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FBI record on legendary gold find raises many questions

A scientific analysis commissioned by the FBI not long before agents went to dig up buried treasure revealed that vast amounts of gold could be beneath the surface, according to newly released government documents and photos. government deepens the mystery of 2018 excavations in remote western Pennsylvania.

The report of a geophysicist who performed microgravity testing at the site suggested an underground object with a mass of up to 9 tons and a density suitable for gold. The FBI used the consultant’s work to obtain a warrant to seize the gold – if any.

The government has long declared their mining a bankruptcy. But a father and son pair of treasure hunters who’ve spent years hunting for legendary Civil War gold – and who have led agents to the woods, hoping to pay the finder’s fee – suspect the FBI has passed. face them and get away with a cache that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The newly revealed geophysical survey is part of a plan to release government records under a court order on the FBI’s treasure hunt at Dent’s Run, about 135 miles (220 km) from Pittsburgh about 135 miles (220 km) from Pittsburgh. northeast, where legend has it that an 1863 shipment of Confederate gold was lost or stolen. on the way to the US Mint in Philadelphia.

Dennis and Kem Parada, co-owners of the Finders Keepers treasure-hunting outfit, successfully sued the Justice Department over the records after being pressed by the FBI. Finders Keepers provided the FBI files to the Associated Press. The FBI then posted them on its website.

Engineering survey data collected by the geophysical consulting firm Enviroscan lent credibility to the extensive fieldwork of treasure hunters at the site – and prompted the FBI to dig in a big, secret operation that lasted for many cold days in late winter 2018.

John Louie, a professor of geophysics at the University of Nevada, Reno, who was not involved in the digging, reviewed the Enviroscan report at the request of the AP and said “the company’s methods are very good” and “concluded” Their argument represents a “physically plausible” hypothesis that gold was buried at the site.

But he cautioned that the subsurface gravity anomalies identified by the Enviroscan do not confirm the presence of gold. There are other technical reasons why Enviroscan’s data might turn out the way it did, says Louie.

“Therefore, it also makes perfect sense for the FBI not to find anything at this location, since there’s really no gold there,” he said by email.

Enviroscan co-founder Tim Bechtel declined to comment on his work at Dent’s Run, saying the FBI had not given him permission to speak. The FBI won’t discuss Bechtel this week but says that after digging, agents “did not take any further steps to adjust the geophysical survey findings to the absence of gold or any other metal.” any other kind.”

Other documents in the FBI’s case file have just been released that still raise many questions.

In a one-paragraph FBI report, dated March 13, 2019 – exactly one year after the excavation – agents claimed to have found nothing at Dent’s Run. The report said “no metal, artefacts and/or other related materials were found”. “Due to other priorities… the FBI will close the annotated case.”

Anne Weismann, an attorney for Finders Keepers, cast doubt on the reliability of the FBI report. She cites its brevity, as well as its timing – it was written after the Keepers of Searchers began pressing the government to release the records.

“It’s not what one would expect,” said Weismann, a former attorney for the Department of Justice. “If that’s the official record in the file about what they did and why they did it, it’s pretty much nothing, and it’s crazy.”

She added that if the government doesn’t come up with a more complete, concurrent account of their gold find, it “would make it clear to me that this is not an accurate record and this was created as a cover-up. And I’m not taking it lightly.”

In response, the FBI said the one-page document “represents the standard summaries filed at the formal conclusion of the FBI’s investigation.”

The agency has repeatedly denied that they did not find anything.

Agents acted on information that Dent’s Run “may be a cultural heritage site containing gold belonging to the United States government,” the FBI said in a statement, but “that possibility is not due to the excavation. The FBI continues to categorically reject. any claim or speculation to the contrary.”

The archive passed to Finders Keepers also included nearly 1,000 photographs, in grainy black and white, showing some – but certainly not all – of what the FBI was doing at the dig site, according to the documents. treasure hunter.

Residents have previously told of hearing hammers and jackhammers overnight between the first and second days of the dig – when work was believed to have halted – and seeing an FBI convoy, including even large armored trucks.

The FBI denied any work took place at the site after hours, saying that “the only nighttime activity was ATV patrols by FBI Police officers, who guarded the site around the clock throughout the period. excavation period.”

Parada suspects the FBI took the gold in the middle of the night and then showed the treasure hunters an empty hole Monday afternoon.

Warren Getler, who has worked closely with treasure hunters, said: “It’s curious why the FBI went the wrong way and got in the way to this extent. “They worked that night under cover of darkness to hide, from our understanding of what we were supposed to be partners for.”

Many of the FBI photos appear to be unrelated, including hundreds of random trees and a wooded path leading to the dig site, while others simply don’t add or state any more. question, asserted by Parada and Getler, authors of “Rebel Gold,” a book that explores the possibility of burying Civil War-era gold and silver treasures.

FBI agents stand around the hole in photographs that appear earlier in the series, but they are absent from nearly all subsequent images of the excavation site.

Getler and Parada say the top FBI agent told them the hole was filled with water Monday morning, but low-quality government images show only a small puddle or perhaps a puddle of water. a little snow. They say the same agent spent most of the second day at the base camp – where Getler and the treasure hunters say they were largely confined to their vehicles – rather than the dig site.

This is the standard for photographs, the FBI says, to “document the state of the site before, during, and after FBI activities,” which Parada claims all point to an overnight clandestine excavation and raid. excavated the second day for display only.

“I think we were expecting a few hundred pictures of the night dig, and I think we were expecting pictures of coins or metal bars,” Parada said. “I thought there were pictures, but they’re gone.”

FBI records also show that a few weeks before the excavation, an agent from the agency’s art crime team approached Wells Fargo to ask if they would deliver gold in a wagon to the United States Mint. 1863 or not.

Wells Fargo historians offer no evidence of it but say records from this era are incomplete. Wells Fargo shipped the gold by carriage, a company archivist wrote in an email to the FBI, but the large quantities of precious metals, as well as gold, have to be transported long distances, “better to be transported by ship or vehicle. fire.”

Getler said the gold may have been transported by wagon, not by horse-drawn carriage.

Additional FBI releases are expected in the coming months.

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