The CIA’s Ugly Legacy on Workplace Sexual Violence – The Dispatch

Last month yet another Central Intelligence Agency officer was convicted for a workplace sexual assault on a female agency colleague

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

1. Last month yet another Central Intelligence Agency officer was convicted for a workplace sexual assault on a female agency colleague, one that happened in front of more than a dozen witnesses.
2. It followed another former officer’s conviction in a bench trial last year in a similar attack, in which a female trainee was strangled in a stairwell at CIA headquarters while resisting her colleague’s advances.
3. This case will be retried in front of a jury in Virginia today.
4. Last month another agency officer was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drugging and molesting dozens—perhaps hundreds—of women and filming his depraved acts.
5. These court proceedings come on the heels of a CIA inspector general report demanded by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigation, on the agency’s epidemic of workplace sexual violence.

I’ve had the honor of representing several female CIA officers who bravely came forward with criminal complaints of sexual assault at the hands of agency colleagues

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

• The first officer to inform Congress about this crisis was soon fired for obviously pretextual reasons, and her claim of unlawful retaliation is under investigation by the CIA’s inspector general.
• She settled, on confidential terms, a lawsuit for Civil Rights Act and Privacy Act violations.
• Yet another officer in a sensitive post, who interacted regularly with the most senior CIA officials, felt compelled to resign in protest at how badly the agency mishandled her assault.

Beginning from a very low standard, and only under intense congressional pressure via reforms mandated in the bipartisan 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, has the CIA made limited forward progress regarding workplace sexual violence.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

The agency no longer helps assailants within its ranks dodge local law enforcement attempts to serve them with orders of protection

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

• The CIA also no longer routinely threatens victims’ security clearances or assignments to discourage them from filing employment discrimination complaints or seeking needed mental health assistance.
• This progress is long overdue, but it’s progress.

Yet the agency still refuses victims’ requests to have their security-cleared lawyers present for meetings with CIA investigators

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

• It also still insists on videotaping victims’ interviews with investigators—even though the only people who benefit are the accused perpetrators’ defense counsel, who use them to cross-examine victims.
• CIA security personnel still interrogate victims about whether they disclosed classified information in reporting sex crimes, and in one case, bizarrely polygraphed a female officer who’d been sexually assaulted about whether she’d ever been raped, which is irrelevant to her suitability for holding a security clearance.
• In one recent case the agency unit responsible for taking sexual assault complaints even filed a personnel action against a victim whom they considered to be too pointed in the manner of making her complaint.

The CIA is forbidden from wielding general police powers, or interfering with domestic law enforcement, including by state and local authorities, and most CIA personnel lack relevant criminal investigative experience

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

• Yet the agency still improperly allows itself to decide whether to notify law enforcement of sex crimes complaints involving its officers.
• In fact, until recently, the agency refused to report to law enforcement what it considered to be mere misdemeanors.

Whether misconduct is a crime, and if so whether it’s a felony or a misdemeanor, are legal decisions properly made by prosecutors’ offices and grand juries

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

• It’s not clear why the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, which is commendably aggressive in prosecuting national security cases involving counterintelligence, export controls and terrorism, appears to habitually defer to the agency regarding this core law enforcement responsibility when it comes to sex crimes.
• Fortunately for CIA women, good local police and prosecutors in northern Virginia are now rising to the task; unfortunately, agency policies continue—unnecessarily and perhaps deliberately—to make these investigations and prosecutions more difficult.

Meanwhile, male CIA officers under active investigation by law enforcement for felony sex crimes are permitted to remain in operational postings abroad

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

• This is despite glaring counterintelligence threats posed by their criminal liability exposure—which could lead them to defect to an adversary’s intelligence service rather than face decades in prison in the U.S.—and the obvious physical safety dangers such predators pose to female colleagues, liaison partners, sources, and host country civilians.

In 2024, it’s impossible for the United States to conduct espionage well without talented women

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

• About 3 in 5 American university graduates now are female, a general trend that’s even stronger at the elite colleges and graduate programs from which the CIA typically seeks recruits.
• Beyond that, some human intelligence sources are more easily recruited or handled by female case officers, in cultural circumstances in which a particular cover for status or action simply fits better on a woman.
• Yet the persistence of sex crimes within the agency harms the recruitment, morale, and retention of good female officers.

The same high standards that rightly apply to any police department in America ought to apply to the CIA, too

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

• The situation warrants a Justice Department civil rights investigation of the agency’s response to sex crimes, and depending on the results of that probe, the possible appointment of an independent federal monitor.
• That monitor—likely a former prosecutor, and ideally a woman—would report to DOJ and perhaps even, pursuant to equal employment opportunity litigation, a federal judge.
• This monitor’s reports should be shared with CIA’s congressional oversight committees and the press and the public.

The CIA clearly cannot solve this problem internally, and will not solve it on its own

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Gender Equality, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

• The agency needs outside expert help to fix its sexual violence problem.
• CIA women, patriots performing often hazardous duties for the United States, deserve no less.

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators in the Article

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

• SDG 5: Gender Equality – The article discusses workplace sexual violence against female CIA officers, highlighting the need for gender equality and a safe working environment.
• SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions – The article mentions the need for justice, proper handling of sexual assault cases, and the involvement of law enforcement.

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

• SDG 5.2: Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres – The article highlights the need to address workplace sexual violence against female CIA officers.
• SDG 16.3: Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all – The article discusses the need for proper handling of sexual assault cases and involvement of law enforcement.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

• Indicator for SDG 5.2: Number of cases of workplace sexual violence reported and properly investigated within the CIA.
• Indicator for SDG 16.3: Number of sexual assault cases involving CIA officers reported to and properly handled by law enforcement.

Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Source: thedispatch.com