A CIA agency document obtained by The Associated Press said 15 CIA employees were disciplined for committing sexual, racial or other types of harassment last year.
The employees included a supervisor who was removed from the job after engaging in "bullying, hostile behavior," and an operative who was sent home from an overseas post for inappropriately touching female colleagues, said the document, an internal message to the agency's workforce, according to the AP.
The examples cited in the message, sent several weeks ago in an email by the director of the agency's Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, were meant to show how the CIA is enforcing its strict policy, the AP reported.
"The CIA has no tolerance for harassment of any kind and takes every allegation of such activity extremely seriously," agency spokesman Christopher White said in a statement, according to the AP.
The agency won't release its employee workplace surveys or details about complaints, on the grounds that such numbers are classified, the AP reported.
The message to employees on harassment, which CIA officials said was the first of its kind, said 15 out of 69 complaints in the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2013, were found to be true, according to the AP.
In the interest of "transparency," the message said, officials shared summaries of four examples involving three unidentified CIA employees and a contractor including a supervisor who engaged in bullying, hostile behavior and retaliatory management techniques was removed from the job, given a letter of reprimand, and ordered to undergo leadership and harassment training, the AP reported.
The officials declined to name the disciplined employees or describe their jobs, according to the AP.
In 2012, then-CIA director David Petraeus sent a message to agency staff members outlining a new effort to curb sexual harassment in war zones, where CIA men and women often live in close quarters under stressful conditions, the AP reported. Petraeus himself later admitted he was having an affair with his biographer and resigned his post.
