Official announcement of GATA/Howe lawsuit

12:45a EDT Sunday, December 10, 2000

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Not quite two years from its founding, GATA
has accomplished, with the help of Reg Howe,
what we set out to do: Get into court to stop
the suppression of the price of gold. That's
certainly something to be jubilant about. But
in fact our work is just beginning.

For SUSTAINING this lawsuit against motions
for dismissal through summary judgment, and
then undertaking discovery and deposition,
and doing so against forces that control
nearly all the money in the world, will cost
more money than most of us would see in
several lifetimes. And we probably have only
a few months to raise most of it.

GATA already has advanced to Reg, to cover
legal costs, sums that are substantial to us
and yet probably less than what the slobs at
Chase and Goldman Sachs spend over a
weekend at the Hamptons.

Without giving the game away to our enemies,
I can say that GATA's treasury at the moment
contains only enough funds to keep the
organization itself going, only enough for
ordinary operating expenses for a few months.

We did not get into this business to do what
some nominally charitable organizations do:
build up and admire a pile of money. We raise
money to spend it in pursuit of the purposes
set out in our charter. And we certainly do not
have yet the kind of money that would sustain
this lawsuit through a summary judgment motion
or even a couple of days of depositions.

But we have figured -- hoped and prayed, actually
-- that if we could only get an action into court, we
might have a chance of finally mobilizing the gold
world and the mining industry into underwriting us
enough to sustain the lawsuit, the lawsuit being,
we think, the last best hope of gold and free and
honest markets.

Very quickly we need at least a hundred thousand
dollars. For the near term, once proceedings begin
in the suit, we probably will need at least a million.
My guess is that, with that much, we can continue
to underwrite Reg's work, obtain more counsel to
assist him as necessary, and finance discovery and
depositions.

We are still making our plans, but I hope that
we soon will be able to send Reg and GATA
Chairman Bill Murphy on a fund-raising trip
to gold-producing regions that are not quite so
subservient to Wall Street.

Such fund-raising is likely to determine the fate
of the lawsuit.

As a result, most money raised by GATA
henceforth is likely to be spent on the suit.
GATA will continue to have its own organizational
expenses to pay -- just this coming week we may
spend a few thousand dollars to publicize the
suit around the world -- but these expenses are
likely to be a fraction of the lawsuit's cost.

Since we are a federally tax-exempt organization
in the United States under Section 501-c-3 of
the internal revenue code, our tax return to the IRS
will be public information every year, as the tax
returns of other educational, civil rights, and
charitable organizations are.

In the meantime, everybody can help, and it
doesn't have to be financially. Individual financial
contributions are wonderful, of course, and I am
always amazed by them. People from all over the
world who have never met us and probably never
will meet us send us money -- usually small
amounts, of course, but heartfelt. These have
sustained us both morally and actually.

But we will sustain the lawsuit and have a chance
of prevailing only if the gold industry and those who
are involved with gold and believe in its traditional
monetary functions come forward with the kind of
money necessary to fighting the enormous powers
we have taken on.

That is why any clamor raised with the mining
industry and the news media, calling attention
to the lawsuit and our need for support, will
be appreciated and, possibly, become more
valuable than a small contribution.

I long have thought that the industry and the
gold world could end their persecution very
quickly if only they would start standing up
for themselves. The bad guys have nearly all
the money but in the United States they CAN
be held to account. They can't kill us all,
and their scheme can't stand the light of day.
That's why we can win.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer