Just last month, a Central Intelligence Agency agent was convicted of a workplace sexual assault of a female intelligence colleague, an event that took place in front of more than a dozen witnesses. It followed the conviction of another former officer last year at a trial of a similar attack, in which a female trainee was strangled in a stairwell at CIA headquarters as she resisted her colleague’s advances. This case will be retried today before a jury in Virginia. Last month, another agency agent was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drugging and molesting dozens – perhaps hundreds – of women and filming his depraved acts. These legal proceedings follow a report from the CIA Inspector General, demanded by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigation, into the agency’s epidemic of workplace sexual violence.
I have had the honor of representing several female CIA officers who courageously came forward with criminal complaints of sexual assault by colleagues in the agency. Telling the truth came at a high price for their careers. The first official to brief Congress on this crisis was quickly fired for apparent reasons, and her claim of unlawful retaliation is under investigation by the CIA’s Inspector General. She settled, on confidential terms, a lawsuit alleging violations of the Civil Rights Act and the Privacy Act. Yet another officer in a sensitive post who was in regular contact with top CIA officials felt forced to resign in protest over the agency’s poor handling of her attack.
Starting at a very low level, and only under intense pressure from Congress through reforms mandated in the bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act of 2024, the CIA has made limited progress on sexual violence in the workplace.
Until recently, for example, the desk as policy threatened victims with prosecution for unauthorized disclosure of classified information if they informed police of their attackers’ CIA association or identified colleagues as witnesses to their attacks without agency approval. This was legally and in effect witness tampering in a crime: the deliberate attempt to intimidate someone to delay or prevent the communication of information to law enforcement authorities regarding the potential commission of a criminal offense, such as assault on federal property. In the case of the stairwell victim, in my view, agency misconduct went beyond witness tampering and obstruction of justice when CIA lawyers unlawfully leaked her workplace communications to her attacker, who used them in a botched attempt to intimidate her into testifying against him. his criminal trial.
The agency no longer helps attackers within its ranks evade efforts by local police to serve them protection orders. The CIA also no longer routinely threatens victims’ security clearances or assignments to discourage them from filing employment discrimination complaints or seeking necessary mental health care. This progress is long overdue, but it is progress.
Yet the agency continues to deny victims’ requests to have their security-certified attorneys present at meetings with CIA investigators. The country also still insists that victims’ interviews with investigators be videotaped – even though the only people who benefit from this are the defense of accused perpetrators, who use them to cross-examine victims. CIA security personnel still question victims about whether they disclosed classified information when reporting sex crimes, and in one case they bizarrely took a polygraph of a female officer who had been sexually assaulted, about the question whether she had ever been abused. rapedwhich is not relevant to her eligibility to hold a security clearance. In a recent case, the department responsible for handling sexual assault complaints even initiated a personnel action against a victim who they found to be overly strident in the way she filed her complaint.
The CIA is prohibited from exercising general police powers or interfering with domestic law enforcement, including by state and local authorities, and most CIA personnel lack relevant criminal investigative experience. Yet the agency still improperly allows itself to decide whether to notify law enforcement of complaints of sex crimes involving its officers. Until recently, the agency even refused to report to law enforcement authorities what it considered mere crimes.
Whether misconduct is a crime, and if so, whether it is a misdemeanor or a misdemeanor, are legal decisions properly made by prosecutors and grand juries. It is not clear why the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, which has been commendably aggressive in prosecuting national security cases involving counterintelligence, export controls, and terrorism, typically appears to shirk this core sex law enforcement responsibility to set. crimes. Fortunately for CIA women, the good local police and prosecutors in northern Virginia are now taking on this task; Unfortunately, agency policies—unnecessarily and perhaps intentionally—continue to make these investigations and prosecutions more difficult.
Meanwhile, male CIA operatives under active investigation by law enforcement authorities for sex crimes will be allowed to remain in operational posts abroad. This is despite the blatant counterintelligence threats posed by their exposure to criminal liability – which could lead them to defect to an adversary’s intelligence agency rather than spend decades in prison in the US – and the obvious physical security risks that such predators pose to female colleagues, liaisons, sources, and host country citizens.
I was proud to serve for six years as a CIA case officer, one of many young professionals who left their civilian careers after September 11. In my opinion, albeit now from the outside looking in, and as an attorney in private practice, the agency still doesn’t get it right on this important issue.
Crucially, the agency still claims that most information about sex crimes is classified, which is clearly not the case. The executive order authorizing the entire classification system specifically prohibits declaring anything secret because it is criminal or embarrassing to a government agency. Remarkably, the CIA insists that its inspector general’s 648-page report on sexual harassment and assault is somehow classified. When the agency is confronted with tough questions about sexual violence in the workplace, bureaucrats respond weakly — the CIA “takes this very seriously” and “acts quickly” to “ensure a safe work environment” — rather than coming up with action plans.
One of my clients was sexually assaulted by her supervisor, whose counsel admitted to being drunk in the office in the afternoon, in a conference room of a clandestine agency. Her victim impact statement, made in court in September, described experiencing “a Byzantine and ultimately futile process” within the CIA following her attack. Her attacker was allowed to complete a months-long transition program, retire and retain his security clearances – despite misconduct confirmed by witnesses that later resulted in his conviction for a violent crime. Another officer convicted of a workplace assault on a female colleague was similarly allowed to retain his clearance and, relatedly, a Navy Reserve intelligence post.
Despite pressure from Congress, the press, and most of the agency’s own workforce, CIA management under Director William Burns simply still cannot provide a work environment for female agents that is free of violent sexual predators .
If a local law enforcement jurisdiction in America had a similarly poor record of mistreating female sex crime complainants while failing to punish male perpetrators, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division would investigate to the police station and the public prosecutor’s office. I’m biased as a native New Yorker, but I think the New York Police Department is the best in our country. But even the NYPD’s famed Special Victims Division recently came under scrutiny by the DOJ Civil Rights Division and local U.S. Attorneys regarding whether the NYPD engaged in gender bias. If the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division finds that a police department has engaged in a pattern and practice of misconduct, a federal supervisor of that law enforcement agency is often appointed for a specified period of time. Again using the NYPD as an example, it operated under federal scrutiny for years regarding alleged racial profiling in its “stop, question, and frisk” practices.
The same high standards that rightfully apply to every police department in America should also apply to the CIA. The situation warrants a Justice Department civil rights investigation into the agency’s response to sex crimes, and depending on the results of that investigation, the possible appointment of an independent federal monitor. That monitor — likely a former prosecutor, and ideally a woman — would report to the Justice Department and perhaps even, under equal employment opportunity lawsuits, to a federal judge. This monitor’s reports should be shared with the CIA’s Congressional oversight committees, the press, and the public.
In 2024, it will be impossible for the United States to spy effectively without talented women. About three in five U.S. college graduates are now women, an overall trend that is even stronger at the elite colleges and graduate programs where the CIA typically seeks recruits. In addition, some sources of human intelligence may be more easily recruited or handled by female caseworkers, in cultural circumstances where a particular cover of status or action simply suits a woman better. Yet the persistence of sex crimes within the agency hurts recruitment, morale and retention of good female officers. As my client stated in court: “When he put his hand up my skirt, I felt myself losing my self-confidence, becoming ‘smaller’ and feeling like I no longer had a voice.” Unfortunately, she is not alone in her feelings.
When I was in the army, a wizened old general said to a group of young officers preparing for an inspection, “Guys, a cat can’t skin itself.” He was right. The CIA clearly cannot and will not solve this problem internally. The agency needs help from outside experts to solve the problem of sexual violence. CIA women, patriots who often perform dangerous tasks for the United States, deserve no less.
Read more at De Uitzending
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