From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.”
Obvious plant nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“.
——
Also the CIA was unable to confirm his discharge with the navy earlier? As if people aren’t properly vetted every time they switch jobs within the agency. (Especially considering his CIA career was on an upward trajectory)
I have no clue what Mr. Rush actually did but it was neither of these two things which earned him ire.
Maybe he’s a traitor and the gold + foreign money are bribes. If the CIA doesn’t want to explain what he‘s been bribed for the charges make a more sense.
the CIA is literally tasked with breaking (other countries') laws. tradecraft is a very similar skillset to being an effective criminal.
think about it: shell companies, lockpicks, bribes, theft, blackmail, hacking, forgery. two kinds of people do those things: spooks, and the mob. the difference is why you're doing it and to whom.
also, if anything the CIA is far tamer today than it was in the '60s.
All spies are bastards. That's sort of their job. In the CIA it might speak more ill of the guy who was arrested that he was arrested than that he (allegedly) inflated his credentials and might have bilked the military for leave pay.
Yeah, that's why in a functioning State you have means to control the damage. But now we seem to have accepted it is a free for all and just throw ours helpless hands in the air and hope we are next to enjoy the criminal bonanza at some point.
the CIA told him to make that part of his identity and then burned him with it
isn’t it obvious?
not being charged for the forty million dollars in gold and foreign currency missing, no explanation on why they are even looking for something that was rightly paid out as expenses, no explanation on what kind of expenses those could be to begin with to incur this much, no explanation on why the government wasn't using US dollars to pay a government employee expenses. Its a complete red herring because some client state is paying off a debt, CIA just needs this guy burned
> no explanation on what kind of expenses those could be
I think it's pretty obvious the gold was to pay a bribe. The only thing I'm surprised about is the value. That's A LOT of money for a single pay-off or bribe. It seems more than what would conceivably be paid to an individual at once because spy agencies tend to prefer to pay-as-you-go with individuals. Each round of documents, actions or whatever gets a payment.
So I suspect this was intended to either buy a one-time, career-ending action from someone very senior or, more likely, the ongoing cooperation of a company, gang or small nation-state. It's hard to guess but looking over major events in that time frame, Venezuela might be a good bet. The odd part is that the gold was in his house. Aside from the dumb trade craft of keeping it in the very first place anyone would look, why is the gold even in CONUS?
And why gold? Bulk gold is one of the worse ways to transfer that much money. It's big, heavy, and easy to trace until melted down (which is hardly trivial for most people). But the thing I'm stuck on is the places you can walk into and get cash for even one kilo of gold, much less over 300 of them, is extremely limited - and half of them will be under some form of "Know Your Customer" reporting, especially in North America, and the other half might prefer to "Kill Your Customer" and keep the gold. Diamonds, bearer bonds, offshore numbered account, even good old Benjamins seem far better. I think the amount and medium both narrow down the sort of person or entity the intended recipient must be.
One imagines the sort of folks who'd actually prefer to receive payment in that much gold bar all reside overseas where they might control a national bank or have their own precious metals smelting operation. That's why I'm struggling to picture the fake scenario this senior executive used to plausibly convince anyone at the CIA he personally needed to take possession of more gold than several people can comfortably carry and do so in the vicinity of rural Langley, VA. I mean, he can't carry it on any commercial flight and It's not like he's going to schlepp it himself in his family sedan to put it on a secret CIA cargo flight. The CIA has people for that. Also, someone that senior isn't generally doing any direct case officer work. They manage case officers who manage field assets.
So many interesting questions we'll never get answers to.
You could encase them in plastic to prevent damage and mask them for some run off the mill equipment. Nobody would suspect anything without prior knowledge.
Watches are the commodity of choice for corruption in some circles. I know people in jewelry and a significant portion of their transactions are watches to Chinese businessmen, formerly through Hong Kong, now through Singapore. They're high value items with razor thin margins.
I collect watches worth >$100k and I promise you that most collectors in this range are just watch nerds that have more money than they know what to do with.
Singapore is a big watch market because it has a very tight knit and wealthy collector community.
Margins on most watches in this range are around 10% on the low end. I wouldn't call that razor thin.
What's the appeal of collecting high priced watches? Is it kind of like art collections, where its a decent store of value while maintaining a collection of something you are personally interested in? Or is it more for "love of the game"?
Not saying its not a cool thing to collect, well made watches are a very cool piece of engineering, I'm just curious if there's any "special" appeal outside of "i like this thing and have the money to enjoy it" :)
> From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.”
- "I need these bars to pay off this Russian spy who will tell us Putin's nuclear codes password"
Comes back a week later
- "His password is 12345"
- "How do we know the story is not fake?"
- "What am I going to get a signed receipt from him? Duh..."
It is an eternal problem with human intelligence. GRU and FSB spend serious resources on provoking their own agents, aimed at a range of problems including this one.
Ehh, more like Rush would've been found dead like Abbott after declaring "I'm a patriot" to internal CIA. What's tantalizing about Bourne is something about who we are and capable of, regardless of conditioning... both good and bad.
Sounds like he was most likely involved in some serious shit that was off the books and somehow it came to light. His boss is probably aware of what it was but no one will admit shit. It went awry and he is left holding the bag.
Gold and money for an operation that could have been to anything from funding armed rebellion to god only knows.
$40m+ in an expense account based in gold bars is absolutely crazy. CIA agents must have access to untold resources if this is seen as a somewhat regular 4 month spend. Seems it is, given that they seemingly weren't concerned about the $40+ million being taken out, but where it was being held.
Archive.ph/archive.today failing me to bypass paywall, is everyone commenting on the title? Or you all have NYT subscriptions? Or you know of some other bypass?
The CIA legitimately engages in bribery and hard asset payments. Note that the CIA approved his request and gave him these assets (or at least many of them - the paragraph below doesn't specify the amount).
> From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.”
Possibly the question here is, why did Rush take them home. It's always possible Rush was just sloppy and undisciplined, which would also reflect a cultural problem. Many people have been found with secret documents in their homes.
A couple of weeks ago there was a story that the CIA raided the office of the director of the NSA and seized information regarding the CIA. Trump was in China at the time. About a week later the NSA director resigns. I waited for it to turn into a major story and get some kind of explanation, but silence.
It seems like an extraordinary story and I don't understand why there isn't a hullabaloo. Did I hallucinate it? Who runs this country?
Anna Paulina Luna is the only one claiming that the CIA raided the office of the DNI. No other trustworthy sources are reporting this and there's been no independent verification. Anna Paulina Luna is a lunatic who says outlandish things with no regards to truth.
The FBI raided the home of John Bolton who was a former National Security Advisor for the first Trump administration. (not directly part of the NSA and definitely not the director of the NSA). Bolton has become a vocal critic of Trump since he was fired in Sept 2019.
Trump's DOJ has a track record of prosecuting Trump's vocal critics. eg. Former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James
Its nickname since the 1970s has been Criminals in Action, when they were smuggling heroin out of the Golden Triangle to fund covert actions during the Vietnam War.
Is it fragmenting? The FBI has always been in charge of investigating other agencies. The article even notes that this particular investigation was initiated when the CIA director made a referral to the FBI.
I'm guessing they decided they don't like the guy anymore? The CIA is very corrupt as an institution and things like this run rampant. Billions of dollars go unaccounted for a year at the CIA.
This is different than that and scant on pertinent details
It says he received it as compensation for expenses, not that it was ever in some government vault. This is additional gold and foreign currency that an agency had, not the reserve.
It then says
> When the C.I.A. conducted a review of where the gold and currency were stashed
Why would they do that if it was compensation for expenses
He wasn't charged for that, and the phrasing doesn't suggest it was supposed to be remitted to the government
if the CIA didn't have a history of being involved in shady shit like this that already explains everything, this would be weird
instead it looks like he's got burned over his necessary use of fibbed identity
Maybe this is part of the shadow money. CIA has been working with business people since the beginning of Cold War and I wouldn't be surprised that they have deep roots in the financial world -- after all both Intelligence and Finance need globalization.
I don't think it's connected to this specific event, but there's a lot of lore about the CIA moving gold in/out of Afghanistan, Iraq and others during war time.
I used to read a lot about Michele Sindona who was supposed to be connected to the Mafia and the intelligence community. His currency trading firm was one of the first to trade the Eurodollar contracts back in the 60s, IIRC.
I think intelligence and finance really go hand in hand. It makes so much sense -- you see, the intelligence community really hates the congress or whatever to snoop around its operations before approving the budget -- wouldn't it a lot easier to just earn your own $$? And with all the information the intelligence agencies control, it is almost trivial to make quick money in finance. Last but not the least, wouldn't banker be the perfect cover for spies? They wear nice suites, too.
There's a book that ties into this sort of thing - Gold Warriors [1]. It about how, post WWII, the US recovered a bunch of Gold looted from China and used it to set up an anti-communist slush fund.
They want globalization to make their jobs easier. In no sense do they "need" it. Whether we want a world where the desires of intelligence and finance are blindly prioritized is an open question. For my part the answer is obviously no.
I think most ordinary people would say No, but most of us do not have a say in any important things. They put up the facade of voting while all the important stuffs are decided within the circles.
I think it really makes sense to consider ourselves to be just intelligent cattle -- they still tolerate us because they need us to turn natural resources into machinery, weapon, insights and other stuffs they need, but once AI and robots keep up, they can probably get rid of 90% of us.
That's their post hoc, uncorroborated claim. It's easy to imagine many other possibilities; it could just be face saving. It could be Rush is taking the fall. etc.
None of those points match bitcoin. What you are describing is more like tornado cash or similar stuff which are really really banned when interfacing with banks or similar institutions.
Obvious plant nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“.
——
Also the CIA was unable to confirm his discharge with the navy earlier? As if people aren’t properly vetted every time they switch jobs within the agency. (Especially considering his CIA career was on an upward trajectory)
I have no clue what Mr. Rush actually did but it was neither of these two things which earned him ire.
Maybe he’s a traitor and the gold + foreign money are bribes. If the CIA doesn’t want to explain what he‘s been bribed for the charges make a more sense.
but yeah, I imagine that a job which requires keeping secrets and breaking laws tends to attract people who keep secrets and break laws.
But on the other hand, being a useful fool that blindly does anything for profit, Do seem in line with the people working in tech for the last decade.
Yes, the CIA is a corrupt today as "tech". And no that is not ok nor required, or it ever was like that.
My point was about the populous eating up the inevitability of those entities being above the law by default.
* but is is sad we destroyed the most important part we can't even catch lowly thieves like this
think about it: shell companies, lockpicks, bribes, theft, blackmail, hacking, forgery. two kinds of people do those things: spooks, and the mob. the difference is why you're doing it and to whom.
also, if anything the CIA is far tamer today than it was in the '60s.
isn’t it obvious?
not being charged for the forty million dollars in gold and foreign currency missing, no explanation on why they are even looking for something that was rightly paid out as expenses, no explanation on what kind of expenses those could be to begin with to incur this much, no explanation on why the government wasn't using US dollars to pay a government employee expenses. Its a complete red herring because some client state is paying off a debt, CIA just needs this guy burned
I think it's pretty obvious the gold was to pay a bribe. The only thing I'm surprised about is the value. That's A LOT of money for a single pay-off or bribe. It seems more than what would conceivably be paid to an individual at once because spy agencies tend to prefer to pay-as-you-go with individuals. Each round of documents, actions or whatever gets a payment.
So I suspect this was intended to either buy a one-time, career-ending action from someone very senior or, more likely, the ongoing cooperation of a company, gang or small nation-state. It's hard to guess but looking over major events in that time frame, Venezuela might be a good bet. The odd part is that the gold was in his house. Aside from the dumb trade craft of keeping it in the very first place anyone would look, why is the gold even in CONUS?
And why gold? Bulk gold is one of the worse ways to transfer that much money. It's big, heavy, and easy to trace until melted down (which is hardly trivial for most people). But the thing I'm stuck on is the places you can walk into and get cash for even one kilo of gold, much less over 300 of them, is extremely limited - and half of them will be under some form of "Know Your Customer" reporting, especially in North America, and the other half might prefer to "Kill Your Customer" and keep the gold. Diamonds, bearer bonds, offshore numbered account, even good old Benjamins seem far better. I think the amount and medium both narrow down the sort of person or entity the intended recipient must be.
One imagines the sort of folks who'd actually prefer to receive payment in that much gold bar all reside overseas where they might control a national bank or have their own precious metals smelting operation. That's why I'm struggling to picture the fake scenario this senior executive used to plausibly convince anyone at the CIA he personally needed to take possession of more gold than several people can comfortably carry and do so in the vicinity of rural Langley, VA. I mean, he can't carry it on any commercial flight and It's not like he's going to schlepp it himself in his family sedan to put it on a secret CIA cargo flight. The CIA has people for that. Also, someone that senior isn't generally doing any direct case officer work. They manage case officers who manage field assets.
So many interesting questions we'll never get answers to.
I guess the gold bars aren't uniformly sized, which would agree with your ~280kg number.
Singapore is a big watch market because it has a very tight knit and wealthy collector community.
Margins on most watches in this range are around 10% on the low end. I wouldn't call that razor thin.
Not saying its not a cool thing to collect, well made watches are a very cool piece of engineering, I'm just curious if there's any "special" appeal outside of "i like this thing and have the money to enjoy it" :)
- "I need these bars to pay off this Russian spy who will tell us Putin's nuclear codes password"
Comes back a week later
- "His password is 12345"
- "How do we know the story is not fake?"
- "What am I going to get a signed receipt from him? Duh..."
Gold and money for an operation that could have been to anything from funding armed rebellion to god only knows.
> [he] asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302822
I'm totally not surprised, except that Trump's admin is actually catching and prosecuting these people.
I assume that means this is just the tip of the iceberg, and the grift is so predominant that they can't help but catch some people.
> From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.”
Possibly the question here is, why did Rush take them home. It's always possible Rush was just sloppy and undisciplined, which would also reflect a cultural problem. Many people have been found with secret documents in their homes.
Make up some sources, pretend to pay them, cash the payments.
He probably just got sloppy, and it got too obvious.
It seems like an extraordinary story and I don't understand why there isn't a hullabaloo. Did I hallucinate it? Who runs this country?
The FBI raided the home of John Bolton who was a former National Security Advisor for the first Trump administration. (not directly part of the NSA and definitely not the director of the NSA). Bolton has become a vocal critic of Trump since he was fired in Sept 2019.
Trump's DOJ has a track record of prosecuting Trump's vocal critics. eg. Former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_John_Bolton
There has been no legal action taken against current NSA director General Joshua M. Rudd or his recent predecessor, William J. Hartman
American Thought Control.
Crazy crackpot schizos aren’t the only ones listening to the voices in their heads.
Fair enough.
Hey, handing over millions of $$s to local warlords is a business expense...
EDIT: it's 240. but still, they were worth a lot less not that long ago...
It says he received it as compensation for expenses, not that it was ever in some government vault. This is additional gold and foreign currency that an agency had, not the reserve.
It then says
> When the C.I.A. conducted a review of where the gold and currency were stashed
Why would they do that if it was compensation for expenses
He wasn't charged for that, and the phrasing doesn't suggest it was supposed to be remitted to the government
if the CIA didn't have a history of being involved in shady shit like this that already explains everything, this would be weird
instead it looks like he's got burned over his necessary use of fibbed identity
Dad: Public or private sector?
I think intelligence and finance really go hand in hand. It makes so much sense -- you see, the intelligence community really hates the congress or whatever to snoop around its operations before approving the budget -- wouldn't it a lot easier to just earn your own $$? And with all the information the intelligence agencies control, it is almost trivial to make quick money in finance. Last but not the least, wouldn't banker be the perfect cover for spies? They wear nice suites, too.
Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc all have Global Security branches.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249237.Gold_Warriors
I think it really makes sense to consider ourselves to be just intelligent cattle -- they still tolerate us because they need us to turn natural resources into machinery, weapon, insights and other stuffs they need, but once AI and robots keep up, they can probably get rid of 90% of us.
And it can be made to disappear in a hurry, if you have to: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/10/03/140815154/d...
Literally none of these is true of Bitcoin.