C.I.A. Deaths Rise in Secret Afghan War

The Memorial Wall is on the north wall of the Original Headquarters Building lobby. This wall of 103 stars stands as a silent, simple memorial to those CIA officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice. The Memorial Wall was commissioned by the CIA Fine Arts Commission in May 1973 and sculpted by Harold Vogel in July 1974. CIA Memorial Wall

New York Times: A Funeral of 2 Friends: C.I.A. Deaths Rise in Secret Afghan War

The number of C.I.A. deaths in Afghanistan rivals those killed in the Southeast Asia conflicts of nearly a half-century ago.

WASHINGTON — On a sweltering day earlier this summer, operatives with the Central Intelligence Agency gathered at Arlington National Cemetery to bury two of their own. Brian Ray Hoke and Nathaniel Patrick Delemarre, elite gunslingers who worked for the C.I.A.’s paramilitary force, were laid to rest after a firefight with Islamic State militants near Jalalabad in Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan.

There had been scant mention of Mr. Hoke’s death in local news reports in Leesburg, Va., his home, and nothing at all about Mr. Delemarre in news accounts in the Florida Panhandle, where his family lives. Their deaths this past October were never acknowledged by the C.I.A., beyond two memorial stars chiseled in a marble wall at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va.

Today there are at least 18 stars on that wall representing the number of C.I.A. personnel killed in Afghanistan — a tally that has not been previously reported, and one that rivals the number of C.I.A. operatives killed in the wars in Vietnam and Laos nearly a half century ago.

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WNU Editor: Sadly .... and this is an easy prediction .... they are going to be more stars on the CIA Memorial Wall in the years to come.