Is Gold in Fort Knox Real? Ron Paul Wants to Know - CNBC

Is Gold in Fort Knox Real? Ron Paul Wants to Know - CNBC

Are the gold bars in Fort Knox really made of the precious metal? Or has the U.S. government secretly sold off the nation's stockpile and replaced it with metal bars that are only painted gold?

Ron Paul wants to find out.

Giving legitimacy to an Internet conspiracy theory that the gold in Fort Knox is fake, the iconoclast Republican congressman from Texas has asked adminstration officials to audit the purity of the nation's 700,000 gold bars held in Fort Knox, according to an internal Treasury document obtained by CNBC. Paul, a presidential candidate who chairs the House's subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy, had previously called for the U.S. gold reserve to be counted and for a return to the gold standard. He now appears to be going a step further in his request that representatives from the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Mint testify at a subcommittee hearing on June 23 about the authenticity of the nation's gold.

The Treasury document says it would cost about $15 million to conduct an audit. The process would take about 30 minutes to verify the gold content of each bar, or 350,000 man hours; to do that would would take 400 people working for six months, according to the document. The Mint is audited annually by the Treasury's Office of the Inspector General. An audit of the "Schedule of Custodial Deep Storage Gold and Silver Reserves" was published in September 2010.