John McLaughlin is a distinguished practitioner in residence at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He served as the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2000-2004 and Acting Director of the CIA in 2004.
On Memorial Day, I think of two groups of former colleagues who gave their lives in service to our country and whose sacrifices mark the chronology of my time in government service.
First, I recall the members of my 1967 graduating class at Fort Benning’s U.S. Army Officer Candidate School. Most of us went to Vietnam, and I would estimate that about a quarter of our second lieutenants did not return.
I remember in particular Robert Mercer, my closest friend in the class – a wonderfully gregarious individual loved by everyone, who lost his life in a jungle firefight close to the Cambodian border in South Vietnam.
I also recall my much younger cousin Curtis Gay, an Army Specialist who lost his life when Viet Cong overran his base about a month before I deployed to Vietnam. His father, Joe, wrote a book of poetry about his son.
I also think about the 129 stars on the memorial wall at CIA, where I worked for 32 years. The people the stars represent came from all parts of CIA – operators, analysts, scientific/tactical officers, and support. Their sacrifices came, not in a single war, but in multiple missions over decades, with more than a third of the stars on the wall being added since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They are meaningful to me particularly because for eight years (2010-2018) I served as chairman of the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation (https://www.ciamemorialfoundation.org/), an organization dedicated to providing educational and other support to families who lost a spouse or parent in service. I’m proud to say that the foundation has now provided educational funding to more than 100 children and spouses.
Both groups of people perished in organizations or times that were often controversial. What is not controversial though, is that they risked their lives out of a sense of duty to serve their country, something I think we all can honor this Memorial Day.
Read more from former CIA Acting Director John McLaughlin in The Cipher Brief....
