Lunch with Gen. William Westmoreland
In June 1968, while I was in basic training, Gen. William Westmoreland had been kicked upstairs by President Johnson. He was promoted out of his job as commander of our troops in Vietnam and into the job of heading [...]
1974 Congressional Hearings on Military Surveillance
After I left the Army, Sen. Sam Ervin continued to work on making sure the military stayed out of the business of collecting intelligence on civilians. I had kept up with these developments and was opinionated about the legislation [...]
Getting Short—The 1971 Stop the Government Protests
My three-year enlistment was coming up in the spring of 1971, with my last day of active duty being May 12. In Army parlance, I was “getting short.” Given the times in Washington, I was also going out with [...]
The Secretary of the Army’s Special Task Force
In January 1970, Christopher Pyle, a former captain in Army intelligence, wrote an article in the Washington Monthly magazine criticizing the Army for going beyond proper bounds in collecting information on civilians. Pyle’s article prompted inquiries to Secretary of [...]
Yale, The Black Panthers, and the Army
Also in May 1970, at the same time as Kent State was becoming a symbol of the country’s extreme division over the Vietnam War, a different kind of seminal event of both racial and student unrest was about to [...]
Kent State University and the Aftermath
My single worst intelligence assessment was in underestimating the future extensive campus demonstrations against the war that came in the wake of the events that unfolded in May 1970 at Kent State University in Ohio. The violence attendant to [...]
Kwajalein Atoll—The Ronald Reagan Missile Test Site
Kwajalein Atoll was then the western terminus of the Pacific Missile Test Range. Then and now, Kwajalein functions as a critical facility that tests the accuracy of U.S. ICBM missiles and their Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) nuclear warheads. [...]
Johnston Atoll and the Origins of Space Warfare
Iknew Kwajalein was going to be a very different place, but I didn’t understand that getting there would turn out to be a surprise, too. Northwest Airlines, with its distinctive fleet of red-tailed passenger jets, had a contract with [...]
NORAD and Cheyenne Mountain
My following visit to Cheyenne Mountain and NORAD’s Headquarters wasn’t just interesting and useful. It turned out to be absolutely fascinating as well. NORAD was a joint U.S.-Canadian command that had begun in the 1950s with its backbone being the [...]
