Ian Sayer, a real-life Indiana Jones, is urging Donald Trump to declassify all federal documents related to Nazi war crimes so he can track down more stolen Nazi gold. The 80-year-old has already recovered two Nazi gold bars worth £2.4 million, hidden in the German central bank.
18-Year Investigation Yields Results
Sayer's 18-year investigation led to the recovery of the gold bars in 1996. Now he wants all US Government records under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act made public to find looted gems worth millions that remain unaccounted for.
Sayer insists the gold belonged to the victims of the Nazi regime, not governments. He said: "I have spent nearly 50 years tracking Nazi war criminals and searching for looted Nazi gold. In that time I have learned one thing above all others. The obstacle is hardly ever that the evidence was destroyed. It is that it remains closed."
Call for Declassification
He added: "I am the last person to have established the location of missing Nazi gold - two bars traced to Germany and finally accounted for. The United States searched for those two bars in the years after the war and failed to find them. Detailed investigations were called for and never carried out. The reasons have never been explained and I believe the explanation lies in files that are still classified. On the evidence of the last 50 years I am confident that it would pay dividends. Some of those dividends would be paid, at last, to the people who are owed them."
The former truck driver became an independent gold hunter in 1978. He told the US Government two bars of Belgian gold looted by the Nazis had disappeared from American custody in Munich in 1945, providing bar numbers, date of deposit, bank and account details.
Bars Recovered
It took five years and eight months to persuade them to look. When the State Department approached Germany, the Bundesbank admitted it held the bars, which are stamped with swastikas. They were surrendered in 1996, transferred to the Bank of England's vaults, and sold as metal.
Sayer says it remains the only looted Nazi gold ever recovered through the work of a private investigator. Now he backs a campaign by Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley for the declassification of Nazi records.
Support for Senator's Request
"Declassification does not produce dramatic revelations to order," Sayer said. "It produces the dull and specific documents - a deposit slip, a receipt, an internal memorandum, a ledger entry - that turn a suspicion into a traceable asset. And assets that can be traced can be returned. I have proved that this works and I proved it as a private individual with no powers, no budget and no access beyond what any member of the public may see."
"If one man could establish the fate of two bars of gold from the open record a government with the National Archives behind it can establish the fate of a great deal more. Senator Grassley is asking for that machinery to be switched on. That is why I support his request to President Trump for an executive order declassifying the federal records relating to Nazi war crimes."
