The CIA Memorial Wall is one of the first things visitors see when entering the Original Headquarters Building lobby. The wall – located on the lobby’s north wall – stands as a silent memorial to those CIA employees “who gave their lives in the service of their country.” Currently, there are 87 stars carved into the marble of the CIA Memorial Wall. The”Book of Honor” lists the names of 54 employees who died while serving their country. The names of the remaining 33 employees must remain secret, even in death; each of these officers is remembered in the book by a star.

Who Gets a Star?

The men and women remembered on the Memorial Wall lost their lives while serving their country in the field of intelligence. The Honor and Merit Awards Board (HMAB) recommends approval of the nomination to the CIA Director if it meets the following selection criteria: Inclusion on the Memorial Wall is awarded posthumously to employees who lose their lives while serving their country in the field of intelligence. Death may occur in the foreign field or in the United States. 1) Death must be of an inspirational or heroic character while in the performance of duty; or 2) as the result of an act of terrorism while in the performance of duty; or 3) as an act of premeditated violence targeted against an employee, motivated solely by that employee’s Agency affiliation; or 4) in the performance of duty while serving in areas of hostilities or other exceptionally hazardous conditions where the death is a direct result of such hostilities or hazards.

Once approved by the Director, the Office of Protocol arranges placement of the star on the Memorial Wall.

Many years ago, while in Germany, I ran across a rather hidden but well-kept cemetery for SS troops killed during World War II. It was clear from the iconography at the cemetery that it was attended by more than family relatives and descendants of what the Nuremberg Tribunal labeled as a criminal and terrorist organization per se. And that led me to a thought experiment: Can we really, without doing disrespect to the victims of these creatures and covering-up their magnitudes of their crimes, “honor” the deaths, duty and “service” of these criminals, or indeed anyone, without any consideration of what was the real nature of their “duties” and “service” and for whom and what cause, did they really die?

It seems that the CIA at least considers how they died given that not all CIA officers who die while on duty would be qualified to have a star in their name, or as an anonymous entry. Presumably a CIA officer who say died of some STD while “hooking-up” overseas would not be qualified. Or, someone like an Aldrich Ames who died on duty later found to be doing what Ames was engaged in would not be qualified. I suspect that a CIA officer who turned whistle-blower on CIA operations involving drugs and who was killed by other CIA “assets” to silence him or her, would not qualify.

So how and by whom is “honorable service” in the CIA determined? What really qualifies as an act of heroism? What kinds of acts would be considered “inspirational” to the likes of those the CIA wants to recruit and that are considered most trusted? Someone like Richard Helms or George “Slam Dunk” Tenet who out-and-out lied to  and/or disingenuously spun Congress and showed contempt for Constitutionally-mandated Congressional oversight over intelligence operations? Someone who ran secret prisons and engaged in “enhanced interrogation” the covering up and destruction of evidence of which is admission of consciousness of guilt and the illegality of such secret prisons and torture (truly inspirational and heroic to some of the types found in and sought by CIA according to many former CIA insiders and some current ones)?

Criterion two says that in addition to heroic and inspirational acts demonstrated prior to death,  as an act of terrorism while in the performance of duty. Does that include death in the performance of duty committing terrorism or only if one is the object of it? If we define, as most people do, terrorism, as any acts and policies that are calculated to inflict, and/or are callously indifferent to the effects of infliction of, violence against non-combatants, who are unarmed and untrained to resist threats to their lives, then the whole history of the CIA from 1948 is one long trail of direct state-sponsored terrorism, terrorism through proxies, or terrorism by regimes set-up through coup d-etat and other means. The names and places of CIA operations that have only produced blowbacks that still haunt us today as the past is never really gone, it lives within and constrains the present, are now commonplace: Italy 1948; Iran 1953; Guatemala 1954; Korea 1946; China 1949; Taiwan 1949; Cuba 1959; Vietnam 1949; and the list goes on and on: see: https://sttpml.org/former-cia-officer-whos-afraid-of-sibel-edmonds/; see: http://jimcraven10.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/u-s-is-currently-fighting-74-wars-that-the-u-s-government-will-publicly-admit/; see: http://www.serendipity.li/cia/ciabase/ciabase_report_1.htm and  http://www.serendipity.li/cia/ciabase/ciabase_report_2.htm

On criterion 3, death as a result of being targeted as a member of CIA, what if the CIA officer dies as a result of just self-defense against a CIA officer operating outside of the law in the attacked person’s own country and perhaps in ways that cause even more scrutiny on the illegal actions of the Agency? What if that CIA officer dies when a prisoner turns on him during torture that is forbidden by U.S. and international law? And if the CIA officer is operating both covertly (hidden) and clandestinely (plausible deniability), and even as a false flag operation (to be blamed on someone else) that gets blown and causes all sorts of blowbacks as have most CIA operations, then does he or she qualify for a star on the wall?

On criterion four, death in places with hostilities or exceptional hazards and death is the result of those hostilities and hazards, what if the deceased CIA officer was the source and only karmic victim of those hostilities and exceptional hazards that also took the lives of many thousands of non-combatants and innocents? What if that officer was the accidental victim of a drone or cruise missile he or she called in and that went off target? What if that officer was the victim of known terrorists, recruited and not properly vetted and who turned out to be a double, or perhaps recruited under the banner of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, and who turned on his former master like a rabid junkyard dog brought in to protect a family and turned on it? Do they get a star on the wall?

Are some of these scenarios, from actual known cases, the real reasons why some CIA names, deaths and real reasons for them kept secret?

What if we had a star on the wall for every innocent victim of a fascist regime installed, maintained and protected by CIA? Or for every innocent person who acted as “collateral damage” from CIA drone strikes and other operations? Or for every innocent person, turned-in as a “terrorist” or “Islamist” and tortured or assassinated, for no reasons other than family or clan feuds, jealousy, payback or the like, as in the case of the Phoenix program in Vietnam and recently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere? What would that wall look like then?

What would that wall look like if we had the truth of what real “duties”, what operations, what “service”, for whom really, with what real costs and benefits and falling on whom really, were involved in that CIA officer’s death?

Anyone remember the scandal and controversy surrounding Reagan’s ceremonial “visit” to the Bitburg Cemetery for dead Nazi SS? All over the world, I suspect there are many victims who regard this wall of memorial as many in Israel and elsewhere regarded Reagan’s visit to Bitburg. What if all of the real costs (including social costs and costs to innocents as well as costs of protracted blowbacks over decades as in the case of Iran) and on whom those costs fell,  along with concrete assessments of real benefits and to whom those benefits really flowed, of past and present CIA operations, were assessed and debated? How iconic would that wall look then?

A Thought Experiment.

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12/10/13

The US devoted more resources to finding Mandela to hand over to the apartheid forces than the apartheid forces themselves. It was the CIA that actually located Mandela, and he was driving dressed up as a chauffeur when he was stopped, and he was arrested and ultimately serves 27 years in prison.

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To the Editor:

Nelson Mandela’s membership in the South African Communist Party in the early 1960s was acknowledged by the Communist Party itself last week, confirming the findings of my own historical research, reported by Bill Keller (“Nelson Mandela, Communist,” column, Dec. 8).

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Perhaps the United States government will now confirm the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in Mr. Mandela’s arrest in August 1962, which is also indicated by my research. It was the height of the Cold War, and it was all a long time ago, but the truth still counts.

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STEPHEN ELLIS

Amsterdam, December 9, 2013

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