Oregon Public Broadcasting

A CIA contractor killed in last month's bombing in Afghanistan was laid to rest at Willamette National Cemetery Saturday.  April Baer reports.

A crowd of several hundred turned out to remember 46-year old Dane Paresi.

Among the mourners, sat Joe Yorio, the CEO of Paresi’s employer, Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide.

Yorio and other officials praised Paresi as having saved lives in the December 30th incident at a base in Khost, Afghanistan.  

CIA Deputy Director of  Security Mary Rose McCaffrey said the agency will always remember Paresi’s sacrifice. The blast took the lives of six other Americans, most of them CIA personnel.

Paresi’s brother Mark remembered him as a 20th century Huck Finn, a man of enormous energy and good humor, who created a rapport with everyone he met.

Paresi was survived by his wife and two daughters, and his parents, all of whom live in the Northwest, as well as five siblings and their extended family. 

Officials are still piecing together the security breach that led a suicide bomber into Forward Operating Base Chapman.