President Trump’s top spy chief has engaged in an effort to review how U.S. intelligence agencies can help advance the administration’s goal of decriminalizing homosexuality worldwide.
Richard Grenell, serving as the acting director of National Intelligence and overseeing the nation’s coalition of 17 spy agencies and organizations, made his intentions clear in an intelligence community-wide letter obtained by the New York Times.
“Last year, the President charged me with leading the U.S. government’s efforts to help decriminalize homosexuality in the 69 countries that currently make being gay a crime,” Grenell wrote last week. “In line with this, I have directed our team to establish an interagency working group to fully leverage the expertise of the IC and will further advance these efforts through membership on the National Security Council.”
The decriminalization of homosexuality wouldn’t be the first issue the intelligence community has linked to intelligence-sharing. For instance, the United States is currently engaged in an all-out effort to convince its “Five Eyes” Western allies, especially the United Kingdom, not to use Chinese tech firm Huawei’s equipment in their fifth generation wireless networks.
Grenell, who is believed to be the first openly gay Cabinet member in U.S. history, told the New York Times in an interview on Wednesday that his working group is weighing whether intelligence sharing should be limited with countries which criminalize homosexuality, although no decisions have been made. The spy chief, who is concurrently serving as the U.S. ambassador to Germany, said this is part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to leverage U.S. foreign policy to promote tolerance and acceptance of the gay community that was formally launched in February 2019.
“We have the president’s total support,” Grenell said. “This is an American value, and this is United States policy.”
Grenell said: “we can’t just simply make the moral argument and expect others to respond in kind because telling others that it’s the right thing to do doesn’t always work” and said it was his belief that “to fight for decriminalization is to fight for basic human rights.”
The vast majority of the nearly 70 nations which criminalize homosexuality to some degree are in Africa and the Middle East, as well as in Southeast Asia and a few island nations in the Pacific and Caribbean.
There are a number of countries with which the U.S. works closely on various intelligence efforts and counterterrorism measures, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, which have laws criminalizing consensual same-sex relations between adults.
“If a country that we worked in as the United States intelligence community was arresting women because of their gender, we would absolutely do something about it,” Mr. Grenell said. “Ultimately, the United States is safer when our partners respect basic human rights.”
Other top members of the Trump administration have been vocal about this issue, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“Around the world, far too many governments continue to arrest and abuse their citizens simply for being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex,” Pompeo said in 2018. “The United States firmly opposes criminalization, violence, and serious acts of discrimination such as in housing, employment, and government services, directed against LGBTI persons. We use public and private diplomacy to raise human rights concerns, provide emergency assistance to people at risk, and impose visa restrictions and economic sanctions against those who persecute them.”
Pope Francis said in 2019 that governments that mistreat gays “are actions that are typical of Nazism, that with its persecution of Jews, gypsies, people with homosexual orientation, represent an excellent model of the throwaway culture and culture of hatred.”
Grenell’s letter to the U.S. spy agencies made it clear he was also committed to helping gay intelligence community members.
“While I will likely not be in this role for long, I plan to use this opportunity to drive lasting impact for the IC Pride community, and I am asking every member of the IC leadership team to join me,” Grenell wrote. “I am committed to doing more to detect and respond to all discrimination and harassment within the workforce. I expect every IC agency to ensure policies are specific and deliberate in protecting the LGBT workforce.”
Grenell told the New York Times that even though his role was temporary, he is “not a seat warmer.”
He added: “The president asked me to do a job, and I am going to do the job to the best of my ability.”
All this comes amid increased scrutiny by Democrats that Grenell is doing too much in his acting role, with House Intelligence Community Chairman Adam Schiff expressing anger with Grenell’s new leadership picks at ODNI and hinting that Grenell was “politicizing” the spy office.
“Going forward, I encourage you to think of the relationship between your committee and the IC as that between the legislative and executive branches of government, rather than that between a hedge fund and a distressed asset, as your letter suggests,” Grenell shot back at the California Democrat this week.
