Gary Charles Schroen (November 6, 1941 – August 1, 2022) was an American intelligence officer who spent 52 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. He retired as the most decorated CIA officer in history. Early life Schroen was born November 6, 1941 in East St. Louis, Illinois to Emil and Fern (née Finch) Schroen. His father was a union electrician, and his mother a homemaker. He joined the Army after graduating from high school in 1959, serving in the Army Security Agency in West Germany for three years. In an incident Schroen called "a bad start" in an unpublished short story, a beer bottle he had left on top of his barracks mailbox spilled on outgoing Christmas correspondence, enraging his commanding officer who threatened to court-martial him for tampering with the U.S. mail. He was reduced in rank to a private instead. After receiving an honorable discharge in 1962, Schroen attended Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, working as a janitor and unloading trucks for UPS during college, and graduating with a degree in English in 1968. After graduation he began teaching 5th grade in the Detroit Public Schools. In June 1969, Schroen joined the CIA. Career Schroen worked in the Directorate of Operations for 52 years, rising from a case officer to deputy chief of the Near East Division in 1999, a post he held through 2001. He spoke fluent Persian and Dari, and became the agency's top expert on Afghanistan. Schroen spent much of the 1970's in Iran. As Schroen walked home from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran one night in September 1975, members of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) attempted to assassinate him in the street, an incident he escaped by pulling a gun on the would-be killers and sprinting away. On November 21, 1979, Pakistani student protesters who erroneously believed the U.S. was responsible for the Grand Mosque seizure in Mecca, stormed and set fire to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, trapping Schroen and others inside. They ultimately found refuge in a code room vault and escaping the compound unharmed before protesters burnt it to the ground. Following his death, widow Anne McFadden would recount to The Washington Post that Schroen often said "If there aren’t 3,000 students coming over the fence, then it’s