It’s a golden ticket many have sought, but precious few have procured.
Even important officials have expressed frustration at not being able to visit the country’s gold storage in Fort Knox. Historically, FDR was the only non-authorized individual to have access.
Now, President Donald Trump and his DOGE chief Elon Musk have each questioned whether the gold is really there.
A high-powered visit by the world’s richest man and the world’s most powerful one could be in the offing.
Trump, who has said windmills may cause cancer and raised doubts about the Kennedy assassination, has said explicitly the gold might be gone.
‘We’re actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there, because maybe somebody stole the gold. Tons of gold,’ Trump said.
‘I assume the gold is there, but it’s certainly reasonable for people to check,’ Sen. Ted Cruz told DailyMail.com. ‘It’d be interesting.’
‘Maybe Goldfinger did it?’ quipped Sen. Lindsey Graham, pointing to the classic James Bond film involving a plan to irradiate the supply.
A fortunate person who managed to see the gold reserves described the experience as extraordinary and shared detailed insights about the vault’s interior.
President Trump and Elon Musk have each spoken about visiting the gold depository at Fort Knox
‘I suppose we should take a look,’ mentioned Senator Jim Justice from West Virginia, implying that the issue might not be a top priority for him. Senator Mike Lee from Utah has made multiple unsuccessful attempts to gain access, being consistently denied by the U.S. Mint.
The repository holds 147.3 million, according to the Mint.
One sitting lawmaker, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, did get to eyeball the gold supply back in 2017, when it was valued at $186 billion. It was the first trip inside the Bullion Depository since 1974.
‘It just kind of came up as a result of a casual conversation,’ he said at the time, having joined a delegation with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
‘It’s not even the annual funding level for some of our large departments in the federal government,’ McConnell said, exaggerating many fold.
Mnuchin, a Hollywood producer who famously posed in front of U.S. currency with wife Louise Linton, said then: ‘I assume the gold is still there. It would really be quite a movie if we walked in and there was no gold.’
Musk himself has posted cheekily about what might be there.
‘A live tour of Fort Knox would be awesome … is the gold there or not? They say it is — is it real? Or did somebody spray paint some lead?’ he said on the Joe Rogan experience podcast.
‘Well, I guess they could find out pretty easy,’ said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
Amid the mystery, concocted or otherwise, one person who got an extended look at the gold supply was not so terse.
Dave Ganz was part of a contingent of 120 journalists and photographers who got a look inside the famed vaults in 1974.
The Treasury Secretary allowed the visit ‘when rumors persist that all the gold had been removed from the vaults,’ according to the Mint.
Heavy lifting: Sen. Mitch McConnell visited Ft. Knox in 2017
There have been persistent rumors about the gold underneath Fort Knox, some now fueled by Donald Trump and Elon Musk
Signed and sealed: McConnell signed his name on the visit
In the dark: The trip took McConnell and Mnuchin in the path of totality for the solar eclipse on the day of their visit
Mnuchin also examined U.S. currency along with wife Louise Linton
Mrs. Mary Brooks, Director of the Mint, points her hand toward the ceiling to show off the gold bars stored in the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox. Members of Congress toured the facility with Mrs. Brooks in 1974
‘We’re actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there, because maybe somebody stole the gold. Tons of gold,’ Trump said
‘Even for the jaded, the experience was nothing short of amazing,’ he wrote in a 2009 article about the experience.
No one from the public or even a person from the government outside of authorized personnel had been there since FDR made a wartime visit in 1943.
Ganz described the laborious process of constructing the facility out of ‘16,000 cubic feet of granite, 4,200 cubic yards of concrete, 750 tons of reinforcing steel, and 670 tons of structural steel.’
It came amid a ‘persistent rumor that there was no gold left in Ft. Knox resulted in the first opening of the depository to the public in 1974.’
The visit itself must have cost a pretty penny.
There were aircraft in the air ‘all the time.’
A bus ferrying a group of journalists pulled up on ‘Bullion Boulevard.’
Former Rep. Phil Crane (R-Ill.) said he had suggested the tour ‘because of rampant rumors that significant portions of our gold reserves were gone.’
To guard against such suspicions, vault doors were affixed with sealing wax, special tape, and signed cards meant to reveal if there was tampering.
One lawmaker, Clair W. Burgener (R-Calif.) told the journalist: ‘Personally, I’m convinced that only a conspiracy or a military invasion could get the gold out of here.’
The vault Ganz toured was the size of a ‘comfortable four room apartment.’
A lawmaker asked a guard about a rumor of an ‘escape tunnel’ inside the repository.
There was a lower level tunnel, the lawmaker was told – but only after some back-and-forth were lawmakers and journalists allowed to see it. The tunnel, too, was sealed and dated, and accessed only from inside the vault.
‘Conclusion was that the tunnel – which opens inside the depository building, but outside the vault proper – was not a viable means for anyone to try to remove substantial quantities of gold,’ Ganz wrote. ‘The escape could only be made outside the vault, not the building itself.’
