A lecture by the highest transgender officer in the armed forces; a celebration of Loving Day and sessions on equity assurance training.
A large number of flyers obtained by DailyMail.com from CIA officers expose the extent of the agency’s work on ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’, prompting new accusations that it is being distracted from its core mission : protecting Americans from foreign threats.
But Trump transition insiders say those concerns will be directly addressed by John Ratcliffe, who was picked by the president-elect to lead the agency and will be questioned by senators on Wednesday about his plans.
“I suspect Ratcliffe will come like a wrecking ball to the woke deep staters,” said a source familiar with his plans.
“The mission is all he cares about.
‘No more politicized intelligence products. No more social experiments.
“Nothing and no one that distracts from the mission of gathering foreign intelligence and keeping Americans safe.”
The list of targets is recorded in more than twenty flyers collected by disgruntled employees.
DailyMail.com received a series of flyers for events at CIA headquarters from serving officers. This includes a lecture by the highest transgender officer
Some include the logo: ‘DEIA Enables Mission’, suggesting that diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility enhance the CIA’s ability to do its work
John Ratcliffe served as Trump’s director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021. He has filed to run the CIA and will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee
For Pride Month last year, CIA officers were invited to a lecture by Adm. Rachel Levine, deputy secretary at Health and Human Services, the first openly transgender four-star officer in the armed forces.
A year earlier, CIA headquarters hosted a week of events to mark “Loving Day,” the anniversary of a 1967 court ruling that allowed interracial marriages in Virginia.
Then there are support groups for people going through divorce; ‘Orange Shirt Day’, to commemorate Indigenous people affected by their experiences in residential schools; ‘intentional parenting’ sessions; and even lessons in importing dogs from overseas posts.
Officers are invited to join the Multicultural Inclusion Exchange or the Peer Support Cadre.
Some carry the slogan “DEIA makes mission possible,” suggesting that diversity, equity, inclusivity and accessibility help the CIA do its job.
The events may be appropriate for a consumer-oriented hipster coffee shop, but not for agents whose primary focus is completing the mission, said a former CIA paramilitary operations officer.
“We are the spearhead of the Agency and we have no time for this nonsense,” he said. “And that’s it: nonsense.”
The issue will come up Wednesday when Ratcliffe appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee for his confirmation hearing.
He is expected to address the topic of the CIA’s DEI work in his opening statement, while outlining his broader goals and ambitions.
The kites
He is among a string of Trump appointees who have pledged to tackle what they see as a “woke” agenda.
At the same time, the private sector has responded to the election by jettisoning DEI policies. Meta and Amazon are among the companies scaling back or phasing out diversity programs introduced in the wake of protests against the 2020 police killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans.
The CIA also hosted a series of events titled “The Black Experience,” where the public could listen to what was billed as a “diverse generational panel.”
‘We are an agency that has to operate in many different landscapes around the world. “Having a diverse workforce is critical to our mission,” an agency spokesperson said.
‘It’s not only the right thing to do, but it’s also the smart thing to do if we take full advantage of the wealth of our own society, whether that’s ethnicity, language, gender or whatever, because that will push us to have a stronger intelligence service.”
A 20-year veteran, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the current approach is putting the cart before the horse.
‘We used to say that diversity is our strength. I understand that,” he said.
‘But when diversity became the overriding emphasis, it ended up like the old rule of convoys, where ships traveled at the speed of the slowest boat.
“And that’s what we ended up with.”
One of the Trump aides in the running to become deputy director of the CIA has previously expressed concerns about its direction.
Cliff Sims, deputy director of national intelligence for strategy and communications during Trump’s first term, described his shock when he first walked into the CIA cafeteria and saw a poster that read “Trans Lives Are Human Lives.”
“Even here, I thought to myself, when I think about how someone had taken the time to protect America’s security from dangerous foreign actors to promote the latest version of identity politics,” he wrote in his recent book “The Darkness Isn’t overcome.”
DailyMail.com received more than 20 flyers
He is now part of the Trump transition landing team at the agency.
Peter Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to lead the Defense Department, was chosen in part because of his attacks on DEI.
“DEI widens disparities, creates grievances and excludes anyone who will not bow to the cultural Marxist revolution sweeping through the Pentagon,” he wrote in his book “The War on Warriors.”
“Forget DEI. The acronym should be DIE or IED. It will kill our military worse than any IED ever could.”
The CIA was panned early in the Biden administration for a recruitment video that featured a recruit who described himself as an “intersectional cisgender millennial.”
The unnamed CIA officer, 36, tells viewers she is “unapologetically me,” adding that she suffers from “imposter syndrome” but now rejects “misplaced patriarchal ideas about what a woman can or should be, to internalize.’
Former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright tweeted: “The CIA used to be about missions to a country. (I speak from experience).
“Now it’s about demanding – and getting – accommodation to repair an emotional wound or advance a personal agenda. America is less safe with this new CIA, and more dangerously political.”