CIA struggles with its own ‘Me Too’ moment as allegations of sexual assault spill into the open

Courts in northern Virginia and Washington, DC, have been quietly hearing cases of alleged sexual assault at the CIA for more than a year, offering fleeting glances of what multiple officials describe as a deep-rooted cultural problem at the spy agency.

Two cases have resulted in convictions of misdemeanor assault in Virginia. In September, a federal judge in Washington, DC, sentenced a former CIA officer to 30 years in prison for drugging and sexually assaulting dozens of women.

Behind the scenes, other allegations continue to plague the notoriously insular spy agency, including at least one claim that has resulted in an officer being fired, CNN has learned.

A stream of female whistleblowers has gone to Capitol Hill recently to testify behind closed doors to congressional oversight committees about other allegations of sexual assault and harassment at the CIA.

Earlier this year, a more than 600 page report by the agency’s inspector general and a separate review by congressional investigators found serious deficiencies in how the CIA handled complaints.

In response to what some victims have called the CIA’s “Me Too” moment, the agency has launched a major reform effort over the past year. That includes establishing a dedicated office to receive allegations of sexual assault and harassment, and hiring a law enforcement officer to help facilitate investigations — part of a broader attempt to make it easier for CIA officers to report a crime without jeopardizing classified information, including their cover.

On top of that, the CIA has for the first time conducted an internal survey aimed at understanding the scope of its sexual harassment problem.

The results, which have not been previously reported, suggest the CIA may have a rate of workplace sexual violence just slightly higher than the national average – and much lower than the US military, another large national security agency that has struggled with sexual assault in its ranks.

According to the results, which were described to CNN by multiple sources including CIA Chief Operating Officer Maura Burns, 28% of respondents said they experienced at least one instance of a sexually hostile work environment while employed at CIA, while 9% indicated at least one instance had occurred in the last 12 months.

A total of 7% of respondents reported experiencing at least one instance of unwanted sexual contact or assault during their career at the agency, with 1% reporting that the experience took place in the last year.

That’s compared to the 6.8% of women in the military who experienced some form of unwanted sexual contact in 2023; or the less than 0.5% reported across the federal government in recent years.

The survey garnered mixed reactions inside the agency. For some officials, it was evidence that the CIA, like the federal government in general, may have less of a problem today than it has had in the past.

But multiple current CIA officials who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity — as well as victims and their advocates — say the survey also shows it’s clear that the agency still needs has work to do to shift a “work hard, play hard” culture that for too long has unevenly enforced prohibitions against unwanted sexual conduct.

“I do think the culture part is going to be the hardest and will take the longest,” said a senior CIA officer. “Half of our workforce is female, and so I wouldn’t quite define it as the ‘good ole boy’ network — but I do think there is an unevenness to the accountability and discipline of behavior like this.”

“I have officers come and talk to me and say, ‘Why did this person get away with this and this person didn’t?’ That’s legit,” the officer said.

Though the survey suggests that over the years, the CIA may have a comparable rate of workplace sexual violence to the national average — 5.6 percent of women across the US report experiencing some type of sexual violence by a workplace-related perpetrator during their lifetime — there are important limits that make its findings hard to rely on too heavily.

For starters, it was voluntary, and only a quarter of agency personnel responded. In general, voluntary survey participants tend to be those with strong feelings about the subject at hand, potentially skewing the results higher than reality.

But experts say sexual assault and harassment is also historically underreported; and because employees responding to this kind of survey may not trust that their anonymity will be honored, said Laura Palumbo, communications director for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, they may choose not to engage — potentially skewing the results lower than reality.

The results are also being publicized internally at a moment when the CIA is facing a handful of particularly egregious allegations.

One young female contractor has alleged that a more senior officer came to her home with a firearm demanding sexual relations, and then later gave her a knife on CIA premises as a “threat,” according to a federal complaint obtained by CNN and three sources with knowledge of the episode. That official has been dismissed from the agency, according to two of the sources.

Another woman says she is “one of at least five self-identified sexual assault victims” of an officer who was until recently stationed in Europe, according to multiple sources and a letter sent by one of the alleged victims to the US ambassador in that country and obtained by CNN.  According to one of the sources, there are no allegations of physical violence.

The officer has been accused of knowingly infecting his alleged victims with a sexually transmitted disease — a potential felony under Virginia law if the infected person can be shown to have “the intent to transmit the infection” –- and is under investigation by the CIA.

At least some of the alleged assaults appear to have taken place in Virginia and have been reported to state law enforcement, according to the letter and another source familiar with the matter. That person remains employed at CIA headquarters pending the results of the investigation.

Senior CIA officials, including Chief Operating Officer Maura Burns and Director Bill Burns – no relation – have emphasized publicly that they are taking the problem extremely seriously.

In instances where an allegation of assault has been made, the agency also does its own internal threat assessment to determine whether the accused poses any risk to their colleagues. “The first thing we do is make sure that the victim and the accuser are not in contact with each other,” said Maura Burns.

At that point, assuming there has been a report made to law enforcement, the CIA waits until the criminal process has played out before it takes any further investigative steps. That is the limbo that the accused officer from the European post — and his alleged victims — are currently in, for example.

As long as appropriate consideration is given to whether the accused poses an ongoing risk to his victim or others, this approach is basically in-line with nationally accepted best practices, according to Palumbo.

Ongoing questions surrounding the rollout of the new policies emerged in a September 25 town hall with Dr. Taleeta Jackson, the head of the CIA’s agency’s newly established Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention Office, and Maura Burns. According to Burns, multiple officers asked questions that made it clear that many are still uncertain of how to report a crime to law enforcement without running afoul of rules governing the disclosure of classified information.

Officials acknowledged that it’s understandable that people are confused: Protecting your cover is hammered into young officers from the moment they enter the agency. That exposed a clear space where managers might be mishandling instances in which a report has been made — and victims might be feeling discouraged from reporting an assault.

“I answered head on: ‘Go call the police. The cover issue, we will fix, don’t worry about that,’” said Burns. “There’s still some hesitation and reservation about that and that was clear to me in the questions that we got.”

Some victims say that they are still being deterred from reporting their alleged assaults to law enforcement. A filing made by a self-identified victim of assault to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in June, which seeks class action status for victims at the agency, asserts that the agency inappropriately “instructed victims to falsify elements of their stories if they were to contact law enforcement or face disciplinary action for revealing classified information.”

The office responsible for internal threat assessments “told me I was more than welcome to make a report on my own to local law enforcement — which would not be cover consistent — with the clear caveat that under no circumstances was I to reveal my affiliation with CIA, my perpetrator’s affiliation with CIA, or the locations where myself and the other victims were sexually assaulted, some of which are CIA property,” the victim, identified by the pseudonym Daniella Sparks in the complaint, wrote.

“In short, both [the Threat Management Unit] and the Office of General Counsel repeatedly instructed myself and the other victims to make false statements to law enforcement and informed us that if we associated ourselves with CIA in any manner, we would be guilty of mishandling classified information,” she wrote.

Another of the CIA’s challenges is the same in any workplace: How to protect victims and allow for fair adjudication while also respecting the rights of the accused to defend themselves against serious allegations. Some officers are quietly concerned that the reporting process could become “weaponized,” multiple current officials said.

In at least one instance — an alleged assault in a stairwell at CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, that resulted in a misdemeanor conviction —  the defendant is appealing on the grounds that he was falsely accused.

The agency is planning to conduct its internal survey annually, something that experts say is best practice that can help make this kind of survey more valuable over time.

For now, said Burns, “We looked at it as kind of a snapshot of people’s experiences and perceptions.”

According to Burns, the agency’s next big push is in education — both to managers on how to handle instances of assault and harassment, and to the workforce on the resources and rights available to them. Jackson, Burns said, will be traveling overseas in the coming year to standardize that training at the agency’s far-flung outposts across the globe.

“We still have work to do,” said Burns. “We are not where we need to be, and I don’t need a survey to tell me that.”