FBI Photos Have One Man Convinced Agency Did Find Gold

The court-ordered release of a trove of government photos, videos, maps, and other documents involving the FBI's secretive search for Civil War-era gold has a treasure hunter more convinced than ever of a coverup—and just as determined to prove it. Dennis Parada waged a legal battle to force the FBI to turn over records of its excavation in Dents Run, Pennsylvania, where local lore says an 1863 shipment of Union gold disappeared on its way to the US Mint in Philadelphia. The FBI, which went to Dents Run after sophisticated testing suggested tons of gold might be buried there, has long insisted the March 2018 dig came up empty, reports the AP. Parada and his advisers, who have spent countless hours poring over the government records that were released in May 2022, believe otherwise.

Parada's dispute with the FBI is playing out in federal court, where a judge must decide whether the FBI will have to release its operational plan for the gold dig and other records it wants to keep secret, or whether—as the FBI asserts—the FBI has satisfied its legal obligation to search for its records of the dig and the close should be closed. The judge has yet to rule. Parada was mostly kept away from the dig site while the FBI did its work and suspects the agency conducted a clandestine, overnight dig between the first and second days of the court-authorized excavation, found the gold, and spirited it away. Residents have previously told of hearing a backhoe and jackhammer overnight and seeing a convoy of FBI vehicles, including large armored trucks.

Parada and a consultant, Warren Getler, have focused on a handful of FBI photos and an accompanying photo log that have them questioning the FBI's official timeline. At issue is the presence or absence of snow in the images and the timing of a storm that briefly disrupted operations. For example, an FBI image that was supposed to have been taken about an hour after the squall does not show any snow on a large, moss-covered boulder at the dig site. That same boulder is snow-covered in a photo that FBI records indicate was taken the next morning. They accuse the FBI of altering the sequence of events to conceal an overnight excavation. There are other seeming anomalies in the records, according to their legal motion. Among them:

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• The agency did not provide any video of the second and final day of the dig. Nor did it produce any photos or video showing what the FBI’s own hand-drawn map described as a 30-foot-long, 12-foot-deep trench, which the treasure hunters claim could have only been dug overnight. Government lawyers acknowledged these gaps in the photo and video record but did not elaborate in a court filing last week.
• The consulting firm hired by the FBI to assess the possibility of gold produced a report on its findings, but the version given to the treasure hunters seems to be missing key pages.

There is little evidence in the historical record to suggest that an Army detachment lost a gold shipment in the Pennsylvania wilderness, but Parada believes otherwise and had hoped to earn a finder’s fee from the potential recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold. (More Dents Run gold stories.)