David Rush has been accused of exploiting the spy agency’s elaborate secrecy precautions that strictly limit sensitive information around such top secret programs to only those who “need to know,” these people said.

Rush is accused of creating a sham government contract as part of the program, the sources said, and inviting two of his CIA colleagues to participate in helping run it, they said. One of those colleagues transferred millions of dollars to the invented program, the people familiar with the investigation said.

Because Rush claimed the project was an ultrasecret “special access program,” his co-workers would have been prohibited from speaking about it with other employees, the people familiar with the investigation said. They did not know whether the other employees were aware of the alleged scheme or were unwitting accomplices.

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