Ms. Hanson\u2019s report, \u201cFaithless Heathens: Scriptural Economics of Judaism, Christianity and Islam,\u201d carried a title far more provocative than its contents, said the professor who advised her. But it may have given a hint of her career to come, as an officer for the Central Intelligence Agency specializing in hunting down Islamic extremists.<\/p>\n
That career was cut short last week: Ms. Hanson was one of seven Americans killed in a suicide bombing at a C.I.A. base in the remote mountains of Afghanistan.
\nThe victims there included the unidentified chief of the post at FOB Chapman, a mother of three young children, as well as two contract employees of Xe (formerly known as Blackwater), and four CIA employees whose families have released their names: Harold E. Brown Jr. of Massachusetts, 37; Scott Michael Roberson of Ohio, 39, a former U.S. Navy Seal; and Jeremy Wise of Arkansas, 35. Brown left behind his college-sweetheart wife and three children. Roberson was a security officer new to the agency, whose wife is due to give birth to their first child next month. Wise, who is survived by a wife and young son, was memorialized in a Facebook posting.<\/p>\n
Another slain CIA officer was Elizabeth Hanson, 31, an Illinois native and a 2001 graduate of Colby College. A family friend posted notice of her death to friends on Facebook, describing Hanson as \u201ceffervescent\u201d and \u201cvibrant.\u201d<\/p>\n
I first saw the somber CIA Memorial Wall and book at the side of Henry \u201cHank\u201d Crumpton, a legendary former CIA officer. Hank\u2019s almost-mythic reputation has been chronicled in bits and pieces \u2013 though usually pseudonymously. He was simply called \u201cHenry\u201d by the 9\/11 Commission Report and in Bob Woodward\u2019s \u201cBush at War,\u201d and \u201cHank\u201d in others. His full name is Henry A. Crumpton, a wiry Georgian who spent the greatest part of his adult life hidden in the covert world of espionage and counterterrorism in Africa and South Asia. <\/p>\n