Re: Watercoolered: The CIA's Double Secret Probation

On Oct 29, 11:58 am, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Women need to find more suitable employment, because they can't
recruit agents in the field.

One woman was investigated and ultimately forced to leave, allegedly
for not admitting to a relationship with a foreign national. The CIA
has forbidden her from discussing the matter, but others familiar with
the case note that such liaisons are hardly uncommon-and are not
usually career enders for men. Quite the opposite, much hanky and
panky gets covered by checking out the safe house with a woman to
create a plausible cover.

There's a total lack of interest by any CIA director in what the
Christ their own security people are doing. And there is a fear to
change anything because Congress will go ballistic."

MotherJones.com
Watercoolered: The CIA's Double Secret Probation
Valerie Plame was just the latest woman to run up against Langley's
Kafkaesque workplace culture.

Laura Rozen
October 25 , 2007

As she walks to her table at a Georgetown restaurant, Janine Brookner
looks pleasant, harmless, vaguely academic; with her blond bob and
cream pantsuit, you'd figure her for a literature professor. But only
until she starts to talk about her long tenure as a spook-and her
second career as the legal nemesis of the CIA.

In 1994, after a quarter century with the Agency and several top
international assignments, Brookner found herself under investigation
by the CIA's inspector general on what she says were bogus charges-
among them being a lush and "sexual pro­vo­ca­teur"-leveled by a
subordinate she had disciplined. The probe led nowhere; when the story
made news, Brookner's bosses even went on TV to defend her. But by
then Brookner had left the Agency and sued; she won a settlement and
used it to pay for law school. Now the diminutive, sixtysomething
attorney is bringing the full weight of her experience to bear in
representing more than two dozen current and former female CIA
officers in a class-action lawsuit alleging rampant gender
discrimination. But the broader problem, Brookner says, is a
dysfunctional workplace culture that uses the cloak of national
security to insulate itself from demands for reform. "They hide behind
secrecy," Brookner says. "The CIA doesn't have any watchdog."

There is no union or employee association at the Agency; it is largely
outside the purview of most federal investigative agencies such as the
Government Accountability Office; and Congress rarely takes an
interest in its internal workings. Many employees-especially in the
clandestine service-cannot talk to outsiders, even close family, about
the details of their work. If their security clearance comes under
scrutiny, or if they have a discrimination complaint, they are
discouraged from hiring an outside lawyer.

"If an Agency employee wants to get a lawyer, technically, you need
permission," says Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specializes in representing
national security workers. "The Agency will tell the employee, 'We can
deal with this internally. It will make it worse for you if you get
outside legal counsel.' If you are a covert employee, you are supposed
to go to the security officer in the CIA Office of General Counsel and
say, 'I want to go talk to this lawyer.'" Zaid's clients can't bring
him into the office without the Agency's express permission and can't
show him any documents-including unclassified emails and memos
relevant to their case-without official clearance. Other parts of the
national security apparatus, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency,
don't have such restrictions, Zaid notes. "Most of my clients are in
the intelligence community, military, or law enforcement," he says.
"The CIA's Office of General Counsel has the worst attitude of all."

"Secrecy aggravates whatever existing dysfunctions there may be,"
agrees Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a
close observer of the intelligence community. "It isolates the
offender and the victim, and it insulates the whole system. There are
fewer people you can talk to without getting into trouble."

Perhaps no one group has suffered more than the pioneering women who
entered the clandestine service's rarefied Yale-boy club starting in
the '60s. These women, one male former officer says, "made the old
guys uncomfortable. I remember being at a meeting where one of the
senior older officers said, 'Let's be honest. This isn't a job that
women are supposed to be doing.'" Brookner recalls being told during
her first posting in Asia-an overseas assignment that she had fought
for-that a woman couldn't recruit Asians; when she moved on to Latin
America, she heard the same thing about Latinos. Likewise, Melissa
Mahle, who went on to be chief of mission in Jerusalem, recalls being
told that women couldn't recruit people from the Middle East.

The trailblazers proved the doubters wrong time and again. "We went
out there and showed that we could be a good case officer and a good
recruiter," Mahle says. "We had opportunity, but you had to be pushy
for it." Still, they ran up against the ultimate glass ceiling: For
women, there were no second chances. Mahle was investigated and
ultimately forced to leave, allegedly for not admitting to a
relationship with a foreign national. The CIA has forbidden her from
discussing the matter, but others familiar with the case note that
such liaisons are hardly uncommon-and are not usually career enders
for men. (The relationship double standard is a key complaint in the
class-action case Brookner is now handling.)

"There is an idea that men can do this hard job, but women get too
emotional," Brookner says. "As soon as a woman sleeps with a man, she
tells every secret she ever knew. The mentality is that a man is in
control. The [clandestine service] is this macho male group. In order
to get where you get, you are always fighting and always having to
prove yourself again and again." And though the Agency's ranks have
become more diverse, Mahle notes, one critical resource remained
largely closed to women-the informal mentoring network. "When guys
make mistakes, if they're smart, they go to their mentors and get
protection through that."

Mahle is one of several veteran officers who have spoken out about the
torment of getting caught up in a political crisis or security
investigation-of becoming suddenly isolated while confronting a
Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Valerie Plame Wilson retired early two years
after the White House blew her cover; the CIA gave her a declassified
letter detailing how long she had worked there so that she could
receive her pension. This year, it ordered the letter reclassified-
even though by then it had been entered into the Congressional Record.
(Plame Wilson's publisher sued, to no avail.) By not allowing her to
"acknowledge that she worked for the CIA before 2002," says her
husband, Joseph Wilson, "they turn her into a nonperson."

Plame Wilson's, Brookner's, and Mahle's cases are all unique, but
their accounts reveal a bitterness that I have often noticed with
other officers, and that threads through the debate about the
intelligence community's failures before 9/11 and the Iraq War. The
list of complaints is long-politicization, subordination of field
operations to headquarters bureaucracy, and outdated security
procedures-but all have festered in a culture whose leadership faces
only pro forma oversight. "What I think is wrong is an entire fucking
security structure that is obsolete and needs to be changed," says one
retired senior officer. "Not just for the goddamn women. There's a
total lack of interest by any CIA director in what the Christ their
own security people are doing. And there is a fear to change anything
because Congress will go ballistic."

Today, the CIA is drawing recruits as never before. In the first six
months of 2007, the Agency received more than 103,000 job
applications, according to a CIA public affairs officer, substantially
ahead of the pace last year (134,000 applied in all of 2006); more
than 40 percent of its workforce has been hired since 9/11, the
officer told me in an email, and a full 24 percent of new domestic
hires are minorities.

Even some of those who have left in dismay can't quite turn their
backs on the Agency. "If you're asking if it is so dysfunctional that
it can't do its mission, I disagree," says Mahle. "It's severely
hampered-you can't admit you have a problem, that's where they are.
But I still recommend it as a career to people. It's a very important
way to serve your country."

Hi,

It is interesting to note that a friend of mine, David, from Oct 1994
to April 1995, had his internet
access shut off because of email from someone with a *.su address that
a professor who
snooped, like a Gestapo agent, into his account. David was working on
emergency management
and planning for the current administration, FEMA, DoD through an
NGO.

The issues regarding contact with a foreign national should, as it was
in 1995:
1) Do you always communicate by phone, email, or regular mail?
(Correct answer YES)
2) Have you ever received or send messages via diplomatic pouch?
(Correct answer NO)
3) Do you or the person you have contacted sent messages via dead
drops? (Correct answer NO)
4) Is the person your contacting relationship strictly related to a
professional one? (Correct answer YES)

If a woman or man is able to abide by these criteria, they should be
able to keep contact with people in other countries.
In 1995, until David was asked to resign in 1999, this criteria was
OK.

It is important to realize that David worked in Emergency Management
from an NGO that was approved by
the current administration them because he felt it was one way to
serve his country and to show the benefits
of the US to the world. However, the problem David ran into, is that
he does not like to play politics (Beltway),
and in 1999 because he would not support fully a President who had a
sexual act done in the oval office,
the movie star group of LA with big political ties forced pressure on
the NGO to have him ousted. He
still works on emergency management, and is bi-partisan, because he
feels that anyone who has something
to contribute is welcome, a good idea is not democrat or republican or
other, it is simple a good idea and
worth pursuing.

The person David talked with from the company in 1995 was a nice
person, and maybe that person should be
the one to review issues like this. David is still here, and I meet
with him in Kenosha at McD, 82nd street
and Sheridan during his lunch time, 1:30-3:00 (british tan ascott).

Sometimes, a kind discussion between two people can help break through
the political walls, and get a
solution which is mutual to both parties. That was David's approach in
Emergency Management from 1992 - 1999,
see the journal "Simulation," June 1996 which he was a guest editor,
and read his introductions from 1993-1999
Emergency Management and Planning conference proceedings by SCS,
Society for Computer Simulation, San
Diego, CA, www.scs.org, as to his idealism and beliefs. He works with
all people worldwide, as a medical
researcher from 1989-1993 and from EMP 1992-1999, and as consultant,
along with forming his own company,
from 1999-present, even after the deep effect of his father's passing
had on him from 1999-2005, and what challenges
he faces now.

He is loyal to the US, and get's up everyday to do what he can, which
a constrained budget.


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