President Donald Trump said he’s going to check on the country’s supply of gold stored at the famously secure Fort Knox depository, in what would be an unusual glimpse into the vault not typically accessed by presidents or the public.
“If the gold isn’t there, we’re going to be very upset,” Trump said, as his adviser tech billionaire Elon Musk has stoked theories claiming the gold may have been taken.
The U.S. Bullion Depository, often called just Fort Knox, is a huge vault at the military base in Fort Knox, Kentucky. The U.S. Mint says it holds about half of the country’s gold and has only allowed a handful of visits from outsiders like politicians and journalists over its history.
Fort Knox is home to nearly 150 million troy ounces (or 5,000 tons) of gold, according to the U.S. Mint. At current prices, the value could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Theories of thievery at Fort Knox are nothing new. When members of the media and lawmakers got their first glimpse at the gold stores in 1974, a New York Times headline read: “Visitors Get a Peek at Fort Knox Gold—It’s There.”
“In recent years there have been repeated rumors that some of the gold was missing,” the Times then reported.
The Mint is aware that some people have been skeptical of a secretive, inaccessible location storing vast amounts of gold. High-profile visits have been orchestrated before to address the public’s concerns, according to the Mint’s website.
“The Treasury Secretary allows the visit when rumors persist that all the gold had been removed from the vaults,” it said of a 1974 visit.
An M1 Abrams tank sits on a pedestal above the entrance signage to Fort Knox on May 31, 2021.
An old question returns: Is the gold still in Fort Knox?
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is among those calling for an audit, saying in a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that a “formal audit” hasn’t happened since 1974. But Bessent, appointed by Trump, said a report from Sept. 30 showed the gold was all accounted for.
“We do an audit every year,” Bessent told Bloomberg TV. “All the gold is there.”
Trump’s call for a public audit comes amid skepticism about about the vault from one of his most public advisers: Elon Musk.
“Who is confirming that gold wasn’t stolen from Fort Knox? Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not. That gold is owned by the American public! We want to know if it’s still there,” Musk said in a post to his social media platform X last week.
The Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk does not officially lead but has acted out his objectives, has been orchestrating a campaign to drastically cut the federal workforce and budget.
How much gold is supposed to be at Fort Knox?
Fort Knox doesn’t have all the U.S. gold. There are 147.3 million ounces of gold stored there, about half of all the Treasury’s gold, according to the U.S. Mint.
Fort Knox has also held historical artifacts for other government agencies, including President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights during World War II for safe keeping.
The vault was built in 1936 with 16,000 cubic feet of granite, 4,200 cubic yards of concrete, 750 tons of reinforcing steel and 670 tons of structural steel. Fort Knox received the first gold in its depository in 1937.
‘Freakishly well secured’
Small amounts of gold do leave the vault to be tested for purity “during regularly scheduled audits,” according to the U.S. Mint.
But “except for these samples, no gold has been transferred to or from the Depository for many years,” the Mint’s website says.
In fact, according to the Mint, the structure and content of the vault is only known by a few people, and no one person has all the information needed to open it.
Former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, who got to see inside the vault in 2017, said in a radio interview then that it took “quite a bit of time” to access it, the Associated Press reported.
“All I will say is that it is freakishly well secured,” Bevin said. “The gold is safe.”
A vault filled with gold at the Fort Knox gold vault, photographed during a visit by members of the media and lawmakers in September 1974.
Who has seen inside the gold depository?
The Fort Knox Bullion Depository is not open to the public, and visitors aren’t allowed inside.
Only thrice since the depository was established have outsiders entered the vault. The last time was during Trump’s first term as president. In 2017, then Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Bevin and Congressional lawmakers paid the first visit inside since 1974.
The media and other invited guests wait outside the gold vault on the grounds of Fort Knox Army base in Kentucky for a tour of the facility in September 1974.
The Sept. 23, 1974, trip was the result of theories similar to the ones circulating today. It was the first and only time members of the media were allowed inside. Photos taken for the Louisville Courier-Journal show the inside of a vault stacked with gold bars.
Before that, President Franklin D. Roosevelt inspected the depository on April 28, 1943. No president since Roosevelt has gone inside, according to the U.S. Mint.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How much gold is in Fort Knox? Trump, Musk prompt an old question.
