A former spokesman for the DEA, Garrison Courtney, is in federal court in Virginia this morning pleading guilty to a wire-fraud case in which he acknowledged falsely posing as a CIA officer working on a secret program to support covert operations in Africa.
The charging documents are still sealed, but the scheme sounds intense: Forged documents promising people immunity from prosecution, fake contracts, a fake SCIF.
This case is nuts: Courtney acknowledges he persuaded "real public officials" that they had been selected to participate in the secret program and used them to help land contracts with private companies, and that he got officials to let him use government offices.
He has pleaded guilty.
This is just an astonishing fraud. In addition to lying about being a CIA asset, a nonexistent taskforce, fake immunity agreements, etc., Courtney persuaded people that a foreign intelligence service had tried to assassinate him with ricin. 
