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as a kid you know it never crossed my mind to be a spy I remember saying to my mother mom
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you know uh when I grow up I think I'd like to be a magician and she said Son you can't do both my first serious job
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was working in a steel mill in Pittsburgh where I grew up I remember walking into the steel
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mill cuz I worked the night shift and looking through a a hazy Smoky night and off in the distance I saw shimmering
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glowing environment this this coke oven this was 19th century technology and I saw inside of it in
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silhouette people with little hammers chiseling away at the Old Brick and I remember thinking to myself geez I'm
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glad I'm not doing that well guess what my first job was getting the getting the
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coke oven metaphorically this was very good preparation for what I had to do later which was often remain calm in
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120° heat metaphorically whether that was a tough decision about an operation or walking
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into the Oval Office with a difficult message yeah that was uh I often think back on that and thankful I had the
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opportunity hi John Gerald Kennedy and then John Kennedy came and spoke at my college during his campaign in 1960 I
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was a freshman we all turned out for the talk let the word go forth that the torch has been passed to a new
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generation of Americans and when he said in his inaugural that the torch has been
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passed to a new generation a lot of us felt like we were the ones picking up the
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torch on the day I finished graduate school there was a telegram waiting for me from my mother that said uh son guess
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what you've gotten your draft notice so I ended up volunteering to go into the army getting a commission as a second l
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at studying Vietnamese then deployed to Vietnam on one one occasion uh the Commanding General sent me up to a
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special forces uh camp near the Cambodian border when you flew into it you had to be aware that uh North
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vietnames or Viet Kong were on a mountain nearby and they would be mortaring the landing zone go
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go the practice was to drop the helicopter in quickly Run for the bunker and dive into it before of that started
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so as we're running for the bunker this old sergeant said to me as a joke I guess kid if you like this sort of thing
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they have jobs like this at CIA I got back went to graduate school I got kind of bored with civilian life so I walked
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down the street in Philadelphia to the federal building and it was Apparent from the sign in the lobby that if I
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went up to the fourth floor I could see someone and talk to him about how to apply to the CIA and I did and you know
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people often ask how does someone get to the CIA it's not much more complicated than that