Original subtitles

>> NARRATOR: Millions in

missing gold...

>> DAVID CHILDRESS: 100 tons of

gold bars were inside this

mountain.

>> NARRATOR: ...priceless art,

lost for decades...

>> ROBERT WITTMAN: Those

paintings are valued at around

$500 million.

>> NARRATOR: ...and precious

documents in the hands of

thieves.

>> CHRIS ISLEIB: He was stealing

our heritage from us.

>> NARRATOR: What are the real

stories behind America's lost

treasures?

And are there some that the U.S.

government would rather we

didn't find?

>> MARLA COOPER: My uncle was

the hijacker known as D.B.

Cooper.

>> NARRATOR: There are those

who believe in the existence

of a book.

A book that contains the most

highly guarded secrets of the

United States of America.

A book... whose very existence

is known to only a select few.

But if such a book exists,

what would it contain?

Secret maps?

Secret plans?

Secret vaults?

Does there really exist

America's Book of Secrets?

April, 1991.

Hatfield, Arkansas.

A lifetime obsession with

treare hunting finally pays

off for retired U.S. Navy

helicopter pilot Bob Brewer

when his shovel hits a hard

object buried in the soil of a

dense forest.

>> WARREN GETLER: There was a

glass jar filled with gold and

silver coins, and he picked it

up.

And he said, "It's gold," and he

pulled out 20 coins or so.

>> NARRATOR: Dating from the

1800s, with a face value of over

$400, the coins were deemed to

be worth thousands of dollars.

>> BOB BREWER: It's probably the

most exciting thing I ever did

in my life.

And then after I found the first

one, within the next three

years, there were several

come up.

>> GETLER: The largest recovery

that I know Bob made is probably

from $300,000 to $500,000.

>> NARRATOR: Could it just be

coincidence that Brewer struck

it lucky several times?

Or did he have more secret

knowledge?

Richmond, Virginia.

April, 1865.

In the final chaotic days of the

Civil War, as the Confederate

states faced defeat, a covert

group of Southern sympathizers--

known as the Knights of the

Golden Circle-- laid plans to

fight on.

Secretly formed in Virginia, the

group claimed approximately

500,000 members and was active

in both the North and the South.

>> GETLER: The Knights of the

Golden Circle was both

Confederate and Masonic, based

on our research.

It's fascinating to me that the

history of the Knights of the

Golden Circle has been largely

ignored by academics.

But we have to start with the

fact that this is a subversive

secret organization.

>> BREWER: Their goal was to

take all of Mexico, Central

America, and part of South

America and Cuba and all of the

South up to about Washington

D.C., and make it a separate

country and use slavery as its

means to produce the wealth of

the crops.

>> NARRATOR: During their brief

history, the Knights of the

Golden Circle were rumored to

have accumulated vast amounts

of gold and silver, which they

acquired by stealing from U.S.

Treasury facilities, robbing

military payrolls, and

repatriating Confederate monies

shipped to England and Canada

during the Civil War.

>> W. CRAIG GAINES: The Knights

of the Golden Circle guarded

some wealth, but the treasures

that they guarded were probably

loot from the war or personal,

uh, treasures hidden during the

war to keep outsiders away from

it.

>> GETLER: We know that this

organization and its legacy

groups still exist today.

The families who were involved

with this organization, going

back more than 100 years, were

trained into how to protect

this money on horseback, by foot

patrol, and they never touched

it.

My co-author Bob Brewer was

being trained as a sentinel to

protect the buried gold.

He was shown what we call a

Bible Tree, which had symbols

and verses from the Bible in

code.

>> BREWER: The Bible Tree itself

is just one part of a major

system of trees and markings

that outline the depository and

give you instructions as to how

to find the treasure.

Basically a map.

>> NARRATOR: Using a secret

decoding system that was passed

down to him by his great uncle,

Brewer deciphered the letters

"J," "A," and "S" followed by

three dots, as an abbreviation

for the biblical book of James,

and the three dots pointed to

the third verse.

Understanding this verse to be

an instruction, Brewer took the

image of a horse's head carved

in the tree bark and turned it

around.

Following the new direction

indicated by the inverted

carving led him to discover even

more clues.

>> BREWER: We find all types of

relics that are buried.

And usually, if it's a sharp,

pointed object, then it's

looking at the treasure.

Now, the treasure may be miles

from there, but that's a line

you've got to follow to find the

treasure.

>> NARRATOR: Although the first

pointers did not lead him

directly to buried gold, Brewer

became convinced he was dealing

with a well-thought out system

for hiding valuables.

>> BREWER: There's a systematic

plan that runs from east to

west, all the way from Virginia

to California.

>> NARRATOR: Brewer mapped out

the locations of his finds:

carved forest markers, hidden

clues, and even small stashes

of old coins.

He began to see a pattern of a

circle within a square,

criss-crossed by intersecting

lines.

But the design made no sense

until his partner John London

brought him a mysterious

"template" that he claimed to

have found while treasure

hunting in Texas years before.

>> JOHN LONDON: In the early

days, it had to have been made

of... of oilskin or something

very nearly transparent.

>> NARRATOR: Brewer uses his

recreation of the template as

an overlay on topographic maps,

believing it can help him to

decipher the clues he has

unearthed in his search for the

treasures of the Knights of the

Golden Circle.

>> LONDON: These bent, gnarled

trees are actually land markers.

And if you draw a line from

this point to that point over

there, and then you find another

land marker that, you know,

creates another leg of an "X"

and you start working on that,

it all of a sudden makes sense.

>> BREWER: I finally started

seeing things that I hadn't saw

before, I figured out they fit

in... right into what I had been

doing.

We've got a piece here that was

found out here in the mountains,

but it's been cut and shaped,

and as I slide it onto

the template, you'll see that it

fits that template perfectly.

It-it doesn't point at money.

But it tells you how to align

the template so you can find

the treasure.

And so once I find the center of

that template, the treasures

are like picking grapes.

>> GETLER: The Knights of the

Golden Circle established the

biggest network of buried

treasure not only in America

but in the world.

It's a network that's connected

by geometry, geography, secret

codes, and symbols.

>> LONDON: I believe, if there

was a Book of Secrets, the

methods used to lay down the

treasure and to locate the

treasure... I think they'd be in

that book.

>> NARRATOR: As he struggles to

crack the code of the Knights of

the Golden Circle, Bob Brewer--

like many serious treasure

hunters-- prefers to keep his

discoveries a secret.

But why?

>> LONDON: It seems odd to me

that every time you hear of a

rumor of treasure being in a

certain area, all of a sudden

that land becomes a national

park or an entity that all of a

sudden we can't access for any

other reason than to maybe camp

or fish.

>> GAINES: I believe there's a

lot of these treasures, but most

people don't tell you that they

found it, because then you have

the issue of who does

it belong to.

So a lot of these finds are

unreported, but it's probably

the tip of the iceberg.

>> BREWER: This whole thought

process of KGC treasure and the

buried gold in the United

States, it's one of the best

conspiracy theories there is.

And it's getting to the point

where it's no longer

just a theory.

>> NARRATOR: Are restrictive

government rules forcing

treasure hunters to keep their

discoveries secret?

Would these valuables be better

protected in museums and

historical collections?

Or might they be threatened

by equally determined but

perhaps even more audacious

treasure hunters who dare

to steal America's very history?

Coming up:

>> NARRATOR: June 27, 2012,

Baltimore, Maryland.

Barry Landau, author and

renowned presidential historian,

once known for his impressive

collection of documents and

influential connections,

is sentenced to seven years in

federal prison.

His crime? Stealing the history

of the United States of America.

>> ROD ROSENSTEIN: People who

looked Barry Landau up on the

Internet or did any research

about him would find Barry

Landau talking about himself and

his connections and his

relationships.

But when you scratch beneath

the surface, you found that

nobody really knew who

Barry Landau was.

>> ISLEIB: He seemed to have

been somebody who lived

a high life.

He was attracted to glamour.

He was attracted to

the presidency.

He became a self-styled

expert.

He collected a lot of inaugural

memorabilia.

>> CATHERINE WILLIAMSON: One

pattern that seems to emerge is

so much like gambling.

The first time you win on

the slots makes you put so much

more money into the machine.

And it seems, in a small group

of collectors, that this same

psychology is at work.

They have a tremendous success

having discovered an

important piece, and they want

to replicate it.

It becomes very difficult to do

that through legitimate means,

so that seems to be the impulse

that might make them step

over the line.

>> NARRATOR: Interestingly,

it was Landau's method of

collecting that led to his

fall from grace.

In 2011 he and his 23-year-old

partner in crime Jason Savedoff

were caught red-handed at the

prestigious Maryland Historical

Society in Baltimore.

>> ISLEIB: He would basically

attack with kindness.

He would bring cookies, bring

cupcakes, ingratiate himself

with the people who were on

staff there.

>> WILLIAMSON: In the academic

community there is a

gentleman's agreement that we

will all respect the material;

we will do what is necessary to

gain access to the archives.

Once we are there, we will treat

the material with respect.

That is the contract

between scholars.

And that is why you don't go

through a metal detector,

generally, to go into a rare

book room or to go into

a reading room.

>> ISLEIB: Barry Landau was a

fraud and he was a predator.

He specifically targeted

certain organizations and

certain institutions just to

steal from them.

He would case them, he would

visit them repeatedly, he would

look for their weaknesses,

and he would go in, eventually,

and steal directly from them.

And he knew exactly what he was

taking and he knew exactly how

to get away with it.

>> ROSENSTEIN: But the employees

of the historical society were

suspicious of Mr. Landau.

They just thought something

wasn't right about him.

One of the employees went up

into a balcony and watched and

saw Mr. Landau and Mr. Savedoff

secrete some of these documents

in their briefcase and their

clothing, and then called

the Baltimore police.

>> NARRATOR: The police were

astonished to discover 79

original documents, some of

which bore the signatures of

Abraham Lincoln, hidden inside

Landau's computer bag.

But an even bigger surprise

awaited the officers who

searched his home in New York.

>> ISLEIB: Barry Landau had a

collection in the tens of

thousands of items.

It included inauguration

tickets, it included menus, it

included badges, it included

goblets.

We're not sure what was stolen

and what was not, what was

legitimately gained.

>> ROSENSTEIN: What Barry Landau

had in his apartment in New York

was the sort of collection you'd

expect to see in a museum.

In fact, the agency needed to

rent a truck in order to take

all the evidence away from

Mr. Landau's apartment.

>> NARRATOR: Landau's young

protégé, Jason Savedoff,

received a reduced sentence in

exchange for assisting law

enforcement with the recovery

of evidence.

But just how did Barry Landau

manage to remove thousands of

irreplaceable items from museums

and libraries across the U.S.?

Like a magician employing

the art of distraction, Landau

enticed librarians with cakes

and candy, but the clothes he

wore played an even bigger role

in his audacious larceny.

>> ROSENSTEIN: These are some of

the tools of the trade that Mr.

Landau would use to steal

documents from historical

societies.

He had these coats and jackets

specially tailored with a large

interior pocket.

So, for example, in this

overcoat here, the pocket is so

deep, that Mr. Landau was

actually able to conceal this

entire document and then walk

right out of the museum carrying

it with him.

>> NARRATOR: When it came time

to sell the priceless items,

Landau used his knowledge

of archival methods to conceal

that the documents were in fact

stolen property.

>> WILLIAMSON: The mid-century

American method for documenting,

by and large, was to pencil

inventory numbers.

And that's obviously very

simple to remove.

>> ROSENSTEIN: Mr. Landau would

use something as simple as a

pencil eraser to erase

notations.

He also would use a file.

And of course a magnifying

glass, which would allow him to

inspect the documents and make

sure that he removed all traces

of where they came from.

>> WITTMAN: When you try

to monetize these pieces and

bring 'em back to market, that's

when they get caught.

Anyone who steals artwork from

a museum or cultural property

from a museum valued at more

than $5,000 and over a hundred

years old is committing

a federal crime.

The real art of an art heist

is not the stealing,

it's the selling.

>> ISLEIB: Barry Landau was

stealing American history.

He was stealing our heritage

from us and from our future

generations.

>> NARRATOR: In an effort to

recover America's priceless

historical artifacts, federal

agents must sometimes go

undercover and take a walk

on the wrong side of the law.

In 2003 Special Agent Robert

Wittman received a tip about

one of the original 13 copies

of the Bill of Rights.

Sent to North Carolina by

George Washington in 1789, the

priceless parchment had been

looted from the state capitol

by a Union trooper in 1865

at the end of the Civil War.

Nearly 140 years later, after

changing hands several times,

the document was in the

possession of a man who was

trying to sell it to the

National Constitution Center

in Philadelphia for $4 million.

>> WILLIAMSON: This Bill of

Rights is another example that

if a piece is stolen, it doesn't

have good title.

And you're never gonna get

good title back no matter

how many hands it moves through.

If it was once stolen, it is

still stolen property.

>> WITTMAN: We set up an

undercover operation,

a sting operation.

We created a $4 million

fake check.

It wasn't real.

I was actually undercover as

a philanthropist who was putting

the money up to actually

buy the piece.

And we had a code word.

When we said the code word,

agents came in, and we were able

to recover the document.

>> NARRATOR: Fooled by the

fake check, the seller handed

over the precious copy.

And although he was out

$4 million, he at least escaped

federal prosecution.

>> WITTMAN: The U.S. attorney's

office decided not to charge

the individuals with a crime

'cause we couldn't prove they

had actual knowledge of it

being stolen at that point.

>> NARRATOR: Undercover agents?

Sting operations?

The hunt for America's missing

relics reads more like fiction

than fact.

But that is nothing compared

to the details behind a decades-

old mystery involving cash,

a hijacked plane, and a

mysterious man known

as D.B. Cooper.

Coming up...

>> NARRATOR: February 10, 1980.

The Columbia River, near

Vancouver, Washington.

On a camping trip with his

parents, eight-year-old Brian

Ingram discovers a strange

bundle of decomposing bank notes

buried at the water's edge.

The cash adds up to $5,800.

But where did it come from?

>> GRAY: It's like

every boy's dream.

He found buried treasure.

And this treasure was caked in

some sand.

They're all 20-dollar bills.

And when they brought the money

to the authorities, they could

read some of the serial numbers.

>> NARRATOR: The serial numbers

reveal that the money was part

of a ransom payment.

The first physical evidence

recovered from the world's only

unsolved hijacking...

nine years earlier.

November 24, 1971.

>> Ground transportation...

>> NARRATOR: On the evening

before Thanksgiving, Northwest

Flight 305-- a short trip from

Portland to Seattle-- takes a

terrifying turn when a passenger

in row 18, listed as Dan Cooper,

presses the call button.

(button dings)

>> COOPER: As soon as the plane

took off, he handed the flight

attendant a note informing her

that he was hijacking the

airplane.

>> GRAY: To show her that he's

serious, he reaches for his

attaché case and he opens it.

Inside, she can see wires and

she can see red sticks.

She thinks it's a bomb.

>> NARRATOR: The hijacker

demands $200,000 in cash, and

four parachutes to be delivered

to him when the plane touches

down in Seattle.

>> COOPER: Once he landed and

the money was on board, the

passengers were released.

Nobody was physically harmed

in the hijacking.

>> 36 passengers

got off the jetliner in Seattle

last night.

Left aboard, four crew members

and the hijacker.

>> GRAY: The hijacker wanted

to go to Mexico City,

but he had these very specific

instructions on how the plane

should be flown.

He wanted it no higher than

10,000 feet.

Couldn't go any faster than

200 miles an hour.

Furthermore, this was a very

unique kind of plane because

it had these rear stairs that

came out.

>> NARRATOR: But passenger Dan

Cooper-- later known as D.B.

Cooper-- never made it to

Mexico.

As the plane flew over

Southwestern Washington, the

hijacker strapped the money to

his body, lowered the plane's

aft stairs, and jumped.

Over the following days and

weeks, teams of law enforcement

officials scoured the region for

any sign of him.

But despite the intense efforts,

nothing was found.

No money.

No parachute.

And no suspect.

>> RONALD KESSLER: The FBI still

has an open case on Cooper.

He was indicted, so it has not

closed the case.

There's always a possibility

that he could be found.

>> NARRATOR: But who was the

mysterious passenger known as

Dan Cooper?

And is there a secret reason

why he has never been found?

>> GRAY: People know this case

as the D.B. Cooper case.

But really it should be called

the Dan Cooper case.

Because Dan Cooper is the name

that the hijacker gave when he

bought his ticket to board that

flight.

On the night of the hijacking,

a lot of reporters were trying

to figure out what was going on.

>> NARRATOR: A miscommunication

between a journalist and the FBI

led to the hijacker's name being

reported as D.B. Cooper.

The FBI decided not to correct

the record, believing it would

help them to eliminate suspects.

>> GRAY: Agents wanted the

public to think it was D.B.

Cooper because then they could

look for Dan Cooper.

They could weed out all the

clues that would come in about

D.B. Cooper.

That was their, you know, sort

of ace in the hole.

>> NARRATOR: More than four

decades later, the decaying bank

notes found on the edge of the

Columbia River remain the only

clue to ever surface in the D.B.

Cooper case.

>> KESSLER: None of the money

that D.B. Cooper received ever

showed up in circulation based

on the serial numbers that, of

of course, had been recorded.

So that tells you something

about whether D.B. Cooper ever

survived that parachute jump.

If he had, he certainly would

have spent the money.

>> NARRATOR: But is it possible

that money might not have been

D.B. Cooper's motive for the

hijacking?

Or was there another, perhaps

more secret, reason?

>> COOPER: I'm Marla Cooper.

I'm the niece of the hijacker

known as D.B. Cooper.

My uncles Dewey and L.D.

planned the hijacking.

L.D. was the man on the plane,

but Dewey was the man

on the ground.

>> NARRATOR: In 1971,

eight-year-old Marla Cooper was

spending Thanksgiving as usual

with her family at her

grandmother's house in Sisters,

Oregon.

It was there that her two

uncles, after years of

struggling to get by, boasted

about coming into a large sum of

money.

>> COOPER: And I heard my Uncle

Dewey tell my father that we

were rich, our money problems

are over.

Um, we just had to go back and

find the money.

Um, but he said, "We did it, we

hijacked an airplane."

>> NARRATOR: A few days later,

her father's two brothers,

Dewey and Lynne Doyle-- known as

L.D. to his family--

disappeared, and Marla Cooper

never saw either of her uncles

again.

Could L.D. Cooper have been the

mysterious hijacker known

as D.B. Cooper?

And, if so, might he have

audaciously used skills he

learned as a U.S. Navy

paratrooper during the

Korean War?

Skills that tied in directly to

the unique make and model of the

aircraft from which Cooper made

his escape?

>> GRAY: From the documents I

uncovered, what I learned was

that that plane had been used by

the CIA.

And the CIA, in the Vietnam War,

had specifically used this

Boeing 727 and the rear stairs,

which came down on hydraulics,

to drop parachutists

and guns and food.

Was Cooper somebody that

potentially had connections

with the CIA?

>> COOPER: I think that my Uncle

L.D. Cooper was used by the CIA

for the hijacking.

>> NARRATOR: "Used by the CIA"?

Why would the CIA want to hijack

a domestic airline flight?

In the nine years prior to D.B.

Cooper's daring seizure of an

aircraft, nearly 50 commercial

flights had been hijacked in the

United States, often by a

politically motivated attacker

demanding to go to Cuba.

>> COOPER: There was an epidemic

of hijackings taking place

during that time.

President Nixon was desperate

and so was J. Edgar Hoover,

who was in charge of the FBI,

to improve airport security.

But like today, changes like

that bring into question: are we

losing our freedoms?

>> GRAY: You have to look at the

results of the Cooper case.

Very high publicized, very

famous, not necessarily for

getting away with the money but

for changing the climate of

airport security in our nation.

Now we go to an airport,

we're scanned.

The sterile terminal all came

about because of Cooper.

>> COOPER: I didn't start out to

be a conspiracy theorist, but

I've really come to believe

that there is classified

information about the hijacking

that has never been made public.

>> NARRATOR: Is it possible that

the U.S. government was behind

the world's only unsolved

hijacking?

And if $5,800 of the ransom

money washed up on the shores of

the Columbia River, might the

rest still be out there waiting

to be found?

Perhaps it has vanished forever

along with D.B. Cooper, leaving

nothing but unanswered questions

and a colorful myth that

persists to this day.

Coming up:

>> CHILDRESS:

>> NARRATOR: Boston,

Massachusetts, March 18, 1990.

As the city slept off its annual

St. Patrick's Day party, two men

dressed as police officers

talked their way into the

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

>> GEOFFREY J. KELLY: Once they

were inside the museum, they

spent the next 81 minutes going

through it and removing 13 works

of art from the vaults.

And they disappeared into

the night.

>> NARRATOR: The 13 stolen

masterpieces include works

by Degas, Vermeer and Manet.

>> WITTMAN: In today's market,

those paintings altogether are

valued at around $500 million,

making it the largest single

property crime in U.S. history.

>> NARRATOR: As the FBI spread

their net, the list of suspects

began to focus on infamous

Boston mobsters like Whitey

Bulger, then leader of the

notorious Winter Hill Gang.

>> WITTMAN: At the time of the

heist, all leads were covered.

There might have been some

thought at that time that the

Irish mob in the Boston area

might have been involved,

or even possibly the

Italian mob.

>> KELLY: Well, I can't comment

on Mr. Bulger, but certainly his

name has been linked to it by

others due to the fact that his

involvement in organized crime

in Boston and his support

for the IRA.

The IRA has used art theft as a

viable fundraising technique.

>> ERIK NEMETH: The eluding and

the trafficking, so that's the

movement of the artifacts from

the discovery to an eventual

buyer, is a challenging process.

Organized crime is very well

versed in those tactics.

>> NARRATOR: Some even

speculated that the theft had

been commissioned by a wealthy

collector, one determined to own

the world's finest art.

>> NEMETH: When an art theft

occurs, we're gonna talk to

experts in the field to see who

might be interested in this type

of painting.

I don't know if it was, uh,

commissioned or if they just

took pieces that they liked

or if they took what they

believed would be the most

valuable pieces by going

to the Dutch Room.

>> WILLIAMSON: The really

high-profile art heists must be

carried out on commission.

I just don't think that you

would steal high-profile

multimillion-dollar paintings

on spec.

I just think that you must have

an end user.

It is difficult to find a

market, even when you have a

really terrific piece.

You don't always know who will

buy it.

>> NARRATOR: Today, the FBI

estimates that art theft from

museums and private collections

costs Americans at least

$6 billion each year.

But is art theft really just

about elite collectors and

priceless paintings?

Or is there another, more secret

reason why recent art heists

are about much more than money?

>> NEMETH: As a security

concern, art crime competes for

resources with other more

serious crimes, whether it's

drug trafficking or murder.

>> NARRATOR: Although glamorized

in movies like Oceans Twelve and

The Thomas Crown Affair,

art theft can be both lucrative

and lethal.

It now stands third behind the

sale of illegal drugs and

weapons as the world's biggest

crime business.

>> NEMETH: Now it has

implications for international

security.

Der Spiegel ran a story which

connected Mohamed Atta, one of

the 9/11 hijackers, with an

attempt to sell antiquities or

inquire with a German expert

in cultural artifacts on the

sale of antiquities in Hamburg,

Germany.

The fact that places like Iraq

and Afghanistan and Southeast

Asia have a tremendous wealth in

marketable antiquities and

cultural artifacts, it's easy to

suspect that cultural wealth

might be exploited as a source

of funding.

>> NARRATOR: Did Mohamed Atta

finance Osama bin Laden's terror

plot against the United States

by selling stolen artwork?

It seems far-fetched until one

considers that the thieves

responsible for the Isabella

Stewart Gardner heist still

remain at large.

March 18, 2013.

On the 23rd anniversary of

America's largest unsolved art

heist, the FBI makes a stunning

announcement.

>> FBI agents developed crucial

pieces of evidence that confirm

the identity of those who

entered the museum and others

associated with the theft who

belong to a criminal

organization.

>> NARRATOR: Although they claim

to know the identity of the

thieves, the FBI refuses

to name them.

But why?

>> WILLIAMSON: I think that

perhaps they're trying to exert

pressure on the person or

persons who may have

the property.

You know, if they turn up the

heat, you're not gonna be able

to shop it around without

compromising yourself.

>> NARRATOR: Even more

surprising is the FBI's

announcement that they are

willing to consider immunity for

anyone who returns the stolen

artwork.

>> ISLEIB: Crooks come and go.

They will be caught eventually.

But recovering the artifact

is extremely important.

That would be the number one

priority.

>> NARRATOR: After 23 years and

a trail that has involved law

enforcement agencies from all

over the world, the FBI now

believes the stolen paintings

might be as close to Boston as

Connecticut or Philadelphia.

But that's small consolation to

the thousands of patrons who

flock to the museum each year.

Due to a provision in Isabella

Stewart Gardner's will

requiring that the exhibition

not be changed in any way, the

missing masterpieces are now

represented by nothing more than

an eerie array of empty

picture frames.

>> KELLY: There have been

so many dead ends, times

where I've really thought that I

was literally minutes away from

the recovery.

If you go into the Dutch Room

of the museum, you'll see the

empty frames are still

on the wall.

I look at those empty frames

and it kind of mocks me.

>> NARRATOR: Coming up...

>> DELONAS: Both President

>> NARRATOR: White Sands Missile

Range, New Mexico.

Here, within 3,200 square miles

of dry, dusty desert are areas

so isolated, they provide the

perfect location for top secret

weapons tests...

rocket launches...

and atomic bomb trials.

But could this desolate area

in America's Southwest also be

hiding other, even more

explosive secrets?

Growing up in the 1950s and 60s,

Terry Delonas loved to listen to

his grandmother's stories about

the incredible treasure she

claimed her husband Doc Noss

found near White Sands at

Victorio Peak in November of

1937.

>> CHILDRESS: What Doc Noss

found apparently...

a hundred tons of gold bars

were stacked up inside this

mountain.

>> NARRATOR: In addition to gold

bars, Noss also found antique

artifacts and a sword.

>> DELONAS: My grandmother

would, uh, she would

occasionally reach in one of

her dusty old trunks and pull

out an artifact like this one.

It's actually a, uh, sword of

European origin.

The hallmark shows that it was

made in Klingenthal, Bavaria.

And some historians have

speculated it could've been one

of the swords used by one of the

guards during Maximilian's

empire in Mexico.

>> NARRATOR: Could the sword

really have belonged to

supporters of Mexico's last

emperor-- and even more

mysteriously, did Doc Noss also

find, as he claimed, a cavern

full of gold bars?

If so, where did the treasure

come from?

>> GETLER: It's our strong

belief that the Knights of the

Golden Circle buried massive

amounts of gold in certain

locations.

They buried them in underground

caverns.

The biggest one that we're

pretty sure of is Victorio

Peak.

The Knights of the Golden Circle

went to Mexico to rescue

Maximilian, who was their ally

right after the Civil War, and

they brought this gold back to

Victorio Peak.

>> NARRATOR: Was Victorio Peak

really part of a network of

secret hiding places that

researchers claim were used by

the mysterious Knights of the

Golden Circle?

Unfortunately, we may never

know.

Because before Noss could

retrieve the horde of gold bars

he claimed was hidden deep

within the mountain, a rockfall

cut off access to the treasure

shortly before the U.S.

government suddenly annexed

Victorio Peak as part of the

White Sands Missile Base in

1953.

A coincidence?

Or could there be another, more

secret reason why the U.S.

Army wanted to keep the land

off-limits?

>> LONDON: They're doing

a lot of stuff out there.

From training troops to

testing missiles of every

description.

So you really can't have

civilians running around loose

on a missile range.

>> DELONAS: If there was an

actual America's Book of

Secrets, I think what it would

reveal is the very high level of

Oval Office presidential

awareness of events surrounding

Victorio Peak.

>> NARRATOR: June 5, 1963.

At the height of the Cold War,

President John F. Kennedy

and Vice President Lyndon

Johnson visit White Sands

Missile Range for a

demonstration of rocket and

weapons launches.

But there are those who claim

that during the official events,

Kennedy and Johnson also viewed

a much more secret but no less

awe-inspiring display at

Victorio Peak.

>> DELONAS: Recently one of

President Kennedy's security

team said that he had been sent

in advance to Victorio Peak to

prepare the site and that both

President Kennedy and Lyndon

Johnson actually entered the

caverns at Victorio Peak and,

um, viewed some of the treasure.

>> NARRATOR: Five months later,

John F. Kennedy was assassinated

in Dallas, and Lyndon Johnson

became the 36th president of the

United States.

And it was Johnson who became

the first U.S. president to

have an airstrip constructed

at his personal residence,

outside Fredericksburg, Texas.

But why?

>> CHILDRESS: Lyndon Johnson did

some things that other

presidents never did.

He would have military planes,

including Hercules cargo planes,

actually fly in and out of his

ranch.

And that was something of a

mystery, because no one really

knew why military planes and

cargo planes should be flying

in and out of Lyndon Johnson's

ranch.

>> GETLER: I believe that the

gold that was at Victorio Peak

has been completely removed.

It was taken out, I believe,

during the Johnson years.

>> NARRATOR: Did President

Lyndon Johnson have secret

knowledge of the gold that was

hidden deep inside Victorio

Peak?

And if so, did he order that

the gold be removed?

The facts may remain a mystery.

Because, although there is still

no concrete evidence that gold

was ever hidden at Victorio

Peak, Terry Delonas continues

his family's decades-long quest

to excavate the site.

In 1992, under the watchful

supervision of the U.S.

military, he was even granted a

brief access.

>> DELONAS: We finally broke

into one of the major fissures

and we believe it was access

to the main treasure caverns.

That was a Friday afternoon.

Our excavation crew came out

from the dig site that day

feeling pretty happy and perky.

The MPs noticed that, and we

were evicted the following

Monday.

Our equipment was confiscated, a

fence was built around Victorio

Peak, and we were never allowed

access again.

>> NARRATOR: Why did the U.S.

military prevent Terry Delonas

from accessing the cavern?

Did they have secret knowledge

of what he might find there?

>> DELONAS: There are so many

great treasure stories, but

this is the only one that seems

to have had a really overt

attempt by some individuals in

the government to suppress the

truth about the events that

happened at the peak.

>> NARRATOR: Missing

masterpieces.

Mountains of gold.

And a hijacker who vanished

without a trace.

Is the U.S. government doing

everything it can to locate

America's lost treasures?

Or are they deliberately and

mysteriously intended to

remain lost forever?

Perhaps the only way to know for

sure is to keep digging.

Keep searching.

And keep unlocking the secrets.

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