How porous is the CIA's interview process that they couldn't validate the guy's military discharge status?
The CIA as an illegal and fascist organization tends to hire the illegals and fascists. Drug killers, torturers, and psychopaths.
FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
171–180 of 419 posts
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
A small plot of forested rural land without utility service doesn't cost much at all. Go car camping at your new private getaway for a few days. This isn't rocket science. Also if you drive out to a remote part of the US who is going to see you? There are some very empty places in this country. Not quite on the level of Canada or Russia but still.
flock or any number of cameras that contribute to flock would see you.
They would see you driving out into the sticks to go camping for a few days. That's entirely normal isn't it? We haven't (yet) made it to the level of flock cameras on gravel logging roads.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Or are you imagining he'd go bury the gold in a hole in the woods somewhere? Why not?
Why not carry 600 lbs of gold bars out into the forest and bury them, then hope nobody thought it was suspicious to see someone carrying a shovel into the forest on any one of the trips necessary to do it?
Do you ever debate with intellectual honesty?
Nobody aside from you said “carry”.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#174How porous is the CIA's interview process that they couldn't validate the guy's military discharge status?
The CIA as an illegal and fascist organization tends to hire the illegals and fascists. Drug killers, torturers, and psychopaths.
There's even a Tom Cruise movie about it called American Made.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
The type of people Intelligence agencies need and use to accomplish their goals are also the type of people who tend to do these things.
True, but hiring someone then, later, accusing them of lying in the admission forms that should have been verified before hiring them is bizarre. I’m sure the CIA could come up with a better excuse.
> is bizarre
Only under the incentive structures you’re used to considering.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“. But where else would you keep it? A safe-deposit box at a bank? I think, if I received illegitimate gold bars and figured the FBI might look into that, I would choose to keep them somewhere where a judge would think twice before issuing a search warrant for. Judges don't generally just issue search warran…
> Or are you imagining he'd go bury the gold in a hole in the woods somewhere? Why not?
Because, for someone with any kind of security clearance, suddenly going out to the woods, if you don't normally go out to the woods, would be a major outlier from your highly-scrutinized and documented regular life; and so could easily lead the FBI to finding your buried gold, without having to get any kind of warrant.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#177Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#178This could easily be an episode from Snowfall (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6439752/), the rather excellent TV show about the early days of the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles during the beginning of the 1980s. The CIA feature prominently and regularly acquire large amounts of cash & narcotics in order to run their operations.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's very blatant and below that range. They got many orders for the exact same model that's around $50k.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but hiring someone then, later, accusing them of lying in the admission forms that should have been verified before hiring them is bizarre. I’m sure the CIA could come up with a better excuse.
> is bizarre Only under the incentive structures you’re used to considering.
It makes parts of the CIA look incompetent to the public. This is rare.
It’s reasonable to assume they knew it from the start he was getting money illicitly from the Navy and they might have enabled it. This was part of the leverage they had on him, to be used if he ever became a liability.