Few, if any, government organizations have a greater mission need for diversity than the CIA. The CIA officers who secretly watched Osama bin Laden’s compound from a nearby residence avoided detection and accomplished their mission because they looked and acted just like other residents of Abbottabad. The CIA benefits immensely from America’s ability to center citizens from many different ethnic, religious, and cultural origins in a unified cause.
As one allied foreign intelligence officer once put it to me, the CIA’s impressive resources and workforce allow it “to get where it needs to be.” In a nod to the general belief of allies that CIA headquarters is too risk-averse and bureaucratized, the officer added, “If Langley allows it.”
Still, prizing diversity as an end in and of itself is also a mistake. Western intelligence services have found, for example, that…
