Tag: cia

CIA Official Confirms Agency Flip-Flopped Over COVID-19 Origins Over Five-Day Period

Over the span of five days in 2021, the CIA abruptly changed its opinion on the origins of COVID-19 from a laboratory to neutral, a newly released document confirms.

Originally, CIA analysts concluded that COVID-19 likely came from a high-level laboratory in Wuhan, China located near where the first cases were detected in late 2019, senior CIA officer James Erdman III told lawmakers in May. Over the span of five days in 2021, however, Edman says the agency changed its stance to ‘neutral.’ 

Then in September of 2024 during a private briefing between intelligence officials and members of Congress, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) inquired as to how the agency came to the conclusion that lab-origin vs. natural origin were about equal, according to yesterday’s document release by outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard. 

In response, an unnamed CIA employee told Wenstrup that “he made the call to stop the shift to lab because [redacted] had come in the day before they were ready to publish which made them back off the call,” according to a summary of the briefing compiled by an intelligence official. 

As the Epoch Times notes further, officials said in a declassified assessment based on information through August 2021 that only one agency – which was not the CIA, based on details since made public – favored a lab origin for COVID-19.

An updated assessment released in mid-2023 states that the CIA was unable to determine the origin of COVID-19 because both the lab and natural origin theories “rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting.”

The CIA said in 2025 that a lab origin for COVID-19 was “more likely.” The Trump administration maintains that COVID-19 came from the lab in China.

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A whistleblower in 2023 told members of Congress that the CIA team tasked with analyzing the origins of COVID-19 favored a lab origin, but that after the team was paid, it changed its position.

The CIA at the time denied paying analysts to reach specific conclusions.

Erdman, the senior CIA official, told a Senate panel in May that he was on a team investigating how intelligence agencies handled the COVID-19 pandemic and that the CIA declined to provide documents the team had requested that may have shed light on the change.

Erdman said that the team found the shift happened after Dr. Anthony Fauci, at the time the head of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – which provided funding for the lab in Wuhan – briefed intelligence officials and suggested to officials that they talk to specific scientists, including researchers who wrote a paper with which Fauci and the institute’s head secretly assisted.

The paper, called “Proximal Origin,” purported to rule out a laboratory origin.

Wenstrup also asked intelligence officials in the 2024 briefing about a white paper that National Center for Medical Intelligence analysts compiled as a rebuttal to the “Proximal Origin.” The authors of the white paper felt their conclusions were ignored by intelligence officials, they informed Wenstrup.

A representative for the center was not prepared for the questioning, “which annoyed Wenstrup,” according to the briefing summary.

Fauci Briefed Intelligence Officials

Fauci briefed intelligence officials on June 4, 2021, and promoted the idea that COVID-19 had a natural origin, according to another briefing summary released by Gabbard.

Fauci “recommended that [intelligence officials] take a look at Tulane’s paper on two lineages from two separate markets,” the summary states. “To Dr. Fauci, this paper’s findings were a clear indication of natural origins of COVID-19.”

Fauci also “reminded the group that even for SARS, it took 12 years to make the link to a bat even though it only took 4 months to identify the natural reservoir” and that “we still haven’t identified source/origin of Ebola,” which is believed to have a natural origin, according to the summary.

Fauci, who has not responded to requests for comment, told lawmakers during a hearing in 2024 that he did not talk about viral research related to COVID-19 with intelligence officials.

“After the investigations began about COVID, I was briefed by intelligence agencies about possibilities of there being activities going on in different laboratories,” he said.

In another readout of the 2021 briefing, Fauci was said to have suggested intelligence officials connect with three scientists whose names were redacted.

“All three … have advocated for features of the virus that they judge to be consistent with a natural origin,” the readout states.

An email disclosed that one of the scientists was Kristian Andersen, a Scripps Research researcher who coauthored the “Proximal Origin.”

Andersen said in private messages with coauthors that COVID-19 may have been engineered before the paper was published. He has said that further analysis of the virus altered his and others’ views.

“Dr. Fauci was the behind-the-scenes adviser who, alongside his hand-picked so-called experts, pushed the intelligence community to endorse a natural animal origin to hide his dangerous gain-of-function research that he funded using taxpayer dollars,” Gabbard said in a video statement posted to X on June 18.

“All of this in a deliberate attempt to cover up the truth and shift the blame and attention away from Fauci’s own actions.”

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Gabbard Rescinds Intelligence Reports on Mysterious Syndrome

Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has retracted intelligence community reports on mysterious health problems known as Havana Syndrome, according to a memorandum released on June 11.

Gabbard found that the intelligence community assessments of the anomalous health incidents, released in 2023 and 2025, failed to meet the community’s analytic standards.

That included selectively excluding intelligence and evidence that did not support the conclusions and relying on an “ethically flawed medical study without noting methodological critiques,” Gabbard’s office said in the memo, sent to members of Congress.

The 2023 assessment concluded it was very unlikely that a foreign adversary was behind the incidents, which have impacted staffers in countries such as Cuba and China.

The updated assessment released in 2025 said most intelligence agencies still held it was very unlikely an enemy was responsible for the syndrome, but two components judged there was a “roughly even chance” that a foreign actor had used a novel weapon to target Americans, or had developed such a weapon.

Gabbard’s team said future assessments on the matter would adhere to “rigorous ethical standards incorporating all available intelligence sources and engaging a broad range of experts from agencies including the CIA.”

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New UFO files dump reveals CIA destroyed a ‘message from space’

The Pentagon released a third batch of UFO files today, including documents that claim the CIA destroyed a ‘message from space.’

Among the tranche is a 1958 CIA memorandum discussing a phone conversation with a scientist regarding concerns about a destroyed ‘space message and its transmitter.’

The scientist, Dr. Leon Davidson, was a chemical engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project and at Los Alamos, and studied UFOs.

The memo stated that Davidson was told by the CIA that the agency ‘cannot resolve his problem concerning the space message and its transmitter because records on the matter have been destroyed by the evaluating agency.’

The third set of documents was quietly uploaded to the Department of War’s website on Friday morning.

According to the Pentagon, there have been ‘unprecedented levels of interest’ in the UFO files, and the Department of War’s website has received over 1.7 billion hits worldwide since its launch in May.

The latest trove of files includes dozens of new documents, photographs and videos to the government’s rapidly expanding archive of unexplained sightings.

A one-page memo in the third tranche of UFO files released on Friday revealed a 1958 phone conversation between the CIA and a scientist about an alleged ‘space message’ which had been destroyed after its reception on Earth.

The scientist, Dr Leon Davidson, was a chemical engineer and UFO researcher who worked on the Manhattan Project, the mission to create the world’s first atomic bomb in World War II.

The memo stated that Davidson was told by the CIA that the agency ‘cannot resolve his problem concerning the space message and its transmitter because records on the matter have been destroyed by the evaluating agency.’

The memo then acknowledged that two agents from the CIA had been in contact with Davidson before the scientist reached out to the agency regarding the mysterious transmission.

The memo admitted that agents ‘Walker and Skakich’ attempted to conceal their identity from Davidson while speaking to him about the message from space.

‘Referenced telephone conversation disclosed that there is nothing in the record to show that Davidson knew he was dealing with the Agency in his contacts with Walker and Skakich, that in fact, an effort had been made to to conceal their CIA identity from him.’

‘But the answer was hardly fair to Davidson, and one not likely to be fully accepted by him,’ the memo continued, noting that Davidson was given no answers on how or why the transmission was destroyed.

It is unclear when and where Davidson allegedly received his message from space.

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All Roads Lead Back to Reagan: The Reagan Era Policies Still Haunting America Decades Later

Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States, passed away 22 years ago on June 5th, 2004, at 93 years of age. When it comes to Reagan’s legacy in the political establishment, he is lauded as perhaps one of the best presidents in American history. Upon his death much of the nation was brought to a veritable standstill, as his funeral acted as an unofficial national day of mourning.

As Reagan’s casket was brought out of the Capitol rotunda, cannons fired in his honor, the reading of his funeral rites broadcast in New York’s Times Square as well as on televisions around the world. Over 100,000 people attended his funeral to pay their respects, including multiple former presidents, government officials, and diplomats from around the world. In a CBS News broadcast the day of his death, Reagan’s personal biographer Edmund Morris described him as “looking and acting presidential, a man with dignity”.

Morris describes Reagan’s “largest mission in life” as “the moral leadership of the United States”. In Morris’s words Reagan saw himself as a savior sent to tame the government and get it off the backs of the American people. But beyond the aggrandizement and grandstanding, when one takes a more critical look at the legacy left behind, what is revealed is a much darker history than American political revisionists like to admit. One fraught with systemic corruption and the exploitation of the American people.

In this article, we will take a look at Ronald Reagan’s true legacy, and while not exhaustive, highlight several policy decisions that still impact the lives of American citizens today.

Naturally, we shall start with foreign policy, as it is arguably the most impactful and extensive. In this area Reagan is typically hailed as a hero more than most in the annals of American exceptionalist revisionist history. He started off his presidency in January of 1981 being credited with bringing an end to the Iran hostage crisis, as Iran would agree to release 52 Americans after 444 days in captivity shortly after Reagan was sworn into office.

This immediately did wonders for Reagan’s image as a diplomatic tough guy that Americans could look up to. But the reality is much more sinister. Acclaimed investigative journalist and founder of Consortium News Robert Parry (1948 – 2018) spent decades amassing evidence ignored by the DC political beltway proving that, in truth, members of the Reagan campaign, particularly campaign manager and future CIA director William Casey, undertook efforts to sabotage attempts by the Carter administration to free the American hostages for political gain. Casey and others would covertly meet with Iranian officials in Madrid during the summer of 1980 and strike a secret deal insuring that Iran would agree to only release the hostages on the day of Reagan’s inauguration in exchange for arms shipments.

With this act of political subterfuge, Reagan’s presidency began with a borderline act of treason, treating American lives as bargaining chips.

Of course, this was only the beginning. As secret dealings with Iran would scandalize the entire Reagan presidency. The Iran Contra affair, beginning in 1985, would go on to leave a lasting and disastrous blight both inside and outside of the United States.

During the height of the Cold War, the staunchly anti-communist Reagan administration would go to any lengths no matter how deplorable to exert American imperialist dominance across the globe. When the leftist Sandinista government came to power in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration sought to oust them with a coup. When Congress denied funding for this operation, Reagan would once again turn to his pal William Casey, now director of the CIA, and their Iranian allies, as well as the cartel.

The CIA would begin making covert arms shipments to Iran via Israel, despite an embargo in place at the time, using the revenue to fund an insurgency by the Contras, a right wing militant terrorist group fighting to oust the Sandinista government. At the same time, the CIA would put itself in business with the Contras cartel allies in a plot to help bolster the Contras funding, a scandal later exposed by journalist Gary Webb whom revealed the CIA helped to facilitate cocaine trafficking into the United States, resulting in the disastrous crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s which unceremoniously claimed thousands of lives.

These undertakings initiated by Reagan have left lasting scars on American society and politics. In the decades since, Nicaragua has continued to be a prime target for imperialist regime change efforts, particularly following the 2006 election of Daniel Ortega which brought the Sandinistas back to power and lead to a series of coup attempts against his government by both the Bush jr and Obama administrations, as well as a deadly relaunching of Reagan-era destabilization efforts against Nicaragua as recently as 2023 under the Biden administration.

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CIA accused of ‘poisoning the sky’ with toxins as files expose secret weather control agenda

Once top-secret CIA files have detailed America’s plans to control the world by manipulating the weather. 

The documents, declassified in 2003, discussed the controversial topic of weather modification, the tactic of launching rockets or using planes to dump chemicals into the atmosphere that alter the climate and local storm systems. 

Although the resurfaced documents from 1965 did not mention the specific chemicals used in the experiments, they did discuss the need for more funding of the weather modification projects that would soon be used as a weapon of war.

In fact, the memos noted that federal funding for the secret program was set to be four times higher in 1967 – the same year the US began spraying toxins over Vietnam to cause floods and landslides.

One post on X claimed: ‘The CIA has been poisoning the sky and controlling the weather since 1965!’

The 18-page report was recently shared by conspiracy theorists, years after it was quietly placed into the CIA’s public archives, including a letter praising the classified operation from US President Lyndon B Johnson.

Johnson’s endorsement of the CIA’s weather modification project came just three years after he gave an ominous speech on the future of America and the work to create ‘weather satellites’ with the power to strengthen storms.

While giving the commencement address at Southwest Texas State University in May 1962, then-Vice President Johnson said: ‘He who controls the weather will control the world.’

Just 18 months after giving this speech advocating for the US to control the weather, LBJ became the 36th president and would oversee two infamous projects designed to manipulate the weather – Project Stormfury and Project Popeye. 

Following the speech, the records showed real government programs were already underway by 1965, such as Project Stormfury, which flew into hurricanes and seeded them with a freezing agent called silver iodide to try to weaken the storms by disrupting their inner structures. 

Johnson’s letter, which is among the 18-page CIA report, from September of that year specifically mentioned the project’s work in manipulating a recent hurricane near Florida, believed to be Hurricane Betsy, which made landfall in Louisiana as a major Category 4 storm.

By 1967, however, this work expanded to Project Popeye, which was used against enemy supply lines during the Vietnam War to artificially extend the country’s monsoon season.

Intelligence officials also noted they had the full support of Johnson, who was determined to beat the Soviet Union’s efforts to control the weather as global tensions escalated. 

The US government has maintained that weather modification has been used only to help weaken dangerous storms and induce rain in drought-stricken areas.

However, conspiracy theorists sharing the files have accused the CIA of using these projects to keep the world dependent on government by weaponizing storms, blocking sunlight and poisoning food supplies to intentionally make people sick.

Those allegations focus on so-called ‘chemtrails,’ the white streaks seen coming from high-flying jets on clear days, which appear to spread out and dissipate very slowly.

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The 667-pound clue spy agency missed in David Rush’s gold bar scandal: ‘Humiliation for the CIA’

The CIA should have known something was off the moment ex-officer David Rush demanded 667 pounds of gold bullion.

Instead of requesting diamonds or rare gems — the far lighter, more mobile currency the agency has long favored for clandestine work — Rush asked for heavy gold bars, a choice a former senior CIA official told The Post was an obvious red flag.

Now Rush is incarcerated in an Alexandria, Va., lockup and charged carrying out a massive theft – although it is the spy agency itself facing tough questions from lawmakers about how he was ever allowed to get this far.

The first clue is the gold itself.

“You tend to go in other directions because it’s lighter. Precious jewels are better. Diamonds are better,” former CIA Iran targets officer Reuel Marc Gerecht told The Post.

“People don’t realize how heavy money is. It was regularly a problem for large payments – particularly if you’re trying to do it clandestinely. You could just weigh yourself down with cash. Gold – you’d need mules,” he exclaimed.

The security breakdown allegedly allowed Rush, who had a top secret security clearance, to hoard in stages 303 gold bars valued at $40 million and weighing 667 pounds.

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Moscow Signs Military Partnership With Taliban In Full Circle Since CIA’s Operation Cyclone

Russia and the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan have reached a military and technical cooperation agreement, Russian news outlet Interfaxreported this week. 

The deal was concluded during the International Security Forum held in Moscow. According to the report by Interfax’s correspondent, Taliban Defense Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob held talks with Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Sergei Shoigu on the sidelines of the event.

During the meeting, Yaqoob said that engagement with Russia is important for the Taliban-led administration and that both sides have been expanding their bilateral relations. He added that Afghanistan and Russia share historic ties and that Kabul aims to maintain and strengthen those relations.

Shoigu urged western countries to release Afghanistan’s frozen assets and take responsibility for the country’s reconstruction during the event.

“We are convinced that western countries must unfreeze frozen Afghan assets, fully acknowledge their full responsibility for their 20-year presence in Afghanistan, and assume the entire burden of post-conflict reconstruction of the country,” Shoigu said.

One day later, on Thursday, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Vasily Osmakov met with Yaqoob in Moscow to discuss regional security and potential bilateral military cooperation.

According to the ministry, the two sides addressed security issues in Central and South Asia, as well as the outlook for cooperation between their armed forces, including areas of military collaboration.

Russia was the first to recognize the Taliban-led state that assumed control in Afghanistan in 2021. The recognition took place in July 2025. 

US troops launched a hasty and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after the Taliban’s 2021 victory and subsequent takeover of the country. 

The US military left behind large amounts of equipment. An internal State Department review from 2023 attributed the chaotic evacuation to poor planning.

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This Is The Deep State On Parade Like A Naked Emperor

In the annals of Deep State WTF-ery, is there a stranger case than CIA officer David Rush turning up with $40-million in 303 one-kilogram gold bars, plus $2-million in cash, plus a stash of 30 mostly Rolex watches?

Well, yeah, the stranger story is how the guy got hired by the CIA in the first place.

Rush was arrested on Monday, May 18, by an FBI SWAT team at his home in Loudoun County, VA. Agents searched the house all day long and found the stash. Rush is currently charged with theft of public money and allegedly falsifying his military and academic credentials to obtain federal employment benefits, including roughly $77,000 in improper military leave pay. He’s scheduled to make a federal court appearance in Alexandria today.

Rush first applied for a job at the CIA in March 2006. He claimed to have a bachelor’s degree in math from Clemson University and a master’s from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He was rejected. He reapplied later that same year. Bumped again. He reapplied again in 2009, adding a new credential: that he’d been a US Navy test pilot and flight trainer. This time, he was hired.

Rush’s college credentials were found to be false, but it is unclear when that was discovered. Since he included them in his two earlier 2006 failed applications, why were they not flagged in his successful 2009 application? His claim of being a US Navy pilot was also found to be false (he was an information systems tech in his Navy service). The FBI affidavit unsealed recently details the pattern of lies across all applications.

Understand that CIA vetting procedures are supposed to be exceedingly rigorous. The process is stressful and invasive — many candidates drop out or are weeded out. The background check involves interviews with practically everybody who knows the applicant going back decades, his criminal history, work, financial history, education, military service. The applicant gets a polygraph exam. Even after getting hired, monitoring continues.

Rush was hired at the very start of the Obama admin; Leon Panetta was the newly appointed CIA Director. Wouldn’t you like to hear him ‘splain how David Rush managed to get hired? Was somebody smoothing his way in? Rush rose to become a senior executive service (SES) officer with a top-secret (TS/SCI) security clearance. His exact duties, the division he worked for, his day-to-day responsibilities have not been disclosed.

Rush allegedly requested the gold and foreign currency from the CIA for “work-related expenses” between November 2025 and March 2026. The agency later could not account for the assets or locate records explaining their official purpose. A search of a storage locker at CIA connected to Rush turned up only a small amount of the requisitioned cash.

“There is a whole process that we go through to get that money. I don’t just walk into the logistics office and say ‘Excuse me, I need $100,000 tomorrow.’ There is a form I have to fill out. It’s not a bank vault you walk into. It doesn’t work like that.” — Tracy Walder, 46, a former FBI special agent and CIA officer, quoted in The New York Post.

Wouldn’t you assume that some higher-up CIA officer would have to sign off on such a colossal requisition of gold and money? (And where does the CIA get so much gold on-demand?) Perhaps the very Director of the CIA approved it — which would be John Ratcliffe through 2025 up to right now. Doesn’t he have some ‘splainin’ to do? (Was Rush set-up? Was this a sting?)

Assuming Rush spent some period of time as an entry-level CIA employee, when did his rise to SES level happen? John Brennan became CIA Director in early 2013 (the start of Barack Obama’s second term). What were David Rush’s relations with John Brennan? Was Brennan his mentor? Does the gold stash have any connection with the current legal problems of John Brennan and other former high officials involved in the long-running “grand conspiracy” case about the attempted overthrow of a president?

You might imagine that Rush’s phone and computers were seized in the May 18th raid on his house — though it’s unlikely he used such conventional channels for black ops chatter. It’s conceivable, though, that any alt-communications of his were captured by the vast national security surveillance apparatus, and that DNI Tulsi Gabbard might have come across them this past year. How else might Director Ratcliffe have been tipped off?

This story is not going away. The scale of the grift is spectacular and vivid — 303 gold bars! — like a Hollywood movie. Rush’s explanation of “work-related expenses” sounds preposterous. If the requisitions were made serially, over several months, as appears, then the agency had more than one opportunity to review and question them.

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How Western Intelligence Agencies Built the Global Jihadist Network

Americans have been fed a comforting fairy tale about Islamic terrorism. Radical jihadists attack the West simply because they despise freedom, democracy, and the American way of life. This narrative flatters domestic audiences while conveniently obscuring a far more troubling reality. For decades, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel have armed, financed, tolerated, and tapped into Sunni Islamist extremists as geopolitical tools to destabilize rivals. The evidence spans multiple theaters and rests on declassified documents, congressional investigations, and credible investigative journalism.

The most thoroughly documented case is Operation Cyclone, the CIA program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen from 1979 to 1992. In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski confirmed that the CIA began aiding mujahideen opponents of the pro-Soviet Kabul government six months before the Soviet invasion—a calculated provocation intended to draw Moscow into an unwinnable war. When asked if he regretted supporting Islamic fundamentalism that gave “arms and advice to future terrorists,” Brzezinski replied:

“What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”

Multiple intelligence agencies participated in this operation. MI6 ran covert operations supporting hardline commanders. Pakistan’s ISI served as the critical financial and logistical conduit—operating under the direction of Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq, who controlled ISI policy throughout the war. Saudi Arabia agreed to match CIA contributions dollar for dollar, a commitment secured when Brzezinski visited Riyadh in February 1980 and one that CIA officer Gust Avrakotos and congressman Charlie Wilson (D-TX) would fly to Riyadh to enforce whenever Saudi payments fell behind. Historian Steve Coll documented in Ghost Wars that Osama bin Laden informally cooperated with ISI-run guerrilla training camps on behalf of newly arrived Arab jihadists, with intimate connections to CIA-backed commander Jalaluddin Haqqani. The global jihadist network that became al-Qaeda grew directly from this infrastructure.

The Afghan theater was not an isolated experiment but the opening chapter of a longer story. The same networks it created spread rapidly to the next front. The Chechen insurgency of the 1990s was joined by Arab and Central Asian jihadists who had cut their teeth in Afghanistan. The most prominent was Ibn Khattab, a Saudi-born mujahideen veteran born in 1969 inʿAr’ar, Saudi Arabia, who left for the Afghan jihad at age 18 before entering Chechnya in 1995. Saudi-backed organizations funneled funds, and Gulf state charities developed during the Afghan jihad maintained, in some cases wittingly and in others not, support for al-Qaeda-affiliated groups throughout the decade. Several of the future 9/11 conspirators—including Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh—originally sought to travel to Chechnya in 1999 before being redirected to al-Qaeda’s Afghan camps, per the 9/11 Commission.

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Former Senior CIA Officer With Top-Secret Clearance ARRESTED After FBI Raid Home And Seize 300 Gold Bars Worth $40 Million — Plus $2 Million Cash And 35 Luxury Watches

A former senior CIA officer with top-secret security clearance has been arrested after federal agents raided his Virginia home and seized roughly 300 gold bars worth more than $40 million, along with approximately $2 million in cash and 35 luxury watches, mostly Rolexes.

The officer, identified as David Rush, who held a management position at the agency, now faces charges of criminal theft of public money.

According to NBC News, Rush allegedly used his position to request large amounts of gold and foreign currency, claiming they were for “work-related expenses,” only to allegedly divert and stash them at his Fairfax County residence.

On May 18, federal agents searched the home and walked out with the massive gold hoard. Investigators had earlier found only a portion of the funds in a storage space near his office.

Rush had requested the assets between November and March, according to an FBI affidavit.

The CIA’s own internal audit couldn’t account for the gold or significant foreign currency, prompting CIA Director John Ratcliffe to refer the matter to the FBI for criminal investigation.

More from NBC News:

Asked about Rush’s case, a CIA spokesperson said in a statement joint statement with the FBI that the FBI had arrested a person after a referral from the agency.

After a CIA internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the FBI for a law enforcement investigation,” the written statement said. “The FBI is working closely with our partners at the CIA and the Department of Justice as we continue to investigate this matter fully. We are committed to following the facts, ensuring accountability, and pursuing justice in accordance with the law.”

The case raises questions about the effectiveness of the federal government’s security vetting, which is supposed to ensure intelligence officers or other government employees don’t betray the public trust or spy for foreign countries.

The U.S. government conducts background investigations on every prospective employee at the CIA and other agencies granted access to sensitive and secret information. And after employees are hired, the government continues to monitor their financial activities, travel, credit records and other information through automated checks to ensure they aren’t vulnerable to blackmail.

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, which falls under the authority of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, oversees the background check program, known as “continuous vetting.” When the program flags a potential problem or anomaly in an employee’s records, officials investigate further.

It wasn’t clear how the investigation into Rush began, and it also wasn’t clear when he left the CIA. His home was raided just last week.

Rush is also accused of a long-running fraud scheme in which he allegedly falsified time sheets, inflated his hours, and lied about his background for nearly two decades to secure and maintain his high-level position and extra pay.

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