How to Be Good

The Washington Post has a sad story about a soon-to-be former CIA agent who took prospective agents to strip clubs to recruit them and has been accused of sexually assaulting several women. And it goes on to ask a question that, in different form, I think has important implications for agencies everywhere:

The CIA says that these problems involve a tiny fraction of its workforce, and that those found to have breached rules are punished or fired. But former officers say the cases underscore a perennial challenge: guarding against scandal in a workforce -- the size of which is classified but is generally estimated to be 20,000 -- that prides itself on secrecy and deception.

"You have an organization of professional liars," said Tyler Drumheller, who oversaw hundreds of officers as chief of the agency's European division. Experienced field managers are needed, he said, because inevitably "some people will try to take advantage of the system . . . and it's a system that can be taken advantage of."

To be clear, I think this is probably an overly harsh assessment of CIA agents as a whole. Just because your job involves deception doesn't make you a morally bankrupt human being. Taking on a cover doesn't mean you're suddenly free from moral constraints, and most people seem to understand this just fine. But the question of how to inculcate an ethical culture is still really relevant for all agencies across government. I was shocked about a year ago when I wrote a story about a report that showed high levels of ethical violations in the government. But I've come to see that perceptions of unfairness and mistrust are more prevalent than I initially assumed. So how do we get beyond that? How do we encourage people to do right by each other, and inculcate them with a sense that that behavior should be instinctive? I don't have the answer. But it's an important question to be asking.