The Ex-CIA Official Caught With 303 Gold Bars Is Cutting a Deal. Prosecutors Want to Avoid a Trial Over Classified Files.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The former CIA official whose Virginia home turned out to hold more than $40 million in gold bars has reached a tentative plea agreement with federal prosecutors, according to a joint court filing that asks a judge to push back the indictment deadline so the two sides can finish the deal without a public trial. A federal judge granted the request and extended the deadline to October 8.

David J. Rush was charged in May with a single count of theft of public money. The charge has nothing to do with gold on its face. Prosecutors say Rush fraudulently claimed 744 hours of military leave on his CIA timecards after he had already been honorably discharged from the Navy in 2015, collecting roughly $77,000 he was not owed. They also say he inflated his salary by listing degrees from Clemson University in South Carolina and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York that he never earned, and that he lied about his education and military service on government applications.

What made the case a sensation was the search warrant. When FBI agents went through Rush's home in May, they found 303 gold bars, about $2 million in cash and roughly 35 luxury watches, many of them Rolexes. According to the FBI, Rush had made several requests to the government for large amounts of foreign currency and for tens of millions of dollars in gold bars, describing them as work-related expenses, and he received them. His employer could not identify what the money and gold were supposed to be used for. A Justice Department attorney said during a June hearing that Rush "wasn't supposed to have the gold bars at his home." Rush's own account in court filings was that he "obtained the gold bars from the U.S. government for work-related expenses."

Rush's attorney has called the gold "a sensational tidbit" and argued that the theft charge is unrelated to the precious metals. A judge disagreed on the question of custody: in June, Rush was ordered held pending trial after the court found he posed "a severe flight risk."

The joint filing from the U.S. Attorney's Office and Rush's lawyer does not describe the terms of the tentative agreement. It does say why both sides want one. "A pre-indictment resolution promotes the public interest by conserving government and judicial resources," prosecutors wrote, and both parties said a trial could involve significant litigation over classified material. That is the recurring problem with prosecuting intelligence officers: the evidence needed to explain why a CIA employee was handed gold in the first place is often the evidence the agency least wants aired in open court.

A plea would resolve the criminal case while leaving the central question unanswered in public. The government has never said what a CIA program would need $40 million in physical gold for, why Rush was the person authorized to request it, or how much of it, if any, was ever spent on whatever it was meant for. If the deal is finalized by October 8, Rush would plead to the timesheet charge and be sentenced without a jury ever hearing the rest.