 * A suicide bomber disguised as an Afghan soldier has killed seven CIA agents and six others were injured at a base in Afghanistan on 30 December 2009 in the agency's worst loss of life since 1983. Authorities are investigating how a suicide bomber penetrated deep into a US base.
* President Barack Obama told Central Intelligence Agency employees that their colleagues who died were “patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens and for our way of life.”
“In recent years, the CIA has been tested as never before,” Obama said in the letter to agency employees, which was released in an e-mail from the agency.
* The Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack on a US military outpost that killed seven CIA operatives and wounded six others on Wednesday, in a strike that illustrates the insurgents' growing reach and military capability.
Former CIA officers said the dead agents were part of a paramilitary unit, likely involved in recruiting and training local Afghans in security roles and carrying out military operations against Taliban and al-Qaida militants along the Pakistan border.
Obama has stepped up pressure on a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, most publicly by increasing the U.S. military force by 23,000 earlier this year, including 4,000 trainers, and authorizing 30,000 more this month to be in place next year.
90 CIA employees have been killed on their job since the agency's inception in 1947. Fatal incidents include:
October 2003: Two CIA contractors die while tracking terrorists near Shkin, Afghanistan.
Feb. 5, 2003: A CIA officer is killed in eastern Afghanistan during a training exercise.
Nov. 28, 2001: CIA officer Johnny Michael Spann is fatally shot during an uprising by Taliban prisoners near Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan.
1998: Two CIA officers die in the line of duty.
1993: On Jan. 25, two CIA employees are killed at the gates of the agency headquarters in Langley. In August, a CIA officer is killed in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
1989: Eight CIA employees are killed in the course of the year, including six on board a CIA plane that crashed Nov. 30 while carrying military equipment from Zaire to Angola.
March 16, 1984: CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley is kidnapped. After being tortured, he is killed in 1985.
April 18, 1983: 17 Americans, including eight CIA employees, are killed in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.
1965: Seven CIA employees die, most of them in Vietnam.
Updated on Thursday, 31 December 2009
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