By Tim Binnall
Strengthened in their belief that the federal government is covering up the recovery of an apocryphal cache of lost Civil War gold, a team of treasure hunters are reportedly asking a judge to force the FBI to release additional documents concerning the highly contentious dig. The request is the latest salvo in a longstanding legal battle brought forth by Dennis and Ken Parada, who contend that they led authorities to a massive stash of gold bars buried in a Pennsylvania state park back in 2018, but were then excluded from the excavation and subsequently told that nothing had been found. Since that time, the pair have doggedly pursued the matter in court and the results of their hunt for answers rather than treasure has been rather illuminating.
Having received a wealth of materials acquired from the FBI by way of a court order, the treasure hunters point to several details which, they argue, reveal a cover-up on the part of the federal government. Specifically, the note that weather conditions in several photos from the dig do not match what was occurring at the time in which they were taken and theorize that this is evidence of some kind of shenanigans meant to conceal was really unfolding during the excavation. They also assert that the FBI purposely provided low quality images wherein it was nearly impossible to discern many details in the photos.
Beyond that, the treasure hunters accuse the FBI of holding back additional materials from the dig which they should have received, such as additional photos from later in the excavation, any images of the specific spot where the gold was thought to be buried, nor a complete version of a report from a geophysical survey of the site. As such, the team are once again asking a judge to compel the federal government to produce these documents as well as the FBI's operational plan for the project and other potential evidence requested by the Paradas' legal team. Considering their success in court so far, one suspects that the treasure hunters will ultimately get their hands on these materials.
For their part, the government remains insistent that they did not find any gold during the dig, the treasure hunters' attorney observed that the documents produced so far "cast doubt on the FBI's claim to have found nothing and raise serious and troubling questions about the FBI’s conduct during the dig and in this litigation, where it has gone to great lengths to distort critical evidence." To that end, Ken Parada has indicated that he intends to pursue the matter with the same zeal with which he hunted for the treasure at the center of the saga, declaring that “I will stick at this until the end, until I know everything that happened to that gold. How much, where it went to, who has it now. I gotta know.”