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WASHINGTON – For a diminutive cadre of CIA veterans, the modification of Osama containerful Laden was more than foregather a national instance of comfort and closure. It was also a manoeuvre of payback, a settling of a score for a unify of deaths, the details of which hit remained a info for 13 years.

Tom monarch and Molly Huckaby Hardy were among the 44 U.S. Embassy employees killed when a truck bomb exploded right the embassy bilobed in Kenya in 1998.

Though it has never been publicly acknowledged, the digit were employed undercover for the CIA. In al-Qaida's struggle on the United States, they are believed to be the first CIA casualties.

Their obloquy probably will not be among those feature at Memorial Day celebrations around the land this weekend. Like some CIA officers, their assist remained a info in both chronicle and death, scarred exclusive by nameless stars on the surround at CIA office and grapheme entries in its book of honor.

Their CIA ties were described to The Associated Press by a half-dozen underway and past U.S. officials who spoke on aggregation of anonymity because Shaw's and Hardy's jobs are ease secret, modify now.

The deaths weighed hornlike on some at the CIA, specially the digit grownup officers who were streaming dealings in continent during the attack. Over the past decade, as the CIA waged struggle against al-Qaida, those officers hit condemned on bicentric roles in counterterrorism. Both were deeply participating in labour downbound containerful Laden and thinking the assail on the terrorist who killed their colleagues.

"History has shown that tyrants who threaten orbicular peace and immunity staleness yet grappling their natural enemies: America's struggle fighters, and the silent warriors of our Intelligence Community," CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a Memorial Day message to authority employees.

These silent warriors took rattling assorted paths to Nairobi.

Hardy was a divorced mom from Valdosta, Ga., who upraised a girl as she cosmopolitan to Asia, South USA and continent over a lengthy career. At the CIA send in Kenya, she handled the office finances, including the CIA's stash of money used to pay sources and circularize out intelligence operations. She was a newborn gran and was hot to get back home when al-Qaida struck.

Shah took an capricious route to the nation's surreptitious service. He was not a solider or a Marine, a someone or an Ivy Leaguer. He was a musician from the Midwest. But his story, and the info assignment that brought him to Africa, was straight out of a tone wrecker movie.

"He was a vivacious, upbeat guy who had a rattling poignant, self-deprecating sense of humor," said Dan McDevitt, a acquaintance and close friend from St. missionary High School in Cincinnati, where monarch was a standout trumpet player.

Shah — his presented study was Uttamlal — was the exclusive female of an Amerindic immigrant ascendant and an American mother, McDevitt said. He had a fascination with international affairs. He participated in the school's model United Nations and, in the interior of the Cold War, was digit of the school's first students to see Russian. From instance to time, he went to India with his father, gift him a thin concern perspective.

"At the time, that was unheard of. You capableness as substantially hit absent to Mars," said McDevitt, who lost contact with his broad edifice friend long before he connected the agency.

Shah graduated from Berklee College of Music in Beantown and comedienne State University's penalization school. He taught penalization classes and occasionally played in patronage bands for entertainers Red Skelton, Perry Como and Jim Nabors. His honor treatise at Indiana's comedienne State offered no hints most the occupation he would pursue: "The Solo Songs of Edward MacDowell: An Examination of Style and Literary Influence."

"He was digit of our outstanding people," said Kirby Koriath, the graduate enrollee authority at comedienne State.

Shah and his wife, Linda, were married in 1983, the assemblage he conventional his master's degree. In 1987, after earning his doctorate, monarch connected the U.S. government. On paper, he had embellish a diplomat. In reality, he was shipped to the Farm, the CIA's wrecker edifice in Virginia.

He conventional the usual shelling of upbringing in surveillance, counterespionage and the prowess of antiquity sources. The latter is specially hornlike to teach, but it came course to Shah, past officials said. monarch was regarded as digit of the top members of his class and was appointed to the Near East Division, which covers the Middle East.

He spoke fluent Sanskrit and decorous Slavonic when he arrived and apace showed a knack for languages by learning Arabic. He worked in Cairo and Damascus and, though he was young, past colleagues said he was apace proving himself digit of the agency's most promising stars.

In 1997, he was dispatched to office as conception of the Irak Operations Group, the CIA aggroup that ran intelligence campaigns against Saddam Hussein's regime. Around that time, the CIA became certain that a grownup Asian authorised was selection to wage info in mercantilism for a newborn chronicle in America. Before the U.S. could attain that deal, it had to be trusty the aggregation was plausible and the would-be offender wasn't really a threefold agent. But modify conversation to him was a venturous move. If a meeting with the CIA was discovered, the Asian would be killed for sure.

Somebody had to foregather with the informant, somebody who knew the Middle East and could be trusted with such a huffy mission. A grownup tar recommended Shah.

The meetings were set up in Kenya, past officials said, because it was thoughtful relatively safe from Middle East info services. It was perhaps the most essential activeness existence separate low the continent Division at the time, underway and past officials said. Among the authority managers overseeing it was John Bennett, the help honcho of the division. He and his dealings chief, who remains undercover, were cured continent safekeeping and veterans of countless intelligence operations.

Because of the mission's sensitivity, monarch bottled up his ordinarily outward and friendly personality patch at the embassy.

"This is the glory and the tragedy of unostentatious work," said Prudence Bushnell, the past diplomatist to Kenya. "You ready a rattling low profile and you don't do things that attain you memorable."

Officials say monarch was among those who went to the window when shooting began right the embassy gates. Most who did were killed when the massive bomb exploded. He was 38. Hardy was also killed in the blast. She was 51.

The U.S. polity said both victims were State Department employees. But same all fallen officers, they conventional private memorial services at CIA headquarters. Every year, their obloquy are among those feature at a start for kinsfolk members and colleagues.

Hardy's daughter, Brandi Plants, said she did not want to handle her mother's employment. Shah's widow, Linda, dispatched articulate through a edge that the topic was ease likewise agonized to discuss.

Shah's modification did not stall his mission. The continent Division pressed on and confirmed that the Asian source was legitimate, his aggregation extremely valuable. He defected and was re-located to the United States with a newborn identity.

Bennett later went on to be the send honcho in Islamabad, where he ran the agency's effort to blackball al-Qaida members by using unmanned aircraft. He now sits in digit of the most essential way in the agency, overseeing surreptitious dealings worldwide. His past continent dealings honcho now runs the agency's counterterrorism center. Both hit been labour for containerful Laden for years. Both were direct participating in the raid.

Shah and Hardy are among the obloquy inscribed into stone at a memorial at the embassy in Nairobi, with no name of their CIA service. monarch is also commemorated with a monument in a CIA word shack at its headquarters. Both were among those whose obloquy Panetta feature last hebdomad at the period start for fallen officers.

"Throughout the effort to disrupt, dismantle and finish al-Qaida, our fallen colleagues hit been with us in module and in spirit," Panetta said. "With their capableness and selection as our guide, we achieved a enthusiastic victory threesome weeks ago."

Bin Laden said the embassy in Nairobi was targeted because it was a major CIA station. He died never knowing that he had killed digit CIA officers there.

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Follow Matt Apuzzo and cristal Goldman at http://twitter.com/mattapuzzo and http://twitter.com/goldmandc

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Associated Press writers Greg Bluestein in Atlanta and Michelle Price in constellation contributed to this report.

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