This image is found on the PBS.org website companion for the television documentary America Rebuilds under the section Uncovering Property.
The page, entitled A Treasure in Silver and Gold, describes the vault as two levels of 3,000 square feet each.
See the source for the full-sized image. The page credits images to Leslie E. Robertson and Associates.
The basement of 4 World Trade Center housed vaults used to store gold and silver bullion.
Published articles about precious metals recovered from the World Trade Center ruins in the aftermath of the attack mention less than $300 million worth of gold.
All such reports appear to refer to a removal operation conducted in late October of 2001. On Nov. 1, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced that "more than $230 million" worth of gold and silver bars that had been stored in a bomb-proof vault had been recovered.
A New York Times article contained: Two Brinks trucks were at ground zero on Wednesday to start hauling away the $200 million in gold and silver that the Bank of Nova Scotia had stored in a vault under the trade center ... A team of 30 firefighters and police officers are helping to move the metals, a task that can be measured practically down to the flake but that has been rounded off at 379,036 ounces of gold and 29,942,619 ounces of silver .. 1
Reports describing the contents of the vaults before the attack suggest that nearly $1 billion in precious metals was stored in the vaults.
A figure of $650 million in a National Real Estate Investor article published after the attack is apparently based on pre-attack reports.
Unknown to most people at the time, $650 million in gold and silver was being kept in a special vault four floors beneath Four World Trade Center. 2
An article in the TimesOnline gives the following rundown of precious metals that were being stored in the WTC vault belonging to Comex. 3
* Comex metals trading - 3,800 gold bars weighing 12 tonnes and worth more than $100 million
* Comex clients - 800,000 ounces of gold with a value of about $220 million
* Comex clients - 102 million ounces of silver, worth $430 million
* Bank of Nova Scotia - $200 million of gold
The TimesOnline article is not clear as to whether the $200 million in gold reported by the Bank of Nova Scotia was part of the $220 million in gold held by Comex for clients.
If so, the total is $750 million; otherwise $950 million.
There appear to be no reports of precious metals discovered between November of 2001 and the completion of excavation several months later.
Assuming that the above reports described the value of precious metals in the vaulst before the attack, and that the $230 million mentioned by Giuliani represented the approxmiate value of metals recovered, it would seem that at least the better part of a billion dollars worth of precious metals went missing. (It is not plausible, of course, that whatever destroyed the towers vaporized gold and silver, which are dense, inert metals that are extremely unlikely to participate in chemical reactions with other materials.)
An article in The Sierra Times suggests that gold was recovered from two trucks in a tunnel under 5 World Trade Center, giving rise to suspicions that the trucks were being used to remove the gold from the vaults before the South Tower fell. 4
However, this report may have been based on an erroneous reading of other reports that describe the removal of crushed vehicles from a tunnel under 5 WTC in order to gain access to the vaults under 4 WTC to remove their contents. 5
Why is there this huge discrepancy between the value of gold and silver reported recovered, and the value reported to have been stored in the vaults?
There are a number of possible explanations, from outright theft using the attack as cover, to insurance fraud.
Until there is a genuine investigation that probes all the relevant facts and circumstances surrounding the attack, we can only speculate.
References
1. Below Ground Zero, Silver and Gold, New York Times, 11/1/2001 2. Thanksgiving at Ground Zero, National Real Estate Investor, [cached] 3. Crushed towers give up cache of gold ingots, TimesOnline, 11/1/02 [cached] 4. Cache of Gold Found at WTC Two truckloads retrieved through a tunnel in rubble2, [cached] 5. , Reuters and New York Daily News, [cached]
it was a lot of *US GOLD* stored below the World Trade Centre -
what happened to the "GOLD"???
Who was in charge of Security of the World Trade Centre???
The short selling started - about $6 trillion - was taken from the IT Hi-Tech industries - by short selling - after all the genius CEO's were murdered in - the 9/11 - World Trade Centre -
GOLD | TECHNOLOGY | DJIA
38099902 = GOLD | XCI = Technology Index | 26099400 = Dow Jones Industrial Average
A construction worker on the site of Ground Zero in New York Human remains were found beneath a manhole at the site New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said construction work will continue at Ground Zero, despite recent finds of human remains at the site -
He said the discoveries - which included 18 fragments found on Sunday, would not halt work at the 9/11 attack site -
Families of more than 1,100 of those who died have never received any remains of their loved ones -
Don't talk about what you have done - or what you are going to do - Liberty is to the collective body - what health is to every individual body - Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man - without liberty - no happiness can be enjoyed - by society -
Are We Being Prepped for Another “Terror” Attack? - July 11, 2007
Filed under:
The 911 attack has left a multitude of questions unanswered.
Why did Building 7 collapse even though no airplane hit it?
Why were fighter aircraft not allowed to intercept the off-course jets as they should have?
Why did a MOSSAD film crew know about the attack in advance?
Given the fact that the George W. Bush regime is completely lacking in anything that remotely resembles a conscience, the possibility has always existed that the 666and neocon friends may secretly stage an even bigger “terror” attack in order to seize more power, destroy more Constitutional liberties, and postpone the 2008 elections so that they don’t need to leave office in 2009 and face possible public trial and punishment for their crimes against America, not to mention a growing list of war crimes which the World Court in Belgium would like to prosecute.
We may be getting a glimpse of the future right now. Yahoo News reports “U.S. counterterror officials are warning of an increased risk of an attack this summer, given al-Qaida’s apparent interest in summertime strikes and increased al-Qaida training in the Afghan-Pakistani border region.
On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune that he had a ‘gut feeling’ about a new period of increased risk…
Other U.S. counterterrorism officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, shared Chertoff’s concern and said that al-Qaida and like-minded groups have been able to plot and train more freely in the tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border in recent months.
Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding in the rugged region.”
And they’ve reportedly been there for six years now since 9/11.
Apparently the mightiest army in the world can’t seem to find them assuming they ever existed at all and were not a CIA bogeyman from the start.
The Yahoo article continues “Chertoff’s department has not made any move to increase the nation’s color-coded terror alert system.
Now, airlines are under orange — or high — alert, which is the second most serious level on a five-point scale. The rest of the country remains a step below at yellow, or elevated.”
So, let me get this straight: Chertoff has a “gut feeling” that the US is about to be attacked by a foreign enemy, but he has done nothing whatsoever to prepare for it?
No fence along the Mexican border.
No banning of Arab students.
No deportations of suspicious Muslims.
Never mind the dual-loyalist Zionist thing, Chertoff seems to be an IDIOT!!
What in God’s name is he doing in that job?
Like that Mike Brown character whose only job prior to taking over FEMA was being an Arabian horse show judge, and not a competent one at that.
My personal guess is there won’t be an attack this summer, at least not a “major” attack.
There may be a few alleged “car bombs” of mysterious origin, like that incident in Britain a couple of weeks ago, which they are blaming on Muslim medical doctors.
A few small incidents may occur just to rattle Congress’ cage and chase a few wavering Republicans back into the neocon fold.
The main event will most likely come a little over a year from now, between August and October–some kind of gas attack on the New York subways or something even worse, terrible enough and close enough to November to give Bush and the neocons an excuse to invoke his multitude of new emergency powers, cancel the elections or postpone them indefinitely, and then find some excuse - to stay in power permanently.
A coalition of US military veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is suing the US government.
The class-action lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans claims they have been denied disability pay and mental health treatment.
Action is being taken on behalf of - hundreds of thousands of veterans
The legal case against the US Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) seeks widespread changes in the agency.
It says the DVA has deliberately cheated some traumatised war veterans out of benefits owed to them.
The case was filed on Monday in a federal court in San Francisco.
Cost 'incalculable'
Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, the coalition claims they have been let down on several fronts.
These include the provision of prompt disability benefits, additional staff to reduce waiting times for medical care and services to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
The coalition says the DVA worked with the Pentagon to mis-classify post-traumatic stress disorder claims as pre-existing personality disorders.
The cost to veterans, their families and the nation will be incalculable, it says, unless systematic and drastic measures are instituted immediately.
There has been no reaction to the legal action from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Several Congressional committees and a presidential commission are now studying ways to improve health care for war veterans.
Depleted uranium weapons used - British and US forces are still using depleted uranium in weapons despite warnings of its long-term cancer risk, the BBC has found.
A former senior scientist has said that the MoD suppressed crucial information about links to ill-health. Andrew Stickler reports.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
