Recently published Central Intelligence Agency inspector general reports show that at least 10 CIA employees or contractors were suspected of sex crimes against children over the last 14 years, but only one of them was prosecuted.
Buzzfeed News published the IG reports Dec. 1 after a nearly 10-year fight with the CIA to obtain them. heavily redacted reports include more than 3,000 records, 75 of them detailing investigations into alleged sex crimes against children from 2005 to 2019.
Cases ranged from child pornography being found on government laptops, to an official sexually assaulting a two-year-old female.
CIA often referred incidents to U.S. attorneys, but prosecutors declined to press charges in all but one instance.
For example, the Eastern District of Virginia U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to move forward with the case against the person who assaulted a two-year-old female because of “taint issues” with the evidence.
In that case, the CIA employee/contractor admitted in Nov. 2008 to having “inappropriate sexual contact with an 8-year-old female and an unnamed two-year-old female.”
“Additionally, [REDACTED] admitted as having downloaded a movie containing child pornography while working [REDACTED] for the Agency,” the IG report said, adding that investigators also found child pornography on the person’s computers.
CIA fired the person and stripped their clearances, but the Eastern District of Virginia declined to prosecute “based on taint issues from the [REDACTED] information and the lack of previously identified child pornography victims in his videos.”
In another case, a CIA contractor was caught soliciting sex with a minor from an undercover FBI agent in an online chat room in February 2010.
FBI interviewed the contractor on April 16 to “discuss issues related to his behavior.” Law officers apparently executed a search warrant a day later, but found that the hard drive missing from the contractor’s laptop.
“When questioned, [REDACTED] indicated that he had removed the hard drives and thrown them away [REDACTED],” the IG report said. Eastern District of Virginia declined to prosecute the matter, and the District of Columbia Attorney’s Office agreed to re-open the case in their district if any future physical evidence was found.”
In a statement to Buzzfeed News, the Eastern District of Virginia said the suspects’ CIA connections had nothing to do with the decisions not to prosecute.
“ occupation or employer of the suspect does not factor into that evaluation,” the spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said. “While we cannot comment on the reasons why specific cases were declined, we do take very seriously any allegation that our prosecutors declined a potential case based on an improper assessment of the relevant factors.”
When contacted by Pezou, the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment further. CIA did not respond to an email inquiry.
revelations in the IG reports follow the high-profile case of former CIA agent Brian Jeffrey Raymond, who pleaded guilty in July 2021 to two counts of sexual abuse and one count of transporting obscene material.
investigation into Raymond began on May 31, 2020, when a naked woman was seen screaming for help from the balcony of Raymond’s residence in Mexico City. Raymond admitted to having sexual intercourse with her, but the woman reported that she had no memory of events after consuming drinks and food provided by him.
During the investigation, FBI agents recovered from Raymond’s electronic devices hundreds of photographs and videos created between 2006 and May 30, 2020, depicting at least 24 unconscious and nude or partially nude women.
Commenting on the Raymond case on a Dec. 2 episode of “Spy Talk,” author Mark Olshaker said intelligence agents often share skills with sexual predators such as the ability to manipulate and seduce. But Olshaker, the co-author with retired FBI agent John Douglas of “Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit,” said he doesn’t think the problem is exclusive to the intelligence community.
“We probably do have a problem, but we have a problem everywhere in society,” he said. “I don’t know that I would single out the intelligence community, expect to say that probably some of the skills that make them good intelligence agents also make them fairly efficient as predators.”
Pezou : IG Reports Detail CIA Sex Crimes Against Children