The single worst training session I endured at Fort Gordon was a bizarre experience. The instructors said the scenario was we were citizens in a country with a strict class system and the only way to move up was by trading tokens without talking. It became clear that the only way to win was to cheat by lying about how many tokens you had since the instructors never counted them. It appeared the whole point of the exercise was to imply that the American system is inherently unjust, which is a truly odd thing to be teaching to American soldiers. I could give many other examples of things like this. So much time in today’s Army is wasted on training that has nothing to do with making better soldiers.
There were fun times as well. For Halloween of 2018, we were allowed to wear our costumes to work. I spent my whole shift dressed up as Toucan Sam, the cartoon cereal mascot. It was fun to be dressed like that while listening to enemy chatter.
There’s not much what I can say about what I actually did other than I listened to what the bad guys talked about and tried to translate it. I wasn’t so great at transcription, but I was pretty good at finding interesting things. The best part was that I worked with one of the best Arabic linguists in the Department of Defense and got to hear all his stories about the various idiots he had to outwit over his long career. He, like most NSA civilian employees, is a veteran. In fact, most of the people who work for NSA are active-duty military and most of the rest are veterans. I think the US public’s generally negative perception of NSA would change if they knew that. I remember jumping on the anti-NSA bandwagon in 2013 after the Snowden leaks. When I worked for the NSA and saw what it actually did, I began to see NSA employees as unsung heroes.
From his stories, it seemed that the veteran linguist did not like the military and one night, I asked why he stayed in so long. Long story short, he was forced to be the breadwinner for his family at a young age and he had to keep his job somehow. Later, when the military was making me miserable, I saw that I did not need it the way he did.
He told me a story about his time in Greece. Another guy there was a short, alcoholic computer genius. He would test microchips in a homemade lab in his kitchen, find the design flaws, then write back to the manufacturers for a reward of a few thousand dollars. Once he was late for a flight, so my mentor went to check on him. He found the computer whiz sprawled out on the floor surrounded by bottles of ouzo. I don’t know whether that story really happened or if he made it up on the spot just for me. He met a lot of drunks over his military career and probably guessed I was too.
I greatly enjoyed being in the company of people who shared my interests in math, codes, computers, and foreign languages. It was also a lot of fun to read through the NSA archive and learn things that have been classified for a long time. Some of it is truly intriguing and incredible. Alas, it will not be public knowledge for a long time. Everybody who works for NSA has to take a vow of silence in a ceremony that reminded me a bit of what happens when a guy becomes a made-man in the mafia. It was a little scary and kind of cool, much like the counterintelligence polygraph test I had to take. I admit it was a little fun to be strapped into a chair with various gizmos and wires hanging off me. All I could think of was the scene from Goldfinger where James Bond says “do you expect me to talk?” while strapped down with a laser beam steadily coming closer to him.
A sailor I met at DLI was assigned to the same section as me. It is no exaggeration to say that he was the best Arabic linguist to graduate DLI in 2017. His speaking prowess was unbelievable. Unfortunately, it took forever to get his NSA work computer set up. I could tell he was getting frustrated, so invited him to sit with me so we could listen together. He left the section unexpectedly, never to return. I suspect he had some kind of mental breakdown, a common affliction among new NSA linguists.
When I reached my third year in the Army, I thought to myself that I should stay in, because I had never had a job last that long before. And so I prepared to end BLC, the Basic Leadership Course, so I could get promoted to sergeant. BLC ought to be called the Army IQ Reduction Program. Not only is it the worst class in the Army, it’s the worst class I’ve taken in my entire life. It may even be the worst class theoretically possible. It’s 23 days in a row of 5 AM wake-ups, shouting slogans in unison, and watching PowerPoint all day. About the only good thing that happened to me there was meeting an Army Ranger and Special Forces sniper who were among my instructors. I guess game recognize game. The 5 AM wake-ups were particularly unpleasant as at that time I had been on the night shift for several months. And just when I was starting to get good at the job, I spent 3,000 hours for, I had to take this dumb class or else risk not getting promoted.
It was disappointing to meet a National Guardsmen there who was clearly obese and who had failed a walking test there by trying to run when he thought no one was looking. That’s probably the most pathetic thing I ever heard about a soldier I met myself, and my respect for the National Guard took a nosedive. He also decided it was fun to see how much he could anger me, and it didn’t stop until I made it clear to him that the most useful thing he could do in combat was get his brains blown out so a more competent soldier could use his corpse as a sandbag. His equally obnoxious accomplice didn’t stop bothering me until I put my hand on him and gave him a look that made him whimper in fright.
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