Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or one house in Beverly Hills.
Not even a decent jet.
My daughter is spending more than this on her birthdays.
FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
231–240 of 419 posts
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
CIA recruits a lot of square pegs who didn't quite fit in to other parts of government
But it still vets them. This is very odd.
Vetting has been put on hold in cases where there are labor shortages. Don’t remember where, but I read an account of a military guy applying to ICE and they did no vetting at all, and had he accepted the jobs with a sizablebonus (he did it to see what their process was) he would have been deployed without training. At the time the source and person seemed credible.
This is what happens when a new administration fires the incumbent experts and hires by loyalty tests.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some on hiking trails :)
Flock brand?
Yup. Gen1 unit with the standard square Flock panel and black pole they always use.
https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1tofx8e/...
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#234Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smartphone will report it.
So does your car now, if it’s made after 2018.
For such wealth, basic opsec would be worth it 10000x over, cia folks should know it well. No phone, use old car, pack it with camping gear placed above the gold. Initially go prepare the place, heck even setup a movement-triggered camera there for few weeks. Go where there is lush greenery so you can actually dig 1-2m deep hole in the dirt without dynamite. Learn how to cover place so it looks natural. And learn how to come back to it and find it reliably, day, night, rain, snow doesnt matter. My son could come up with this.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#236Earlier 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.
Confirmed. CIA hires people with sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies and tries to hire them so they're mild rather than criminal in nature.
Ha, this was explored in some credible article here on HN some months ago, wasn't it? It made complete sense.
You can't be a nice balanced guy doing work which often dips in shady stuff, sometimes being responsible for killing innocents, or in extreme cases one's failed actions can send some region into death spiral of some small or larger conflict. No, you need (relatively) smart folks for whom emotions are just a tool to use on others to achieve your goals.
And this obviously has various side effects, some quite negative.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#237From 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…
Honestly I'm just trying to wrap my head around the fact that you can just ask for $40M in gold bars as a CIA agent and they don't have a better way of figuring out if you pocketed it than looking for it later (and apparently taking a while to think of checking his home?)
Who watches the watchers?
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it still vets them. This is very odd.
Vetting has been put on hold in cases where there are labor shortages. Don’t remember where, but I read an account of a military guy applying to ICE and they did no vetting at all, and had he accepted the jobs with a sizablebonus (he did it to see what their process was) he would have been deployed without training. At the time the source and person seemed credible. This is what happens when a new administration fire…
DHS is not the same as the CIA. The former is heavily politicized and the latter kinda just does its own thing and I'm pretty sure they haven't paused vetting (ICE agents don't require TS/SCI clearance like CIA officers)
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#239I read a book by a CIA officer. A big part the job is carrying around tons of cash for shady people. It’s understood that if you take the cash for yourself, you go to prison.
The ironic thing is the money usually goes missing. It gets given to some VIPs brother, who is supposed to give it to VIP, but doesn’t.
The important thing is it not go missing while you are watching it. It can go missing later - just not on your watch.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 an…
> What's the appeal of collecting high priced watches? You can carry them on your person through airports and other places reasonably unmolested in a way carrying a bunch of cash isn't so easy. > Is it kind of like art collections, where its a decent store of value Art doesn't store value: It trades whatever number the parties exchanging it want it to have, so those parties can manipulate their total annual revenues,…
> > What's the appeal of collecting high priced watches?
> You can carry them on your person through airports and other places reasonably unmolested in a way carrying a bunch of cash isn't so easy.
Now I have to ask, why do you need to carry a bunch of cash through airports, and why so often that you need a method of doing so?
I'm of course assuming you're doing this for legal reasons, I understand all the reasoning for less legal ones, but then that's hardly comparable to the original question, so I think this is a fair assumption.