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FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

nytimes.com

81–90 of 419 posts

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#82

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?

I get 24 hour access through my local library. Here, have a gift link https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/us/politics/fbi-arrest-ci...

Thank you!

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#84

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.

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.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249237.Gold_Warriors

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#85
post #41
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would make such a fantastic set of barbell plates.

Gold is pretty soft. You would have to cut it to 10 carat, so there’s be even more to go around!

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.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#86
post #62

> 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…

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.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#87

How porous is the CIA's interview process that they couldn't validate the guy's military discharge status?

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.

Exactly, honest people would fail at such missions. A few million lost here and there is the cost of doing business

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#89

Guy sounds like a dragon. What's the deal with the watches though?

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.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#90
post #44

How porous is the CIA's interview process that they couldn't validate the guy's military discharge status?

When it comes to stories involving intelligence agencies I generally assume that I’m not getting the whole or accurate story.

Yeah, the CIA is all about CYA.
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