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 secretivesham program, effectively cultivating them as perhaps unwitting accomplices andpreventing them from talking to others about it. Hepersuaded one of them to transfer millions of dollars to the program via a government contract that was also fraudulent, they said. “He made up a contract,” one of the people said. [...] 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.
There's a fun way that "Continuity of Government" can mean "setting up an 'emergency' dictatorship" which is interesting to think about in conjunction to a mysterious "intelligence-gathering program" this guy was apparently a part of.
