Trump's CIA director will take a 'wrecking ball' to transgender lectures and pride events at Langley
A lecture by the highest ranking transgender officer in the armed forces; a celebration of Loving Day and sessions on 'equity assurance training.'
A trove of flyers obtained by DailyMail.com from serving CIA officers lays bare the extent of the agency's 'diversity, equity and inclusion' work triggering fresh accusations that it is being distracted from its core job of protecting Americans from foreign threats.
But Trump transition insiders say those concerns will be tackled head on by John Ratcliffe, who is the president-elect's pick to lead the agency, and who will be grilled by senators about his plans on Wednesday.
'I suspect Ratcliffe is going to come in like a wrecking ball to the woke deep staters,' said a source familiar with his plans.
'The mission is all he cares about.
'No more politicized intelligence products. No more social experiments.
'Nothing and no one that distracts from the mission of collecting foreign intelligence and keeping Americans safe.'
The list of targets is laid out in more than 20 flyers collected by disgruntled staff.
For Pride Month last year, CIA agents were invited to a lecture by Admiral Rachel Levine, assistant secretary at Health and Human Services, the first openly transgender four-star officer in the armed forces.
A year before, CIA headquarters held a week of events to mark 'Loving Day,' the anniversary of a 1967 court judgment allowing interracial marriages in Virginia.
Then there are support groups for people getting divorced; 'Orange Shirt Day,' to remember indigenous people affected by their experiences in residential schools; 'intentional parenting' sessions; and even lessons in importing dogs from overseas postings.
Officers are invited to join the Multicultural Inclusion Exchange or the Peer Support Cadre.
Some carry the slogan 'DEIA enables mission,' suggesting that diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility help the CIA to do its job.
The events may be appropriate for a consumer-facing hipster coffeeshop but not for agents whose prime focus is on completing the mission, said a former CIA paramilitary operations officer.
'We're the point of the spear for the Agency and we don't have time for this nonsense,' he said. 'And that's what it is: Nonsense.'
The issue will come into focus on Wednesday when Ratcliffe will appear before the Senate intelligence committee for his confirmation hearing.
He is expected to address the topic of the CIA's DEI work in his opening statement as he sets out his broader goals and ambitions.
He is one of a string of Trump appointees who have promised to tackle what they see as a 'woke' agenda.
At the same time, the private sector has responded to the election by jettisoning DEI policies. Meta and Amazon are among the companies scaling back or winding down diversity programs that were introduced in the wake of protests against the police killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans in 2020.
The CIA also ran a string of events entitled 'The Black experience' where audiences could hear from what was billed as a 'diverse generational panel.'
'We’re an agency that has to operate in a lot of diverse landscapes around the world. Having a diverse workforce is crucial to our mission,' said an agency spokesperson.
'Not only is it the right thing to do, but it's the smart thing to do for us to take full advantage of the richness of our own society, whether that’s about ethnicity or language or gender or anything else, because that’s going to make us a stronger intelligence service.'
A 20-year veteran, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the current approach put the cart before the horse.
'We used to say diversity is our strength. I get that,' he said.
'But when diversity became the overriding emphasis it ends up like the old rule of convoys when the ships traveled at the speed of the slowest boat.
'And that's what we ended up with.'
One of the Trump aides in the running to be deputy director of the CIA has previously voiced concerns about its direction.
Cliff Sims, deputy director of national intelligence for strategy and communications during the first Trump term, described his shock at walking into the CIA's cafeteria for the first time and seeing a 'Trans lives are human lives' poster.
'Even in here, I thought to myself, considering how someone had taken time out of their day protecting the security of America from dangerous foreign actors in order to promote the latest iteration of identity politics,' he wrote in his recent book "The Darkness Has Not Overcome."
He is now part of the Trump transition landing team at the agency.
Peter Hegseth, Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Defense, was chosen in part because of his attacks on DEI.
'DEI amplifies differences, creates grievances, and excludes anyone who won’t bow down to the cultural Marxist revolution ripping through the Pentagon,' he wrote in his book "The War on Warriors.'
'Forget DEI. The acronym should be DIE or IED. It will kill our military worse than any IED ever could.'
The CIA was panned at the start of the Biden administration for a recruitment video that featured a recruit who described herself as an 'intersectional cisgender millennial'.
The unnamed CIA officer, 36, tells viewers she is 'unapologetically me', adding that she to suffer from 'imposter syndrome' but now refuses to 'internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be.'
Former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright, tweeted: 'The CIA used to be about mission to country. (I speak from experience).
'Now it's now about demanding — and getting — accommodation to fix an emotional wound or advance a personal agenda. America is less safe with this new CIA, and dangerously more political.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14278867/trump-cia-woke-john-ratcliffe-confirmation.html