A very odd and somewhat alarming story just came out yesterday: a recently fired Senior CIA official was arrested for allegedly helping himself to $40 million worth of gold bars from the CIA.
Most modern corporate offices have snacks in the breakroom so that employees can easily grab some quick calories to keep working instead of leaving the office. It would be a little overboard to walk out of the office with an armful of granola bars or fruit snacks.
But apparently the CIA just has gold bars that can be accessed by CIA agents to use in the normal course of their workday. Maybe it’s like a giant leave-a-penny-take-a-penny tray you find at convenience store counters.
Or maybe it’s for untraceable bribes for domestic or overseas operations.
(Oh wait, the CIA isn’t supposed to be involved in domestic affairs, my mistake.)
Pictured: CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA.
Not pictured: a ton of gold they keep there.
According to NPR, between November and March this agent “requested and received a ‘significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expense…’”
At least now we know that if an agent walks out of Langley with more than $40 million, they’ll probably trigger an investigation and arrest.
Future CIA gold thieves now know to only take $10 or $20 million to avoid suspicion.
That’s a little under 9,000 troy ounces of gold, or over 600 lbs – which is kind of a laughably large amount of metal to be lugging around, even if you do it in batches.
In any event, the CIA apparently has no small amount of gold on hand. We know they recovered $40 million worth – but we don’t even know if that’s the total haul, nor do we know how much gold is just sitting at the CIA.
It’s also extremely odd that they recovered any of this gold at all. If this agent was smart, he would have already moved this gold along or hidden it.
And it seems unlikely that agent sticky fingers managed to swipe all of the CIA’s gold…
Do they have $100 million worth of gold on hand? More? How much more? Where did they get this gold? Is it Treasury gold on loan?
If it’s not, where did they get it? Whose gold is this if not the American government’s – or better put: the American people’s?
Is that our gold being walked out of the CIA?
How much gold is leaving the CIA and for what purpose? Obviously “personal enrichment” is not an approved use for the CIA’s gold – but what would be?
Lots of questions and few answers. Given what we know about the CIA, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever get any answers. For one, the CIA budget falls within the purview of the National Intelligence Program, which is entirely classified.
We can only guess, and make educated observations.
My conclusion? If the CIA owns a bunch of gold and is using it for covert operations, that’s a leading indicator. Gold is at the center of our most secretive spy agency…
That’s a major admission in and of itself.
Have a great weekend.
Best,
Garrett Goggin, CFA, CMT
Lead Analyst and Founder, Golden Portfolio
P.S. Gold is centered not just at the CIA and its operations, but also with a much larger, global conflict between the US and China. I call this the US Gold War and it’s been ratcheting up for years – heading towards only one likely conclusion. My thoughts on this conflict available in this free report.