After the Cold War ended, a series of CIA directors and Congressional oversights urged the institution to diversify its ranks after the September 11 attack.
This drive had little to do with a sense of racial justice, civil rights, or equity. Rather, it was an insane national security decision.
Agency leaders have come to believe that having an analyst from a set of backgrounds leads to better conclusions. Culturally knowledgeable officers will see what others may miss. Case Officers reflecting American diversity move more easily about foreign cities without being detected.
“If there's a place where there's a clear business case for diversity, it's in the CIA and the Intelligence Email Agency,” said Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, a longtime senior member of the Senate Intelligence Email Committee. “You have to have spies all over the world in every country. They can't all become white. Otherwise, our intelligence collection will suffer.”
But once focusing on the importance of diversity in agents faces new pressures. Under the Trump administration, the CIA tried to dismantle recruitment programs, particularly those that tried to bring racial and ethnic minorities into the organization.
John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA, says these steps are to create a colour brand organization that focuses solely on people's employment and promotion based on merit.
Diversity adoption advocates say the fight to integrate agencies is abandoned when it is only partially completed. In the 1980s, white men met 90% of the highest leadership positions. These numbers began to fall 10 years later as agencies were hired, promoted women and minorities were hired and promoted.
Recruitment helped, but it didn't become a spying agency that looked as accurate as America. Ten years ago, when the agency last released detailed figures, more women were rising to top jobs. However, only a quarter of agents was made up of people from racial or ethnic minority backgrounds.
Critics of the Trump administration fear that without the aggressive recruitment of minorities, the CIA will not be able to work secretly in any country in the world and carry out its mission to steal US secrets.
Not only did Ratcliffe shut down his diversity recruitment efforts, he also began firing executives assigned to them. Other high-ranking CIA officials argued that officers would be allowed to transfer to other jobs at the agency, but they were rejected by Mr. Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe cited an order to roll back President Trump's diversity, equity and comprehensive initiatives.
Suddenly, even those who were assigned to help find the next generation of spy handlers – who were primarily hired at white colleges – were in the chopping block.
CIA spokesman Liz Lyon defended the decision.
“The CIA will be the ultimate meritocracy to hire, hire, empower and retain executives who are focused on our mission to recruit spies and better collect foreign intelligence agencies than any other intelligence agencies in the world,” she said.
The federal judge suspended the dismissal, set up a temporary injunction, then ordered the agency to hear appeals and consider officers for other positions. Last week, the government appealed the judge's order.
Advocates for fired officers argue that there is no reason to let them go. They were not human resources or diversity employment experts. They were spies chosen for an initiative that was important to the previous administration.
“We don't have DEI executives. The CIA has only intelligence agents,” said Darrell Brocker, a former CIA executive who leads the agency's training efforts.
The first Trump administration was not hostile to efforts to diversify institutions. As the first woman to lead the agency, under Gina Haspel, director for most of Trump's first term, the CIA continued to recruit diverse candidates.
In 2020, the agency created its first TV streaming ad, showing women and minorities that the agency rated inclusiveness, according to one staff member at the time.
The one-minute ad shows a group of executives who have people of color, women and white people brought to their agencies. The veteran employees who lecture to recruits are black. Language experts are from South Asians. The senior executive ordering overseas business is a woman. And the case officer who performs brush passes on the source of the field is a black woman.
The CIA is currently creating new recruiting videos. It focuses on technology and, according to those who saw it, it introduces a whiter group of officers.
It is not the first withdrawal from diversity in the history of the American Intelligence Report. A spy organization that preceded the CIA's precious diversity, just as its successors did not in the early days.
Major Gen. William J. Donovan, director of the Department of Strategic Services, the agency's predecessor, recruited women and black Americans to become one of the “glorious amateurs” who were conducting secret operations during World War II.
In his speech after the OSS was closed, and before the CIA was replaced, General Donovan highlighted the diversity of the groups he had gathered.
“We've come to the end of an extraordinary experiment,” he said. “This experiment was to determine whether a group of Americans, which constitute a cross-section of racial origin, ability, temperament and talent, could endanger encounters with long-standing, trained, enemy organizations.”
The Department of Defense has begun purges of materials to celebrate the diversity of armed services, but the CIA has not begun compiling its history. The agency's website still has pages highlighting the quote from General Donovan and the contributions of black, Japanese-American, Hispanic and female executives.
“Bill Donovan realized diversity is our strength,” Brocker said.
However, when the CIA was founded in 1947, General Donovan's commitment to diverse power was not carried over.
“In spite of Donovan's best measures, it was basically 'OK Little Ladies, back in the kitchen,'” Brocker said.
It was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall that changes began on a massive scale.
John McLaughlin, former assistant director of the agency, said perceptions of agency needs have begun to change.
“From that point on, it was generally understood that diversity wasn't just a good one, it's a business requirement,” McLaughlin said. “We really needed someone who could fit in with different parts of the world and didn't look like me. I blend in with Ireland, but that's not helpful to anyone.”
The push for a more diverse workforce has intensified after the September 11 attacks as the Middle East and terrorism became a top priority. Congressional members criticize the institution for not enough speakers in Arabic, Dali and Pashto, and there are too few executives focusing on the Middle East and Central Asia.
McLaughlin said the CIA brought in analysts who have in-depth academic knowledge, as well as family ties and cultural knowledge about the countries and societies they studied.
Teams of executives, including various experiences and backgrounds, are more proficient at reading between the boundaries of declarations from authoritarian governments, and are able to better recognize cultural differences in the way others express themselves.
“The point is, if someone has grown up in a different culture, or at least experienced it, they're going to have a different perspective,” McLaughlin said. “And you want different perspectives in the room.”
Not everyone buys the argument that Chinese people will make better case officers in Beijing than anyone else.
While running the CIA's Near East division, retired senior secret services officer Daniel Hoffman said he worked hard to eliminate promotions and potential discrimination bias and ensure the promotion was based on merit.
It created a stronger, more diverse agency, he said.
But recruiting spies overseas and stealing secrets is all about good trade and language capabilities, Hoffman said.
Hoffman, who built up sway in four languages while working for the CIA, said the agency has an impressive record of training non-Chinese officers in America to master the Mandarin.
For Hoffman, promoting people simply because they were women or came from a minority background was counterproductive, but he ensured that no one was suppressed because of gender, ethnicity, or gender, reflecting the country's core values and strengthening the CIA.
“We need the best people in our agency,” Hoffman said. “We need to hire and promote the best people without quick bias.”
Brocker said he would not oppose the idea that talented executives can receive training in excellent commercial and language skills. However, he said that the most effective stations he served had a diverse group of executives.
He grew up in Okinawa and served in Korea while serving in the Air Force. When he came to the CIA in 1990, he wanted to tackle Asian issues. He spent his first few months as a Soviet weapons and tactics analyst specializing in North Korea.
He intended to create a career as an Asian professional until he met William Mosebay Jr.
“This guy knew more about Africa than anyone I'd ever met,” Brocker said. Mosebey taught us how to get African leaders over the phone, hire a diverse executive bench and employ all sorts of sources.
“It changed my life as much as I didn't want to be a black guy going to Africa after meeting Bill Mosebay,” Brocker said.
White Mr. Mosebey believes in the importance of having people with many perspectives in his station, and has convinced Mr. Brocker to join his team.
“Black officers in the African department could easily blend in than white officers of the past, but we have always had a good blend of people: black, white, male, female,” Brocker said. “I served at many stations. I've never served where they weren't there without another black officer.”
The former official said it was essentially the reason the CIA tried to pursue diversity. Relying on the competitive advantages offered by American society.
“This isn't kunbaya,” McLaughlin said. “In this context, the overall idea of awakening is ridiculous. It's not good to have diversity. That's a business requirement.”
