Faithful listeners of the podcast know it has been several months since our last regular episode, but this hiatus was for a very good reason. Behind the scenes, I have been collaborating with John Clarence, the premier researcher on the Noss/Victorio Peak Gold Story, to develop an expansive new podcast series on that topic. You might be wondering why a JFK podcast is pivoting to a story about buried treasure. The truth is, the Victorio Peak gold story directly intersects with the lives of JFK and RFK, exposing hidden sides of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon that will give you serious pause and fundamentally change how you evaluate those presidencies…and perhaps for at least one of those men, how you evaluate his potential involvement in the JFK assassination.

However, before we can understand Victorio Peak, we need a prelude. That prelude starts this weekend with a multi-episode deep dive into a well-documented, yet often overlooked, World War II event: the discovery of the Merkers salt mine. In April 1945, advancing American forces uncovered the staggering wealth of the Third Reich, mostly stolen from neighboring countries during the war. At this late stage of the war, it was now hidden deep underground, including 8,198 gold bars and a horrifying quantity of SS loot stripped from concentration camp victims. This well documented historical event is crucial because it goes directly to understanding how the U.S. government and our military at the time looked upon massive treasures of stolen gold, and how they may have ultimately handled portions of it. It sets the foundational stage for the Victorio Peak story that follows.

If the idea of the government secretly moving and hoarding massive caches of gold sounds like a fictional tie-together, a chilling coincidence from this past week proves otherwise. In this 7-minute teaser, I weave our upcoming historical narrative covering the Merkers mine with the shocking, breaking news of David Rush. Rush, a former senior CIA officer with top-secret clearance, was arrested after an FBI raid on his home uncovered 303 one-kilogram gold bars—valued at roughly $40 million—sitting in a basement safe. Prosecutors allege that Rush created a fake, highly classified "black box" Special Access Program to request this incredible wealth directly from the CIA for supposed "work-related expenses".

This modern-day scandal takes the historical rumors of hidden government gold and makes them very real in the modern realm. It forces us to pause and rethink what is possible as we begin to stitch this massive web together. The hiatus is over. Listen in to this teaser as we prepare to journey into the Merkers Mine, with four episodes due out this weekend, telling this chilling World War II story. And from there... we go to Victorio Peak, and beyond.