New Delhi: Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer David J. Rush, who was found with gold bars worth $40 million last month and is now facing an FBI probe, was part of a classified China espionage programme before he was fired, according to a report by The New York Times.
The report suggests that Rush had “powerful friends” in the US government, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen A. Feinberg, who had worked with him on the China spying programme. Feinberg had pushed for Rush to play a significant role.
Feinberg, unaware of the ongoing criminal investigation against Rush, had also approached the CIA earlier this year, asking to work closely with him, NYT adds.
The two have known each other at least since Feinberg was the head of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board during Donald Trump’s first term, according to the report. Feinberg, co-founder of private equity firm Cerberus Capital, had taken a particular interest in the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, where Rush was an officer.
Feinberg reached out to the CIA on behalf of Rush in late March or early April.
Rush was accumulating $40 million in gold bars by fabricating a classified programme. The fake programme, he had claimed, was linked to a project regarding ‘the continuity of government operations’. He carried out the scheme allegedly between 2009 and 2026.
Rush allegedly constructed a special access programme, “a sort of black box for the most secret intelligence operations, which even the intelligence personnel with the highest security clearance couldn’t access an individual SAP, as they are known, without specific authorisation”, The Washington Post had reported last week.
Rush had allegedly briefed two other CIA officials into the fake project, convincing them of its top secret nature and prohibiting them to talk to others about it. One of these officials was persuaded by him to approve transfer of millions of dollars to the programme via a government contract that was also misleading, directly to his home, noted The Washington Post report.
Investigators are looking into how Rush managed to establish a highly secretive, fictional intelligence programme entirely on his own without authorisation from his seniors. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether the two colleagues he recruited into the operation were aware of its fraudulent nature.
Rush was excluded from the Pentagon’s meetings as soon as the officials learned of his criminal investigation, although it is unclear as of now how fast the CIA informed the Defense Department of the same.
When questioned, both CIA and the Pentagon declined to comment because of ongoing legal investigation, noted The Washington Post.
Rush was also accused of inflating his academic credentials, as he claimed that he graduated from Clemson University in 2000 and that he had a graduate degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
He was also charged for obtaining military leave pay worth tens of thousands of dollars from last November to March in the view of “work-related expenses”, while he falsely claimed to be a Navy Rescue member, wherein he was discharged, as stated by the authorities, according to NYT.
As the CIA failed to locate the gold and currency as stated in the court papers, an alert was sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who found 303 gold bars, with approximately $2 million and 35 luxury watches on searching Rush’s home on 18 May.
Nishtha Modgil is a TPSJ alum, currently interning with ThePrint.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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