Post by SSHoya on Sept 11, 2022 11:46:42 GMT -5
One of the most meaningful opportunities I had was to volunteer to be on the DOJ "landing team" to explain the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund to families of those killed and any survivors. It wasn't until 2019 that I visited the 9/11 Memorial and found the names of some of those who died and whose families had come to the DOJ table at the Family Assistance Center at Pier 94 for help.
Inside her Northern Virginia home, Anne McFadden keeps an informal shrine to her late husband Gary Schroen, a fellow spy and one of the CIA’s most revered and longest-serving officers.
A staircase wall shows the cover of “First In,” Schroen’s book that chronicles his mission at the age of 59 leading the agency’s first officers into Afghanistan two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. An adjacent photo features Schroen and his colleagues on that team — its code name was “Jawbreaker” — sporting black-and-white keffiyehs next to their helicopter, tail sign: “91101.” On a sideboard, 11 CIA medals, most emblazoned with the agency’s seal of an eagle and a 16-point compass star, sit open in square-shaped wooden cases.
"You know, he didn’t talk that much about what he got the medals for,” McFadden said on a recent day inside their home, where the counterintelligence specialist granted her first interview since her husband’s death last month. “He had these in a drawer. I put them out.”
Schroen worked for the CIA as an operations officer and contractor for more than 50 years before dying Aug. 1 after complications from a fall outside their Alexandria home. He was 80.
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/gary-schroen-cia-bin-laden-9-11/
Inside her Northern Virginia home, Anne McFadden keeps an informal shrine to her late husband Gary Schroen, a fellow spy and one of the CIA’s most revered and longest-serving officers.
A staircase wall shows the cover of “First In,” Schroen’s book that chronicles his mission at the age of 59 leading the agency’s first officers into Afghanistan two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. An adjacent photo features Schroen and his colleagues on that team — its code name was “Jawbreaker” — sporting black-and-white keffiyehs next to their helicopter, tail sign: “91101.” On a sideboard, 11 CIA medals, most emblazoned with the agency’s seal of an eagle and a 16-point compass star, sit open in square-shaped wooden cases.
"You know, he didn’t talk that much about what he got the medals for,” McFadden said on a recent day inside their home, where the counterintelligence specialist granted her first interview since her husband’s death last month. “He had these in a drawer. I put them out.”
Schroen worked for the CIA as an operations officer and contractor for more than 50 years before dying Aug. 1 after complications from a fall outside their Alexandria home. He was 80.
www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/09/gary-schroen-cia-bin-laden-9-11/