CIA expands survivor benefit tied to overseas terror attacks

WASHINGTON – The CIA is expanding survivor benefits for agency employees and contractors killed in the line of duty overseas in acts of terrorism.

The change is retroactive to 1983 and was applauded Wednesday by Barbara Doherty, the mother of Glen Doherty, a CIA operative killed in the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Libya. The CIA has agreed to pay a death benefit even though the family was not entitled under a standard federal insurance policy Glen Doherty held that pays a survivor benefit only to spouses and dependents.

Barbara Doherty issued a family statement calling the expanded benefit “symbolic justice.” Her son was killed, along with three other Americans, in the attack on the facility in Benghazi. He was divorced and had no children.

The CIA said in a statement that the expanded benefit reflects a statutory change enacted last December and applies to survivors of all federal employees, including contractors, killed overseas in the line of duty and as a result of terrorism. It is retroactive to April 18, 1983, the date a suicide attacker crashed a truck into the front of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans, some of whom were CIA officers.