Mission Ethics Draft
Please key your comments to specific numbered sentences/paragraphs. If your comment is a new topic, provide a new number for it for follow-on discussion.
2. Our success depends upon the trust and goodwill of our customers, vendors, business partners, and fellow citizens. Hence, our staff and contractor reputation for ethics and actual behavior must be above reproach. Therefore, we adhere to the following standards of professional ethics and behavior:
3. First do no harm to U.S. citizens.
4. We act within the Constitution and the Rule of Law; we are constrained by both the spirit and the letter ofA the laws and policies of the United States.
5. Expediency must never be an excuse for misconduct.
6. We are accountable for our work and support accountability processes to ensure our adherence to these commitments. We intend for our examined behavior to earn and sustain a good reputation for us personally and for our organizations.
7. Statements we make to our clients, colleagues, and the public will be true, and structured not to conceal unnecessarily or to mislead in any way.B
8. We will seek to resolve difficult ethical choices in favor of constitutional requirements, the truth, our fellow citizens and our customers.C
9. We will address the potential consequences of our actions in advance, especially the consequences of failure, discovery, and any unintended consequences of success.D
10. Intelligence gathering is a risky business. We can and do take risks, but only if the consequences of failure fall on the Intelligence Community, not on our unwitting citizens.
11. Although we may work in secrecy, we will work so that if our efforts become known, our fellow citizens will be proud of us and of our efforts.
Discussion Points
The Intelligence Community needs to review explicitly its ethical principles from time to time when it is not under stress, so they are present in the minds of the work force and can help them at times when the IC is under stress. Properly used, ethics shows how to recognize the right in a novel situation.
Most of the text on the previous page is unexceptional, and indeed occurs on IC web pages in some form in various Values or Ethics statements, from Army, CIA, Navy, NSA, USAF, and others.
The italicized text is not as common, and is explained below.
A. "... both the spirit and letter of" Have you ever been in meetings where actions were sanctioned that met the "letter" of the law, but many felt uncomfortable that the "spirit" of the law was purposely evaded? This language is meant to address that concern.
B. "... and structured not to conceal unnecessarily or to mislead in any way" Have you been in decision meetings where statements were crafted to lead the intended audience to erroneous conclusions, or to believe you really meant something else with the language, but if given fuller context, the crafted statement was still technically true, but would lead to different conclusions? How did you feel?
C. "... resolve ethical choices in favor of constitutional requirements, the truth, our fellow citizens and our customers <elided>". The order of terms is important; in particular, customers come last in this set of responsibilities.
D. "... address potential consequences... and unintended consequences..." simply says we will not take action rashly, without serious thought given to issues other than direct results.