CIA Director Condemns Racism after Assuming Object Found Hanging Near Secret Facility Is a Noose

CIA Director William Burns issued a denunciation of racism after an object — interpreted by some to be a noose — was found near a secret agency facility in Virginia last week, according to the New York Times.

“C.I.A. has zero tolerance for actions or symbols of hatred and treats any such incidents with the utmost seriousness,” agency spokeswoman Susan Miller told the Times. “Our values and our vital national security mission demand that we uphold nothing less than the highest standards of inclusiveness and safety.”

Explicit racial intimidation within the ranks of America’s premier intelligence-gathering organization would of course be an issue worth addressing, but the rest of the Times story reveals that there is essentially no evidence to suggest such a problem exists.

Some at the CIA are “not entirely clear that the object was even meant to be a noose” and the agency does not have any evidence that whoever is responsible for the object was aware that the CIA operated out of the building. It also “does not currently have evidence suggesting that an agency employee left the item, or that a foreign intelligence service was involved.”

Nevertheless, the incident, as a result of Burns’s reaction, has resulted in further scrutiny of the agency’s commitment to racial equality, with the Times connecting the incident to African-American representation in the agency (12.3 percent, as opposed to 12.4 percent in the general population, but lower at the senior level) and a Fox News article summarizing criticism of a CIA recruiting video released last year. The advertisement featured an agency employee, who declared that she was a “cisgender millennial” and “intersectional,” and condemned “the patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be.”

The supposed discovery of a noose, and the accompanying racial baggage haunting the CIA comes as yet another example of an increasingly common phenomenon — especially on college campuses — across the country.

Nooses, or innocuous pieces of rope depending on the eye of the beholder, seem to bring with them, if not physical harm, great emotional distress as well as institutional reckoning. Last year, Princeton University denounced an “appalling act of hate” when a “noose” was seen on a construction site, prompting a sorrowful vigil. The results of an investigation were never released.

At Stanford in 2019, the university’s administration did not jump to conclusions after a possible noose was found in a bush, but did launch an investigation, call nooses “a symbol of violence and racism directed against African American people,” and declare that “if additional evidence comes to light, it may be classified as a hate crime.”

The consequences of the university’s measured response was an open letter signed by students, alumni, and faculty calling its statement “morally appalling.”

At the University of Michigan, a staff member’s fishing knot caused opprobrium. At Johns Hopkins, a prolonged FBI investigation into a noose on a construction site resulted in no action “despite extensive efforts.”

And of course, there’s Bubba Wallace, the NASCAR driver who, despite an FBI investigation that determined that a pulldown rope present in a garage assigned to Wallace for the GEICO 500 in 2020 had been there since 2019, insists to this day that he was the victim of a hate crime.

“That took time to do. It’s a noose,” said the driver in an ESPN documentary on the incident. “It’s so sad that people don’t want to take the time to read the facts, and just make a judgment off of B.S.,” lamented Wallace, after rejecting the conclusion of the 15 FBI agents assigned to his case.

An investigation into the object found near the CIA facility is ongoing.