Word: stampings
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Just when the CIA thought the scandal season was over, along comes Stamp-scam. Though it has none of the drama of arms-for-hostages trades or covert wars in Central America, this latest caper centers on the appropriation of a valuable rarity: 95 misprinted U.S. postage stamps that could be worth thousands of dollars each...
...Ordinary stamps were then substituted for the valuable ones. Six days later, 85 of the misprints were sold through a New Jersey dealer, Jacques Schiff. (The CIA staffers had attempted to sell 86, but one of the stamps was torn and, consequently, worthless.) A well-known trader of misprinted stamps, Schiff refuses to disclose how much the spooks were paid for their goods. Since then, however, Schiff has brokered three sales of the stamps. In the last transaction, 50 stamps were sold to the Mystic Stamp Co. for nearly $1 million, or $20,000 a stamp...
...nine CIA staffers involved later told investigators for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing that the nine other stamps they acquired were sent out on agency mail. Skeptics, however, believe that each of the employees kept a single stamp for himself. Jim Ellenberg, owner of a stamp- and coin-collecting shop in suburban Washington, insists he recently gained possession of one of the inverted candlestick stamps from a CIA man. Says Bill Bergstrom, office manager of the Schiff firm: "It is obvious one, all or some ((of the CIA workers)) were holding the rest...
...will not say whether it has launched an internal investigation of the stamp switch, and so far there is no indication that the Justice Department has been asked to look into it. But if probers were to find that the nine staffers had illegally converted Government assets for personal use, the workers could face criminal indictment...
...first discovery was of a Star of David etched into the beard of Bernard Revel, a Jewish educator portrayed on a 1986 $1 commemorative stamp. Last week the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing acknowledged a second instance of tiny graffiti: an engraver had hidden a signature on a 1986 issue honoring the hobby of stamp collecting. Still another name was discovered on a 1985 stamp saluting World War I veterans...