For more than half a century, the Central Intelligence Agency has reportedly made cash payments-evocatively termed "ghost money "-to high officials from Afghanistan to Zaire. At best, ghost money advances U.S. interests in gathering information, influencing foreign governments, and bolstering friendly leaders. But it also carries risks. Despite the scale of these payments, no academic literature has squarely addressed the collateral consequences of ghost money. This Article ventures into that gap by revealing the dangers ghost money poses specifically for U.S. anticorruption efforts. First, it presents a typology of U.S. payments made in the name of national security. Then, it lays out three collateral effects such payments have on the fight against corruption: (1) reinforcing clientelist systems, (2) undermining U.S. anticorruption messaging, and (3) weakening the enforcement of laws against corporate bribery, including multiple provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Finally, it engages with the recent literature on executive control of the U.S. intelligence services by proposing institutional structures to govern ghost money, including cost-benefit analysis, mechanisms to ensure presidential political accountability, and congressional review. Such proposals would better align intelligenceand its multi-billion-dollar budget-with anticorruption law and policy.