Spy Sues CIA, Saying She Is Job Bias Victim

A female spy is suing the CIA, claiming discrimination in job promotions after an incident in which a foreign intelligence recruit kissed her, which the spy agency saw as a potential security breach, her lawyer said Wednesday.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday. “We haven’t received the suit yet, so we don’t have any comment,” a Central Intelligence Agency spokesman said.

The legal action was taken by a woman identified as Grace Tilden, a pseudonym because her identity is classified secret. Between 1990 and 1998, Tilden was part of the CIA’s highly clandestine “NOC” program, which stands for non-official cover.

She would collect information from people known in intelligence lingo as “assets,” who in some cases did not know they were informing the CIA.

From 1992 to late 1995, Tilden worked in a foreign country, described in the suit as “Foreign Location A.” In 1993, she met a foreign recruit in a hotel room who “unexpectedly” kissed her on the lips, the lawsuit said.

“Ms. Tilden discouraged the asset from attempting to pursue any kind of romantic relationship,” the complaint said.

Tilden was uncertain whether she was required to report the incident formally to the CIA and asked a female co-worker, who advised her not to worry about it because the incident was too insignificant for a formal report, the complaint said.

That co-worker later told a male CIA operative about it and he included it in a written report, the lawsuit said.

A few days later, Tilden was summoned to a “domestic” location for a meeting with the CIA’s deputy chief of station and the chief of operations for the foreign country where she was based.

CIA “employees and managers, who subscribe to unfortunate stereotypes about women, immediately presumed that Ms. Tilden was being deceptive and that, in fact, she was engaged in a torrid love affair with an enemy agent and spilling national security secrets in bed,” the complaint said.

The lawsuit said the CIA has a double standard in such areas and that a man would have been instructed to seduce or establish a sexual relationship with a foreign recruit to learn enemy secrets.

At the worst, the man would have been informally counseled verbally, “with a wink and a nudge,” not to do it again, the lawsuit said.

“That’s utterly ridiculous,” said an intelligence official who did not want to be identified.

But Tilden’s lawyer, Roy Krieger, said in other cases he has handled, “we have learned that in some instances male case officers have been encouraged, if not specifically instructed, to develop sexual relationships or foster sexual interest in them in order to develop a potential asset.”