{"id":669649,"date":"2026-05-28T07:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T07:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/669649\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T07:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T07:13:12","slug":"ex-cia-official-charged-with-stealing-gold-bars-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/669649\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-CIA official charged with stealing gold bars : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

\n The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency is displayed at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., April 13, 2016.<\/p>\n

Carolyn Kaster\/AP<\/p>\n

hide caption\n <\/p>\n

toggle caption<\/p>\n

Carolyn Kaster\/AP<\/p>\n

A former senior CIA official with top secret-level clearance is accused of stealing hundreds of gold bars worth more than $40 million from the federal government and stashing them in his home.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a> <\/p>\n

David Rush was arrested and charged with criminal theft of public money last week, according to federal court filings in Virginia, where he lives.<\/p>\n

From November to March, Rush requested and received a “significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses,” according to an affidavit from an FBI agent investigating the case.<\/p>\n

The affidavit says its unclear what Rush intended to use the funds for, but that a portion of it was found in a storage space near his office.<\/p>\n

Federal officials searched his home on May 18 and seized more than 300 gold bars with an estimated value of more than $40 million, according to the affidavit. They also seized roughly $2 million in U.S. currency and some 35 luxury watches, many of them Rolexes. Rush was arrested the next day, the FBI said.<\/p>\n

The FBI affidavit concludes that there’s probable cause to believe that Rush “knowingly embezzled, stole, purloined, or knowingly converted a thing of value of the United States” for his personal use.<\/p>\n

The FBI said it was working with the CIA and Department of Justice in its investigation.<\/p>\n

Rush’s lawyer declined to comment Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a> <\/p>\n

It’s not clear what role Rush had at the CIA or when he left the agency. He’s described in court filings simply as a “former senior executive service-level employee at a United States government agency.” Spokespersons for the FBI declined to comment further, and the CIA didn’t respond to an email.<\/p>\n

The FBI affidavit also notes that Rush appears to have lied for years about his education and military background. The bureau’s investigation found he had falsely claimed to be a Navy pilot and that he’d graduated from Clemson University in South Carolina and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.<\/p>\n

Instead, they found he had enlisted in the Navy in 1997 and then served in the U.S. Navy Reserves from 2004 until 2015, when he was honorably discharged as a lieutenant. The affidavit states he does not appear to have underwent any evaluations as a pilot during that time, and he did not attend either college.<\/p>\n

Rush is being held in custody pending a hearing Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency is displayed at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., April 13, 2016.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-669649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}