In His Resignation Letter, Joe Kent Spoke About the Death of His Wife

 

In His Resignation Letter, Joe Kent Spoke About the Death of His Wife

 

Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent was killed in action during a special operations mission in Syria in 2019. Mr. Kent said he could not support “sending the next generation off to fight and die” in Iran.

 

John Ismay

By John Ismay

Reporting from Washington

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/us/politics/joe-kent-shannon-kent-iran-syria.html

March 17, 2026

 

In his resignation letter on Tuesday, Joe Kent, a top counterterrorism official, criticized the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. But he also mentioned his “beloved wife,” a Navy linguist who was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in January 2019.

 

Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent was 35.

 

Chief Kent was assigned to Cryptologic Warfare Activity 66, a Navy unit that supports the National Security Agency and military special operations forces. She was supporting the latter at the time of her death.

 

Mr. Kent, himself a retired Army special forces officer, recounted meeting his wife in a podcast interview last year.

 

They met “for 10 minutes in 2007,” he recounted. “I actually met her at the Baghdad ‘ville,’ the area where all the different intelligence agencies are.”

 

She was giving a targeting brief on “an Iranian militant.” Mr. Kent said he chatted with her for five or 10 minutes and wanted to talk with her more, but they both had to get back to their jobs.

 

“The war moved fast, and she moved on to a different location,” he said. “And I didn’t see her again for several years.”

 

She was a native New Yorker, he said, and joined the Navy after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. With a gift for languages — self-taught in Spanish and French, Mr. Kent said — she was sent to Monterey, Calif., to learn Iraqi-dialect Arabic.

 

She soon found herself working with a SEAL task force, and tried out for a special reconnaissance team.

 

In 2013, both found themselves going through a yearlong training course for a unit Mr. Kent would not name, saying it is “still one of the few units that not a lot is known about.”

 

She was also qualified in human intelligence operations, which involves recruiting and paying sources to act as spies on behalf of the United States.

 

Her ability to speak Arabic in the Iraqi dialect made her invaluable to special operations missions, he said, because as a woman she could more easily speak with Iraqi women and find out what they knew about insurgent operations.

 

After reconnecting on the first day of the selection course for that classified intelligence-collecting unit, Mr. Kent said that “from that moment on, we were pretty much inseparable.”

 

“I think we fell in love pretty quick,” he added.

 

The two married after they completed their yearlong training course. She was stationed at Fort Meade in Maryland while Mr. Kent was working in the Washington, D.C., area. After the birth of their children, he said, the family relocated near Annapolis.

 

Her first deployment after having children took her to Syria in late 2018, Mr. Kent said.

 

“She was still working at the N.S.A., so she was still doing pretty vital stuff for the country,” Mr. Kent said. “But she was the one staying at home up until her final deployment.”

 

On Jan. 16, 2019, Chief Kent was meeting with a source at a restaurant in Manbij, Syria, when a suicide bomber killed her and three other Americans.

 

Chief Kent was posthumously promoted to senior chief.

 

“She should have been out of Syria because Trump gave the order to get those guys out of there,” Mr. Kent said on the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast. “And then you have the administrative state dragging their heels and desperately trying to keep us in these conflicts.”

 

In his resignation letter, Mr. Kent cited what he said was Israel’s influence over the Trump administration’s policies. Some lawmakers called Mr. Kent’s remarks on Israel antisemitic, and critics mentioned his support for conspiracy theories.

 

Mr. Kent wrote that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” adding, “I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”

 

Early in her career, Chief Kent’s language skills and easy manner had made her good at “tactical questioning” of people during missions. “That was her foot in the door,” Mr. Kent said in an interview shortly after her death.

 

“Back then I don’t think SEALs were enthusiastic about talking to locals, and Shannon found a place where she could be of value, and she poured her heart and soul into it,” he said.

 

John Ismay is a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy.