CIA Operatives Who Claim Sex Bias Reject Settlement

WASHINGTON —  The principal CIA employees in a threatened class-action lawsuit alleging sexual discrimination have asked a federal judge to find that a nearly $1-million tentative settlement wrested from the CIA in March is inadequate.

The unusual revolt by at least nine of the 10 female CIA operatives who threatened to sue is a political setback for the CIA’s top management, which had sought through the settlement to put behind it the charges of rampant sexism in CIA stations overseas.

It also is an embarrassment for the women’s lawyers at Steptoe & Johnson and the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, who some of the women now claim were duped by the CIA and the Justice Department into accepting a deal that provides inadequate relief for years of CIA wrongdoing.

The lawyers have responded that many of the more than 200 other female CIA case officers involved in the dispute still support the deal and said they remain hopeful it will be approved by a federal judge at a hearing Friday in Alexandria, Va.

The women gave startling accounts of alleged discrimination that the CIA had sought to suppress. They claimed women were accused of sleeping with sources or were denied promising overseas assignments that male superiors said would “take away . . . [the] masculinity” of a husband or “were too dangerous for a woman.”

The women accused the government and their own attorneys of misconduct in settlement negotiations, including misstating the size of the group that deserves to share in remedial promotions or receive a part of the CIA’s proposed relief of $940,000.