CIA sued for allegedly discriminating against covert officer

CIA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A former CIA officer, who served the Agency in a covert capacity, has sued his former employer claiming he was discriminated against because he is married to an Asian woman. According to the lawsuit, filed recently at a San Francisco court, covert CIA employee Walter Roule claims the his CIA supervisor favored junior officers with Caucasian wives for overseas postings, thus giving them more opportunities for promotion. Roule also claims that his supervisor threatened the careers of other CIA officers of Asian background, or with Asian partners, if they supported Roule’s discrimination complaint. In his court filing, the former covert CIA officer alleges that the discriminatory behavior started in 2006, when he was covertly posted in “the Northern District of California in a hybrid position”. It was then that his supervisor, who is not named in court documents, allegedly used internal CIA communication systems to distribute “discriminatory, defamatory, and false statements” about Roule and his wife, whose national origin is from an Asian country. When Roule complained, his supervisor allegedly threatened to deny him access to his CIA-issued “covert communication system, access to which is vital for an officer’s safety and indispensable to an officer’s ability to perform his job”, according to the lawsuit. Less than a year later, Roule claims he was placed on “Double Secret Probation” and was denied access to his operational job duties. Neither the CIA nor Roule’s legal team have provided any further information on the lawsuit.