“Inscribed on its pages were the 70 stars, arranged by year of death. But only 29 stars had names beside them. (…) The rest of the stars in the Book of Honor, 41 in all, were nameless. For years, their identities have been among Washington’s most poignant and intriguing mysteries.”
Star Agents – Ted Gup
Washington Post
7 September, 1997
July 21, 2026 — A Very Special Post to Celebrate Our 10th Anniversary — Over the last three decades, I have devoted much time to several distinct stories: the CIA Memorial Wall (and the associated Book of Honor), the KRYPTOS sculpture, and the Lockerbie tragedy. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined that these stories would one day converge.Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
RELATED POST : Lockerbie 30th Anniversary — PT/35(b) : MEBO TELECOM and the Story of the MST-13 Timers
RELATED POST : CIA Annual Ceremony — 50th Anniversary of the Memorial Wall (May 17, 2024) [UPDATE — Earliest known photo of the CIA Memorial Wall]
This article is the fourth and final installment in our series. Readers may benefit from reviewing the previous articles for a better understanding of the topics discussed here.
RELATED POST : The Holy Grail — The CIA Wall, The KRYPTOS Sculpture, & The Lockerbie Tragedy
Let us now use the knowledge gained in this series to reconstruct the Book of Honor as it stood at the 50th anniversary of the Agency.
“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
Yogi Berra
From the NSA Memo about Kryptos written by George C. Dalmas (dated 18 Nov. 1991), we know that the wall counted 53 stars at the time. In the Book of Honor, only 23 of the 53 names were disclosed.
On January 4, 1994, President Clinton spoke to CIA employees in the main lobby, and referred directly to the significance of the CIA’s Memorial Wall, noting:
“The 56 stars carved into the wall here in this lobby remind each who passes by this place of the ultimate risks of intelligence work. (…) Two of the stars added just this year commemorate two devoted agency professionals who were slain last January entering this compound — Dr. Lansing Bennett and Frank Darling.”
On July 14, 1995, President Clinton returned to the CIA and made the following comment:
“But Aldridge Ames was a terrible exception to a proud tradition of service, a tradition that is reflected in the 59 stars that shine on the CIA’s memorial wall in honor of those who gave their lives to serve our country.”
When President Bill Clinton visited the CIA headquarters to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Agency on September 16, 1997, 70 stars were chiseled on the CIA Memorial Wall as you can verify by yourself!
The last of the 53 stars mentioned in the 1991 NSA Memo is Mathew Gannon. And the first name ever added retroactively is Chiyoki Ikeda whose star 71 was added after the 50th anniversary.
Here is the list of all commemorated CIA officers who died after Mathew Gannon and before September 16, 1997.
1989
Robert W. Woods
Michael Atkinson
George Bensch
George V. Lacy
Pharies “Bud” Petty
Gerhard H. Rieger
Jimmy Spessard
Unidentified
1992
Barry S. Castiglione
Lawrence N. Freedman
1993
Lansing H. Bennett
Frank Darling
Freddie Woodruff
1995
Jacqueline Van Landingham
1996
James M. Lewek
John A. Celli
Leslianne Shedd
Obviously, 17 CIA officers died during that period. The logical conclusion is clear.
Since 53 + 17 = 70, each one one them was commemorated by a star on the wall, even if many of these stars remained nameless in the Book of Honor.
Therefore, we can confidently ‘reconstruct’ the Book of Honor as it stood in September 1997 at the time of the 50th anniversary of the CIA.
About the 1998 CIA Annual Ceremony
According to Ted Gup, the names read during the 1998 ceremony are:
Jerome P. Ginley, William P. Boteler, Howard Carey, Frank C. Grace, Wilburn S. Rose, Chiyoki Ikeda, Thomas “Pete” Ray, Riley Shamburger, Wade Gray, Leo Baker, John G. Merriman, Eugene Buster Edens, Edward Johnson, Mike Maloney, Louis A. O’Jibway, Walter Ray, Billy Jack Johnson, Jack Weeks, Paul C. Davis, David Konzelman, Wilbur Murray Greene, William E. Bennett, Richard Welch, James S. Rawlings, Robert C. Ames, Scott J. Van Lieshout, Curtis R. Wood, William F. Buckley, Richard Krobock, Lansing H. Bennett, Frank A. Darling, James Lewek, and John Celli.
Compared to the previous year, one star was added to commemorate Chiyoki Ikeda, and five names were disclosed: Thomas “Pete” Ray, Riley Shamburger, Wade Gray, Leo Baker, and Mike Maloney.
This list is certainly not correct. John W. Waltz was the 16th of the original 31 stars in the CIA Book of Honor when the Memorial Wall was created in July 1974. His name was one of only three listed in the original Book of Honor for the year 1965, which contained seven stars at the time. Today, the year 1965 includes nine stars.
But a more important anomaly caught my attention. The original Book of Honor listed names alphabetically within each year. Later, the Agency adopted a chronological order.
However this list clearly mixes both systems. Indeed, William P. Boteler (June 16, 1956) is listed before Wilburn S. Rose (May 15, 1956) according to alphabetical order, but James Lewek (April 3, 1996) is listed before John Celli (November 17, 1996) according to chronological order.
“The one exception is the 1998 ceremony — George Tenet’s first as director — when the covert names were omitted from the roll call. I’ve not been able to find out why this happened, but the practice was resumed the following year.”
Nicholas Dujmovic
CIA Historian
A Three Decades Old Mystery
CIA Historian Nicholas Dujmovic has documented an strange exception regarding the 1998 ceremony.
“A great change in CIA commemoration occurred at the 1995 ceremony. With DCI John Deutch presiding, the names of all those remembered on the Memorial Wall — covert and overt — were read aloud at the ceremony for the first time.
This was a huge development, given that uncleared family members had been attending the annual ceremony for years. Since then, the annual reading of all the names, covert and overt, has continued to the present.
The one exception is the 1998 ceremony — George Tenet’s first as director — when the covert names were omitted from the roll call. I’ve not been able to find out why this happened, but the practice was resumed the following year.”
Why on earth? The Agency had learned that some relatives were communicating with Ted Gup, and passing to him information they had promised not to divulged to anyone. And thus, the CIA decided that covert names would not be read during that ceremony.
REFERENCES
Gup, Ted. Star Agents. The Washington Post, September 7, 1997.
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The Holy Grail — The CIA Memorial Wall, the KRYPTOS Sculpture, & the Lockerbie Tragedy | Part IV — The End of an Era: The Memorial Wall at 50
“The first Memorial Ceremony was held on May 27, 1987, presided by Deputy Director Robert Gates. It was a simple event, attended by a small number of Agency officers. By the time of that first ceremony the number of stars had grown to 50. Now, fifty years later, there are 140 stars chiseled into the Wall.”
Sacred Stars:
CIA’s Memorial Wall Turns 50
(July 2024)
Intel Today 