Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo criticized a video recently released by the agency, saying the country “can’t afford to risk our national security to appease some liberal, woke agenda.”
“When I was Director of the CIA, we valued individuals based on their talent and skill, not their race or sexuality,” Pompeo said in a tweet on Tuesday. “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 added in a subsequent post that 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.”
Pompeo, who also served as secretary of State in the Trump administration, was referencing a “Humans of the CIA” video from the agency in which a first-generation Latin American agent discusses her “intersectional” identity.
“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 agent says.
Some conservatives and other critics of so-called identity politics have
suggested the video was a prime example of cultural inclusivity going too far.
“If you’re a Chinese communist, or an Iranian Mullah, or
Kim Jong Un…would this scare you?” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a tweet this week. “We’ve come a long way from Jason Bourne.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson also criticized the video and the CIA as a whole during his program on Tuesday evening.
Pompeo is widely expected to consider a run for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2024. He has spent the first 100 days of President Biden’s administration criticizing the president, his predecessor at the State Department and other progressive policy goals set forth by the new government.
“So far, President Biden has successfully outlined a radical, socialist agenda for the next 4 years. That should trouble every freedom-loving American,” Pompeo
said after Biden’s first State of the Union address last week.
