A historic wave of departures at the CIA and deep cutbacks at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are swamping the spy agency’s retirement system, leaving former spies with months-long waits to get their first pension check.
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While precise numbers are classified, current and former officials say the pace of retirements and resignations from the CIA outstrips anything in recent memory. They are being fueled in part by Trump’s (R) push to shrink the federal government, including deferred resignations offered to workers last year.
The CIA, in a recent note to alumni, acknowledged the problem and pleaded for patience “The Retirement Branch is currently processing an unprecedented number of retirement cases, and is working diligently around the clock to expedite these cases,” the note said. “We appreciate your understanding and patience as we navigate this challenging period. Rest assured that our team is committed to processing your annuity payments as efficiently as possible.”
It gave retirees two toll-free numbers to call if more than six months had passed since they’d received their final paycheck. One former official said she recently spoke to a colleague who retired in March and had just received their first, partial retirement check. “The question is how do you pay for your mortgage, and how do you pay for your kids’ college,” the former official said.
As CIA workers prepare to retire, they are eligible to take a one-week, in-house seminar called “Horizons” that is meant to help them navigate life outside the spy agency’s cloistered halls — like how to prepare a job-hunting résumé that doesn’t disclose classified information. Lately, those in the seminar are being told they may not see their first full retirement check for up to nine months, or longer, after they depart the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
The retirement crush mirrors trends across the federal government, where, data shows, there are unprecedented numbers of people leaving, creating lengthy delays in retirees receiving their benefits. Last year, there were more than 330,000 departures, most of which were voluntary. The situation is particularly poignant at the CIA, where officers often serve in danger zones, rarely receive public recognition and share a culture of not complaining publicly outside the spy agency’s walls.
CIA officers who until recently recruited agents, prepared classified reports on world crises or developed high-tech espionage tools are feeling the squeeze, said the former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal CIA dynamics. “If military retirees were told they had to wait a year or more for earned pension benefits, Washington would be apoplectic. Intelligence officers serve in the shadows, and their discretion should not become a shield for institutional failure,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the issue.
“If agency and congressional leaders were not aware of this problem before, they are now,” he said. In response to the crunch, the CIA has surged personnel to the Retirement Branch, including people with experience with that work. “CIA is committed to ensuring that retired officers who dedicated their careers to our mission receive their hard-earned benefits as quickly as possible,” a CIA spokesperson said in response to questions from The Post.
“Under Director [John] Ratcliffe, CIA is focused on returning the Agency to its mission of recruiting spies, and recently hired our largest class of operations officers in two decades,” the spokesperson said in a statement. The size of the CIA’s workforce and the number of employees who have left since the start of Trump’s second term are classified. Overall, the CIA workforce was believed to be about 22,000 in early 2025, U.S. officials said. Many hundreds of people — perhaps more than 1,000 — have since left, one of the former officials estimated.
Some former officials describe the agency’s downsizing as the largest since the CIA was significantly cut back in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. In May 2025, the Trump administration told Congress it planned to reduce the CIA workforce by 1,200 over several years, mostly through attrition and reduced hiring. Agency workers were among the tens of thousands of federal employees who took a deferred resignation package the Trump administration offered to shrink the government’s ranks. Others simply decided it was time to leave.
Administrators responsible for processing retirement requests are among those who have left, worsening the crunch, said two former intelligence officials. “The men and women of the CIA protect our country and make Americans safer every day, often without any acknowledgment or recognition,” said Sen. Mark Warner (Virginia), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The least our government can do is ensure they receive the benefits they deserve when they decide to leave.”
“Again and again, this administration has mistreated our public servants, including those in the CIA. And whether it’s incompetence or disrespect that is creating the delay, the administration needs to figure out how to fix it,” Warner said. Some CIA officers have pulled back their retirement requests because they can’t afford to go long periods without being paid, one of the former officials said. Others are falling back on savings or taking out second mortgages to cover the gap.
“Start looking now, hoard cash, plan for a longer period of time” before receiving retirement pay, said a retired CIA official who left last fall. “More thoughtfully and aggressively pursue jobs before you leave The official said it took four to five months before he was paid for unused annual leave — a sum that can be substantial for some retirees — and another month after that before he saw his first retirement check.
The CIA has a tradition of treating its retirees well, former officials said. Among the reasons: Angry ex-employees with heads full of secrets are a target for adversary intelligence services. “We are creating a massive [counterintelligence] risk,” said the official who left last fall. Like other federal officials, former CIA officers are banned from taking certain jobs for a set period after retirement, such as lobbying on issues they handled while in government or working for foreign governments.
CIA retirement packages are initially handled within the agency, which can take several months. Retirees are given an estimate of what their benefits will be. Many factors can complicate the process. Departing officials may have served undercover, using a different identity; spent time in the U.S. military or at another intelligence agency; or have a spouse who also worked at the CIA.
Once completed, the packages are transmitted to the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources agency. Before the cases are finalized, OPM issues interim payments to retirees that are typically 60 to 80 percent of their eventual checks. The government eventually makes up the difference. John Hatton, staff vice president of policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said there is no legal recourse for retirees who want to get their benefits sooner, and the government will not owe interest for delayed payments. “It’s a tough situation,” he said.
The OPM’s workforce declined by a third, from just over 3,000 in fiscal year 2024 to 1,980 in fiscal 2026, according to the agency’s data. Though the OPM expanded the main office responsible for retirement services to handle the wave of departures, the team still shrank by 16 percent, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. OPM data shows it is taking longer on average for the agency to process retirement claims, from 79 days in October 2025 to 109 days in July.
Michael H. Drucker
