The Central Intelligence Agency found evidence indicating at least 10 employees had committed sex crimes with children in the past 14 years, yet only one was charged with a crime, according to a recent BuzzFeed report based on the results of open records lawsuits.
Except for that one, “Prosecutors sent the rest of the cases back to the CIA to handle internally, meaning few faced any consequences beyond the possible loss of their jobs and security clearances. That marks a striking deviation from how sex crimes involving children have been handled at other federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration. CIA insiders say the agency resists prosecution of its staff for fear the cases will reveal state secrets,” says BuzzFeed.
According to the internal CIA report BuzzFeed obtained, a CIA employee who had sexual contact with a 2-year-old girl and a 6-year-old girl was merely fired. Another who obtained sex tapes of young girls from their mothers merely resigned. A CIA contractor who set up a sexual encounter with an FBI agent posing as a child merely lost his CIA contract.
Both the CIA and a spokesperson for the Eastern District of Virginia, where several of these cases were referred for prosecution they never received, brushed off BuzzFeed’s requests for comment.
The article also notes that child pornography is widespread on federal intelligence employees’ work computers and phones. BuzzFeed quotes director of the Pentagon’s Defense Security Service Daniel Payne in 2016 noting that on intelligence agency workers’ computers and phones, “the amount of child porn I see is just unbelievable.”
“The Boston Globe broke a story in 2010 that a significant number of federal employees and contractors with high-level security clearances downloaded child pornography — sometimes on government computers — at NSA and the National Reconnaissance Office, among other defense agencies,” notes the NextGov article reporting Payne’s comments.
Among so-called “national security” employees, said NSA Director of Security Kemp Ensor at a 2016 conference, child pornography is rampant and “what people do is amazing.”
Source: The Federalist
