When things got weird
When I left a small Pennsylvania Bible college (think “Footloose”) to join the U.S. Army Reserve (think “Stripes”), I was only looking for a part-time service commitment to fund my critical pizza budget. Plus, the recruiter said that being an intelligence analyst would be really cool. When I asked what a 96B did, he said, “I have no idea, dude. They don’t tell us. It’s like some kind of James Bond shit or something.”
And with that little lie straight out of the Army recruiter’s handbook, I was 100% in.
I got more than I bargained for, however, when army basic training changed my life and left me wanting more. After cruising through eight weeks of muddy push-ups and drill sergeant screaming, I knew that my real calling in life had nothing to do with preaching to the hungry in Dhaka or Ouagadougou like my homiletics professor envisioned. That’s when a rash decision, over a bag of bad Wendy’s French toast sticks led me to join the U.S. Army full-time.
After graduating from the U.S. Army Intelligence School in Arizona with honors, I asked to be assigned to Hawaii. They sent me to Korea. Jerks. After I was confined to an infantry unit studying Soviet tactics and the blustering North Korean leadership structure, only sixteen miles from the DMZ I might add, I asked to be sent to Langley, VA where they kept the CIA people. Real analysts, I thought. They sent me to Ft. Hood, Texas. Within eighteen months of my new assignment to General George S. Patton’s Hell on Wheels 2nd Armored Division, they rounded me up for a tour of duty in the Gulf War of 1990-1991.
And the hits just kept on comin’
After months of eating shrink-wrapped food in the dark and asking what that smell was from the burn pits, the Tiger Brigade Task Force finally rolled north and kicked some ass. Sandy and ragged after a flight home from Iraq, I transferred to the Ft. Hood, TX Criminal Investigation Command (CID) to be an investigator. It’s like NCIS without all the whiny glamour and hot lab techs. Fun fact: working at CID was the first time I ended up in handcuffs.
With five years of a pretty good Army experience, I took off the uniform. Since then, I’ve stayed in touch with an interesting and, sometimes sober group of individuals, who each claim to have performed insurmountable feats while on secret missions for the U.S. government. I suspect they’re lying, just like my recruiter.
From corporate life, to barracudas, to the badge
Over the years, my military and law enforcement exploits have served me well. (Yes, someone let me be a cop in South Carolina.) Somewhere along the way, I stumbled into some incredibly boring management positions with MCI WorldCom and General Motors, and later independently consulted on various mind-numbing management issues because it sounded like I knew what I was talking about. I’ve been editor-in-chief of two corporate newsletters and have written and presented hundreds of boring business reports, unheeded training manuals, and delivered dozens of motivational speeches, most of which were blatantly disregarded by a terribly narcoleptic audience.
All those corporate shenanigans were enough to make me chuck it and move to the U.S. Virgin Islands where I worked on a dive boat and wrote travel articles from my apartment on St. John that had a view of St. Thomas. True story. (See the financial demise of WorldCom and incarceration of the CEO. Thankfully, I cashed out of my vested interest and bailed just in time.)
In 2008, after masquerading as a federal background investigator in Kentucky, (yes, I have stories about rural KY) I moved to Italy and later to Germany, to work for the U.S. Army Africa and U.S. Army Europe as a senior antiterrorism subject matter expert. That’s when Langley finally came to me in the form of someone I later called “the benefactor.” But I can’t talk much about that. Not because it’s classified, but because I just don’t remember much. Wow, those people can drink!
The formal resume goes deep
That was a fun five years of pretending to be Jason Bourne confined to an office. To date, I have over twenty years’ experience in counterintelligence and credibility assessment, security operations, personnel vetting, protection, policy, investigations, Red Team, insider threat, and crisis management. Yeah, I pulled that right off the LinkedIn page.
One night at a security conference in Montreux, Switzerland over a vat of grappa (the Italian equivalent to moonshine), I talked a magazine publisher into accepting some security articles I told him I could write. He ended up printing four of them in Security Today. It’s the Indian edition, so only like a billion people read it. I sent copies to Langley, but I never heard back. I think my Army recruiter got a job there. Might even be on the seventh floor where they keep the Matrix control room. Who knows.
I’m huge in India now.
In case you’re wondering, I’ve lived in eight states, been to 42, worked on four continents and been to five. Now I’m back where it all started, NW Ohio.
They let me go to Afghanistan. Several times!
After all that, I went to Afghanistan to work for the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force under the auspices of providing counterintelligence support. Among some things that will remain nameless, I got to Red Team some sensitive bases around Regional Command-East. That’s by Pakistan. Seriously, happened. All those Blackhawk and CH-47 Chinook pilots were pretty darn good getting us through those snowy mountain passes and avoiding the occasional RPG launch. A few years later, I ended up at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul for a few more years doing other fun things like insider threat investigations and polygraph stuff. Hey, the embassy had hot food and running water. That was pretty cool, until we gave it away to the Taliban.
My biggest peacekeeping challenge today is keeping the stray cat and the pound puppies separated here in N.W. Ohio where my wife and I submit to the wishes of two Thoroughbred horses (Kallisto (L) Zeus (R)), two dogs, Goblin (pictured), Gaia (won’t sit still long enough), and Pie Hole, the weird cat who skulks and trolls the basement like a non-paid extra in Pet Sematary.
Anyone need a cat?
What is S.I.L.O?
The S.I.L.O. series deals with doing the wrong things for the right reasons. The books are about compromise, jeopardy, fortitude, and redemption.
Ask yourself, “What would I need to run a secret spy agency?” Special Intelligence, Logistics, and Operations. That’s S.I.L.O.
S.I.L.O. operatives are everywhere serving two masters. They’re entangled within the sensitive and non-sensitive positions of our federal government, and they report their findings up the S.I.L.O. chain where the decisions are made by a small handful of people. It’s been around from the President Kennedy-era Cold War. Think about it.
Is S.I.L.O. still around after all these years?
Why not? Someone has to battle the Deep State.
PURITY OF INTENT and THE VENDETTA AGENDA are currently under consideration for traditional publication. Check back for updates.