Gay Pride Is No Longer Kept Undercover at CIA

Not many years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency automatically denied a security clearance to anyone it suspected was homosexual, on the theory that gay men and lesbians were ripe for blackmail.

This week, the CIA held a gay pride celebration at its Langley, Va., headquarters, hosting gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) at a ceremony intended to underscore how far the agency has come from its homophobic past.

“The fact that I would be speaking at Gay and Lesbian Pride Month at the CIA--yeah, that’s a sign of real progress,” Frank said Thursday, two days after he addressed about 100 gay intelligence workers at the CIA and met privately with George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

Busloads of openly gay employees from the National Security Agency also attended the ceremony, in which CIA Executive Director David Carey, the agency’s No. 3 official, said he was pleased to welcome Frank even though the House member had voted to cut the intelligence budget.

Frank responded that he had tried not only to cut but also to “out” the intelligence budget, a classified figure. But, he added, “your budget by now is about as big a secret as my sexuality.”

Overall U.S. intelligence spending, including the CIA and NSA budgets, is said to be about $30 billion this year.

Gay intelligence officers began to abandon their deep sexual cover after President Clinton signed an executive order in August 1995 prohibiting the denial of security clearances “solely on the basis of the sexual orientation of the employee.”

The executive order rescinded an earlier directive, dating from the Eisenhower administration, that classified homosexuality as a “sexual perversion” and said it was automatic grounds for denying a clearance.