CIA fires whistleblower who prompted flood of sexual misconduct complaints

The CIA fired a woman who alleged in a lawsuit that the agency had retaliated against her because she had reported sexual misconduct at the spy agency’s headquarters. The CIA this week fired a woman whose whistleblower account of being assaulted in a stairwell at the spy agency’s headquarters prompted a flood of colleagues to come forward with their own complaints of sexual misconduct. “To be clear, the CIA does not tolerate sexual assault, sexual harassment or whistleblower retaliation,” CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp told the Associated Press, adding that the agency uses “consistent processes to ensure the fair and equal treatment of every officer going through training.” The woman’s termination came less than six months after she filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the CIA retaliated against her for reporting what she said was a 2022 stairwell assault in Langley, Va., to law enforcement and testifying about it in a closed congressional hearing. The woman’s attorney, Kevin Carroll, told the AP that the CIA has now “unlawfully ended a young woman’s career only because she had the moral courage, lacking in her managers, to stand up and be a witness about her sexual assault.” “The agency’s festering workplace sexual violence problem is now harming the retention of young women who won’t put up with it any longer,” Carroll said. The incident, his attorney said, was “a joke that didn’t land the way it was intended to land.” Bayatpour, a 39-year-old Alabama native and former Navy intelligence officer, remained employed at the CIA for several months after he was convicted in August of misdemeanor assault and battery, sentenced to six months probation and ordered to surrender any firearms.