It would make such a fantastic set of barbell plates.

The type of people Intelligence agencies need and use to accomplish their goals are also the type of people who tend to do these things.

How porous is the approving manager/chain that someone can request 300kg of gold bars and no one knows why and they just approve it any way.

When it comes to stories involving intelligence agencies I generally assume that I’m not getting the whole or accurate story.

The cover of national security has allowed a certain type of organized crime to proliferate to the point it's breaking society.

I don't think it's connected to this specific event, but there's a lot of lore about the CIA moving gold in/out of Afghanistan, Iraq and others during war time.

They want globalization to make their jobs easier. In no sense do they "need" it. Whether we want a world where the desires of intelligence and finance are blindly prioritized is an open question. For my part the answer is obviously no.

Epstein and Mossad

Not the first

It’s almost certainly grift. If it were official, the arrest would have been scrubbed.

I imagine watches are more liquid than gold bars

I was just looking for something to watch tonight. Thanks for the recommendation!

This is different than that and scant on pertinent details

It says he received it as compensation for expenses, not that it was ever in some government vault. This is additional gold and foreign currency that an agency had, not the reserve.

It then says

> When the C.I.A. conducted a review of where the gold and currency were stashed

Why would they do that if it was compensation for expenses

He wasn't charged for that, and the phrasing doesn't suggest it was supposed to be remitted to the government

if the CIA didn't have a history of being involved in shady shit like this that already explains everything, this would be weird

instead it looks like he's got burned over his necessary use of fibbed identity

$40m+ in an expense account based in gold bars is absolutely crazy. CIA agents must have access to untold resources if this is seen as a somewhat regular 4 month spend. Seems it is, given that they seemingly weren't concerned about the $40+ million being taken out, but where it was being held.

I thought this was baseless speculation, but from TFA:

> [he] asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.

Yeah, this reads like right out of "Burn notice".

There might be a mix up on the details.

The FBI raided the home of John Bolton who was a former National Security Advisor for the first Trump administration. (not directly part of the NSA and definitely not the director of the NSA). Bolton has become a vocal critic of Trump since he was fired in Sept 2019.

Trump's DOJ has a track record of prosecuting Trump's vocal critics. eg. Former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_John_Bolton

There has been no legal action taken against current NSA director General Joshua M. Rudd or his recent predecessor, William J. Hartman

Anna Paulina Luna is the only one claiming that the CIA raided the office of the DNI. No other trustworthy sources are reporting this and there's been no independent verification. Anna Paulina Luna is a lunatic who says outlandish things with no regards to truth.

The DNI, not the NSA.

Because nobody reputable reported on it?

> Who runs this country?

American Thought Control.

Crazy crackpot schizos aren’t the only ones listening to the voices in their heads.

Its nickname since the 1970s has been Criminals in Action, when they were smuggling heroin out of the Golden Triangle to fund covert actions during the Vietnam War.

Is it fragmenting? The FBI has always been in charge of investigating other agencies. The article even notes that this particular investigation was initiated when the CIA director made a referral to the FBI.

According to the article, 303 gold bars worth about $40M.

None of those points match bitcoin. What you are describing is more like tornado cash or similar stuff which are really really banned when interfacing with banks or similar institutions.