1. Gary Charles Schroen was an American intelligence officer who spent 32 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, most notably as a field officer in charge of the initial CIA incursion into Afghanistan in September 2001 to topple the Taliban and destroy Al-Qaeda.
Gary Schroen retired as the most decorated CIA officer in history.
Gary Schroen's father was a union electrician, and his mother a homemaker.
Gary Schroen joined the Army after graduating from high school in 1959, serving in the Army Security Agency in West Germany for three years.
Gary Schroen was reduced in rank to a private instead.
Gary Schroen worked in the Directorate of Operations for 32 years, rising from a case officer to deputy chief of the Near East Division in 1999, a post he held through 2001.
Gary Schroen spoke fluent Persian and its Afghan Dialect of Dari and became the agency's top expert on Afghanistan.
Later in his career, Gary Schroen served in numerous posts, including chief of station in Kabul, Afghanistan in the late 1980s.
Gary Schroen later served as chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan from 1996 until mid-1999.
Gary Schroen helped lead a 1997 operation in conjunction with the FBI that captured Mir Aimal Kansi, an FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive responsible for the 1993 CIA headquarters shooting.
Gary Schroen was asked by Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Cofer Black, to lead a team into the country to kill Bin Laden and top al-Qaeda leaders.
Gary Schroen later wrote the book First In: How Seven CIA Officers Opened the War on Terror in Afghanistan recounting his Afghan experiences.
Gary Schroen retired in November 2001 as the most decorated CIA officer in history to date.
Gary Schroen had three children, two daughters, and a son, Christopher, a Navy linguist and Gulf War veteran who died of cancer in 2017.
Gary Schroen was interred at the columbarium of Grace Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia on September 24,2022.