POLITICO's James Hohmann reports from Atlantic, Iowa:

Ron Paul said Thursday that he’s eager to find out how much gold the United States really owns.

A supporter at a town hall meeting asked about Fort Knox: “Would you reveal as president whether there’s actually gold there?”

Here is Paul’s full response: “Yes, and if I couldn’t accomplish that then there’s big trouble in this country. I may need to get some help for you. I tried for years to do this…I never went to Fort Knox. I made a request when the gold commission came up in the early 1980s. We had a study of the role of gold in the monetary system. There were 17 members, and I couldn’t get one other person to endorse the principle that we ought to go to Fort Knox and find out if there’s gold.”

“Gold is in more places than Fort Knox. There’s some in New York City, as well as at West Point. And there’s already admission by our government: ‘Well, that gold in New York City, we haven’t been able to verify that for a long time.’ And we all know, and that’s why the audit of the Fed is important, because there’s a lot of shenanigans that go on. They’ll loan the gold, and they’ll use it as collateral on these international transactions. So there’s so much that we have to know about. But that should be on high priority. So I will continue to do that. I think I’ll have a little more clout as president, and I thank you for the question.”

Many in the crowd of about 150 at the community center applauded energetically.

Crusading for the gold standard helped boost the Texas congressman politically, but of late he’s been trying to broaden his message to appeal to more traditional Republican voters ahead of the Jan. 3 caucuses. So the answer took him a little off message and reminded voters of his unorthodox views on issues other than Iran.