Widow of Slain CIA Agent Keeps Her Vigil : Shootings: Judy Becker-Darling to mark second anniversary of husband’s death outside agency. She says U.S. is hiding data on assailant.

Friends of slain CIA agent Frank Darling sought to comfort his widow Tuesday and make sense of his death two years ago at the hands of a gunman who fired into a morning traffic jam.

Darling and Central Intelligence Agency senior agent Lansing Bennett died Jan. 25, 1993, after a man opened fire on cars lined up outside the gates of the CIA’s northern Virginia compound. Three others were wounded.

Police believe that the men were shot because they worked for the spy agency.

“People would say, ‘He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ ” said Judy Becker-Darling, a former CIA employee who is defying agency custom and speaking about her husband’s slaying.

“Except he was in the right place. We were exactly where we were supposed to be--on our way to work.”

Witnesses, including Becker-Darling, said the gunman made his way along the line of stalled cars, firing an AK-47 assault rifle apparently at random. In the confusion afterward, he got into his car and drove away.

“Frank was the first person shot, and he told me, ‘Get down,’ ” Becker-Darling said.

“We heard breaking glass, and I thought we were in a car accident.”

Hit in the back but still conscious, Darling, 28, told his wife to crouch beneath the glove compartment.

“He saved my life. I know that,” she said. “We had been married for three months.”

Mir Aimal Kansi was charged in the attack. He was allegedly angry over what he regarded as American meddling in his native Pakistan and chose the CIA as a visible target.

He is believed to be in Pakistan or another Islamic nation.

Becker-Darling believes that the CIA is hiding information about the killing and about Kansi, perhaps out of embarrassment that such an assault could occur yards from the agency’s doors.

The CIA denied any cover-up.

“The CIA continues to cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities in their efforts to apprehend the assailant,” agency spokesman Mark Mansfield said Tuesday.

Since the slayings, Becker-Darling, 35, has left her CIA job and become a gun-control advocate and outspoken critic of the agency.

“I worked for the CIA for 13 years. I believed with all my heart, they’re going to get this guy, and they didn’t,” she said.

“Now I’m portrayed as the bitter widow who can’t get on with her life.”

Becker-Darling also believes there is a way to prevent vendettas, personal or political, from becoming murders.

“The answer is gun control,” she said Tuesday, as she prepared for a vigil outside the CIA today to mark the anniversary of the shootings.

Bennett’s widow has declined to discuss the killings. She is not scheduled to attend the vigil.

Becker-Darling said she has to steel herself to approach the site of the killings.

“People ask me why I put myself through this, and my answer is that I have to do it because of him,” Becker-Darling said.

“He was a good guy. I wouldn’t be doing all this if he wasn’t.”