Youngest CIA Agent Killed Died in Vietnam When She was Just 21

GALLAGHER: First U.S. woman killed in Vietnam War had Sioux City roots
Sioux City Journal
Tim Gallagher
September 20, 2015

By the time the last American G.I.s evacuated Saigon in 1975, more than 58,000 American soldiers had been killed, more than 303,000 wounded in action.

SIOUX CITY | Barbara Robbins died in a bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon 50 years ago, just 22 days after the first U.S. combat units landed in Vietnam.

Barbara Robbins in Nha Trang, Vietnam, in 1964.

Robbins was the first American woman killed in Vietnam and the first woman killed in the line of duty while working for the Central Intelligence Agency. At 21, she remains the youngest CIA employee ever killed.

She came from Sioux City.

And that's where we begin today, a Sioux City Journal series that highlights 50 Vietnam veterans over the next 50 days. From now until Veterans Day, you'll meet grandfathers and sons, laborers and executives, career military types and those who landed in the jungles of Southeast Asia despite their best efforts to steer clear: Fifty Vietnam veterans, their stories of service and sacrifice, one each day for seven weeks.

The series culminates with an exhibit at Sioux City's Betty Strong Encounter Center and a related program on Nov. 8, three days before the series' conclusion on Veterans Day.

Although the first U.S. combat units arrived in Vietnam on March 8, 1965, military efforts there began taking shape a decade earlier, if not before. The first American killed in combat died Dec. 22, 1961.
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Just a reminder
Vietnam Veterans Memorial The Wall USA
THE FIRST KNOWN CASUALTY

Richard B. Fitzgibbon, of North Weymouth, Mass. is listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having a casualty date of June 8, 1956.

His name is listed on the Wall with that of his son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who has a casualty date of Sept. 7, 1965.

Keep that in mind the next time you hear a reporter say that Afghanistan is the longest war. It all depends on who is doing the counting.