An open letter to the press

4a EDT Saturday, August 14, 1999

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Here's an open letter to the press from GATA Chairman
Bill Murphy about what is going on in the gold market.
Please do whatever you can to bring it to the attention
of news organizations, and please post it as seems
helpful.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

* * *

An Open Letter to Members of the Press:

It is time to wake up to what has been going on in the
gold market.

I can understand some reticence about grasping what the
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee has been telling you:
that the gold market is being manipulated. No one wants
to believe that, but enough is enough. It is time to
start asking some hard questions of your traditional
sources of information who have been feeding you
disinformation about what certain bullion dealers have
been doing with quot;a little help from their friends.quot;

You are not floating down that big river alone. The
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee has contacted the most
prominent gold producers since February. Many have not
even bothered to respond to us thus far and we are
still waiting for them to give us support. In general,
they are a sad lot -- with a few stalwart exceptions
for which we always be grateful.

It appears that some producers have either joined in
with the bullion dealers and government officials who
are part of collusion to knock down the price of gold,
while others have allowed themselves to be put in the
unfortunate position of being forced by their own
bankers to forward sell at the bottom of the market. I
call these nefarious bullion dealers quot;Hannibal
Lechter,quot; as the most accurate way to categorize the
cannibalistic way they have conducted their affairs in
the gold market. The cunning Hannibal has recruited
speculators along the way to facilitate the move down
in the price of gold.

Who can blame the speculators? After all, until very
recently they could borrow gold at 1 percent interest,
sell the gold in the market, and use the proceeds to
invest elsewhere. In essence, they had Alan Greenspan's
infamous comment as protection for their principal:
that is, quot;Central banks stand ready to lease gold in
increasing quantities should the price rise.quot;

When the price of gold was about to explode, they
recruited the Bank of England to help them out by
announcing a future gold sale. (No other central bank
has acted in this way for more than 20 years.) The
speculators also had the comfort of knowing that in
times of financial stress, Hannibal Lechter would
recruit a hedge fund or two to borrow hundreds of
tonnes of gold to sell in the market to add more
pressure on the gold price.

What has been a total shock to me is how Hannibal
Lechter has silenced the lambs. And the quot;lambsquot; are you
in the press (except for a few more stalwarts, for whom
we will also be forever grateful). Most of you are
unwilling to question the pablum that is presented day
after day to you by the establishment. What is most
bothersome is that you refuse to mention the Gold Anti-
Trust Action Committee or air the evidence we have
gathered that the gold market has been manipulated.

Right or wrong, it is not unreasonable that our
viewpoint should be heard. The U.S. Congress wants to
listen to what we have to say. Why don't you? What is
so threatening about just printing what we have to say?
If we are way off base, no one will care and that will
be the end of it.

There is not one of you who does not defend the First
Amendment and freedom of speech. Most of you will
criticize China for its crackdown on individual
freedom. But are you any different? Do you represent
the People's Republic of America or the United States
of China? I suggest that, unconsciously, you have sunk
to a lower level than the Chinese you berate and that
you are hypocrites.

I say that because GATA is challenging the power
structure and some big money in the United States, in
that some of them are part of a vast manipulation of
the gold market.

Freedom of the press rules in the United States UNLESS
it challenges that structure. This is becoming all too
clear to me. This is not something new. Here is a
letter to you from my former wife, Karen, who is still
my best friend:

quot;In October 1993 I had just finished a long,
treacherous journey by horse through uncharted
territory 17,000 feet in the Andes northeast of Cuzco,
Peru. I had traveled there with four others to meet the
medicine men of the last authentic ancestors of the
Incas, five villages in total, untouched by
civilization. I was the first white woman many of the
villagers had ever seen. After finishing the journey, I
stayed in Cuzco an extra week to unwind and process the
experience.

quot;To get back to the United States it was necessary to
go through Lima, Peru. For some reason I had misread my
flight time leaving Cuzco. I had an extra hour so I
went to the plaza and found myself in the cathedral
lighting candles (a very unusual thing for me to do,
since I am not Catholic or religious). When I left the
cathedral I walked around the plaza and a message kept
running through my mind like a continuous re-looping
tape -- 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of
death, I will fear no evil.'

quot;When I boarded the flight for Lima, somehow I knew the
journey was not over, although I had no idea what was
in store for me. I had an 11-hour layover and I was
told that it was not safe for a tall, blond American
woman traveling alone to stay at the airport for that
time. So it had been arranged for me to stay at the
Crillon Hotel, the finest, safest hotel in Lima. A
representative from the hotel met my flight and
escorted me to the hotel. He said another
representative would escort me back to catch my flight
to Miami. I was told not to wander around the city; I
should stay within the hotel.

quot;I relaxed in my room on the 12th floor, ordered a late
lunch, etc. Later I had the thought to run down to the
lobby to get a chocolate bar, but something stopped me
and I suddenly felt that I had to lie down. Before
lying down I went to look out the window and had the
feeling of deja vu. (I remember having recurring
nightmares almost 10 years earlier in New York about
what was about to happen.) As I crossed the room, I
heard and felt a sound so overwhelming that it was like
the earth had opened up underneath me. I remember
hoping that it was earthquake, not something else. But
when smoke came through my window, I knew it had been a
bomb.

quot;I heard screaming from the streets, chaos in the
hotel, and gunfire that seemed unending. I knew I was
in trouble. There was no way out. I was stuck high up
in a hotel that was on fire and I was afraid to leave
my room because of the gunfire. I calmly took a breath
and retrieved the stones the shamans in the mountains
had given me. I performed a small ceremony they taught
me, asking for assistance, and quietly put my stones
away. I turned out the lights and huddled in the corner
of my room. I could still hear the gunfire and my room
was filling with smoke.

quot;Several moments later there was pounding on my door. I
was afraid to open in fear that it was terrorists. Then
I heard a voice in English say, 'Miss Brown, are you in
there? We've come to get you out.' I was so relieved to
open the door and have the four armed men identify
themselves as being from the U.S. embassy. They said
they had a car waiting a few blocks away. Three men
grabbed my bags and one grabbed me and ran me through
the mayhem in the lobby, down the dark streets, and
into a van that was waiting for me. They got me to the
airport just in time to catch my flight.

quot;I asked what had happened. They told me that one of
the leaders of the Sendero Luminoso -- Shining Path --
had been arrested, and a government dinner in the hotel
had been bombed in retaliation. Fourteen people had
been shot and killed in the lobby. (Good thing I didn't
go down for that chocolate bar.)

quot;I was grateful to arrive in Miami, and quite shaken.
But I read the papers and watched the news for two days
and I saw no reports of what had happened in Lima. I
almost felt as if I had been dreaming. I called a
friend in New York who has close ties to Peru. He was
astounded by my story. He knew of nothing of the event
and was surprised since he tries to stay aware of
everything happening in Peru. He later called me and
said he had checked with Washington and indeed what I
told him was true. I was relieved that I wasn't a
psycho.

quot;But I was amazed to pick up the Sunday New York Times
business section shortly thereafter and read a full
page story totally opposite of what I experienced. They
reported on how times have changed in Peru, that the
Shining Path was no longer a threat, that it was safe
and a good time to invest there.

quot;I consulted a wealthy, well-known, and influential
friend of mine in California about my shock of reading
this story. I was told that a lot of money had been
poured into Peru by Americans. The Times published the
story to help cover up what happened. I was also told
that the U.S. press is totally jaded and controlled by
certain powerful people and it is difficult to sort out
the truth from what you read here.quot;

Suppression? Say it is not so!

The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee has sent a 21-page
document to Sen. Phil Gramm, who is chairman of the
Senate Banking Committee. This document lays out some
of the evidence of manipulation that we have
accumulated, and the senator's staff has found it
quite interesting.

GATA asks you to be just as discerning, for if we are
correct, one of the great financial scandals in
American history will unfold in the months and years to
come and it will have to do partly with what we have
uncovered. Do not recoil from investigating what we
have to say BEFORE a crisis develops. The sooner this
outrage is uncovered, the less will be the financial
pain down the road for the average American.

GATA has made it this far with the support of good
citizens all over the world who can smell that
something is very wrong in the gold market. Donations
have come to GATA from a people's army -- individuals
who want a wrong righted. The Gold Anti-Trust Action
Committee surges forward in their behalf and informs
them as best we can at our website, www.gata.org.

We are unpaid volunteers searching for quot;truth, justice,
and the American Way.quot; What is wrong about doing a
story on that?

BILL MURPHY, Chairman
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee