WASHINGTON (AP) — Calista Anderson was at a sleepover when the email arrived from a friend. She was 12 years old and had just experienced the worst moment of her life: her mother had died on a foreign assignment. The email offered another jolt.
It linked to a news article that revealed that, contrary to what she had been told, her mother had not worked for the State Department. She was a CIA officer.
“I called my dad and said, ‘Come pick me up from the sleepover. We need to talk,'” she said.
Losing a parent is painful for any child. But for children of CIA officers killed in the line of duty, the pain can be compounded by startling revelations about who their parents were and how they died. Sometimes the children don’t know what happened.
Now 24, Anderson works at a foundation that supports families like hers. The CIA Officers Memorial Foundation provides tuition and other expenses for the children and spouses of fallen officers. Not surprisingly, much of the community work to support these families takes place in private.
Those responsible want to change that by organizing meetings for the children of fallen officers and gradually telling more of their stories publicly.
“The people we support have to stay in the shadows, but the foundation doesn’t have to,” said John Edwards, a retired CIA executive who became president of the foundation last year.
There are nearly 70 children of officers who receive tuition and other expenses from the foundation. And the work of the foundation is far from over, 80 more children are to receive scholarships.
Two decades after 9/11, intelligence agencies are shifting resources to Russia and China and focusing on advanced technologies. But while US forces are no longer active in Afghanistan, officers from the CIA and other intelligence agencies continue to work in combat zones and so-called “denied areas” where Americans are not welcome.
“I would love it if we were out of business,” Edwards said. “The nature of the work says that probably won’t be the case.”
The story goes on
It is not known how many intelligence officers died in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are 139 stars on the CIA’s memorial wall, honoring officers who have died in the agency’s 75-year history. Fifty-two of the stars have been added since 9/11. Not all of these officers were publicly named.
Intelligence agencies and the military provide death benefits to the families of employees killed in the line of duty, but these payments typically do not cover all expenses, particularly college expenses.
A regular event is the concert known as “Spookstock,” which jointly benefits the CIA Foundation and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Usually performed at an undisclosed location outside of Washington, it attracts the families of fallen officers, senior intelligence officers and families, and corporate sponsors and supporters.
Edwards said he wants to maintain the foundation’s core mission of funding scholarships and expand its offerings to families. The foundation has launched a day care program and added career services to connect grantees with corporate executives.
But he also wanted to play a more public role and promote ties between a group that people associated with the foundation often call “the children” — the children of slain officers who received grants, some in their 30s .
“You bring these kids together who have had similar circumstances and traumatic situations that they’ve been through, it’s an instant bond,” Edwards said. “The more we can involve these students, the better.”
Anderson has “instant credibility,” he said, as someone well known to both recipients and current and former intelligence officials.
As a child, Anderson lived in England for four years with her father, two younger brothers and her mother Jennifer Matthews. Unbeknownst to her children, Matthews held a senior position at the CIA’s London station. Shortly after they returned to Virginia, Matthews went to Afghanistan on a diplomatic assignment that her children assumed was a mission.
Matthews was instead chief of the Khost base, part of the CIA’s counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan.
The CIA was working to check the reliability of a Jordanian doctor believed to have information on the whereabouts of al-Qaeda’s then-No. 2 official, Ayman al-Zawari. Jordanian Humam al-Balawi was brought to the Khost base in December 2009 for what officials hoped was a critical meeting, according to agency reviews released the following year by then-director Leon Panetta.
Instead, shortly after entering the compound, al-Balawi set off a deadly explosion. He killed five CIA employees, two security firms, a Jordanian intelligence officer and the Afghan driver who had taken him to Khost.
The attack almost immediately threw an international spotlight on Anderson, her father and her two brothers as they grieved and tried to understand what had happened.
Her father explained what he knew about her mother’s work, and friends of her mother who worked at the CIA filled in more gaps in the years to come. Old colleagues also shared stories about their mother’s love for a pedicure and a glass of champagne.
As she got older, Anderson stopped reading about her mother online and avoided portraying her in pop culture. She hasn’t seen Zero Dark Thirty, the film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden that occupied part of her mother’s time in Khost and her previous work in a CIA cell in the hunt for bin Laden before and after 9/11. fictionalized Sept.
Whether the CIA could have prevented the Khost bombing remains a contention within the Matthews intelligence community and family. Some former officers have blamed Matthews.
Internal agency reviews found that critical alerts were not being widely disseminated and that it was unclear who was responsible for the operation. The CIA has not fired or disciplined personnel, Panetta said in 2010, but has tightened security procedures and created new groups to better train officers in combat zones and detect double agents.
After a CIA team killed al-Zawari in a drone strike in late July, several of Matthews’ former colleagues said they thought of her.
“She was passionate about taking down (al-Qaeda) and if she were here today, no one would be prouder of that accomplishment than she is,” said former CIA Director Gina Haspel, a close colleague of Matthews. recently in a report speech at a foundation event.
Anderson graduated from the University of Richmond and then earned a master’s degree in art history — a degree that jokingly left her with no choice but to accept the foundation’s job offer as events coordinator.
She helped with the latest issue of Spookstock and recently organized a golf outing for current scholarship holders during their Thanksgiving break.
At such events and in conversations with other children of fallen officers, she often brings up her own memories of her mother and experiences after her mother’s death. The feelings of sadness and shock sometimes come back.
“There are moments when it can be extremely difficult emotionally; it can be very tiring. I can feel very empty,” she said. “But in many ways I’m really grateful for those moments because they really remind me of why we do what we do.”