The following information from the Herbert Hoover/Requa files demonstrates the beginnings of Barrick Gold.
See Source below for full details.
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~ The Requa/Herbert Hoover Gold Mining Files ~
Aka: The Requa/Hoover/Milbank/Lewisohn/Steen/Combined-Metals/Bunker-Hill Files — as
complied by four generations of Requa family members with former U.S. President/Geologist
Herbert Hoover, Hoover sons Herbert and Alan, Jeremiah Milbank Sr, Jeremiah Milbank Jr.,Combined Metals Reduction Company, Adolph Lewisohn, Lewisohn Bros, Charles Steen, El
Paso Gas, Bunker Hill Mining Company, and numerous others.
Part I:
During the 1930s Herbert Hoover (following his White House years) with fellow geologist Mark L.
Requa — who had engineered Hoover’s 1928 nomination for the presidency and his subsequent
campaigns — developed the Mercur Gold Mine in Utah into production; and, they had spent under the
management of Lawrence K. Requa (in 1930’s dollars) over $1,000,000. Production was then shortly
thereafter curtailed due to metallurgical difficulties developed and not possible then to solve (carbon in
the ore), but that then were possible to solve in the 1970s when Getty Oil acquired the mine properties
which Barrick Gold acquired and then went public on in 1983.
The comprehensive mining data of the 1930s that defined the gold deposits was provided to them by
Lawrence Requa, unused for 40 years. It was this Mercur Gold Mine, and the Requa/Hoover data on
the established gold reserves to be produced there, upon which basis Barrick Gold (having acquired
rights to the mine from Getty Oil) then went public in 1983. Mercur had been a mine “set to go” since
the 1930s. In 1985 Barrick closed their agreement with Getty and paid $31 million with royalties
(considered to have been a “fire sale” price). A news article from the time is noted by the link below:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&dat=19850716&id=c5ozAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LYQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1743,97562
The large overall Requa/Herbert Hoover Files on countless such mining sites were consolidated by
the Requa family from its one hundred years of mining activities throughout the Western Hemisphere
from Alaska to Bolivia. It detailed thousands of gold and other mineral showings and mines that were
deemed of merit for further mining exploration and/or development, some having been put into
noteworthy mining production, from the 1930s to 1970s — or into then-pending mining production —
by the Requas, the Hoover family, the Milbanks, the Lewisohns, Charles Steen, and the many other
mining interests allied with them. These were the most major mining financiers of their time —
expending their essentially-limitless available mining finance funds in both exploration and
development. Seen below are Hoover and Mark Requa in 1928 and early 1930s (White House Years),
and then Hoover with L.K. Requa, after Mercur, in Idaho in late 1930s at their mining site there:
In 1993 it is certain that this compilation of data from almost a century by four generations of Requa
family comprised the most extensive — and largely still unexploited — database for gold exploration
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and development in the world. As such, it was viewed by those knowledgeable about it as the most
valuable mining database for the Western Hemisphere — certain to provide the critical data basis for
producing many gold, silver, and base metal mines throughout the Hemisphere — such as at the
Mercur Gold Mine that Barrick Gold went public on, based on that 1930s data, and then began
producing over 100,000 ounces of gold a year.
The great value of the combined Requa/Hoover Files — with just one of its documented mines made
possible to take public in 1983 by the now-largest gold mining company in the world — consisted of
similar data on many hundreds of mining sites throughout the Western Hemisphere. The Mercur Mine
data had been acquired in the 1930s by Hoover, Mark Requa, and Lawrence Requa. Data on these
additional hundreds of mining sites was acquired by the additional expenditures of the greatest possible
funds available then in mining by the greatest mining capitalists of the era up through the 1970s: the
Milbanks, Hoovers, the Lewisohns, Charles Steen, and others. Well into the hundreds of millions of
dollars had been spent to acquire the data in the Requa/Hoover Files.
Noted geologist John Prochnau, who had several meeting with Lawence Requa in a recorded interview
in 2001 stated the following regarding the Requa family and these files:
“Lawrence Requa...was a very well known mining geologist in Nevada and throughout the world
and the third generation of a family of very prominent mining engineers and entrepreneurs that
began with the great grandfather who came to California in the Gold Rush and had a very
successful career in developing mines there, and following with the grandfather Mark Requa who
was an associate and very close friend, business associate, and campaign manager for Herbert
Hoover, another famous American mining engineer who became President of the United States in
1928 to 1932.
“[The files in 1992] were stored in a very large room full of filing cabinets that contained files on
various properties…and in my view they probably contained very valuable information. That kind
of information is of extraordinary interest and value. I think the real value of those files is that
they provided information that's not available from any other source, including any modern
technique that you can imagine, because it involves investigations of former workings that are
now inaccessible and can never be re-sampled. That's where the real value lies.
Regarding his experience in the late 1980s with viewing these files, geologist Dan McCullar stated in
the same series of interviews the following:
" Some of these files would be typed paper, some bound volumes. I remember seeing handwritten
notes, some in pencil, some in pen, maps, lots of exclamation points, underlines, and identifying
marks that would indicate that certain files were of extreme importance, that their prospective
nature was of high value.
"I remember specifically files from Central America and Honduras, the fact that Honduras was
heavily forested and his father has spent an enormous amount of time travelling the rivers and
hiking up the river valleys, mapping the outcrops, describing the mineralised areas that would not
be easily seen by air photos.
“...They were all very carefully categorized by geographic regions. Some files had the most
amazing things written [by Lawrence Requa], notes attached, some paper clipped attached, some
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type written pages, descriptions of individual areas, some hand drawn maps, some published
maps with handwritten notes on the maps that identified geologic features on the maps”.
Part II: Historical Details of Record Regarding the Evolution of the Requa/Herbert
Hoover Files
In addition to Herbert Hoover those involved in compiling the data with Lawrence
Requa and with very great expenditures of funds over considerable time were those in
association with Lewisohn Bros. of New York City. Founders of said firm included those
of note at: link http://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entry.php?rec=47 with this excerpt of public
record about that said firm´s very notable and historically illustrious founders of great
wealth:
Adolph Lewisohn (born May 27, 1849 in Hamburg; died August 17, 1938 in Upper
Saranac Lake, NY) was a Hamburg-born German-American businessman who,
together with his brother Leonard (1847-1902), once led one of the most important
and profitable copper companies in the United States. In the 1880s, their company,
Lewisohn Bros., broke new ground in the electrolytic processing of copper and
helped a whole industrial process take root in the American copper industry.
Through their involvement in the Butte & Boston Consolidated Mining Company
(B&B), the Lewisohns increased their stake in the industry and managed to
accumulate a significant fortune in the brief period between 1887 and 1900. After
Leonard’s death in 1902, Adolph Lewisohn managed the business on his own. In the
following years, however, he began to devote more of his time and efforts to
philanthropy, and he put his considerable riches in the service of an enormous
range of social, cultural, and educational initiatives. His charitable giving focused
primarily on institutions in New York City, where he lived for seventy years. Given
the extent of his philanthropic contributions to the city, some considered Lewisohn
“New York’s most useful citizen.”
L.K. Requa mining associate Adolf Lewison (and his successors at Lewisohn Bros.)
may thus also favourably be compared to the Requas’ long-term Hoover associate Jeremiah
Milbank who was likewise a mining financier of vast resources in the Pres. Herbert
Hoover / Mark L. Requa sphere with the Lewisohns (and in the later Herbert Hoover /
Lawrence Requa sphere). As previously written of Jeremiah Milbank has been the
following:
“Of Jeremiah Milbank it will be perhaps news to most that the great
cinematographer Cecil B. DeMille wrote this of him: “There is a persistent myth that
capitalists think of nothing but capital . . . I have known a certain number of very rich
men who were scamps and a larger number who were just dullards; but two of the
finest men I have ever known, with the largest minds and highest ideals, were also men
of great financial power. One of them is Jeremiah Milbank”. For DeMille, Jeremiah
Milbank single-handedly financed one of the biggest Hollywood block-buster budgets of
all time in DeMille´s production in 1927 of King of Kings, the first major Hollywood
production with a cast of thousands based on the life of Jesus Christ. Such ability by
Milbank to expend vast capital was then, with Herbert Hoover and with famed
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geologist L.K. Requa, turned to Central America and mining.”
These financiers had essentially limitless funds to expend — which translated into
vast expenditures and compilations of unprecedented quantities of mining and
exploration data all under Lawrence Requa`s organization
The same mining finance capabilities applied to Uranium Boom King Charles Steen
for whom Lawrence Requa quickly supplied one of his most trusted surveyors to survey
his discovery and claims immediately upon its discovery Steen`s bonanza uranium
discovery claims — the largest and richest discovery ever and at the height of uranium
prices in the 1950s. Said provision of a surveyor by Requa to Steen (Clare Hagen) was
made to avert any claim jumpers — who did arrive as expected, but to no avail due to the
expert surveying quickly arranged by Lawrence Requa. Charles Steen then spent large
capital, from his Bonanza strike, in Honduras under the geological guidance of Lawrence
Requa.
Exploration and mining data was thus compiled at the cost of hundreds of millions
of dollars of expense — over 70 years of the historical and famous Requa Family mining
operations.
The picture below was taken of Lawrence Requa on a raft on the Tipuani River in a
major set of investigations and expeditions by Lawrence Requa in collaboration with the
aforesaid Lewisohn Bros, financiers of New York into that Bolivian district. Thus, on the
Tipuani River below is pictured Lawrence Requa undertaking the extended evaluations,
from historical records and new data to be made, of the very large gold mining potential
for that district with 33 million ounces of historical gold production.
Indicative of the value of the Tipuani files gathered by Requa is this 2008
commentary:
A 2008 Abstract Report states:
http://econgeol.geoscienceworld.org/content/56/7/1258.short
Abstract:
In addition to the gold-bearing placers associated with deposits of the present
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drainage system, gold has been mined in the Tipuani region from a belt of Tertiary
conglomerate ("cangalli") filling the deep channel of a former stream whose original steep
gradient was further steepened by faulting and tilting during an episode of Andean uplift.
The conglomerate consists of cobbles and boulders of slate, granite, and quartzite which
together with finer-grained material are cemented by iron oxide; pay streaks have been
found both close to bedrock (folded Devonian shales) at the bottom of the main and
subsidiary channels, and at higher levels. High-temperature gold and tin lodes associated
with granitic batholiths in the headwater region of the Tipuani river are assumed to be
the source of metals in the cangalli.
This is what Lawrence Requa and Lewisohn Bros. spent millions of dollars to
evaluate regarding 33 million ounces already produced.
The ability by Jeremia Milbank to expend vast capital was, with Herbert Hoover
and Requa, turned to Central America and mining as seen in the following page items:
Jeremiah Milbank** Hoover´s son Allan, L. K. Requa, and Jeremiah Milbank
Later Years Together on horseback in Central America
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/us/19milbank.html?ex=1345176000&en=8bb0be126dfa0086&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Note above link.
** Fortune magazine calls the Milbank clan “one of the oldest, richest, most proper and least publicized in
the American business community”.
This work was greatly expanded by additional millions of dollars expended by U.S.
“Uranium Boom King” Charles Steen in both the evaluation of gold mining opportunities
and in the development of some of these to a present gold production status. One of these
provides a ready-made mine, with $14 million in present dollar values having been
expended by Steen, to bring this mine to gold production status, with 9000 feet of
underground workings in established gold deposits.
Geologist L.K. Requa was the third in a family line of famous U.S. mining
professionals and entrepreneurs. More remarkably, the magnitude of the expenditures
made by these mining professionals and financiers to produce their evaluations is to be
ascertained: into the hundred million dollar range and likely more.
This was an unprecedented sum for a geologist to commence regional evaluations of
Central America´s mining opportunities, and then to carry on the follow-up developments
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that transpired from 1940 for over 30 years in Central America until 1970. Ascertaining
the ability of L.K. Requa to be availed of such unprecedented funds for such a venture at
that time and for such a length of time has resulted in the recognition that this derived
from the prior major U.S. historical events revolving around his father Mark L. Requa —
who had in fact organized the uppermost leadership of the largest U.S. oil industry
corporations into backing and then making Herbert Hoover the President of the United
States. The position and ability of Mark Requa to do this derived from his appointment
by President Woodrow Wilson in 1918 as the U.S. federal Oil Director to direct and
allocate the entire oil production of the U.S. during World War I. This is noted in one
source below:
“To ensure adequate supplies, effective distribution, and appropriate allocation [of oil
during WW I], President Wilson appointed Mark L. Requa as the first Fuel administrator
(Secretary of Energy). His job was to create a working relationship between the
government and oil industry to accomplish the above goals. The close working
relationship that evolved was in marked contrast to the feud between the government
and Standard Oil years earlier”.
See link: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/egee120/node/233
The appointment of Requa, his evolving rapport with all the leading oil men, and the very
great power he wielded throughout the oil industry leadership, is clarified in these
successive links to New York Times front page articles from January through March of
1918:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F20916F8385B11738DDDA80994D9405B888DF1D3
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F70C10F93E5C1B728DDDAF0894DB405B888DF1D3
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40E17F73A5B11738DDDA80A94DB405B888DF1D3
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F30611F73A5B11738DDDAB0A94DB405B888DF1D3
The extent of Herbert Hoover´s and Mark Requa`s joint access to the White House and to
some most remarkably powerful financiers even in 1917 has been determined from
records of Herbert Hoover´s appointment books that note his and Requa´s meetings with
President Woodrow Wilson and other powerful financiers from June through October of
1917:
These have shown the 1917 gatherings in Washington D.C. of Hoover, Requa,
Whitmarsh, Baruch, Warburg, President Woodrow Wilson:
Mark L Requa is listed with Hoover on June 6th, 7th, 8th, & 27th, 1917, and July 2, 1917 along with
Woodrow Wilson; on July 18, 1917 along with Theodore Whitmarsh who would become a director of the
Federal Reserve in 1931; and July 19th, 23rd, 28th, & 31st; Aug. 6th, 9th, 13, 14, 15th with Whitmarsh
again, and 18th, 21st, 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 1917; Sept. 5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14 along with Bernard Baruch,
Sept 17,18,20,21,22, 24th along with James F. Byrnes, Sept. 25 along with Bernard Baruch. Oct. 1,2,3,4th
along with Bernard Baruch, Whitmarsh & War Industries Board, Oct 5,6,7th along with Woodrow
Wilson, Oct. 10,11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19th along with Paul M Warburg, etc. During the time just
following Mark L. Requa would be appointed to control the entire oil production and allocation of the
U.S. during WWI.
A few months later President Wilson appointed Mark L. Requa as Oil Director. After the
war Requa engaged in food relief programs with Hoover for Belgium and elsewhere.
During Hoover´s tenure as Commerce Secretary, Requa was then able to marshal the
support of the oil industry leadership to accomplish the nomination and election of
Hoover as President. In addition to Mark Requa, one of Hoover´s closest friends and
political allies was Jeremiah Milbank. Thus it was that Hoover, Milbank, and others with
essentially limitless means, then financed L.K. Requa to an unprecedented extent after
his father Mark´s death to undertake the mining development of Central America.
Thus, with these unprecedented funds held by Milbank, Hoover, Lewison Bros, and many
others, and then later with those of uranium magnate Charles Steen, a vast amount of
geological and mining work throughout Central America was done in the 1940´s through
the 1960´s covering over 100 sites. Mines were mined, gold reserves were established and
brought near to production, and opportunities almost certain to yield gold reserves and
gold mines were defined throughout the region.
Source -
http://www.greatgoldgrab.com/Federal%20Reserve%20Instigated%20Requa-Hoover%20Files.pdf
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Much more to come as always..
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