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State Department agrees to try looking for gold records again
5:08p ET Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Three years ago GATA more or less won its freedom-of-information lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, in which GATA sought access to the Fed's records involving gold swaps.
While the court found that most of the Fed's records involving gold swaps were exempt from disclosure under the law, GATA's initial inquiry to the Fed produced an admission that the Fed indeed has secret gold swap arrangements with foreign banks --
-- and the court ordered disclosure of one record, the minutes of the April 1997 meeting of the G-10 Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee, at which Western treasury and central bank officials conspired to coordinate their policies in the gold market:
... Dispatch continues below ...
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Having found that the Fed violated the disclosure law in that one respect, the court required the Fed to pay GATA nominal court costs:
Following this success, GATA asked for access to all the gold-related records created since 1990 by the U.S. State Department, U.S. Treasury Department, U.S. Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee:
http://www.gata.org/node/11606
The Fed provided many records but, having secured an exemption for its most incriminating records, none of the records disclosed were of any interest.
Meanwhile the State Department purported to be unable to find any gold-related records at all --
http://www.gata.org/files/StateDeptDenialLetter-05-08-2013.pdf
-- even as outside researchers were able to find such records on the department's own Internet site:
http://www.gata.org/node/13228
-- and the Treasury Department, while undertaking discussions with GATA's lawyers about narrowing GATA's request, has not yet provided any information either. (Our lawyers prodded the department again this week.)
This failure to disclose by the State and Treasury departments has entitled GATA under the freedom-of-information law to sue them for the information. GATA has not done that yet, but we have pursued the State Department's internal appeals procedure, asking the department to make a better search of its records:
http://www.gata.org/files/GATAAppealLetterStateDept-07-08-2013.pdf
And a few days ago GATA's law firm, William J. Olson P.C. in Vienna, Virginia, received from the State Department a notice that the department has granted GATA's appeal and indeed will reopen its search for gold-related records:
http://www.gata.org/files/GATAStateDeptGrantsAppeal-08-14-14.pdf
Of course this whole process is silly and ridiculously slow, deliberately so to discourage embarrassing disclosures about the U.S. government's secret involvement in the gold market. But the process establishes, if with great difficulty, that something is going on here and that the government is so desperate to conceal it as to risk looking ridiculous.
This process also establishes again that the crucial prerequisite of the Western gold price suppression scheme is the cooperation of the mainstream financial news media, their agreement not to commit ordinary journalism when it comes to surreptitious intervention by Western governments and central banks in the gold and currency markets.
Imagine the consternation among those governments, investment houses, and markets if tomorrow's Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post and the Internet sites of the Associated Press, Reuters, and Bloomberg news services carried stories headlining the refusal of the U.S. government to answer specific questions about its secret activity in the gold market, activity documented extensively in GATA's archive here:
http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21
GATA has been waging this struggle for 15 years and will continue to press it. Disclosures will be slow and hard-won but they will continue and eventually enough of the world will learn what's going on and then things will change.
Our lawyers are pretty good and they work at a substantial discount, as they serve certain causes in large part out of their conception of public service. But we have to pay them every once in a while to keep them on the job. As you may see from our first victory over the Fed, our lawyers have produced and their chances for producing again are pretty good.
So if you haven't already donated to GATA, please consider helping us with a contribution now:
Or buy some of GATA's promotional merchandise.
-- T-shirts:
-- DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006:
http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html
-- Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009:
http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal
Yes, if you donate or buy GATA merchandise you well may get on a government list of subversives. But if you're reading this you're probably on it already.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
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http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html
Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt:
Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009:
http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal
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