[Radle]

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’t properly vetted every time they switch jobs within the agency. (Especially considering his CIA career was on an upward trajectory)

I have no clue what Mr. Rush actually did but it was neither of these two things which earned him ire.

Maybe he’s a traitor and the gold + foreign money are bribes. If the CIA doesn’t want to explain what he‘s been bribed for the charges make a more sense.

[seanhunter]

> Obvious plant nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“.

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.

[ericyd]

The first story could literally be a sketch on a comedy show, thanks for the laugh

[dieselgate]

Reminds me of safety trainings where they show machine-shop accidents or people nailing themselves with an air-gun. It happens more than we think and is gruesome. Just a couple months ago saw a Dewalt framing nailer recall posted at home depot for accidental discharges without the trigger being held. Not the same as drilling into your stomach - and I see a black comedy element - but can't help but wince and cringe at the thought of it all and it's not genuinely funny to me.

[ericyd]

The drilling into oneself is not funny. The feeding an obviously seriously injured person soup to deduce the severity of their illness is funny as hell to me

[Tangurena2]

> 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.

Long ago, I graduated from a police academy. One of the things taught was that crooks, while clever at finding ways to make money, are rather unclever ("stupid" if you will) at performing that task. Which is why so many are caught.

The smart engineer who over-estimated his ability with sewing is a tragic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I'm reminded of the Dunning Kruger paper [0]:

> In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks and robbed them in broad daylight, with no visible attempt at disguise. He was arrested later that night, less than an hour after videotapes of him taken from surveillance cameras were broadcast on the 11 o'clock news. When police later showed him the surveillance tapes, Mr. Wheeler stared in incredulity. "But I wore the juice," he mumbled. Apparently, Mr. Wheeler was under the impression that rubbing one's face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to videotape cameras.

Links:

0 - that paper itself: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/sasi/wp-content/uploads/sites/27...

[bitmasher9]

I think we often underestimate the intelligence of the criminal population for two main reasons.

1. The dumbest ones are most likely to be caught and have their stories told.

2. Law Enforcement often gets frustrated at chasing the smarter ones and use illegal methods catching them and the real story doesn’t come out in court.

[jermaustin1]

> the real story doesn’t come out in court.

I'm not saying this hasn't happened, but any competent criminal defense attorney (like a SMART criminal would have) would go to town on illegally obtained evidence. I'm not saying cops don't do warrantless searches/taps/etc., to gather unofficial clues, but if they can't get real evidence that stands up under scrutiny, the criminal walks.

I'm not sure if prosecution would move forward on such shaky ground in hard to prove cases.

[Schmerika]

> any competent criminal defense attorney

I don't think 'going to town on illegally obtained evidence' works as often as you believe it does [0, 1].

And think back - how many people went to jail for national and/or international scale warrantless wiretapping? How did we, as a nation, respond to Snowden's revelations?

> I'm not sure if prosecution would move forward on such shaky ground in hard to prove cases.

There are people on death row in the US even after being proven innocent and ordered to go free. Dignity in Ink [2] present similar cases every day - they're never going to run out of material.

0 - A major DOJ/GAO-era federal study found that illegal search/seizure issues accounted for about 0.4% of declined federal prosecutions and roughly 0.7% of dismissed cases after prosecution began. - https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/84544NCJRS.pdf

1 - Another study across seven jurisdictions found motions to suppress succeeded in under 1% of warrant cases, and only 1.5% of defendants went free because of successful suppression motions. - https://nij.ojp.gov/library/publications/search-warrants-mot...

2 - https://www.instagram.com/dignityinink

[itintheory]

Parallel construction is when they use illegally obtained evidence to construct a separate set of ostensibly legitimate evidence. Like, an illegal wiretap might lead to someone being in the right place at the right time to witness a crime.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

It is CIA. For better or worse, different rules apply.

[hylaride]

It would not surprise me to learn you sign away certain rights to sign up - arguably the way it should be for such an organization.

[kshacker]

Only if such evidence was made public

[HlessClaudesman]

Are you telling me that Luigi Manglone was not foiled by a eagle eyed McDonalds employee?!?

[mrandish]

Near as I can tell Luigi nullified all his carefully planned evasion and escape routing by deciding at the last minute he really needed a coffee from the Starbucks across the street from where he was about to shoot his victim and didn't keep his hoody up. If he'd worn a long-billed baseball cap, dark glasses, kept his hoody up and skipped Starbucks he'd probably never have been caught.

His evasion and escape plan was actually pretty good and he put a lot of effort into being hard to trace by arriving and departing NYC via bus and staying in a hostel, which makes it surprising he screwed up the easiest and most obvious things.

[wat10000]

On the other hand, smart people with criminal intent are more likely to find legal ways to profit. Why steal a hundred bucks from somebody when you can figure out how to steal a few bucks from millions and your only punishment is paying a fraction of your profit in fines.

[Ntrails]

> Law Enforcement often gets frustrated at chasing the smarter ones

and gives up, moving on to easier prey - and ideally getting them to plead to the other crimes I can't solve as part of a nice plea deal. Great for the stats.

[Tangurena2]

The really smart ones leave people wondering if a crime really happened at all. It doesn't even need to be Oceans 11/12/n++, it can be simply "are you even sure the money is missing?"

[lab14]

I mean, you see smart people all over the world talking to imaginary, supernatural, all powerfull beings asking for favors via prayers, like that would have any effect on their lives.

[randusername]

> like that would have any effect on their lives

Prayer is more than begging favors from imaginary friends, even if that is the stereotype and there is some truth in it. Like meditation, journaling, and other contemplative practices, it is a mechanism for putting the day-to-day in proper context of some larger narrative. In a theological framework, then, it's about a narrative in which you aren't alone in your joys and sorrows.

I don't think intelligence and spiritual practice are mutually exclusive. I think you can be repulsed by the dogma, indoctrination, and irrationality but also recognize that there might be something redeemable in such popular frameworks for finding meaning and purpose in existence.

[WhitneyLand]

“Like meditation, journaling, and other contemplative practices”

The big difference is that meditation and journaling do not require a belief that you are communicating with supernatural beings.

“I don't think intelligence and spiritual practice are mutually exclusive.”

That’s a low bar. At the least we know supernatural/religious beliefs are negatively correlated with scientific training and scientific eminence.

[wat10000]

It may be more than begging favors from imaginary friends, but it does include begging favors from imaginary friends.

How many people would agree with the statement "prayer works"? How many of them consider that to mean actual concrete effects taking place outside the person making the prayer? It's a lot.

Maybe prayer is, for some people, just a way to organize your thoughts or whatever. But for a huge number of people, it's a way to literally influence outside events.

[LEDThereBeLight]

Prayer does work, through the mechanism of putting your thoughts in perspective and context and sharing them outside yourself. Whether or not people understand the reason “why” it works doesn’t matter.

[Hikikomori]

I think the difference is if its personal and spiritual. Compared to "thoughts and prayer" for the dead children in the latest school shooting, and continue to do nothing else.

[alphawhisky]

I think most people would argue that's just being a moral person. Jesus was a humanist, after all. I find that these days, the folks looking for community won't really build for others, and the folks looking to build for others are extremely hesitant to join a community. You tell me why and which group are better Christians.

[aj_hackman]

As outlined in John 1:1, Jesus is in fact God himself, and God is something far greater and more magnificent than a humanist. The message of the Bible is a total inversion of humanism, teaching us to believe in God alone rather than ourselves for deliverance from the necessary and ultimately temporary problems of evil and suffering. It's full of stories of human beings attempting to fix things on their own and failing spectacularly (which is ironic given the history of the church).

[alphawhisky]

Forgot the holy spirit, doofus. The God in you and me. The reason Jesus told us to love one another. You will never be righteous with such a shallow and disconnected interpretation of God's will.

[vladms]

In medicine, placebo was proven to have a positive effect. Maybe we will learn about similar effects about other things.

Now, if only we would convince everybody that those supernatural beings don't work through representatives that everybody must listen, that would already be an improvement!

[prewett]

Why wouldn't supernatural beings work through representatives? For one thing, they are presumably only going to work through people that are committed to their (the beings') agenda. And why would supernatural beings necessarily be populist? Until the Christian revolution, the dominant thought was that the supernatural beings were elitist; all of the heroes in Greek mythology were nobility of some form.

[IAmBroom]

A myriad Christian monarchies have believed in Divine Right. The Christian revolution had no effect on this idea.

[tejohnso]

I get your point, but prayer can be akin visualization and practiced focus, which can indeed have an effect on one's life.

Then there's the type of prayer where you straight up beg for things from FSM for five seconds and move on with your day. Probably less helpful, that.

[lab14]

i'm OK with meditation, as it doesn't require believing in superatural, all powerful beings

[jack_pp]

Newton believed in God, ask an LLM what famous scientists believed in God, take a step back and ask if you think you are smarter than those people.

[throwaway173738]

Just as OP’s derision isn’t a reason for disbelief, “smart people” expressing belief isn’t a reason to believe.

[jack_pp]

It should at least be a reason to not be snarky about the subject.

[dingdingdang]

Yes, it worth aiming for common sense as a bare minimum, chaos and entropy only grows when things we don't understand are casually derided/attacked.

[stickfigure]

Newton spent more of his life working on alchemy than math or physics. Shall we all start searching for the Philosopher's Stone? Why not?

[jack_pp]

He was also a heretic, but what he was most certainly not, was an atheist. All I'm saying is that if some very smart people strongly believe that we're not just star dust that should at least make you question your own belief that there is no higher power.

Maybe put it to the test, even though you feel dumb for doing it, pray for something small that you would not otherwise expect to happen in the immediate future. see what happens

[stickfigure]

People who are otherwise smart often believe dumb things. History is littered with them. Which is why appeal to authority should always be regarded with skepticism.

This prayer example illustrates a series of fallacies and human biases. Confirmation bias, survivorship bias, apophenia, post-hoc reasoning... many ways we know our brains trick us.

Try this pre-registered, with large numbers and control groups.

Or just read the literature from people who did. Prayer does nothing.

[NuclearPM]

It made more sense to believe this stuff back in the 1600s.

[mullingitover]

It also made sense to say you believed in God, because if you did anything else people would do things like burning you alive. Even now, although it’s not usually as violent religion is frequently very coercive.

[paulryanrogers]

Guessing the downvotes are because you said 'imaginary' about things folks consider very personal and are mostly unfalsifiable.

[Filligree]

I feel like that says more about them. Feeling good about the existence of something, or bad about its absence, does not count as evidence.

[irishcoffee]

> Feeling good about the existence of something, or bad about its absence, does not count as evidence.

Isn't the inverse also true?

[Filligree]

Sure, but nonexistence is the default. Has to be the default; most possible things do not exist. In this case we have no evidence for, so we stay with the default.

[ecshafer]

Here comes the /r/atheism level hot takes. In this moment, I feel euphoric.

[nojs]

that was a fantastic story, thanks

[derefr]

> nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“.

But where else would you keep it? A safe-deposit box at a bank?

I think, if I received illegitimate gold bars and figured the FBI might look into that, I would choose to keep them somewhere where a judge would think twice before issuing a search warrant for. Judges don't generally just issue search warrants for residences willy-nilly (because there can often be collateral damage); they're much more blasé about issuing search warrants for safe-deposit boxes.

Or are you imagining he'd go bury the gold in a hole in the woods somewhere?

[Aurornis]

Everyone is a criminal mastermind after reading about someone else getting caught: You only have to say you wouldn’t do the thing that they did and you can smugly imagine yourself getting away with it.

He didn’t acquire 300 gold bars and the other currency at once. He was getting these over a long period. He works for an intelligence agency, so he knew that his actions were going to be investigated. If he was doing any of these routines suggested in the comments like buying a rural plot of land to bury them or taking up camping (alone, by himself) these are all going to raise suspicions and become another thing that could give me away.

[93po]

> he knew that his actions were going to be investigated

I disagree - my take when I first read this was that this was likely a pervasive thing that senior people all did, and they all knew about it. This guy pissed off the wrong person and so they took him down. Same for the lying about credentials - I am sure everyone is like "hey Jim, did you want to apply for that promotion?" with the response of "I can't because I didn't serve long enough", and the final reply of "oh just make up the numbers, everyone does and they don't check".

[unsupp0rted]

> Or are you imagining he'd go bury the gold in a hole in the woods somewhere?

Why not?

[Aurornis]

Why not carry 600 lbs of gold bars out into the forest and bury them, then hope nobody thought it was suspicious to see someone carrying a shovel into the forest on any one of the trips necessary to do it?

[fc417fc802]

A small plot of forested rural land without utility service doesn't cost much at all. Go car camping at your new private getaway for a few days. This isn't rocket science.

Also if you drive out to a remote part of the US who is going to see you? There are some very empty places in this country. Not quite on the level of Canada or Russia but still.

[Aurornis]

> A small plot of forested rural land without utility service doesn't cost much at all. Go car camping at your new private getaway for a few days. This isn't rocket science.

Once someone is under investigation for something like this, they will look at everything.

If the person suddenly bought a small plot of rural land with no utility service that’s going to raise red flags.

As a secondary problem, once the investigators start asking you about it you have to lie to them, which opens you to more charges.

[93po]

> once the investigators start asking you about it you have to lie to them

You literally don't, that's what the fifth amendment is for

there's a large lack of creativity in these comments. pay for a deer lease, go hunting, don't bring phone, bury gold somewhere random in thousands of acres of land deep enough metal detectors won't find it, kill deer, go home. repeat 3x a year and it's both not suspicious at all but also basically impossible for others to find the gold at that point even if they suspect.

[bell-cot]

> A small plot of forested rural land without utility service...

True. OTOH, (1) it's both unusual and public record that you own it, (2) it's seriously unsecured, and (3) the locals both know the turf far better than you and may feel little respect for the undeveloped land of an "outsider".

Bigger picture - Mr. Rush's obsession with collecting very tangible wealth seems to have completely overridden his abilities for rational thought and long-term planning.

EDIT:

> Also if you drive out to a remote part of the US who is going to see you?

The post-Snowden Surveillance State. Between license plate readers, the cell modem in your car, your cell phone, and the difficulty of faking your usual activity patterns "back home" while driving to/from some remote location radio silent (which itself is probably a red flag)...yeah, NO.

[nickphx]

flock or any number of cameras that contribute to flock would see you.

[fc417fc802]

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.

[close04]

See you do what? Nobody's suggesting you go bury gold in front of a Flock camera.

[AngryData]

There are endless miles of places in the US where you could not be seen. That said as evidence by your perspective, there are plenty of people who have never really been to places where you can not see another human for days or weeks or longer if you don't count seeing simple movement or campfire smoke a mile off.

[DANmode]

Do you ever debate with intellectual honesty?

Nobody aside from you said “carry”.

[derefr]

Because, for someone with any kind of security clearance, suddenly going out to the woods, if you don't normally go out to the woods, would be a major outlier from your highly-scrutinized and documented regular life; and so could easily lead the FBI to finding your buried gold, without having to get any kind of warrant.

[MSFT_Edging]

I think you're overselling the security clearance system.

In reality, it'd flag something like "taking out a massive loan for no discernible reason", or "filed for bankruptcy".

I believe a huge part of the big AI push is that the government dragnets have collected so much data, it's nearly impossible to sift through and they're hoping LLMs can finally make sense of it, along the lines of what you're suggesting.

[close04]

Isn't the FBI investigating deaths and disappearances of people with critical access to sensitive material and only found out about it from a newspaper? How much resources do you think are put into monitoring every aspect of the lives of people with access to sensitive info?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/deaths-disappearances-scientist...

[jonnybgood]

Those deaths and disappearances is a big non-story if you actually look in to the details of the cases. The media is making a big deal out of it because the headline grabs eyeballs. So since the media is making a big deal about it the FBI now has to say and do something.

[autoexec]

The government is already tracking every possible detail they can get their hands about every single citizen. Why wouldn't they expend at least that much effort on the people with sensitive information? The records are collected, the only question left is when/how often they get used.

[close04]

It's easy to collect and collate logs from electronic systems (banking, purchases, internet browsing habits, ALPR data) and monitor for things that stand out. To track that someone hid something the size of a suitcase "somewhere" you need to turn that event into electronic data. That's constant individual video monitoring. Or else you just have one electronic data point "car parked here, phone in car".

[reactordev]

They are under the impression that the FBI and CIA are still functioning bodies of government

[gosub100]

They are functioning, just not for the same country

[ajam1507]

How would they know you went out to the woods?

[GoblinSlayer]

Smartphone will report it.

[reactordev]

So does your car now, if it’s made after 2018.

[ajam1507]

This really says something about society, can't even imagine leaving your house without a smartphone.

[mouse-5346]

Leave it at home obviously, or carry a burner, or just turn it off and put it in a metal lunch box etc. Solutions galore. This would only be a problem if every CIA employee is under surveillance.

[valvar]

Just leave it at home.

[gosub100]

Flock cams

[keybored]

The security scrutiny is really so thorough that taking up a new apparent hobby gets flagged? That’s impressive.

[tommica]

The answer is probably "Yes" if you work at CIA

[colonwqbang]

I don't think you know what you are talking about.

[Retric]

Nonsense the cost of physical surveillance is extremely prohibitive.

[phendrenad2]

Why not make multiple trips to carry extremely heavy metal, as a frail office worker, into the woods, which are full of hikers and hunters, on country roads in a suspicious-looking sedan, with a shovel in hand? And then do it all over again whenever you intend to retrieve these gold bars to do whatever it is you want to do with them? Why indeed.

[esseph]

"as a frail office worker"

They could be CIA SAC/SOG, aka Ground Branch.

[phlipski]

Mr. Rush clearly did not watch Breaking Bad...

But how did the CIA not check on whether or not he had graduated from one of the three different colleges he listed as graduating from the three different times he applied for a job at the CIA?!?!?

[formerly_proven]

> Judges don't generally just issue search warrants for residences willy-nilly

What are you on about, searching homes is the #1 criminal investigation technique once you're able to name a suspect.

[colonwqbang]

It's funny, some people commenting here seem to be a bit lost.

It's also obvious from the article that his home was indeed searched.

The idea that the government would not obtain a warrant if they suspect you of stealing millions...

[rubyn00bie]

Planting drugs would be wildly easier, both logistically and conveniently. Gold bars have got to be among the least easy ways to manufacture evidence to throw someone behind bars. Hell it could even easily explain the gold bars…

There’s zero reason to assume this is anything but exceptional incompetence, and looking at the current administration that’s wildly easy to believe.

[troyvit]

> Obvious plant

$40 million in gold bars is about a thousand pounds of gold. That would be hard to plant.

[harambae]

Not that it matters, but I think it's closer to 600 lbs.

$40M /( $4.5k / oz) and then (1 lbs / 16 oz)

[bell-cot]

For precious metals, the units of measure are a bit different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_weight

[troyvit]

You see, this is what I get for relying on AI. Kagi did catch that it was in Troy (hey that's me!) ounces, but I didn't check its numbers.

[saghm]

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?)

[pjc50]

Probably a mini Iran-Contra. Get approval for paying $40m to [SECRET] to carry out acts of pro-US terrorism. Steal the gold. Tip off the enemies of the group so they fail/are killed/arrested. Then report to your superior that the mission was a failure due to enemy action.

[542354234235]

Or get approval for $5m, run operation for $2m and pocket the rest. Operation has provable, demonstratable effects, and the falsified payoffs are mixed in with the real ones. If people check up on you, you can point them to assets still on the books to confirm a payoff or funding for equipment. Rinse and repeat. Its just embezzlement, but in an environment where the assets are supposed to not be traceable. Rinse and repeat.

[expedition32]

Who watches the watchers?

[brookst]

Flock

[gosub100]

There's more to the story they aren't letting on to.

[brookst]

I would hope so. It would be very odd if they shared every detail of the suspect’s life, the investigation, the evidence, and all tangential but interesting facts as part of the arrest.

[bandrami]

CIA recruits a lot of square pegs who didn't quite fit in to other parts of government

[jonnybgood]

CIA recruitment is actually highly competitive. The best avenue to get to the top of the list when applying is if you have an “in”. CIA managers still do college campus visits, and for new college graduates who have done an interview with that individual and decide to apply that can use that person to get to the top of the list.

[rbanffy]

But it still vets them. This is very odd.

[e40]

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.

[hypeatei]

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)

[rbanffy]

All you need to join ICE is being a certified neonazi, so background checks would only jeopardise that policy.

[blitzar]

I think they are a couple of standard deviations more fucked up than the average person still.

[thephyber]

Does it?

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.

[rbanffy]

One thing I was reminded by a friend is that exposing his fabrication would make that information useless. As long as the person who knows it wasn’t involved in the vetting process, they now have leverage over at least two people.

As someone said, all spies are bastards.

[Aurornis]

> Obvious plant nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“.

This is an entertaining conspiracy theory because you'd have to believe that the CIA was so smart that they would completely manufacture a story to get someone arrested, yet so dumb that they'd make up a story that raises questions and makes them look like they did some stupid things.

If a powerful organization hypothetically wanted to get someone arrested by planting evidence, do you really believe this is the best idea they could come up with?

[fc417fc802]

The idea isn't that they manufacture it from scratch but rather that they contrive a convenient explanation for the physical reality that already exists. In that scenario the evidence isn't planted but rather misattributed.

[SG-]

>As if people aren’t properly vetted every time they switch jobs within the agency.

have you seen the criminals elected to run your country and the ones they've put in important policy decisions?