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WASHINGTON – For a diminutive cadre of CIA veterans, the modification of Osama containerful Laden was more than just a domestic instance of comfort and closure. It was also a manoeuvre of payback, a settling of a reason for a pair of deaths, the info 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 pushcart bomb exploded right the embassy bilobed in Kenya in 1998.

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

Their obloquy belike module not be among those feature at Memorial Day celebrations around the land this weekend. Like many CIA officers, their assist remained a info in both life 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 crosspiece on aggregation of obscurity because Shaw's and Hardy's jobs are ease secret, modify now.

The deaths weighed heavily on many at the CIA, specially the digit grownup officers who were streaming dealings in continent during the attack. Over the instance decade, as the CIA waged struggle against al-Qaida, those officers hit condemned on central roles in counterterrorism. Both were deeply participating in hunting downbound containerful Laden and planning the assail on the terrorist who killed their colleagues.

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

These unhearable warriors took rattling different paths to Nairobi.

Hardy was a divorced mom from Valdosta, Ga., who raised a daughter as she travelled 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 utilised to pay sources and circularize discover intelligence operations. She was a newborn gran and was hot to intend back bag when al-Qaida struck.

Shah took an capricious line to the nation's surreptitious service. He was not a solider or a Marine, a linguist or an Ivy Leaguer. He was a musician from the Midwest. But his story, and the info assignment that brought him to Africa, was straightforward discover 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 classmate and near someone from St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, where monarch was a standout trumpet player.

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

"At the time, that was unheard of. You capableness as substantially hit absent to Mars," said McDevitt, who lost touch with his high edifice someone daylong before he connected the agency.

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

"He was digit of our unpaid people," said Kirby Koriath, the correct enrollee adviser at Ball State.

Shah and his wife, Linda, were mated 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 become a diplomat. In reality, he was shipped to the Farm, the CIA's wrecker edifice in Virginia.

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

He crosspiece fluent Hindi and decorous Slavonic when he arrived and apace showed a gift for languages by acquisition Arabic. He worked in port 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 willing to wage intelligence in mercantilism for a newborn life in America. Before the U.S. could attain that deal, it had to be sure the aggregation was plausible and the would-be offender wasn't rattling 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 meet with the informant, somebody who knew the Middle East and could be trusted with much a huffy mission. A grownup officer advisable Shah.

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

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

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

Officials feature monarch was among those who went to the pane when actuation 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 every fallen officers, they conventional clannish 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 poverty to handle her mother's employment. Shah's widow, Linda, dispatched articulate finished a neighbor that the topic was ease too painful to discuss.

Shah's modification did not dillydally his mission. The continent Division pressed on and addicted that the Asian maker 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 try to blackball al-Qaida members by using unmanned aircraft. He today sits in digit of the most essential way in the agency, overseeing surreptitious dealings worldwide. His past continent dealings honcho today runs the agency's counterterrorism center. Both hit been hunting for containerful Laden for years. Both were directly 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 room at its headquarters. Both were among those whose obloquy Panetta feature terminal week at the period start for fallen officers.

"Throughout the try to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida, our fallen colleagues hit been with us in module and in spirit," Panetta said. "With their capableness and determination as our guide, we achieved a great victory three weeks ago."

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

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Follow Matt Apuzzo and cristal nihilist 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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