Statement to DACODAI - Cynthia Kwitchoff

Statement to DACODAI by Cynthia Kwitchoff, former CIA

17 April 2024

FOR: Gen. Lester Lyles and members of the DACODAI Committee

FROM: Cynthia J. Kwitchoff
Freelance Consultant
CIA Staff Employee and Contractor, 1989-2013

SUBJECT: Statement for the DACODAI Public Meeting, May 2024

I have known and read about communism/Marxism since my days in college in the mid-1980s. It had a great impact on me to hear KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov speak at the University of Illinois. He talked about KGB disinformation tactics which aimed to deceive people about the true nature of communism, and the long-term stages of covert manipulation to divide people in a country, thus weakening it and subverting it towards communism. (See: https://unconstrainedanalytics.org/kgb-defector-yuri-bezmenov-warns-america-of-marxist-subversion/) My uncle, an Air Force OSI Special Agent, taught me and gave me books about the KGB’s activities in America. I read many accounts of Soviet and East European defectors who described the misery of living under communist totalitarianism and yearning for freedom from it. My bookcase has hundreds of books on the Soviet and communist threat. One of the main reasons I joined the CIA was to help protect the people of America from living under the yoke of communism.

Yet what I and many have thought of as an ”overseas” problem (communist Soviet Union) actually had been “long marching” subtly through American culture and the educational system. Here in America, Marxist proponents didn’t use and exploit economic class warfare to divide the country, but rather exploited race grievances as a way to divide people. A community organizer in Chicago once told Saul Alinsky about a problem in the inner city and ways to fix it. He was corrected by Alinsky: we don’t fix problems, we exploit them.

As a CIA staff employee and later contractor, my area of work was security and counterintelligence. As a young background investigator in the Office of Security in the early 1990s, I had to attend a week-long Diversity training offsite with my fellow security officers. All that I can remember of this training is how angry I felt about it at the end because of the division it created. When we began, we were all security officers working on a mission together. By the end, we saw each other as different and separated. Instead of just my fellow coworkers, here there was an older Asian female. And over here a young black male, and so on. It was disappointing how the training separated us and focused on our differences rather than being a team. Over 30 years later, this negative experience is the only thing I remember from the week-long Diversity training offsite.

Moving forward, near the end of 2022, a fellow retired CIA officer colleague forwarded me a viral letter making the rounds, written by a retired Army Brigadier General and West Point graduate entitled, “An Open Letter to my Fellow Army General Officers” (See: https://starrs.us/an-open-letter-to-my-fellow-army-general-officers/) In it he warns about the threat of DEI ideology and how it divides the troops, creating tribes, grievances and suspicions of one another instead of unity, trust and meritocracy. Exactly what I had experienced at that diversity training so long ago.

I was so impressed by his letter that I was curious to know more about the organization he was with. This was when I first learned about Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS.US). I liked the work they were doing to stand against the divisive CRT/DEI agenda in the US military and Service Academies, but their website could have used some help, so I offered my services in designing, research and knowledge of the Marxist threat.

In 2018, I had worked on a 250-page report written by one of my clients, a former Army intelligence officer who had worked on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CENTCOM. His report was called, “Re-Remembering the Mis-Remembered Left: The Left’s Strategy and Tactics to Transform America” (See: https://unconstrainedanalytics.org/report-re-remembering-the-mis-remembered-left-the-lefts-strategy-and-tactics-to-transform-america/) A brilliant intellectual who used deep concepts and words, I had to read every sentence carefully to figure out a way to design the report so the readers wouldn’t miss the gold in his thoughts. When I finally finished the report, I concluded from what I learned: that in the end, Marxism’s goal is to negate and destroy everything, even if that eventually includes itself. And that most people were taken in by “nice-sounding” words and concepts—not realizing the covert nature of this destructive end goal, directed by those who did know.

At the beginning of 2023, I began weekly monitoring of news regarding the CRT/DEI agenda push in the US military and service academies to post on the STARRS.US website to track this issue. While collecting articles, I often skim through the comment section to see what people are thinking. To my amazement, I began noticing a repeating pattern of people in the military who couldn’t wait to get out because of the DEI atmosphere and edicts forced on them; military veterans who could no longer recommend military service to young people; and military families who said they wouldn’t let their kids join the military and that a long line of military service to America going back decades if not centuries had ended with them.

I began collecting these comments whenever I happened upon them and it’s now well over 1,500 comments and 130 pages. (See: https://starrs.us/evidence-that-the-dei-crt-agenda-in-the-military-does-hurt-recruiting-and-retention/) This document of quotes was provided to DACOADI committee members in December 2023 to alert them as to what military people are thinking and saying. It gives great insight into the current recruiting crisis of why less and less people want to be in the military. Someone who served in the Air Force as enlisted then an officer then a civilian for 48 years (1969-2017) asked us, “if the list of comments has ever been sent to the SecDef/DepSecDef. I don’t want to believe they would ignore the hundreds of comments you collected and not make policy changes to correct the direction the Department of Defense has headed.”

I’m a civilian observing the military and I wonder about that too. In my work, I’ve seen countless of official DOD X/Twitter posts and YouTube videos with “woke” DEI content get completely “ratioed” in the comment section with thousands of people—many military—angry and pushing back on the damaging woke messaging. I’ve seen gay people plead with a DOD or Service Branch social media account pushing pride month to stop the constant pandering because it is making people turn against them. I’ve seen black people embarrassed that DOD thinks diversity is a ‘strategic imperative’ over warfighting. I’ve seen white males—previously the majority who fought our wars and were killed—now rejecting service and seeing the obvious attempt to win them back (a recent recruitment video with only white men) only now when war is about to be declared. After being pushed aside for years as DOD emphasized and promoted women, gays and transgenders in the military, they are now saying no thanks and those promoted can have at it in the next war.

I’ve watched—in the middle of a historic Army recruitment crisis—the Army feature on its official news page a story about an overweight, sloppy-looking Army officer man with longish/messy hair claim he is a woman. There are photos of him waving little LGBT flags and his desk is covered with stuffed animals. Social media exploded with horrible publicity for the Army. No one wanted to serve with, under or salute someone like this. As a civilian, it is inconceivable to me that the Army would think it’s a good idea to promote this story on its website and social media feeds while in the midst of the biggest recruitment crisis in the past 50 years or more. There were over 32,600 negative comments on the official DOD tweet alone. This is a clue something is not right; the policy is not resonating with the American public that DOD serves. I’ve watched the Secretary of the Army’s posts on social media with DEI content completely ratioed against the message. Does not her staff see the overwhelming, continual evidence that Americans don’t agree with this agenda? Is it the policy of the Pentagon to completely dismiss the American people and what they think?

When I attended the December 2023 public DACODAI meeting, I observed a group of people living in a bubble, shielded or unaware of what the public thinks. Everyone on the committee seemed to be on the same page; no one pushed back or spoke up saying the DEI ideology enforcement in the military may not be a good idea after all. There was no “diversity of thought” so often touted as key. It was only one type of thought—pushing the CRT/DEI agenda, obsessing about everyone’s identity, and seeing white people and especially white men as a problem if there were too many of them. And thus being completely oblivious to the damaging nature of dividing people along race, gender and sexuality instead of being one unified fighting team.

There doesn’t seem to be a purpose to an “Advisory” committee for the Secretary of Defense if the advice is not diverse but all the same. If “diversity of thought and perspectives” is so important, shouldn’t half the members be of a different thought about DEI? Shouldn’t some of the briefers be people who show the negative effects the DEI agenda is having on the military and recruitment? Would not the Secretary be better served if he was aware of the pros and cons of DEI and of the extent of sentiment of a large portion of American public, military veterans and families who think CRT/DEI ideology is divisive and the reason people are leaving the military or not joining? Why should American taxpayers be paying for a one-sided government committee?

There are over 1,600 articles categorized by 20 topics (Army, Air Force, Air Force Academy, etc) on the STARRS.US website showing overwhelming evidence of the problem. There are many more disturbing CRT/DEI trends in the military and service academies that I’ve observed while working on the website than I can cover here. To start with, click on a topic or see these posts tagged with #WethePeople Pulse (https://starrs.us/tag/we-the-people-pulse/) that include comments from military-related people to get insight into what people are thinking. Step out of the Beltway Bubble Mentality. As STARRS Chairman Lt. General Rod Bishop so often says, “Listen to the people.”

Businesses use sentiment tracking to see what the public thinks about their product in order to fix any problems and make it better so that customers are happy, and that they buy and recommend the product to others. Because of the pandering, divisive, condescending and discriminatory CRT/DEI agenda push in the Armed Forces, people who were once the most loyal “buyers” are not happy and not recommending your product (service in the military) to others, and won’t let their kids buy the product either. If DOD was a company, they would be going out of business soon. It’s not rocket science. Make people happy. Marxist-rooted ‘oppressed versus oppressors’ ideology that divides people, that demands lowering of standards for ‘equity’ and quotas, that forces people to accept beliefs that go against their values (such as forcing women to shower with males who think they are women)—do not make people happy.

Because of the never-ending DEI push in the military, when minorities or women are selected or promoted, they don’t know if they were chosen for their abilities or to meet a diversity goal because of something they have no control over: the color of their skin or gender. They aren’t happy with this doubt. They also know their co-workers wonder the same thing about them—is this a DEI hire? And the co-workers are not happy, especially if one of them was passed over for selection or promotion based on the other person’s race or gender. No one is happy with DEI.

Said a senior US military officer, “If we can’t get rid of this DEI BS, none of us of color are ever going to know if we really earned the position we are promoted into.” The DEI push is the cause of this utter disservice to officers like this.

A cadet selected for the color of their skin or gender and by lowering the standards does a disservice to them and is not served well by the academy. The cadet may not be at the level to compete in an academy environment and struggles to keep up, which doesn’t make them happy. If they can’t make it and have to leave, they are not happy. Neither is the would-be cadet who was far more qualified but was not selected because of their skin color. No one is happy.

From a USAFA cadet, “It would be both demeaning and a disservice to my nation to ONLY be at the Academy because I am a minority female.”

From a black female West Point cadet, “….I finally realized I’m here because I’m black, not because I tried. And that made me extremely… I was honestly devastated. I felt demeaned. I felt belittled. I felt like I felt babied.” https://starrs.us/starrs-interviews-3-former-west-point-cadets/

The sentiment collected from military-related people in over 1,000 quotes clearly shows they are not happy. Given this document in December 2023, it is now impossible for anyone in DACODAI to deny there is a problem. The evidence is here that the DEI agenda in the military is a MAJOR problem: https://starrs.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/What-Military-People-Are-Saying-1DEC23.pdf

Those in the military who fought against Marxist ideology during the Cold War are not happy. Over 95,000 military people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands went missing or were wounded in this fight. It is extreme disservice to those who fought, stood and defended against Marxism all those years to find this anti-American, divisive ideology now in their own Pentagon and military branches. Marxism, covertly as the CRT/DEI agenda, has no business being pushed or mandated in the US Department of Defense and against the oath to the US Constitution.

As a side note, the officers and enlisted members of the Soviet armed forces resented and hated the political officers/Zampolit assigned to their units, who enforced compliance with communist/Marxist doctrine. The parallels to today’s DEI officers in the military are evident.

The American public is not happy with the overdone, discriminatory CRT/DEI agenda and they are pushing back. Even those who consider themselves on the liberal/left political side have started speaking out against it. Businesses are halting DEI programs to comply with the long-standing law that it is illegal to choose, hire or favor someone on the basis of their race or gender. The Supreme Court ended the use of race in admissions for universities, a decision most black adults agreed with.

At this point, the DOD seems to be the only one continuing to push this discredited agenda. Why? Who benefits from an ideology that deliberately divides thus weakens America—and our military?