Last year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) announced a significant increase in the hiring of minorities, women, and persons with disabilities across the 17 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community. Then last month, the ODNI’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Office relaunched The Dive as a quarterly magazine to highlight the “great work happening across the Intelligence Community.” The cartoonish magazine seeks to “empower every employee to speak their truth.” Aside from the grammatical error, it is ominous that the office of the director of America’s intelligence community believes that each employee is entitled to his version of the truth.
The contradictions compound. While the ODNI’s mission is to “lead intelligence integration and forge an intelligence community that delivers the most insightful intelligence possible,” the theme of The Dive is to limit analysts’ choice of words and to substitute politically correct pablum for nuanced, well-understood terminology. The Dive focuses on inclusivity, gender identity, and diversity, with a goal of creating a warm, supportive intelligence community that prioritizes politically correct verbiage.
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