LEESBURG, Va. (AP) — At an impromptu party in his office to rejoice his fiftieth birthday, a veteran CIA agent got drunk, reached up a colleague’s skirt and forcibly kissed her in front of his stunned colleagues, in keeping with charges within the agency’s latest sexual misconduct case to go before an open court.
An Associated Press investigation found that Donald Asquith’s alleged assault last yr got here just days after the CIA pledged to crack down on sexual misconduct inside its ranks — though the agency refused to disclose details concerning the extent of the issue. A recently released 648-page internal audit report that found systematic deficiencies within the CIA’s handling of such complaints was classified as “secret” and shielded as a possible national security threat.
“It is inconceivable that sexual misconduct could be considered a state secret,” said Kevin Carroll, an attorney who represents several women on the agency who’ve filed complaints.
The watchdog report followed an earlier AP investigation According to the report, no less than two dozen female CIA employees got here forward to authorities and Congress, reporting sexual assault, unwanted touching and a campaign they described as an try to silence them.
Many were encouraged by a CIA cadet who went to the police in 2022 after the agency did not take motion against a colleague she accused of attacking her with a shawl in a stairwell at CIA headquarters. Some of those women now say they’ve experienced retaliation, including the victim of the stairwell attack who finished lower than six months after the lawsuit was filed against the agency.
“I had blind faith in the institution and in all the things the agency was supposedly doing to fix what I saw as an epidemic,” said one in every of those women, who was not named since the AP doesn’t typically name individuals who say they’re victims of sexual assault. “I realize now that was just lip service.”
Asquith’s case could prove much more embarrassing for the CIA, given his long history of intelligence abroad and the audacity of his alleged conduct. Moreover, this got here in June 2023, lower than a month after CIA Director William Burns announced sweeping reforms designed to guard women, simplify procedures and discipline offenders more quickly. “We have to get this right,” he said.
In April, Asquith was charged with assault in Loudoun County, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, after the sheriff spent months investigating a drinking party at an out of doors CIA office attended by no less than a dozen people.
His accuser, a CIA worker, told authorities that she repeatedly rejected Asquith’s advances, but he continued to maneuver closer to her, rubbing her leg without her consent and making a series of inappropriate sexual comments in addition to “grunting noises and thrusting movements.”
Asquith then “slid his hand under her skirt to her thigh several times, causing her skirt to ride up and possibly exposing her underwear,” court documents say.
The woman told investigators she slapped Asquith’s hand away and stood up to go away, but he intervened as she approached the door and asked her for a “tit hug” before putting each hands round her back and rubbing his groin and chest against her. She said Asquith then “forcefully hugged her and gave her kisses all over her face and mouth without her consent.”
Asquith didn’t reply to repeated requests for comment. His lawyer, Jon Katz, hung up when called by AP.
“The CIA takes allegations of sexual assault and harassment extremely seriously,” the agency said in a press release. Within days of the incident, Asquith’s contact with the alleged victim was restricted, and three months later he retired.
Asquith’s case comes amid a flurry of activity surrounding allegations of sexual misconduct on the CIA, including ongoing state and federal criminal investigations into an undercover agent in Europe suspected of knowingly infecting no less than three CIA colleagues with an incurable sexually transmitted disease. The agency has offered no explanation for why that official stays overseas.
Just every week before Asquith’s trial begins this month, a federal judge in Washington will sentence one other former CIA agent who drugged and sexually abused no less than two dozen women he met through Tinder and other dating apps. Prosecutors are demanding a 30-year prison sentence for Brian Jeffrey Raymond, describing him as a serial offender who caused “immeasurable” harm during various overseas missions between 2006 and 2020.
And next month, a former CIA appointee faces a second trial for the 2022 attack within the stairwell of the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Ashkan Bayatpour has admitted to wrapping a shawl around the girl’s neck, but says it was meant as a joke. The woman says it was an assault during which he also tried to kiss her against her will.
“He made a face like he really wanted to hurt me,” the girl testified last yr during a trial during which Bayatpour was convicted of assault. Under Virginia law, the previous Navy intelligence officer is entitled to a jury trial after appealing the decision.
Former CIA executive Lindsay Moran, creator of a 2005 autobiography about her life as a spy, said sexual misconduct had long been an issue on the male-dominated agency and have become more acute after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the agency’s focus shifted to sending secret combat units to Afghanistan and Iraq.
“They brought their own brand of male toxicity that acted like gasoline on the old boys network that already existed,” Moran said. “National security is being used as an excuse to sweep these concerns under the rug.”
When asked why the agency’s report was classified and why the issue description and case histories were kept secret, the CIA said that this decision was made by its inspector general, who conducted the investigation. It didn’t reply to a request for comment.
In addition, the CIA has still not complied with the AP’s longstanding Freedom of Information Act request for internal records about its response to the Raymond scandal, nor has it asked for a proof for why it took so long to uncover the abuses he documented in nearly 500 videos and photos, a few of which show him groping or straddling naked, unconscious victims.
Republican Marco Rubio of Florida, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told AP that lawmakers would proceed to “hold agency leaders accountable” after pushing for reforms to the CIA’s reporting process for misconduct.
“How far does someone have to go before the agency steps in and says enough is enough?” Barbara Gray, a former CIA agent, told AP last yr after filing an internal grievance against her manager for climbing into her hotel bed while she was sleeping during a business trip.
The CIA assured Gray that her supervisor can be “appropriately punished,” she said, but then promoted him and featured him in a profession development video shown to junior officers. Gray has since resigned after her profession “seemed to stall.”
“What kind of culture does the CIA foster when it promotes some of its worst offenders?” she asked. “I believe the agency is making efforts to improve its reporting processes and procedures, but my question is: What’s next?”
