Or, alternatively, why we should (sometimes) appreciate the CIA.

I’ve been fascinated/horrified/saddened by the story of the Jordanian suicide bomber who blew himself up in Afghanistan, killing seven people, including several CIA agents.

Reading a long and well-reported (it seems so, anyway) Washington Post story about the bombing, I came across this material [emphasis added]:

An intelligence official who agreed to speak on background about Balawi’s suicide bombing called it “an important base, and [being] chief there is an important assignment. You don’t get that one unless you know your stuff — and the CIA had a world-class expert on al-Qaeda and counterterrorism operations running the place.”

The official was referring to a nearly 20-year agency veteran killed in the attack, a 45-year-old woman with three children. At the CIA’s request, The Washington Post has agreed not to use her name in this article.

A former reports officer in the agency’s directorate of intelligence, she started tracking al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. She spent nearly 10 years in the agency’s counterterrorism center and had several brief tours in Afghanistan before landing in Khost six months ago.

The press devotes a lot of time to reporting on the misdeeds of the CIA, as it should. Meanwhile, we in the public tend to think of CIA agents as faceless, nameless sleuths who are fundamentally different from us. Obviously, that’s not so. People like this woman—this wife and mother—are heroes whose work will never get the recognition it deserves.