Ground Zero
Courtesy of NOAA, Wikimedia Commons

TREASURE UNDER THE TWIN TOWERS

On November 1, 2001 the Mayor of New York, Rudolph Guliani, announced that "more than $230 million" in silver and gold had been recovered from the Twin Towers World Trade Center site. The precious metals belonged to the Bank of Nova Scotia.

The destruction of the Towers created a 30' deep pit of collapsed buildings. However 70' underground remained a partially collapsed 16 acre basement, which housed, among other tenants, holdings of the Bank of Nova Scotia. On November 1, 2001, many news articles were still covering the terrible event. In The New York Times, the Bank of Nova Scotia was reported to have holdings of 379,036 ounces of gold, and 29,942,619 ounces of silver, with a total value of $200 million in an underground vault.

The Times Online, on the same day, stated that the owner of this vault was the New York Mercantile Exchange Trading Division (COMEX), which kept an additional 730 million in metals, including
-$100 million in gold--3,800 bars--12 tons,
-$430 million in silver--102 million ounces
-$220 million in gold--800,000 ounces held for others (Chase Manhattan and, Bank of New York, and Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking).

The New York Times also reported an attempted break-in at the vault door, security guards having noted scorch and crowbar marks in mid-October. Close-circuit TV monitoring was immediately installed, with the New York Port Authority patroling until the stated removal of metals.

The mystery is in the math. However it is difficult to imagine thieves with blowtorches and crowbars moving an overwhelming weight in metal. Each gold ingot weighs 70 pounds. It is estimated that 50 tractor trailers would be required to move 30,000 1,000-ounce silver bars. No substantive information is available on the platinum or palladium also stored in the vault. Best that the mystery remains. Rest in peace. (D.H.)