Author: Jenna McLaughlin
Date: September 8, 2017

[...]

In 1995, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order that prevented intelligence officers from losing their clearances on the basis of their sexuality, kicking off what was to be a long and hard-fought shift in agency culture.

In March 2013, John Brennan was appointed director under President Barack Obama, and the new CIA head moved to make diversity and employee rights a priority. Senior leaders competed for spots to speak at employee gay pride events and accompanied the director to diversity events and celebrations.

While embraced by many, Brennan’s policies drew the ire of right-wing publications like the National Review, which claimed his diversity and inclusion strategy was just a way to make the agency more "politically correct."

[...]

"Things changed quickly with President Donald Trump's pick for CIA director, Mike Pompeo. A West Point graduate and former small-business owner, he never made a secret of his conservative social viewpoints during his time as a lawmaker. He has visited college campuses to talk about his disapproval of same-sex marriage, arguing that "the strength of these families having a father and a mother is the ideal condition for childbearing." He has sponsored several pieces of legislation that would have weakened the rights of gay couples and supported organizations that champion those same beliefs.

[...]

Michael Weinstein, a former Air Force officer who founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, says he has been seeing increasing complaints from those inside the intelligence community. Weinstein’s foundation, which focuses on preventing religious pressure from creeping into the military, also has clients in the intelligence community, mostly from the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

According to Weinstein, agency employees don’t want to go public with their complaints because of fear of retribution or being labeled as "leakers." They don’t typically file formal complaints within the government. But certain things are making them especially uncomfortable, such as officials signing off with the phrase “have a blessed day."

That's something "straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale," Weinstein said.

"We are unaware of any such complaints being registered at CIA," the spokesperson said.

The foundation's intelligence community clients have doubled since the July 2016 Republican National Convention, Weinstein said. While he wouldn't specify the number of intelligence community clients he works with, Weinstein said it was in the hundreds — the majority of them working out of Langley. "In the intelligence community, we see supervisors wanting to hold Bible studies during duty hours [and] inviting lower-ranking individuals to their homes for Bible studies," Weinstein told FP.

Whether it's pressure to attend Bible study or concerns that the annual holiday party will become a Christmas party, agency employees feel on edge, according to Weinstein. "Our clients at CIA feel extremely isolated in a way they have not felt before," he said.

The CIA insists that "Pompeo and his senior leaders" have their own view of diversity. "They demonstrate their commitment to the diversity required to achieve that mission in the most important way possible: by living the creed of crushing our adversaries by hiring and training the best spies the world will ever know."