241–250 of 419 posts
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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.
There are some on hiking trails :)
he will serve a short jail term but at least he will live.
remember folks - C.I.A is the only gvt org that self funds itself & can run entirely without gvt money.
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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/...
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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.
He is accused of fabricating his educational credentials.
Either this guy is fantastic at lying or the orgs where he worked are falling flat on due diligence.
this being the C.I.A - this guy is being railroaded or is being made a fall guy. he will serve a short jail term but at least he will live. remember folks - C.I.A is the only gvt org that self funds itself & can run entirely without gvt money.
Citation needed.
The CIA receives lots of opaque funding from the US government (at least opaque to citizens trying to FOIA), but just because it’s not easily accounted for doesn’t mean the org funds itself.
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…
Whenever you say "nobody would be that stupid" you have to pause and take a deep breath and realise that however dumb something is, there are for sure people who are stupid enough to do it.
Example 1 from personal experience: I was at my aunt's house and she had to rush a friend's husband to get medical help because he had drilled a hole in his own stomach with a hand drill while trying to put up a bookshelf.
The friend had been reading a book on medieval medicine so (rather than rushing her husband immediately to hospital) decided to try a medieval remedy on him so fed him some soup to see whether (in line with the medieval diagnostic routine) she could smell it after he had eaten it. She could indeed, because it dribbled out of the hole he had drilled in his stomach.
Now. You might reasonably say: "Noone would be so dumb as to drill a hole in their own stomach" or indeed "noone would be so dumb as to see a loved one who had drilled a hole in themselves and decide to feed them soup" but I can tell you from direct personal experience there are people dumb enough to do this.
Example 2 from personal experience[1]: A friend of my dad who was a highly capable chemical engineer and generally very practical guy (eg he made a motorcycle for his kids to play on using salvaged parts including a lawnmower engine and a frame he welded together himself) was a hobby parachutist. He broke his spine because he decided to modify his parachute himself on his wife's sewing machine in spite of having no previous sewing experience.
However dumb something is, there are people dumb enough to do it and even otherwise smart people have blind spots that make them incredibly dumb under the right circumstances.
[1] Just in case you think smart people can't do incredibly dumb things.
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What a disingenuous way of thinking. Not falling for this is the basis of much religious text by the way. Splitting baby in the middle, etc. 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.
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.
I think using the 60s as a comparison unfairly implies the CIA rehabilitated sooner than should be implied.
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> 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 paymen…
It’s funny to see how "normal" people talk about 40 million in gold and like a few million in foreign currency. That’s really nothing in the theatres the CIA operates in. They simply gave it to him and followed up only after the agency’s bureaucrats couldn’t find it during auditing half a year to a year later. To bribe a nation-state, you’re in the billions. https://www.jfeed.com/middleeast/qatar-iran-bribe-deal To g…
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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.
I reject the the idea that these types of people are needed. It's probably that most of the people in the CIA happen to be like that because they're power-hungry and they're just selecting their kin and justifying their choices as "right kind" because they narcissistically believe themselves to be the right type... They're probably the wrong type. Especially if they all share narcissistic or psychopathic traits; it's…
If the people in the CIA who do hiring want the talent who are excellent at lying and compartmentalizing their ethics, then that’s what the organization becomes over a generation.
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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.
But I think the point is that if I want to transport money from one country to another, I can buy a watch for 30k, take it to the other country, and sell it to a collector relatively easy for probably the same amount of money.
Same if I wanna give a bribe to somebody, I can give them a watch for worth 30K and they can easily sell it for cash to a collector for 30K.
So that person would not be a collector. They would just use it to transfer the value.