A CIA official got nabbed with 40 million dollars in stolen gold bars sitting in his Virginia house. Which raises the obvious question: how do you just... keep that? How does that not get noticed for however long he's been holding it? The "you can just ask for things" framing on the original post is doing some work here. Theft, corruption at the agency level, a guy living in a federal suburb with a fortune in gold. That's not asking. That's taking. Tells you something about what happens when you give people access to black budgets and classified operations. No accountability, no audit trail that sticks. Just a guy with gold.