STARS ON THE WALL

2 More CIA Operatives Killed Last Year in Afghanistan

NYT reports 18 Agency personnel have been lost during the 16-year war.

Two CIA operatives were killed last October after a firefight in Afghanistan with Islamic State terror group militants, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Brian Ray Hoke and Nathaniel Patrick Delemarre were working with the CIA’s paramilitary force in Jalalabad when they were shot during a raid on and ISIS compound. As a policy, the U.S. spy agency does not confirm when its personnel are killed in action; instead, it adds an anonymous memorial star to a marble wall at its headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The Times reports that at least 18 of the stars on the wall represent CIA personnel killed during the 16-year war in Afghanistan, a tally close to the number of operatives lost during the wars in Vietnam and Laos.