[rdtsc]

> 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 a signed receipt from him? Duh..."

[stult]

Weirdly the CIA actually does require case officers to get signed receipts from their assets for payments. Whether they verify the signatures is another question...

[rdtsc]

Ha! That's interesting. I think it would be funny to read some of those. "I, Mr. Ivanov, the Russian spy, got: 2 bars of gold, 5 buckets of caviar, 10 cases of vodka and 3 kilos of cocaine". Then they call the CIA headquarters complaining the cocaine is stale and they would rather have another 5 buckets of caviar instead.

[jojobas]

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.