More On The CIA Gold Bar Caper
A judge ordered the detention of an ex-CIA official found with gold bars worth about $40 million in his home last month.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick said in a detention hearing Friday that David Rush must remain in custody pending trial, determining that he poses a severe flight risk. Fitzpatrick said Rush has the means and motive to flee law enforcement and evade detection.
In May, as FBI investigators were looking into whether Rush had lied about his educational and military background, they searched his home and discovered 303 gold bars, $2 million in cash and more than 30 luxury watches. The government's lawyers alleged he was diversifying funds into commodities that could be traded. They claimed there is "strong evidence" Rush was trying to hide the funds.
I covered this story here a week ago. Remarkably, the most complete set of updates is in the normally somnolent Salem Media outlet RedState.
He allegedly constructed a fake "special access program" to drain millions of dollars in federal funds. For those unfamiliar, special access programs are so compartmentalized that even officials with top-secret clearance cannot enter one without specific authorization. Which, it turns out, makes them a pretty convenient cover for fraud.
. . . Rush allegedly brought two colleagues into the fictitious program. Not to share the wealth, but to keep them quiet. He then persuaded one of them to funnel millions of dollars into the scheme through the fraudulent contract. Those colleagues may have been unwitting, according to people familiar with the investigation. So not only was he robbing taxpayers blind, he was using his own coworkers as instruments to do it.
. . . The fallout is spreading. Several CIA officials have been placed on leave. A senior employee at a defense contractor was also fired. Trump administration officials have briefed both congressional intelligence committees, which, given the scale of what's alleged here, seems like the bare minimum.
Former CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos described the agency's vetting process as extraordinarily thorough, including blood tests, polygraphs, psychological exams, and line-by-line verification of credentials. "It's shocking that he got by a process that scrutinizes everything," he said. "It's a full-on colonoscopy."
However, in my own post, I embedded an account from CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who characterized his own hiring and vetting process as at best mystifying, and he gave an impression that the interview panels he encountered had been told he was on some sort of fast track, since he'd been recruited by an agency talent spotter at Georgetown. It strikes me as entirely possible that the same sort of thing could have happened with David Rush. Via ABC News,
According to [prosecutor Gavin] Tisdale, Rush had falsely claimed he was a doctor to some, lied to his neighbors about being a pilot, and had recently been putting funds away into commodities that were easily tradable, such as the Rolex watches seized from his home. Many of the assets he is believed to have access to still remain unaccounted for, Tisdale added.
Rush also had recent instances of undisclosed travel that further bolstered the government's argument he could not be trusted to return for further legal proceedings in his case, Tisdale added, though he did not provide further details.
"Mr. Rush is in a world of trouble," Tisdale said, adding the government's investigation shows he engaged in a regular "manipulation of classification" and "skirting of the rules" even as he only currently faces a single charge for timecard fraud.
The public hearing followed immediately after a sealed conference where the government had provided further information to magistrate judge William Fitzpatrick that it said it could not publicly disclose.
The RedState story concludes,
Rush has not entered a plea, and portions of the case remain sealed. Prosecutors say the evidence uncovered so far represents only a fraction of what investigators have gathered, and additional proceedings are expected as the probe continues. Whatever comes next, one thing is already clear: the American taxpayer was allegedly being taken for a very expensive ride, and someone inside one of the world's most secretive agencies thought they'd never get caught. They were wrong.
The problem is that the range of allegations revealed in the various stories outweighs the only actual charge against Rush yet filed, which is just falsely claiming $77,000 worth of military leave. This is clearly meant only as a way to keep him in jail pending further investigation, and his defense attorneys claim they're in the dark over what other discoveries may be unveiled down the road. That suggeasts to me that even the gold bars, foreign currency, and Rolex watches are just the tip of an iceberg -- after all, the administration wouldn't be briefing the congressional intelligence committees about a simple embezzlement case. Via the Washington Post:
Rush’s duties at the CIA included involvement in one of the government’s most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs, a project so secret that only a handful of U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers knew of its existence, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Details of that program — separate from the fake project Rush allegedly created — remain highly classified. The Washington Post is withholding details about the program after U.S. officials warned that disclosure could jeopardize ongoing intelligence-gathering operations.
. . . The bulk of Friday’s detention hearing in federal district court was sealed to the public. For about 40 minutes, attorneys privately debated facts of the case that required top-secret security clearance, according to court documents.
. . . [Prosecutor] Tisdale said the case has been rapidly evolving since the original criminal complaint two weeks ago, which included just a “fraction” of the evidence investigators have now gathered.
But we know nothing specific about what remains undisclosed. It's claimed that no foreign intelligence services are involved, but the amount of money and other valuables Rush had in his house raises questions not far from those arising from the Robert Hansson and Aldrich Ames cases. All we can surmise is that there's a lot more to be revealed -- or perhaps never revealed. I wouldn't be at all surprised at an eventual guilty plea to not much, along with a sweetheart deal to keep everything quiet.