Great perspective Ross and I would love to weigh in here as well. Although I see no connections to the topic of UFO Legacy Programs in this case, I think this article by WaPo is an INVALUABLE example of how DoD/IC elements can use Special Access Programs (SAPs) or Controlled Access Programs (CAPs) to hide from oversight.
The article states that Agency Officer Rush essentially built out his own Continuity of Government (COG) SAP to steal $40m in gold bars, $2m in cash, and dozens of luxury watches. This endeavour involved Rush swindling a defense contractor through a fraudulent government contract.
According to the article, Rush fabricated much of his past prior to CIA, including Navy service and college degrees, and somehow fooled CIA security to get hired... miraculously not getting flagged in a series of lengthy and rigorous background checks, blood tests, psychological evaluations, polygraphs, military records search, etc.
I see several issues here and think it far more likely this COG SAP was a coordinated CIA DS&T and Directorate of Operations (DO) activity built to hide from oversight, and Officer Rush is the scapegoat here.
First off, although there is a non-zero possibility, there is nearly a zero percent chance that Rush was able to hoodwink CIA security and "slip through the cracks". What is more likely here, in my opinion, Rush's CV is data masked to match his living alias, aka he had a much longer history with the Agency and operated with standard CIA practice of Non-Official Cover or a NOC.
Second, I find it extremely unbelievable that an officer was able to carve out his own basically waived COG (Continuity of Government) SAPs. Establishment, governance, and the lifecycle of a SAP generally involve numerous oversight mechanisms to ensure the need for a SAP, confirm that there is no SAP duplication across departments/services, etc.
COG SAPs, on the other hand, have a very similar structure to UFO Legacy Program SAPs due to a few massaging techniques that waive all congressional and budgetary reporting requirements. These are NOT easy to make and basically have to be spun up at a white house/NSC level due to some interesting molding of Title 10 and Title 50 to get the SAP to exist in a grey area.
So again, I contest that this activity was likely a CIA DS&T/DO COG SAP built for covert operations outside of traditional oversight.... Perhaps in this case, due to the presence of gold bars, overseas trafficking or influence operations.
Indeed, this situation parallels the revelations of 1983's Yellow Fruit USAP (Unacknowledged Special Access Program) out of the Army's Special Operations Division or SOD which directly led to numerous government oversight reforms on National Programs.
Yellow Fruit operated to provide operational security and counterintelligence for CIA Central American missions (Nicaraguan Contras) and "other Army Classified Operations".
When Yellow Fruit was revealed through a series of normal audits, Lt. Col. Duncan was the fall guy. Army Chiefs of Staff were apparently never read into this activity and were shocked they had no idea what was going on in their own Army!
Col. Duncan served on the staff for the Army Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ASCI). For the security of Yellow Fruit, Duncan performed a staged retirement so the activity could operate outside the Pentagon and within a "black" commercial cover company. In this instance, Duncan would serve the Army SOD's Yellow Fruit USAP through his corporate cover cut-out company, "Business Security International" aka BSI.
Both Army SOD and Yellow Fruit were disbanded with the revelations of Yellow Fruit, and Col. Duncan was one of the few men punished, receiving a full court-martial and a 10-year sentence at Leavenworth!
To state again, I do not think this Agency scandal detailed in WaPo has anything to do with UFO programs; however, I do think it is an incredibly valuable case study.
The events outlined in this article and the Yellow Fruit saga closely parallel and give a firm conceptual understanding of what I speak on oh so often - UFO Legacy Program Secrecy with COG SAP constructs (coming soon), avoidance of traditional oversight channels, NOCs and Datamasked program members, corporate cut-outs, misappropriation and illegal handling of funds, and so much more!
This article is fantastic and I highly recommend giving it a read.
Ironic to read the
@washingtonpost today reporting that charged
@CIA officer David Rush Rush allegedly misused a SAP - Special Access Program - to defraud US taxpayers, hiding the millions of dollars he allegedly stole behind a fraudulent Government contract. This is exactly what David Grusch alleges has been happening with legacy UAP programs concealed from Congress.
Rush is said to have “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.
It's the perfect scam because even intelligence personnel with the highest security clearance cannot access an individual SAP without specific authorization.
Rush worked in the CIA's Directorate of Science & Technology, the same office where the Office of Global Access (OGA) has allegedly been playing a key role in the retrieval of NHI tech. His alleged fraud shows just how OGA may well have diverted public funds illegally from other contracts to fund covert operations without public accountability to Congress.
washingtonpost.com/national-…