The CIA’s Ugly Legacy on Workplace Sexual Violence

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. 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. This case will be retried in front of a jury in Virginia today. 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. 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.