Judge OKs Settlement of CIA Sex Bias Suit : Courts: Agency hails ruling. But the women opposed to the pact fear it will ‘set in stone the policies and procedures’ they were trying to change.

A federal judge quashed a rebellion by at least 10 former and current covert CIA female operatives Friday and forced them to accept a settlement of their class-action sexual discrimination lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Albert Bryan here was a victory for the agency. The CIA has been embarrassed by long-running charges of sexual harassment and discrimination against female operatives by their male supervisors in the agency’s Directorate of Operations, which handles covert espionage work.

The decision came after at least two current CIA female case officers warned the court in closed session that they are still facing threats from male managers and have been told that working conditions for them will worsen because of their decision to press their case.

“They said they were threatened with a lack of promotions, a lack of assignments . . . if they thought it was tough before, guess what,” said Lynn Larkin, a former CIA case officer who has been a leader and spokeswoman for the group opposed to the settlement.

Bryan closed the court to the public on the grounds of national security during the testimony by current CIA case officers, but Larkin spoke for the women and summarized their testimony after Friday’s hearing.

She added that the female officers now fear that the court approval of the settlement will “set in stone the policies and procedures we’ve seen before at the agency.

“I would imagine that this will make things a lot worse. Assignments will disappear. And it’s going to be very difficult for these people to do anything about any retaliation they receive,” she said.

The CIA, by contrast, was pleased with Friday’s settlement, and new director John M. Deutch vowed to work hard to improve conditions for women at the agency and to go beyond the promises spelled out in the settlement.

“The actions taken under the settlement agreement serve as the beginning of a process of ensuring that CIA provides a workplace that is fair and encourages diversity,” Deutch said in a statement.

“CIA cannot afford to waste the talents of any individual,” he said. “One of the highest priorities of the new management team at CIA is the creation of a work environment that does not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”

Deutch has promised to launch a thorough housecleaning of the upper-management ranks within the Directorate of Operations, and many of the older generation of male managers there are likely to be forced into early retirement.

Joseph Sellers, an attorney with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who helped craft the settlement and continues to defend it, said he tried to convince the dissidents that Deutch’s promised reforms could go a long way toward resolving many of their complaints.

*

“This agreement is a very good first step,” Sellers said Friday. “We have no illusions that discrimination will end overnight, but we will see more women getting promotions.

“The agency is undergoing a fundamental re-examination in the post-Cold War world, and we think that there will be significant reforms,” he said.

The settlement, reached in March, requires the CIA to pay $990,000, to be distributed among about 450 women. It also calls for immediate promotions for 25 female case officers and better assignments for 14 others; overall, it includes raises and other career-enhancing steps for 64 women.

Additionally, it calls for an outside examiner to check on the CIA’s progress in hiring and promoting women, and forces the CIA to undergo monitoring of its actions by the federal court for four years. Although the pact doesn’t set specific long-range hiring goals, the CIA has agreed to report male and female promotion rates annually.

Bryan argued that the settlement was in the best interests of the majority of women covered by the class-action suit. “By its very nature, nobody ever gets everything they want out of a settlement,” the judge said. “But the interests of the majority outweigh the objections that have been made.”

The settlement was approved by Bryan despite the fact that all 10 of the women who had pioneered the lawsuit refused to endorse the pact worked out between their attorneys and the government. The women now complain that the pact will require the CIA to do little to improve its personnel practices beyond actions the agency has already taken, or end the harassment of women within the agency’s covert operations division.

To underscore their frustration, the women who rebelled against the agreement filed written testimony about the sexual harassment they had suffered over the years.