what, if anything, underlay the assassination of those three 1960s icons.
It takes no imagination to see that with Senator Paul — the Senator from Kentucky where Ft. Knox is based — now joining the new demand for transparency at Ft. Knox there will in fact be serious pressure to get the Senator — and indeed all Americans — an answer. From Elon Musk. In fact, it was the Senator’s father, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who was demanding an audit of Ft. Knox all the way back in the 1980s. Alas, there was no Elon Musk who had the political heft to get an audit done.
Now there is. At last the flurry of conspiracy musings about what is — or is not — in Ft. Knox and how much it is worth may get answered.
Stay tuned.
READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord:
Pressley, Booker, and Colleagues: Silent on Dems Paying Reparations for Party’s Support of Slavery