From the World

U.S./ Langley: The Unnamed Dead

Suzanne Lewis

giovedì 14 gennaio 2010

Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA, has not mentioned the names of Dane Clark Paresi, Scott Roberson, Harold Brown, Jr., Jeremy Wise, or Elizabeth Hanson in public, even though he has given their families permission to speak openly about their identities. Nor has he released the names of the three other CIA officers who died along with them in the December 2009 suicide bombing attack on Forward Operating Base Chapman near Khost, Afghanistan. It is also highly unlikely that we will hear these names spoken by many other employees of the CIA. To be sure, when they are within their own walls at the compound in Langley, Panetta and his employees will say the names of their slain colleagues and friends. The CIA will host multiple memorial services to honor all seven of the victims of the attack, including an annual Memorial Day ceremony during which the CIA members who have died on the job are remembered and honored; but when they drive past the entrance gate and into the world, most will jealously guard the identities of those slain.

Those unfamiliar with the culture of the CIA do not understand. If these names have been published in newspapers and on the internet, why would the CIA refuse to acknowledge them? Does naming them put any of their colleagues, informants, or family members in jeopardy? There is some debate on this subject, but to understand why the CIA is reluctant to release the names of those who die undercover, we must ask a different question.

We honor the dead by publishing their names. Flipping through the gory battle scenes in Homer’s Iliad, we discover name after name of otherwise anonymous soldiers, such as Pedaeus, tenderly remembered in death:

Meges killed Pedaeus, Antenor’s son, a bastard boy but lovely Theano nursed him with close, loving care like her own children, just to please her husband. Closing, Meges gave him close attention too– the famous spearman struck behind his skull, just at the neck-cord, the razor spear slicing straight up through the jaws, cutting away the tongue– he sank in the dust, teeth clenching the cold bronze.

The practice of naming fallen soldiers continues today, on one war memorial after another, where the names of the dead are carved into stone monuments (the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. is a famous example). At the CIA, however, the monument to slain members has an entirely different character. In the entrance hall of its main building, a collection of black stars has been carved into the white marble wall. Attached to the wall, beneath the stars, a black Moroccan goatskin-bound book, called the "Book of Honor," rests in a steel frame, topped by an inch-thick plate of glass. A list of years (1947, 1948, etc. and sometimes a year is listed more than once) is printed down the left margin of the visible page. Beside each year, the heavy linen paper has been stamped with a black star, and occasionally a name appears to the right of a star.

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Many of the stars in the book of honor do not have a name beside them. In 1997, there were 70 stars, 29 of which had names. There were 79 stars in 2002, 83 in 2004, and 90 in 2009. According to Howard L. Rosenberg, 55 of the 90 entries in the book contain names, while the other employees are represented only by a gold star followed by a blank space. For those who work at the CIA, the greater honor lies in not having one’s name written in the Book of Honor. The unnamed stars belong to those who died undercover, while working for the Directorate of Operations, the clandestine arm of the agency.

One does not apply for work in the D.O. looking for renown. Those who relish a career in espionage tend to be taciturn and private. The glory they desire derives from belonging to an elite group, in which other members may recognize their accomplishments while the outside world remains ignorant. To publish their names while they are working in the DO is to deliver a great insult, like a spit in the face; more to the point, it destroys careers. Even after they retire, former CIA case officers often continue to shun the limelight. For these men and women, their anonymity holds the key to their importance.

Unfortunately, family members of CIA case officers do not always place the same value on secrecy. They live in the larger culture, which desires and expects public acknowledgment for heroic sacrifice. Ted Gup, journalism professor at Case Western Reserve University has been an advocate for family members of slain CIA case officers. In his The Book of Honor (2001, Anchor Books), Gup investigates the identities of those unnamed stars at the CIA. In the process of writing the book, and since its publication, he has encouraged family members to petition the CIA to include their relatives’ names on the agency’s monument. Many new names have been added as a result. For those who argue that monuments serve the living and not the dead, the impulse to include these names makes sense.

For those who work at the CIA, however, and who pass the wall of stars each day, the mystique of those unnamed stars remains a source of pride, a reminder of their special mission, and a sign of highest honor.