Whistle-blowers, Wokeness and the CIA

Abstract

The CIA has developed an uneasy relationship with the American people, who regard it alternately as suspect and protective. Whistle-blowers and turncoats have tended to expose its ethical shortcomings, and sometimes have wilfully impaired US national security in doing so. But the agency stood tall in 2019, when a CIA analyst reported then-president Donald Trump's impeachable improprieties to intelligence-community overseers. Of late, the CIA has also manifested its recognition of the need for the organisation to better embody evolving American standards and mores, including diversity. A recent recruitment video was self-consciously and comically ‘woke’, and drew wide ridicule. That particular effort may have been maladroit. But the CIA is generally right to try to minimise the sociopolitical reasons for avoidable complaints among its officers and overseers so that they can devote maximum attention to the formidable security challenges facing the nation.