I used to work in the Intelligence Community, up until December 31, 2020. I've seen a lot of changes in my 34 years of Federal Service. The most profound was that LGBTQ people used to be denied clearances or had their clearances revoked if they came out back when I started in 1987. A few years before I retired, we had a thriving LGBTQ Employee Resource Group. I was almost in tears when I overheard on of the young servicemen that I worked with talking openly about his husband. And yes, this was under the first TACO regime.
Two operational examples (that I can talk about). During the U.S. operation in Haiti during the Clinton years, a local gang was bothering some of the U.S. military folks. Their name roughly translated to "Chango's Warriors". Now, as a Pagan, I knew that Chango was the Voudou Lwa, specifically the warrior. But someone who was more familiar with Haitian culture could have explained this without jumping through the hoops that I did - and not having to explain WHY I knew that.
The other was in the days after 9/11. I was in a meeting with other members of various IC agencies talking about how people get radicalized. We were all a bunch of college-educated white people - and one college-educated black man - wondering why people in the Middle East were being radicalized by these Islamist groups. My response was that they needed to go down to some of the sketchier parts of Northern Virginia and talk to the Latino gangbangers. Because it's essentially the same idea. The all looked at me like I'd grown a second head.
And then there was the whole "Iraq has WMD" groupthink, where nobody was able to put their hand up and say, "Um, are we SURE that they have them? What is our evidence? Are we sure that Hussein isn't conning us?"
So yeah, diversity is important.
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