Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo Hits CIA Ads: We Can Not Risk National Security to Appease Woke Agenda

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks on "China challenge to US national security and a
TAMI CHAPPELL/AFP via Getty Images

Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo joined the chorus of prominent conservative voices slamming the Central Intelligence Agency’s new series of recruitment advertisements highlighting the racial and gender identity of its workforce.

The ads, which were launched in the last several months under the Biden administration, feature agents talking about their personal backgrounds and struggles. The ads feature a young black woman, a disabled white woman, a gay white man, and a Latina immigrant mother.

“I am a woman of color, I am a mom, I am a cisgender millennial who’s been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise,” the Latina woman says in the ad.

The ads stoked criticism, particularly from conservative voices, for their apparent focus not on national security but on pushing the woke agenda of diversity and inclusion.

“China & Russia are laughing their asses off watching CIA go full woke. ‘Cisgender.’ ‘Intersectional.’ It’s like @TheBabylonBee is handling CIA’s comms. If you think about it, wokeness is the kind of twisted PSYOP a spy agency would invent to destroy a country from the inside out,” Donald Trump Jr., former President Donald Trump’s son, tweeted.

Bryan Dean Wright, a former CIA operations officer, 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.”

Pompeo weighed in on the ads on Tuesday, recalling a woman who thanked him for valuing her work and not her gender.

“When I was Director of the CIA, we valued individuals based on their talent and skill, not their race or sexuality. I’ll never forget what one female analyst said to me: ‘Thank you for valuing me for my work. I want my abilities and achievements to define me, not my sexuality,'” he tweeted.

“The collection of incredibly talented patriots serving America at the CIA is what makes it the best spy agency in the world — and we must continue to recruit the best and brightest. We can’t afford to risk our national security to appease some liberal, woke agenda,” he said.

Fox News show host Tucker Carlson highlighted the ads on his show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Tuesday evening. “It’s entirely genuine. This is not a hoax; this is not a deep fake,” Carlson said of the most recent ad. “This video is real.”

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