Fort Knox Shooting: Why Was Army Employee Killed At Kentucky Base?

Following a shooting Wednesday at the Fort Knox military installation in Kentucky, one civilian Army employee is dead and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command is seeking more information about the suspected shooter and a motive.

Fort Knox officials did not believe the shooting was carried out at random. Police said the Fort Knox shooting was a "personal incident." A yet unidentified member of the human resources team at Fort Knox was sent to Ireland Army Community Hospital and later pronounced dead.

Police at Fort Knox said the suspected assailant was a 5-foot-9-inch black male with brown eyes and black hair, according to a statement. Area law enforcement later impounded a minivan at a residence in Radcliff, Ky., near Fort Knox, and officials later confirmed to local news affiliate WDRB that the towing was indeed related to the Fort Knox shooting. The FBI is also investigating the incident, with all parties involved still seeking a motive for the shooting.

The Fort Knox shooting is not the first domestic act of violence in the U.S. military. On Nov. 5, 2009, Major Nidal Malik Hasan was charged with 13 murder counts and 32 attempted murder counts after he allegedly shot up the Army base at Fort Hood, Texas. Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and many other Americans believe the contextual evidence in the case points to Hasan's shooting as being an act of terrorism, yet the U.S. government later came under fire from all sides after labeling it simply workplace violence.

In March, a marine killed himself after shooting two fellow officers at the United States Marine Corps Base Quantico in Prince William County, Va. The shooting at the base, about three miles south of Dumfries, Va., and about a half hour north of Fredericksburg, Va., was said to be "isolated" yet "not random".

Fort Knox itself has been represented as one of America's most secure facilities, although the military installation is technically separate from the well-known gold depository. Though President Richard Nixon demolished the gold standard, the measure that guaranteed all legal tender money backed by gold, Fort Knox, the depository, still has unknown millions of ounces of gold.

Possibly the most famous fictional representation of Fort Knox's financial and military prowess came in 1964 when Auric Goldfinger, played by Gert Fröbe, attempted to nuke the United States' gold reserves to render the United States effectively powerless until his plot was foiled by British agent James Bond in "Goldfinger," who sent him literally flying out of a plane over Baltimore, Md.