The court-ordered release of a trove of government photos, videos, maps and other documents involving the FBI’s secret search for Civil War gold has treasure hunters more convinced than ever of a coverup – and just as determined to prove.
Dennis Parada is fighting a legal battle to force the FBI to turn over records of excavations in Dents Run, Pennsylvania, where local lore says an 1863 shipment of Union gold was lost on its way to the US Mint in Philadelphia. The FBI, which went to Dents Run after sophisticated tests suggested tons of gold might be buried there, has long insisted the dig was empty.
Parada and his advisers, who have spent hours poring over newly released government records, believe otherwise. He accused the FBI of destroying key evidence and withholding records in an obvious manner to hide the recovery of the historic and priceless gold cache. The FBI defended its handling of the material.
Parada’s dispute with the FBI is being played out in federal court, where the judge overseeing the case must decide whether the FBI must release operational plans for gold mining and other records it wants to keep secret. The judge could also order the FBI to keep looking for additional materials to turn over to treasure hunters.
“We feel like we’ve been double-crossed and cheated,” Parada said in an interview in his cramped wood-paneled office, where big drills and high-end metal detectors compete for space with rusting, Civil War-era miners’ picks. cannon parts and other odds and ends he dug up over the years.
“The truth will come out,” said Parada, founder of treasure hunt Finders Keepers. Solving the mystery isn’t his only goal — he hopes to earn a finder’s fee from the potential recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars in gold.
An FBI spokesman declined to answer questions about the agency’s gold-digging records or respond to the cover-up allegations, citing pending litigation. Last year, the FBI released a statement publicly admitting for the first time that it was looking for gold at Dents Run. The statement said the FBI made no findings, adding that the agency “continues to deny claims or speculation to the contrary.”
There is little evidence in the historical records to suggest that the Army detachment lost a shipment of gold in the Pennsylvania desert – possibly the result of an ambush by Confederate sympathizers – but the legend has inspired a generation of treasure hunters, Parada among them.
He and his son spent years searching for the fabled gold from Dents Run, eventually leading the FBI to a remote wooded area 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh where their instruments identified large amounts of metal. The FBI brought in a geophysical consulting firm whose sensitive equipment detected a mass of 7 to 9 tons of gold.
Armed with a warrant, a team of FBI agents arrived in March 2018 to excavate the hillside. The FBI videographer was on hand to document it, at one time interviewing a Philadelphia-based agent in the FBI’s art-crime team who explained why the FBI was in the woods of one of Pennsylvania’s most populated counties.
“We have identified through investigation a site that we believe has US property, which includes a significant amount of valuable base metals… especially gold, possibly silver,” the agent said in the video, his face blurred by the FBI to protect his privacy.
Calling it a “155-year-old cold case,” the FBI said it had confirmed Parada’s information about the famous gold location through “scientific testing.” He insisted the test results did not prove the presence of gold. Only digging will help law enforcement “get this story out once and for all,” the agent said.
Parada obtained the video and other FBI records through a Freedom of Information lawsuit, hoping it will help answer questions about what happened at Dents Run five years ago. Parada is usually kept away from the excavation site while the FBI does its work.
He suspected that the agency was operating clandestinely, digging overnight between the first and second day of the court-sanctioned dig, finding the gold, and removing it. Residents had previously reported hearing backhoes and jackhammers overnight – when the dig was supposed to be resting – and seeing convoys of FBI vehicles, including large armored trucks. The FBI has denied conducting an overnight dig.
Parada and his consultant, Warren Getler, have focused on several FBI photos and photo logs provided to question the FBI’s official gold digging timeline. The problem is the presence or absence of snow in the picture and the timing of the storm that interferes with the operation. For example, an FBI image that was supposedly taken about an hour after the storm did not show snow on the moss-covered boulders at the dig site. The same snow-covered boulders in the photo the FBI recorded were taken early in the morning — about 15 hours after the storm.
He accused the FBI of altering the sequence of events to hide the overnight dig.
“We have compelling evidence that the night dig took place, and that the FBI went to some great efforts to cover up that night dig,” said Getler, co-author of “Rebel Gold,” a book exploring the possibility of buried Civil War-era caches of gold and silver.
Another anomaly appears in the records, according to the Finders Keepers legal motion. Between:
– The FBI initially turned over hundreds of photos, but gave them in low resolution, high contrast black-and-white, making it impossible to say the time of day they were taken or even, in some cases, what they show. The treasure hunter returned and asked for several dozen color photographs, which the FBI provided.
– The agency did not provide a video of the second and last day of excavation. Nor did it produce photos or videos showing the FBI’s own hand-drawn map of what it described as a 30-foot, 12-foot-deep trench — which the treasure hunters claimed could only be dug overnight. Government lawyers acknowledged the gap in the photo and video footage but did not elaborate in court filings last week.
– The consulting firm hired by the FBI to assess the possibility of gold produced a report on the find, but the version given to the treasure hunters appears to be missing the key page.
– The FBI did not provide the agent’s travel and expense invoices, which could provide more information about the dig’s timeline.
The records released so far “cast doubt on the FBI’s claims that they found nothing and raise serious and disturbing questions about the FBI’s actions during the excavation and in this trial, where they spent too much time to destroy critical evidence,” Anne Weismann, a lawyer for Finders Keepers, wrote in a legal filing that he sought records, including the FBI’s operational plan, which he said was improperly withheld.
The Justice Department did not address the treasure hunters’ most explosive claims about the possible cover-up in its latest legal filing. The government even told a federal judge in Washington, DC, that the FBI has satisfied the legal obligation for treasure hunters to search for records of a dig, and asked for the case to be closed.
The judge has not yet decided.
Parada said he will continue to ask questions until he gets a satisfactory answer.
“I will keep this until the end, until I know everything that happened to the gold,” he said. “How much, where to go, who has it now. I need to know.”