The Noss Gold

Here’s what was said on March 21, 1973 when John Dean, John Ehrlichman and Richard Nixon were in the Oval Office (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnUJa6uuL_Y): Time marker 1:08 – “President: How much money do you need? Dean: I would say these people are gonna cost a million dollars over the next… ahh two years. President: We could get that. Dean: Um hmm. President: On the money, if you need the money, I mean you could get the money. Dean: Well, I think that we’re going… President: What I meant is, you could, you could get a million dollars. You could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten.” – Was Nixon referring to the gold he had learned about in the meeting with Keith Alexander and Ehrlichman at his La Casa Pacific home just two years earlier, or even earlier in from Lyndon Johnson? Remember, in the weeks before the Nixon Thanksgiving week gold theft, Nixon, Dean, Ehrlichman and Haldeman were criminals waiting for their jail cells to be swept out and hosed. Converting gold into cash is a simple matter, so the answer is clearly, yes.

Nixon’s abuse of power following the Watergate break-in was the scandal of the 20th Century. Soon after the break-in leaks began, Mark Felt, second in command at the FBI in the 70s, became Nixon’s archenemy. The location of the information transfer from Mark Felt to Washington Post reporter, Bob Woodward, was the lower parking level at 1401 Wilson Boulevard in Rosslyn, Virginia. ‘Deep Throat’ and ‘follow the money’ were the terms often used to define the Watergate era and the events that led up to and followed Nixon’s resignation. This is where The Noss Gold investigation takes over. As much as the Watergate nightmare was a complex tail of lies and monumental cover-ups, The Noss Gold is an equally intriguing story that challenges the reader to follow the trail of evidence in the same manner in which a juror would listen to the prosecutor in a criminal trial. The evidence presented in The Noss Gold is overwhelming and because of the large number of interrelated documents of evidence proving the case against Nixon, readers must place themselves in the jury box and examine the evidence

“I could not have written a single word of The Noss Gold without having access to the Noss family records, more than 55 thousand pages of documents that stretched back to the 1930’s, documents I studied in the four different  War Rooms I had the privilege of occupying during the nine years of my investigation,” said author John Clarence.  The Noss family records contained an equally valuable treasure––hundreds and hundreds of period photos and color video tapes taken during the four-year expedition in the 1990s, the Ova Noss Family Partnership (ONFP) search. Having such access allowed Clarence to write the three books of The Gold House, a monumental task that began in 2004 and concluded in 2013 when the three books were published. The Gold House books are, in fact, research encyclopedias providing interested readers with the specifics surrounding the history of the treasure discovered by Doc and Ova Noss in 1937 up to the present day. “Much had happened since 2004, and, in my view, I felt it was important to update my research, so I began writing The Noss Gold”, said Clarence. The core of the issues he drew upon to write The Noss Gold, were first mentioned in book two of the trilogy, The Gold House – The Lies, The Thefts. There is more; The novel, Doc & Babe is finished and also available.

“A writer must always give credit where credit is due; so in that framework I must acknowledge that everything I have written about the Noss gold discovery would never have happened had it not been for the scores of people who gave the Noss treasure story wings. In truth, though, it was one person who actually handed the world the amazing story of the Victorio Peak treasure, Ova Noss’ grandson, Terry Delonas, step-grandson of Doc Noss. Terry never let go from the day he began his fight with the U.S. Government and the military brass and their “myth messengers” at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. However, Terry did not march into battle alone, he had a small army at his side,” Clarence wrote.