By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Tuesday put on hold for five days the firings of 11 CIA officers who were ordered to resign or face imminent termination over their temporary jobs with the spy agency’s diversity, equity, inclusion and access programs, their lawyer said.
The attorney, Kevin Sullivan, told Reuters that U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga issued a verbal administrative stay at the end of a hearing that he planned to put in writing.
Trenga gave the government until Thursday to file its response to Sullivan’s request for a temporary restraining order.
“These people are being fired just because of an assumption that’s been made that they are leftists,” said Sullivan, himself a former CIA undercover officer.
The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Administrative stays, which do not deal with the merits of a case, are orders to briefly pause action at issue in the dispute to preserve the status quo and give courts more time to consider legal arguments.
Sullivan said his clients are among 51 CIA officers temporarily assigned to DEIA programs who were placed on paid administrative leave two days after U.S. President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order on January 22 ending such programs across the government.
The 51 officers were summoned to the visitors center, outside the agency’s high-security perimeter in Langley, Virginia, and had their identification badges “seized,” he said.
They were given three options that they were ordered to accept by 5 p.m. on Wednesday: retirement by October 1, resignation effective on Tuesday or termination on May 20, according to copies of unclassified notices the officers were given that Reuters reviewed.
Unless they made their decisions by the deadline, they would be terminated, said the notices, one of which had spaces for their signatures and those of a witness.
Sullivan said the orders violated CIA administrative procedures, the Administrative Procedures Act and his clients’ constitutional rights.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Don Durfee and David Gregorio)
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