In 1968, I enlisted for three years in the Army Intelligence Corps.  I did my basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in western Missouri.

Like everyone else, I was happy to finish the eight weeks and leave the woods and mosquitoes behind.

After two weeks leave in Chicago, I was off from O’Hare to Baltimore for advanced individual training at the Army’s Intelligence School at Fort Holabird.

At the “Bird” I was trained in my 97 Bravo occupational specialty: counterintelligence analyst. Among other things, this involved practicing automobile and foot surveillance techniques in downtown Baltimore and interrogation techniques in the ruins of Fort McHenry on the harbor.

After 16 weeks in Baltimore, I was ready for a long-term assignment.

Though most of my classmates at the Bird headed to Vietnam, Korea or Western Europe, I ended up with a stabilized tour working in Washington, D.C. at the Pentagon in the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence of the Army.

I was assigned to the Counterintelligence Analysis Division and commuted to my nine-to-five job in mufti. Given the widespread race riots and large scale antiwar demonstrations of the day, my main work was to prepare analyses and present briefings to pertinent Army staff as to the likelihood regular Army troops would have to be deployed domestically to quell civil disturbances that had grown beyond the control capabilities of police and national guard security forces.

Occasionally I traveled on assignment. One of the more interesting trips was to western terminus of the Pacific Missile Test Range at Kwajalein Atoll. (Kwajalein is about as far west of Hawaii as Los Angeles is east.) My work involved a counter-sabotage analysis of the Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system and its radar, then being tested at the northern end of the atoll.

While waiting for a congressional delegation to finish a budgetary review of the system, I had a chance to see our tax dollars at work and relax at the same time. The base recreation officer took me to hit golf balls inside a multimillion dollar radar complex. It had been abandoned after a short period of testing due to technological obsolescence. It might have been a poor missile radar, but it was a great driving range.

On my way back to the Pentagon, I took some rest and recreation on the beach in Oahu.

After finishing my Army service in 1971, I returned to Chicago and resumed the practice of law.

Then in 1975, I had occasion to revisit my military days. The Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin was holding hearings on whether legislation was needed to restrict the Army’s domestic intelligence capabilities. (Ervin was better known for the televised public hearings on Watergate he held in 1973.)

Being familiar with the Army’s practices in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I joined my old boss, the Army’s then retired Director of Counterintelligence, and we presented our views on the legislation’s merits in hearings on Capitol Hill.

Though service in the Army during the unpopular Vietnam War was not regarded as a plus by many, I have always been proud of my Army days. I also believe my Army experience enabled me to bring a broader set of skills to my later career.