[No Name] Involvement Confirmed, Durham And The American Revolution – Episode 2055

•  I have obtained  documents from the US Treasury through FOIA requests, which expose another falsehood that puts the auditor in an even more peculiar position. In conflict with the audit protocol, the permanent seals of the vault compartments have been broken, time and again. In addition, the auditor has lied about these events, and when confronted, it’s unable to explain its actions.
• Introduction
• The US official gold reserves are the largest globally at 8,134 metric tonnes (owned by the US Treasury). Although this gold does not back the US dollar at a fixed parity as it did before 1971, it does provide essential support as a final backstop to the dollar and thus credibility to the present world reserve currency.
• The majority of the gold is located at the US Mint depository at Fort Knox. Smaller amounts are stored at US Mint depositories in Denver and West Point. Aggregated this metal is referred to as Deep Storage gold and is captured within 42 sealed vault compartments. The remainder is at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

• When the audits commenced in 1974, the protocol designed was simple (page 534). The following excerpt is from the first auditing committee:

In performing the audit, the gold bars are physically moved from one vault compartment to another. During this operations [sic], the melt numbers and the number of bars in each melt are verified with an inventory listing, and one in fifty melts is randomly selected for weighing and test assay.

•  
• The audit protocol follows that “these actions, having once been performed by an authorized committee, in accordance with established procedures, will not have to be repeated as long as the assets verified remain under an unimpaired joint seal.” Compartments physically verified were placed under Official Joint Seal (OJS) to “avoid the necessity of verifying all assets in each annual or special settlement (audit).” The US Treasury pledged to do a “periodic, cyclical inventory” to “ensure that about 10 percent of the gold” was physically inspected annually, eventually to have audited “all the gold for which the US government is accountable” “by 1984.” The essence of the “established procedures” was to open, audit and seal each compartment once. We will return to this fundamental topic later on.
• Since the stated purpose of joint sealing was to avoid the need of “re-audits,” all the gold could (after 1984) be verified by simply checking if the seals were unimpaired. Great intentions, but this is not what happened.

• The current auditor of the US monetary gold is the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). Representing the OIG, Eric M. Thorson attended the congressional hearing for the Gold Transparency Act (not enacted) that was initiated by Ron Paul in 2011. Mr. Thorson’s testimony at the hearing serves as the official statement by the government on the audits. Having weighed his words carefully, Thorson spoke under oath:

… 100 percent of the U.S. Government’s gold reserves in the custody of the Mint has been inventoried and audited. … I can say that without any hesitation, because I have observed the gold and the security of the gold reserves myself.

… the Committee for Continuing Audit of the U.S. Government-owned Gold [The Committee that started the audits] performed annual audits of Treasury’s gold reserves from 1974[*] to 1986. … by 1986, 97 percent of the Government-owned gold held by the Mint had been audited and placed under joint seal. So once you have done that, and that seal remains unbroken, then I am not sure what other benefit there would be to going back into it at that point. …

Since 1993, when we [OIG] assumed responsibility for the audit, my office has continued to directly observe the inventory and test the gold. In fact, my auditors signed the official joint seals … placed on those compartments, inventoried and tested in their presence. At the end of Fiscal Year of 2008, all 42 compartments had been audited by … the Committee for Continuing Audit of the U.S. Government-owned Gold, or my office, and placed under official joint seals.

Thus, in summary:

• From 1974 until 1986, 97 percent of the gold at the Mint had been verified by the Committee for Continuing Audit.
• In 1993 the OIG became responsible for the audits, and by 2008 all compartments had been verified and sealed.

The conclusions we derive from Thorson’s testimony:

• From 1987 until 1992, there were no audits.
• From 1993 until 2008, the remaining 3 percent of the gold was verified.
• Thorson doesn’t mention anything about vault compartments having been re-opened.
• The Problem
• First of all, the OIG did not assume responsibility for the audits since 1993, but since 1982 as disclosed in one of the few documents that survived the 1980s (page 2).
• Effective October 1, 1982, the Internal Audit Staffs of BGFO and the United States Mint [Committee for Continuing Audit] were reorganized under the Department of the Treasury, Office of the Inspector General [OIG].
• Ever since the OIG became part of the audits in 1982, exactly what was not supposed to happen, did happen: vault compartments that had been physically verified and sealed were re-opened.  from the 1986 audit report regarding the Fort Knox (page 8) and Denver (page 9) depositories:

• For some reason, starting in 1983, “re-audits” were performed over 1,929 tonnes “in accordance with the plan approved by the Treasurer.” However, in 1983, both depositories had already been fully audited, while West Point had not. Why were these compartments re-opened when the protocol stated that, “these actions” (physical verification) “having once been performed … will not have to be repeated as long as the assets verified remain under an unimpaired joint seal”? The OIG can’t explain this to, and neither can it explain  what “the plan approved by the Treasurer” was.

• Conclusion
• Altogether, the vast majority of Deep Storage vault compartments have been re-opened for dubious reasons.
• Under oath, the auditor, Thorson, carefully avoided the subject of “re-opening” compartments.
• In another written statement, the same auditor lied about the subject of “re-opening” compartments.

Source: zerohedge.com

•   it looks like Kim Jong Un’s promised “Christmas gift” —   never arrived. or maybe this was the gift, no missile test , a softening of tensions and willingness to back down in the hope that nuclear talks would warm in this holiday season headed into 2020.

Source: zerohedge.com

‘I don’t want any officers’ — Trump held private meetings with enlisted troops to candidly discuss the war in Afghanistan

• The meetings were intended for candid discussions about the war in Afghanistan, which was nearing its sixteenth-year at the time, with US troops who served on the front lines.
• One of the first groups of Afghanistan veterans to speak with Trump were U.S. Navy SEALs who spoke critically of the war.“It’s unwinnable. NATO’s a joke. Nobody knows what they’re doing,” the SEALs told Trump

Source: taskandpurpose.com