Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
Pre nuke there's almost no need whatsoever to shift the gold. Why take it out of the most secure facility on the face of the planet? Where exactly could you take it without months, even years of preparation?
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It is possible that the US Government did have (and indeed may still do have) such a contingency plan which includes a pre prepared place where the gold could be taken and stored. Obviously it makes sense for the existence / location of such a facility to be classified as secret. And the facility could have been prepared years in advance.
The unknown factor is what event (or events) would need to happen for these contingency plans to be put into action - in this case when is it decided that it is safter to move the gold than leave it in situ? It's possible that one of the events that might cause plans to be implemented is the first release of tactical nuclear weapons in the summer of 1997.
So I do think it's
possible that the gold at Fort Knox might have been moved sometime in the late summer / early autumn of 1997 (i.e. before the TDM) as a precaution...quite apart from anything else the US Government of the time wouldn't have had the luxury of knowing that the exchange would be limited in nature and that Knox wouldn't be a target, so I think one could argue that moving it to a secret location was a sensible option in terms of risk vs reward, the worst case scenario in not moving it obviously being the possibility of losing it all if Fort Knox is attacked by a large enough weapon.
(As an aside, for what it's worth, the British Government had a plan in place to transfer gold from the Bank of England to a prepared spot in North Wales)
http://www.flintshirechronicle.co.uk...1352-26573180/