Her CIA Sex Bias Suit Settled for $410,000, Agent Says She Hopes Agency Can Change

Reaching final agreement with the CIA over a $410,000 settlement in a sex discrimination suit, a veteran female agent expressed hope Friday that the agency would change its leadership and culture to remove the “fear of reprisal and retribution” that plagued her.

Her lawyer said she remains concerned that the CIA fails to investigate male employees accused of wife beating and to discipline those found to have done so. The woman had alleged she was punished for disciplining subordinates, including one she said had admitted beating his wife.

Under the settlement, the 25-year veteran, known in court papers only as “Jane Doe Thompson,” but identified by sources as Janine M. Brookner, retired from the agency Thursday night.

A CIA source estimated she would receive between $40,000 and $45,000 a year in retirement income in addition to the proceeds from the settlement.

Kent Harrington, the CIA’s director of public affairs, said the settlement “does not concede any of the assertions Ms. Thompson has made against the agency or its individual officers.” He dismissed the allegations of wife abuse and said “they are made without regard to the damage caused individuals.”

An agency source said the financial settlement--$410,000 plus attorney’s fees--amounted to only a fraction of the amount demanded and included a $25,000 incentive buyout available to all employees of similar tenure under a downsizing effort.

Otherwise, the CIA declined to discuss Brookner’s allegations, including her central charge that she was punished for disciplining subordinates at the CIA’s Jamaica station, where she was assigned as station chief in 1989 to clean up a problem-racked outpost.

Brookner, 53, alleged that the subordinates, including a deputy accused of beating his wife, retaliated with charges of their own against her. Those charges led to an investigation of her by the agency’s inspector general and a letter of reprimand. As part of the settlement, the Jan. 28, 1993, letter of reprimand is to be removed from Brookner’s personnel file.

The subordinates charged she was a drunk and a sexpot. They also accused her of cheating on her overtime slips and of misusing a CIA helicopter assigned to Jamaica for drug operations. Brookner eventually found herself discredited by the agency and assigned to make-work projects in a windowless cubicle at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.

When the agency’s Justice Department lawyers and Brookner’s attorney, Victoria Toensing, agreed in principle to settle the case Dec. 7, CIA Director R. James Woolsey said he wanted to bring the matter to an end.

Toensing, a Washington partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, noted that the settlement followed an October refusal by a federal judge in Virginia to dismiss individual CIA employees as defendants in the suit. The refusal meant the employees would be liable personally for any damages she won if the case had gone to trial.

The settlement has no direct effect on separate negotiations by the CIA to head off a class-action lawsuit by nearly one-third of the agency’s female case officers in its directorate of operations, or clandestine division, who contend that the agency has discriminated against women.

Negotiations on that matter are progressing, CIA spokesman Harrington said, adding that the agency hoped it would be resolved in the spring.

While declining to discuss specifics of Brookner’s allegations, Harrington cited improvements in the CIA’s record for promoting women.

Representation of women in the senior intelligence ranks has risen from 7.5% in 1990 to 11.8%, he said. In the four main directorates--operations, intelligence, administration and science and technology--only one woman occupies the eight senior management positions. Women hold a third of the so-called building block positions in two of the directorates, a CIA official said.

In the Operations directorate, where Brookner ran into difficulties, a woman was recently named to head a regional division for the first time, Harrington said.