Bet they didn't clear it with the White House: Intel agencies to delve deep into applicants' ancestry, ethnicity

Government Security News reports that the U.S. intelligence communities will be delving deep into its applicants' ancestry and ethnicity.

The Director of National Intelligence [Dennis Blair, pictured at right] wants to ask job applicants and current employees in the U.S. intelligence community to identify their “ancestry” and “ethnicity” to enable personnel officers to assess their progress in recruiting and retaining U.S. citizens with knowledge of certain languages, cultures and societies.

Applicants and employees will be asked to identify their “country of origin” from a list of 58 different countries (plus “Other”); their “ethnicity” from a list of 71 possibilities – ranging from the familiar, such as Arab, Chinese, Jewish, Kurdish, Serb and Ukrainian, to the distinctly unfamiliar, such as Azeri, Banyakole, Dagestani, Kikuyu, Oromo, Tigre and Zhuag – and their “cultural expertise” from a list of 113 countries or ethnic groups, including relatively obscure ones, such as Circassian, Fulani, Hausa, Kpelle, Peuhl, Sara and Yezidi.

Kpelle? Yezidi? Bless you!

How long you figure it will take Al Sharpton and the ACLU to lodge a protest complaining that this kind of practice is -- no matter how much it's warranted -- some sort of violation of their anti-American agenda?

The over-under says ten days.