Orrin Rankin Magill Jr., 87; Led CIA's East Asia Pacific Area

Orrin Rankin Magill Jr., 87, the former director of the CIA's East Asia Pacific region who later married hundreds of Fairfax County couples as a court-appointed civil celebrant, died of prostate cancer Sept. 23 at his home in McLean.

Mr. Magill spent most of his working life in east Asia for the CIA, stationed in Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong. He was appointed to President Richard M. Nixon's Special Committee on Heroin, a U.S. effort to stop the drug traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam.

After his 1975 retirement, he was appointed by the Fairfax courts to serve as one of a number of marriage celebrants, who performed civil marriages for a fee, much like old-time justices of the peace. Mr. Magill didn't limit his weddings to the courthouse and would sometimes marry couples in his home, surrounded by Asian art collected in his travels, or in parks the couples chose.

He was born on a family farm in Dublin, Va., and raised in Shanghai where his missionary parents worked for the YMCA. He learned Chinese history, culture and Mandarin. He returned to the United States for college, graduating from the University of North Carolina. Drafted into the Army in 1943, he was sent to Yale University to study Burmese and then was stationed in Burma as a communications specialist and cryptographer.

Mr. Magill volunteered for the Office of Strategic Services during this period and was a member of the OSS-101, which supplied, trained, led and fought with troops known as the U.S. Kachin Rangers.

After World War II, Mr. Magill joined the CIA at its inception and spent a significant amount of time in the 1950s in Vietnam. He later helped analyze the conflict for the secret history of the war, which became known as the Pentagon Papers. His personal conclusion, his family said, was that Vietnam would be overrun by Communists by the mid-1970s.

His first wife, Anne Elizabeth Graybill Magill, died in 1986.

Survivors include his wife of 20 years, Pierrette D. Koneczny Magill of McLean; four children from his first marriage, Anne E. Frauens of Honolulu, Orrin R. Magill III of High Point, N.C., Sarah Kent Kiely of Fairfax Station and Stephen R. Magill of Herndon; two sisters; two brothers; and 11 grandchildren.

-- Patricia Sullivan