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Younger intelligence officers, male and female, call DO veterans "dinosaurs" and "knuckle draggers" -- referring especially to the paramilitary specialists whose careers began during the Vietnam War. "They don't have the education or scientific background to compete in the present," says Sarah. "They don't treat the new technology types well. I had a boss who never changed anything I wrote because he didn't understand it."
Last December the CIA agreed to pay a $410,000 settlement to former Jamaica station chief Janine Brookner, who had charged, in a highly publicized case, that the agency had falsely accused her of sexual promiscuity and alcoholism after she turned in her male deputy for beating his wife. As it turned out, Brookner had been one of the few Directorate officers who had tried to get Aldrich Ames fired for security breaches, 10 years before the FBI unmasked him for selling secrets to the KGB. As part of Brookner's settlement, the agency promised her a letter of recommendation in exchange for her silence on the details of the case. However, says Victoria Toensing, Brookner's lawyer, the agency insists that the letter remain in her classified personnel file and thus inaccessible to any potential employers because she is still considered "undercover." When CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield was asked for the whereabouts of the recommendation, he declined to answer, stating, "The agency has complied with all the provisions of the settlement agreement."
John Deutch, who took the helm of the CIA last month, is eager to put the sex-discrimination issue behind him. Improving the lot of women at the agency "is a big deal for me," Deutch told reporters after he took his post. "I will be pushing that very hard." Deutch has appointed former Navy Assistant Secretary Nora Slatkin to the No. 3 position in the agency; she vows to make "the glass ceiling a glass floor." Deutch's arrival is being greeted with cautious optimism by the women DO officers suing the agency. Deutch is saying all the right things, Diane explains, but "we've heard it from the last two directors, and nothing really changes."
--WITH REPORTING BY DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON