WASHINGTON — Fifteen CIA employees were found to have committed sexual, racial or other types of harassment last year, including a supervisor who was removed from the job after engaging in “bullying, hostile behavior,” and an operative who was sent home from an overseas post for inappropriately touching female colleagues, according to an internal CIA document obtained by The Associated Press.

The examples, sent several weeks ago in an email to the CIA’s workforce by the director of the agency’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, were meant to show how the agency is enforcing a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment. But the announcement sparked heated commentary in postings on the CIA’s internal networks, officials acknowledged, with some employees arguing the agency does not sufficiently ferret out and punish misconduct.

The CIA’s personnel systems seem to be fundamentally broken, and harassment frequently goes unreported, one officer said in an excerpt of an employee posting obtained by the AP. The authenticity of the posting was not disputed by the agency.

CIA officials took issue with that assertion after agreeing to discuss the workforce message on the condition that they not be quoted by name.

The agency officials made available CIA Director John Brennan’s March workforce message reaffirming the zero-tolerance policy, saying, “Words or actions that harm a colleague and undermine his or her career are more than just unprofessional, painful and wrong — they are illegal and hurt us all.” Brennan assured employees that he would not tolerate acts of reprisal against those who complained of harassment.