WASHINGTON -- Rioting prisoners killed CIA officer "Johnny Mike" Spann at Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, the agency said Wednesday. He was the first American killed in action inside the country since U.S. bombing began seven weeks earlier. \nOfficials recovered his body from the prison compound Wednesday, only after northern alliance rebels backed by U.S. airstrikes and special forces quelled an uprising by Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners. \nSpann, at the compound to interrogate prisoners, was caught inside when the riot began and had been missing since Sunday. The CIA provided few details of the circumstances of his death. \nSpann had been in Afghanistan for about six weeks, said his father, Johnny Spann, during an afternoon news conference in the family's hometown of Winfield, Ala. \nThe father said his son, upon joining the CIA, told his family: "Someone has got to do the things no one else wants to do." \n"That is exactly what he was doing in Afghanistan," said the father. \nThe flag outside CIA headquarters in McLean, Va., was lowered to half-staff. CIA Director George J. Tenet addressed agency employees Wednesday morning, saying Spann was an American hero and calling on fellow officers to "continue the mission that Mike Spann held sacred." \n"And so we will continue our battle against evil with renewed strength and spirit," Tenet said, according to a statement provided by the agency. \nPresident Bush said through a spokesman he regretted the death. "The president understands that this battle began Sept. 11," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "There may be more injuries, there may be more deaths, and the president regrets each and every one." \nSpann was a paramilitary trooper within the CIA's Directorate of Operations' Special Activities Division. The agency's commando arm, like the Army's Green Berets, can arm and train local forces and conduct covert assaults. \nSpann, 32, lived in a Virginia suburb of Washington. He leaves a wife, two daughters and an infant son. \n"We've got another heartbreak and another hero," said neighbor Richard Faatz. \nBefore joining the CIA in June 1999, Spann served in the Marine Corps as an artillery specialist, reaching the rank of captain. \nSen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said he spoke to Mike Spann's wife, Shannon. \n"She said that when I saw people, I should tell them her husband cared about America, cared about the future of America, and cared about the security of Americans," Shelby said, fighting back tears. \nFour other Americans, all military personnel, have been killed in connection with the fighting in Afghanistan. All died in accidents outside the country, two in a helicopter crash in Pakistan.
The CIA has been running covert operations in Afghanistan alongside the more public military effort. CIA officers are believed to have been providing weapons, money and intelligence to rebel groups opposing the Taliban and al-Qaida, as well as interrogating prisoners captured during the fighting. \nThe prison riot began Sunday when hundreds of Arabs, Pakistanis and other non-Afghan prisoners captured after the fall of Kunduz, the Taliban's last stronghold in the north, broke free and stormed an armory for weapons. \nThousands of northern alliance fighters, aided by U.S. commandos and airstrikes, assaulted the compound, but the prisoners held out for days before the fortress was recaptured on Wednesday. Hundreds of prisoners and dozens of alliance fighters were dead. \nFive U.S. soldiers were wounded Monday when a U.S. bomb went astray. They were evacuated to a U.S. military hospital in Germany, where one is in intensive care and the other four were in good condition. \nThe CIA often keeps the death of one of its own secret, usually to protect a clandestine operation or the identities of foreign agents working with the officer. Neither was the case with Spann's death, and agency officials said Wednesday they wanted to publicly honor his service. \nSpann is the 79th CIA employee to have died or been killed in the line of duty. Each has a star on the wall in the lobby of the agency's main building. \nSlightly more than half of the stars include names. The identities of the rest are secret. \nTwo CIA officers died in the line of duty in 1998. No information has been released about their deaths. Some of the better-known include Robert Ames, who died in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, and William Buckley, who was killed in 1985 after being kidnapped the previous year in Lebanon.
