Make that ROBERT Chapman

By Reginald H. Howe
www.GoldenSextant.com
September 12, 2000

On Saturday evening, Sept. 9, 2000, from approximately
8:15 to 9:15 p.m., people trying to access
www.GoldenSextant.com received a message stating that
there was no response, the server might be down, and to
try later. EarthLink, which hosts this site, reports no
record of any malfunction or outage of the server that
hosts this site, or the related DNS server, during or
near this time period. Accordingly, the problem almost
certainly resided at some point in the Internet between
persons trying to reach this site and EarthLink's DNS
server -- that is, in a part of the Internet outside
EarthLink's control or responsibility.

The proprietor of this site is in possession of
considerable circumstantial evidence to indicate that
the problem was not some mysterious Internet gremlin,
but a concerted attack directed at this site by
persons, including government officials, unhappy with
the content of certain commentaries appearing here,
particularly the commentary dated Sept. 10 (the quot;Cross
commentaryquot;), posted Sept. 9 at about 9:30 p.m. Some
(but not all) of this circumstantial evidence relates
to events in and around the approximately one hour
outage, including email transmissions of drafts of the
Cross commentary for review and comment by others,
among them Chris Powell, a newspaper editor who is
secretary/treasurer of GATA, and Bill Murphy, chairman
of GATA and Le Patron at www.LeMetropoleCafe.com, where
he posts his quot;Midasquot; column.

The outage prevented posting at the time planned.
Immediate arrangements were made for publication as
quickly as possible by other means. Before access to
this site was restored, GATA had dispatched the Cross
commentary by email and steps to publish it forthwith
at Le Metropole Cafe were under way. Thus the attempt
to prevent publication last Saturday evening failed,
thanks to help from Chris and Bill. No doubt other
Internet press organizations that have previously
published articles from this site would have helped
too, if requested or needed.

The Cross commentary is rather critical of a study by
Jessica Cross published by the World Gold Council on
Sept. 4. On that very day, in connection with its story
about the Cross study, Le Metropole Cafe experienced an
episode of Internet vandalism. Someone hacked into the
site, stole the email list, and sent a fake email
notice of the story after it had been posted (for
editing) but before the legitimate email notice went
out. The fake email was an obvious effort to embarrass
and defame Bill Murphy. What is more, certain parts of
the fake email give every indication that whoever sent
it had access to Bill's telephone conversations during
that day.

On Aug. 25, 2000, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
regarded by many as Germany's leading newspaper,
published a quite favorable article about GATA,
followed by another favorable article on Aug. 30. Both
articles were prepared by a freelance journalist and
appeared under the dateline quot;AH, Frankfurt.quot; Their
possible significance is discussed in a prior
commentary, quot;Buba: Blowing the Whistle on Big Bubba's
Gold Manipulators?quot; Since its publication, some have
questioned whether the Bundesbank played any role in
connection with these two FAZ articles, pointing out
that many of GATA's German friends had urged the FAZ
for months to give more coverage to the gold market and
GATA's allegations with respect thereto.

Of course, these explanations are not mutually
exclusive. It is still unclear why these articles where
published when they were, and why there was no mention
of Deutsche Bank. By sending readers to GATA's Gold
Derivative Banking Crisis report, the articles almost
ensured that Deutsche Bank's role would become known.
In any event, the FAZ articles marked the first
extensive and favorable coverage of GATA in a world
class newspaper in a G-7 country.

On Sept. 5, 2000, under the dateline quot;BES, London,quot; the
FAZ published an article about the Cross study. Two
days later, under the same BES, London, dateline, it
published another article highly critical of GATA.
Prior to becoming a journalist, BES is reported to have
worked for Deutsche Bank. Sourced largely on
information received from the Gold Field Minerals
Services, the World Gold Council and the bullion banks,
the Sept. 7 article contained several comments
apparently aimed at reinforcing certain false
insinuations in the fake email. GATA has since
formally replied by letter to this FAZ article.

Few international cabals have the power or organization
to coordinate Internet vandalism and the tapping of
email and telephone communications in the fashion
indicated by all these events, not to mention
buttressing the effort with publication of an article
in the FAZ originating from a London correspondent. And
there is only one band of conspirators that could have
any conceivable motive to target this site and Le
Metropole Cafe at the same time over the same subject:
the cabal of government officials and big bullion banks
engaged in an ongoing conspiracy to control world gold
prices, and who are thereby endangering the entire
world financial system for personal and political gain.

The good news is that the cabal is clearly desperate --
so desperate that they have exposed more of their game.
Only if the basic thrust of the information presented
at this site and in GATA's Gold Derivative Banking
Crisis report is correct would they risk, or need to
risk, or dare to risk, striking at the First
Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and of the
press. The U.S. civil rights Laws provide heavy
criminal and civil penalties for this sort of activity,
far more severe in general than those for mere market
manipulation on however vast a scale.

This site may be but a small piece of the national and
world press. Its proprietor is a lone journalist, yet
over the past year he has received from good people all
over the world an astonishing amount of support and
encouragement for which he will be forever grateful.
The idea that he and other Internet gold bugs can be
silenced by surreptitious raids targeted at their
websites would be laughable except that sadly so many
in such high offices seem to hold it. As Ghandi said:
quot;First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then
they fight you. Then you win.quot; So, cabal, from this
site to you: Welcome to the fight, losers!