It was one of the darkest days in CIA history: Seven operatives killed after being lured by a rogue informant into a deadly trap. In the years since, memories of the 2009 disaster in eastern Afghanistan helped to animate the intelligence agency’s global search for an elusive terrorist believed to have played a key role in the officers’ deaths.
That terrorist was Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda leader killed on Saturday, in a strike carried out by the CIA. Nothing in official U.S. statements describe Zawahiri’s death as payback for the American losses in Khost, Afghanistan, some 12 years earlier. But many former and current intelligence officers say that’s exactly how it felt.
The CIA, per usual practice, has not publicly acknowledged any part in firing the missile that struck Zawahiri as he stood on his balcony in an apartment building in Kabul, the Afghan capital. But since Monday, confirmation of the 71-year-old Egyptian’s death has triggered an emotional response within the agency’s Langley, Va., headquarters, and also with former colleagues, friends and family members of those who were killed or wounded in 2009.
“This is an incredibly personal moment,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former official with the CIA’s operations division who served with several of the five men and two women from the agency killed at Camp Chapman, a CIA base on the outskirts of Khost from which the agency ran clandestine missions against al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. In addition to the seven CIA operatives, a senior Jordanian intelligence officer and an Afghan driver were also killed.
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