The former senior CIA official found with more than $40 million worth of gold bars in his house allegedly created a fake, highly classified intelligence program that he used as a conduit to funnel millions of dollars for his personal use, according to people familiar with the criminal investigation.
David J. Rush, who was arrested last month and charged with one count of theft of public money, constructed what is known as a “special access program,” a sort of black box for the most secret intelligence operations, the people familiar with the investigation said. Even intelligence personnel with the highest security clearance cannot access an individual SAP, as they are known, without specific authorization.
The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said the criminal probe found that Rush “read in,” or initiated, two colleagues into the highly secretive sham program, effectively cultivating them as perhaps unwitting accomplices and preventing them from talking to others about it. He persuaded one of them to transfer millions of dollars to the program via a government contract that was also fraudulent, they said.
Rush was arrested following a May 18 FBI raid on his house, where agents seized 303 gold bars worth roughly $40 million, $2 million in cash and 35 luxury watches, according to a government affidavit.
The government affidavit, filed May 20 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, alleges that Rush lied to the CIA about his college degrees and Navy record, and fraudulently obtained $77,000 in military leave pay despite having been discharged from the Navy in 2015.
The government affidavit says that Rush claimed to have a bachelor’s degree from Clemson University and a master’s from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. An FBI investigation found no record of Rush ever attending either institution, nor any evidence to support his claim that he had been a Navy pilot.
Former U.S. intelligence officials said they were stunned that Rush’s alleged misrepresentations were not flagged in what are normally lengthy and rigorous background checks for would-be CIA employees.
Rush, who worked in the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, has not pleaded to the charges against him. At a detention hearing in federal court in Alexandria on Friday, a judge ruled that Rush posed a significant flight risk and ordered him to remain detained at the local jail pending trial.
The account of those familiar with the criminal probe appears to raise serious questions about secrecy guardrails and vetting at the CIA.
It remains unclear, for example, how Rush could single-handedly create a “black box” for a fictional spy program without sign-off from his superiors. It is also unclear whether the two colleagues Rush brought into the fake program knew it was fraudulent.
One of the people familiar with the probe said Rush’s fake program involved “continuity of government” operations, or programs to keep the U.S. federal government running in the event of nuclear war, natural disasters or other catastrophes.
Rush apparently used the fake government continuity program and the contract to persuade a government defense contractor to purchase large amounts of gold, this person said.
Even more astounding, according to former U.S. officials and others familiar with the issue, is that Rush’s duties at the CIA included involvement in one of the government’s most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs, a project so secret that only a handful of U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers knew of its existence, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Details of that program — separate from the fake project Rush allegedly created — remain highly classified. The Washington Post is withholding details about the program after U.S. officials warned that disclosure could jeopardize ongoing intelligence-gathering operations.
The more I read about it, the less fake it sounds. Dude had millions in clean currency, an alias, and high level classified knowledge. Sounds like an agent to me, not someone with a fake Gmail account and some hacked passwords.