By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Jane Burrell became the first CIA officer to die while working for the agency when the plane in which she was riding – an Air France DC-3 – crashed while it was approaching the Le Bourget airport near Paris on Jan. 6, 1948.
Small Wars Journal reports that Burrell was a CIA counterintelligence officer at a time when most women in intelligence were “clerk typists.”
“The way that Jane entered into US intelligence and eventually into CIA was through her intellectual ability combined with her mastery of the French language,” Small Wars Journal wrote.
Burrell held several intelligence jobs before the plane accident.
But at the time of the accident, little was known about her. At the time, the U.S. said she had been on vacation.
