A Howard Watson Intrigue

Duty, Honor, Country Plebe that I was West Point Academy was originally established as a fort that sits on strategic high ground overlooking the Hudson River,  with a scenic view about 50 miles north of New York City.  It is one of the five U.S. Service Academies .  Tuition for cadets is fully funded by the Army in exchange for an active duty service obligation upon graduation. Approximately 1,300 cadets enter the Academy each July, with about 1,000 cadets graduating. The idea of attending West Point Academy didn't hit me until my junior year in high school.  By that time my dad and I were bonafide political opposites. The Vietnam War was raging and I had the nerve to want to go to a military college. Go figure. My father would have liked to hit the roof but decided at nearly the last moment to refrain from doing so, as he would only be hurting himself. In addition to the required excellent grades and test scores for admission to West Point, a candi...

CIA Friends This piece will be short and sweet because I only have three CIA friends: Officers Allen Knox, Liling Xu and Trent Michaels. To be honest, I don't know if I could call Trent a friend per se,  maybe a little more than an acquaintance...but I like his peculiar take on things. The CIA and FBI are both members of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The CIA, however, has no law enforcement function. The CIA collects information only regarding foreign countries and their citizens. Unlike the FBI, it is prohibited from collecting data regarding "U.S. Persons," a term that includes U.S. citizens, resident aliens, legal immigrants, and U.S. corporations, regardless of where they are located. Of course, I'm not about to tell Knox this. He and I have worked on several missions together. In The Smoke Ring case ,  he helped the FBI tie up strings that might have been missed had he not been on board. In The Standing People  case, Knox's resources were ...

Alberto Marino - the best.boss.ever. I'm going to write this as if Al won't ever see it. Unfortunately, he sees and knows everything, so it will only be a matter of time before he'll call me into his office and ask me to "stop putting the light in my face". Alberto Anthony Marino was born in an Italian ghetto in New York City.  Al likes to say it was ironic because the word "getto'' was first established in the 16th century in Venice, Italy.  His paternal uncle worked on New York's waterfront for over 30 years and would tell him often as a kid that he remembered  suffering the consequences of the anti-Italian sentiment that had spread like wildfire once the United States entered World War II.   His uncle's only crime was being born in Italy. But during the early years of World War II, that was enough to classify him as an “enemy alien”.  Even Joe DiMaggio’s parents in California weren’t spared from harassment, though their son...

FBI Special Agent Ahmad Waverly Who is this person? Why is he so special to me? Ahmad Waverly grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and graduated from the University of Florida with a B.S. in Forensic Science coupled with a minor in Chemistry, thinking he was going into the Medical Examiners Office in Miami when he graduated. As salutatorian of his high school graduating class he was a recipient of a four-year academic scholarship to the University of Florida, graduating four years later cum laude. Prior to his senior year at Florida, he interned at the office of the Medical Examiner in Miami and was truly praying that they would offer him a position once he graduated. Sometimes the divine just intervenes. Two months before he graduated, Ahmad met FBI Special Agent John Mason at a career fair with an emphasis on scientists. As far as John was concerned Ahmad was a perfect candidate for the FBI. Ahmad's background and knowledge in computational forensics involving computer-based...

Me and the Female Agents "What's it like working with women FBI Agents?"  I 've been asked this question so many times that you'd think I would be sick of answering it by now. You would be right. I always say the same thing, "It's as if I'm working with men."  Sounds lame? Yeah, but maybe I'm just tired of the question. Unfortunately I do recognize why the question always comes up since  only 20 percent of the Bureau’s 13,667 agents are women, and, sadly to say 83 percent of the agents overall are white.  Indeed, 10 months before being fired as director of the FBI by President Trump, James Comey called the situation a "crisis." In 1972, after Mr. Hoover died,  the FBI opened up the position of Special Agent to women.  Although one of the first two women hired  was also appointed the first female agent to run a field office, her assignment was in Anchorage, Alaska, which was not then, nor is it now, at the center of the act...

My father, my influence Although my mother Anne was masterful at keeping me and my father George from constantly bickering, he and I always remained at opposite ends of the totem pole when it came to politics and vocations. Ironically my two younger sisters fought more with my dad than I did. Go figure.  I was a high school student when I decided that I wanted to be an FBI Agent.  Our social studies class had been studying the JFK assassination and the FBI had impressed me considerably with its professionalism and degree of intelligence. My father couldn't understand why a black person, especially his son, would want to work for an arrogant, white, elitist group like the FBI.  I, of course, did not agree with his assessment. I felt that minorities had been afraid to apply to the Bureau for fear of peer pressure. However, my father continuously conveyed his feelings about my pursuing a "safe" career like medicine or engineering, and not the FBI.  That ...

Lessons from Vietnam After I graduated from WestPoint Academy, my father George literally screamed at me when I volunteered for early duty in Vietnam.  He never let up on the notion that Vietnam was the wrong war at the wrong time against the wrong enemy.  I can recall his words like it was yesterday. “Howard, this ain’t our fight! This is the white man’s M-O getting into another country’s business when they’re fighting against themselves! You don’t need to be getting into the middle of this mess. Ain’t a Vietnamese alive who’s done us wrong. Enough is enough!" Of course I was too headstrong to agree. I listened, but I didn’t agree.    His objection to the war, at least in his view, was important and right but  Vietnam was just something I had to do. When I stepped off that transport plane in Vietnam the heat hit me like a blast furnace. The greenery was so glistening it almost hurt my eyes. The strange smell that hit my nostrils I later fou...