A funeral of 2 friends: CIA deaths rise in secret war
Memorial stars in wall at headquarters denote toll agency workers have paid
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 CIA’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 Hoke’s death in local news reports in Leesburg, Virginia, his home, and nothing at all about Delemarre in news accounts in the Florida Panhandle, where his family lives. Their deaths this past October were never acknowledged by the CIA, 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 CIA personnel killed in Afghanistan — a tally that has not been previously reported, and one that rivals the number of CIA operatives killed in the wars in Vietnam and Laos nearly a half century ago.
The deaths are a reflection of the heavy price the agency has paid in a secret, nearly 16-year-old war, where thousands of CIA operatives have served since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The deaths of Hoke, 42, and Delemarre, 47, show how the CIA continues to move from traditional espionage to the front lines, and underscore the pressure the agency faces now that President Donald Trump has pledged to keep the United States in Afghanistan with no end in sight.
“We are going to be fighting this war for a very long time,” said Ken Stiles, a former CIA counterterrorism analyst who worked closely with paramilitary officers in Afghanistan and who lost three friends in the war.
Makings of secret gunslingers
Hoke grew up in Park River, South Dakota, played violin and football in high school, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a degree in oceanography and in 1997 passed the grueling test to become a member of the Navy SEALS. He was deployed to the Middle East and Europe, and in 2004 joined the CIA.
At the agency’s training facility in Virginia, known as the Farm, Hoke learned how to recruit and handle spies and the art of crafting secret messages. He stood out, a classmate recalled, as among the best in the class. Hoke moved on to the agency’s advanced training course, held at a secret location in the southeastern United States, and was soon part of the agency’s paramilitary arm, the Special Activities Division.