Former CIA officers warn Trump's administration is reviving the Lavender Scare, endangering national security

Three former CIA officers are warning that President Donald Trump’s campaign against diversity initiatives and transgender federal employees threatens to recreate one of the darkest periods in the history of the nation’s intelligence agencies.In a historical account published Thursday by Lawfare, Trace Ballard, Julia Curlee, and Todd Johannessen trace the CIA’s transformation from an agency that hunted and expelled gay employees to one that openly recruited LGBTQ+ officers and then began dismantling that infrastructure after Trump returned to office.The authors bring roughly eight decades of CIA experience to the account. Ballard retired after 35 years and founded the Agency Network of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Officers and Allies, known as ANGLE. Johannessen spent 26 years at the agency and was an early ANGLE leader. Curlee became the first CIA officer to transition openly and continue serving, later briefing Vice President Mike Pence and serving as a National Security Council director.Related: Decorated FBI agent trainee fired over Pride flag warns new ‘Lavender Scare’ is spreading ‘like wildfire’Their history begins with Carmel Offie, a gay intelligence officer who helped move German scientists and diplomats out of the Soviet occupation zone near the end of World War II. Within several years, he became the first CIA employee known to have been fired solely because of his sexual orientation.Offie was an early casualty of the Lavender Scare, the federal government’s systematic campaign to identify and remove gay and lesbian employees as supposed security risks. Beginning in the late 1940s, thousands lost their jobs or were forced to resign, according to the National Archives.The CIA incorporated questions about homosexuality into its polygraph examinations. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued an executive order listing “sexual perversion” as grounds for denying federal employment or a security clearance. The logic was ci