Wsj Alexander Is Great Again Isaw

Marine Maj. Douglas Zembiec, and so a helm, in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. He earned a Bronze Star and a Royal Heart during his deployment there. (Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times)

In the foyer of the Fundamental Intelligence Agency'south headquarters, in that location is a marble wall covered in stars. They are carved divots that represent those who have fallen in the service of the CIA. Below them, bulging out from the polished stone, is a black volume entombed in a case of glass and steel. The book is a guide to the stars, giving the names of some of those who died and withholding the names of others.

On the pages of the CIA'south Book of Honor are 111 paw-drawn stars organized past the years those officers died. For 2007, at that place is a single, bearding star.

Information technology belongs to Marine Maj. Douglas Alexander Zembiec.

Long thought to exist an active-duty Marine when he was killed in Baghdad, Zembiec was actually serving with the CIA's paramilitary arm. While the CIA would not comment on whether Zembiec worked for the bureau, erstwhile U.South. intelligence officials said in interviews that he died in an alley in Sadr Urban center on May 11, 2007, equally a fellow member of the Special Activities Partition's Ground Branch.

It was the final chapter in the life of a Marine known to many equally the Lion of Fallujah but whose story, until now, has never been fully told. He is one of the few Americans to be simultaneously honored past the military and the CIA for his actions. Just because he was working covertly, his function was never acknowledged publicly.

Zembiec was killed in Baghdad due north 2007 while working for the CIA. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. (Michel duCille/The Washington Post)

Family members and one-time intelligence officials say Zembiec was working with a small team of Iraqis on a "snatch and grab" operation targeting insurgents for capture. But moments after warning his men that an ambush was imminent, he was shot in the caput past an enemy insurgent; he died instantly.

In the ensuing gun battle, the Iraqis serving abreast Zembiec radioed back, "Five wounded, one martyred," according to battle reports.

Top military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, lauded Zembiec's actions on the nighttime he was killed, and the military dedicated a helicopter landing zone to him at Army camp Victory at Baghdad International Drome in 2008. Information technology included a white sign with Zembiec's name, his awards and the keepsake of the Marine Corps.

Markedly absent: the crest of the CIA.

Zembiec, who was 34, is credited with saving 25 men on the night of his death, and for his heroism, he was afterwards awarded the Silver Star.

"He was something else," his married woman, Pam Zembiec, said in an interview at her home in Maryland. "Sometimes I thought he was built-in in the wrong time, like he should have been born with the Spartans."

'They fought similar lions'

Zembiec was a warrior, and an outspoken one at that, heralding a firefight during the battle of Fallujah in 2004 as "the greatest twenty-four hours of my life."

At her hubby's funeral, Pam Zembiec clutches the flag that covered his casket. She recently wrote a volume about him. (Kevin Wolf/AP)

Amid his Marines he was known for his humility and fearlessness. He was the company commander for Echo Visitor, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, and during the kickoff battle of Fallujah he led from the forepart, rallying his men and directing fire even later being wounded. His Purple Heart would be i of 78 citations for the 139 Marines of Repeat Company during that deployment.

Zembiec was also awarded the Statuary Star for valor for rushing into the heart of a car-gun-raked street to become the attention of an Abrams tank supporting Echo Company. Abrams are equipped with small-scale radios on the rear to allow infantrymen to talk to the tank crew while behind the safety of threescore tons of steel, but for what­ever reason the radio, or "grunt phone," wasn't working, so Zembiec scaled the tank while bullets ricocheted off its hull.

After he knocked on i of the hatches repeatedly, the crew of the tank finally opened upwards. Zembiec then loaded a magazine of illuminated tracer rounds and began shooting from the top of the tank to mark the building from which his Marines were being shot.

The tank swung its turret and without warning fired its massive 120mm gun. The blast threw Zembiec into the air and onto the street below.

"He deserved five Statuary Stars, not one," retired Sgt. Maj. Williams Skiles said. Skiles served as Zembiec'southward company offset sergeant and right-hand human being during the battle of Fallujah. In a going-away plaque given to Skiles, Zembiec called him "the metallic-weld" that kept the company together.

For all Zembiec's accolades, he was always more comfortable talking almost his Marines' deeds rather than his own.

"My men fought similar lions and killed many insurgents. The valor and courage of the Marines was magnificent," Zembiec wrote in a alphabetic character to his married woman during the boxing. "The Marines fought with such ferocity that whatsoever Marine who went earlier united states would have been proud."

It was his frequent references to his Marines as lions that earned him the nickname the Panthera leo of Fallujah.

Zembiec was built-in in Hawaii and raised in Albuquerque. His begetter, Donald Zembiec, is a retired special agent for the FBI, and his female parent, Jo Ann Zembiec, once a third-course teacher, now volunteers as the primary gardener for the New Mexico Veterans' Memorial Rose Garden, besides as with other veterans nonprofit groups.

Zembiec attended the U.South. Naval Academy, where he speedily rose to prominence for his prowess on the wrestling mat. He graduated in 1995 as an all-American athlete and Marine officer. Years later, Zembiec would sometimes return to the academy to teach the midshipmen on the wrestling team "a thing or two."

His wife included his letters in her recently published book, "Selfless Beyond Service: A Story Almost the Husband, Son and Father Behind the Lion of Fallujah."

"He wrote those letters considering he wanted his Marines to know how much he loved them," Pam said.

And his Marines loved him back.

Shortly later Zembiec's return from Iraq, he and his father were driving separately onto Camp Pendleton, in California. When his father pulled up to the gate, the Marine on duty looked into the vehicle and asked, "Are you lot Captain Zembiec's father?"

In an interview at his home in New Mexico, Donald Zembiec said he nodded.

"I was with him in Fallujah," the Marine continued. "And if we had to get back in there, I'd follow him in with a spoon."

After a brusk stint at the Marines' Special Operations Grooming Grouping at Camp Lejeune, N.C., in 2005, Douglas Zembiec decided to apply for a coveted slot in the Basis Co-operative of the CIA'southward Special Activities Division.

The position is extremely competitive, and the CIA accepts only one Marine Special Operations officer every few years.

"He went for this with all of his guts and celebrity," his wife said. "I've never seen this man stressed in my life until he started interviewing for this. He was pacing, and he couldn't slumber."

His parents saw the move to the CIA as a strategic one in order to stay in a gainsay-related role and avert a staff position, something most Marines of Zembiec'south rank are forced into at a similar signal in their careers.

"He wanted to be at the tip of the spear," Jo Ann Zembiec said.

He was accepted into the program and was sent to the agency from the Marines for a ii-year assignment.

Shortly subsequently, he deployed to Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. His work with the CIA was the starting time experience Pam Zembiec had every bit a armed services spouse afterwards they married in April 2005.

"The three months gone, iii months dorsum seemed similar a cake ride for me," Pam said, referring to the length of her hubby's deployments with the agency.

Because of the secrecy of the Ground Co-operative'southward operations, Zembiec rarely talked about the chore, and Pam followed suit, letting the unknown form a layer of normalcy equally she raised their newborn girl, Fallyn, and their Labrador retriever, Valhalla, exterior Annapolis.

"I wouldn't accept been able to focus on our life if I would have known," Pam said. "Because he didn't tell me anything, I never for a 2nd worried virtually him. I never thought he was in any kind of danger. He was smart, he knew what he was doing. He was trained."

"I always expected someone to come to the door and tell me that Doug had been in a motorcycle accident," his mother said. "I never thought he would exist killed in combat."

In March 2007, Doug Zembiec volunteered to deploy over again, this time to Republic of iraq, where he was able to telephone call Pam almost every solar day.

"The final thing Doug said to me on the telephone — I'll never forget it," Pam said. " 'Wait a minute, wait a infinitesimal, I have to tell y'all something before I hang upwardly. Babe, yous should see what nosotros're doing with the Iraqi people and what we're doing to help them. Things are getting better over here.'

"He was elated; he was crazy about his chore."

That was the morning of May 11, 2007.

'I was very angry'

Iv people came to Pam's door that nighttime. One of them was Col. John Ripley, a mentor to Doug Zembiec, a family friend and a Marine fable.

"When the guys came to tell me that night . . . I was very angry," Pam Zembiec said. "At the time I wanted to blame someone, and I blamed [the fact] that he wasn't with his Marines."

Zembiec's job with the CIA meant that he was working with other Special Operations types and Iraqis, not the Marines with whom he had fought during his earlier deployment to Fallujah.

"I saw a lot of tough guys crying in that house," said Elliot Ackerman, a friend who was in Marine Special Operations training when Zembiec was killed. "They cried for Doug, simply because of where nosotros were in the war I remember they cried for themselves, too."

The terminal fourth dimension Ackerman saw Zembiec was in the winter of 2007; his friend had driven through the nighttime from D.C. to North Carolina then they could do dive training together. They stayed up into the early hours of the morning, catching up, until it was time to do the swoop. Before they left, Ackerman offered Zembiec breakfast because he hadn't eaten in the past 12 hours.

"And all he wanted was a glass of milk," Ackerman said. "A large glass of milk."

Information technology took years for Pam's acrimony to subside; she felt she had been forced to remain silent nearly her hubby's involvement — even every bit movies like "Zero Dark Thirty" trumpeted the CIA'south operation to kill Osama bin Laden. The film also referenced the Basis Branch.

"I'1000 kind of irritated: Why did I have to prevarication about Doug, and why he was killed, when the whole earth knows about Ground Branch?" his wife asked. "It's fourth dimension to say, 'Hey, this is what he was doing when he was killed — he was in charge of an elite group.' "

Todd Ebitz, a CIA spokesman, said, "Consequent with long-standing practice, we practice not comment on who may or may not have been honored anonymously with a star on the bureau'south Memorial Wall."

Weeks after his death and his burying in Arlington National Cemetery, Pam and the rest of Doug Zembiec's family were invited to a private ceremony in then-CIA Managing director Michael 5. Hayden's office on the seventh flooring of headquarters in Langley. Hayden quietly thanked them for Zembiec'due south service. In attendance were some of the men who were serving with him when he was killed, along with Shannon Spann, the wife of Johnny Spann, a former Marine and the first American killed in Afghanistan, in Nov 2001. Spann, like Zembiec, was in the CIA's Special Activities Division.

Later, the CIA'southward next director, Leon E. Panetta, presented Pam Zembiec with the anonymous star that was subsequently chiseled into the Memorial Wall and inscribed into the Volume of Honor.

Today, she has come up to terms with her husband's death and her feelings toward the agency. She said she plans to return to CIA headquarters in iii years to marking the 10th anniversary of his expiry at his star.

"It's nobody'south fault," she said. "Doug chose this path. He died doing what he loved, and he made a difference. And that's what matters."

Adam Goldman, Julie Tate and Greg Miller contributed to this report.

Editor's note: This story should have noted that Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor starting time reported in their volume, "The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George Westward. Bush-league to Barack Obama," that Zembiec was working for the CIA when he was killed in Baghdad in 2007. Gordon, citing a classified summary of raids, as well said in an electronic mail to The Postal service that Zembiec was killed in Adhamiyah commune, non Sadr Urban center.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iconic-marine-maj-zembiec-the-lion-of-fallujah-died-in-the-service-of-the-cia/2014/07/15/71501d2c-0b77-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html

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