The "prime directive" for all life is to "survive" and to "reproduce". There is no other purpose and life's genetic code is an accurate record of the history of all life. The code is immortal but life is temporary. It is so important to survive that we have evolved backup systems like the computers we seem to simulate. The DNA has an RNA which is a duplicate of our chromosomes. We have 23 pairs, 46 chromosomes in all but half of them are duplicates, not a single helix, but a double helix in case one needs to be repaired. The mother wallaby can keep a spare embryo in her uterus for a year just in case something goes wrong with the baby wallaby she carries in her pouch.
I was assigned to the War Room at the Pentagon for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the 60s where I worked for all of the Chiefs of Staff but I had a unique relationship with Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, the coldest of the cold warriors, and Chief of Staff of the Air Force, because he was a ham and so was I. By the way, if anyone is (was) Dr. Stranglove, it was him. He also ran for vice president as George Wallace's American Independent Party ticket mate and he was one of the most interesting characters I met in the military. At night I would go home to my apartment in Falls Church and drop a wire out of the window. Using a matchbox, an impedance matching device I could load up just about anything and talk over the radio - which I did for hours in my spare time. I had been a hame since high school and it was my other passion, at the time. When I was a ham everyone made their own equipment and there was very little solid state. It was all tubes and resisters and capacitors and wire antennas. I once talked to Europe using a mobile whip antenna and my ground system was a wire which I dangled in the Intercoastal. I used loading coils to change bands and I was one of the first hams in military MARS to use my computer like a teletype machine for radio-teletype. Ted LeMay and I would talk by ham radio after work and when we did he called me Hank and I called him by his nickname, Ted. When at work however he was the general and I always addressed him as "sir". Once I didn't have time to put a wire outside so I matched the window screen to my transmitter and talked to him that way.
While in the service I met my share of characters, all of them powerful people. I also learned more about government than I could have learned in school. It would be fair to say I was disillusioned after so many years in military school and the propaganda I was spoon fed by my teachers.
I would occasionally also use the Pentagon military amateur radio station: "K4USA." As time wore on though computers were just becoming popular with some of us and we were just learning how to make them work and find practical applications for them. My uncle who was a physicist at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds had the first one provided the army and I was lucky enough to see it and I was hooked. While my work was crypto much of it then was with mechanical wheel devices but we had a large room at the Pentagon which was filled with the new computer system which used tubes and diode multipliers and adders. The technology then was in it's infancy and that was very exciting. Little did we know or expect that it would become all encompassing and would be as important to the economy and to civilized development as the industrial revolution.
I had to wear a uniform, unlike my duty in the White House, but nobody bothered me. I worked for the bosses, and had a privileged position. I was a specialist 5th class but the rank didn't mean anything. I didn't answer to anyone but the guys at the top.
I had some temporary (TDY) duty at the "alternate" JCS in the alternative pentagon, which were located down very deep inside a mountain in Maryland and about 75 miles from Virginia. Jane came over and tried to stay there but it was not very convenient with the babies so for most of that duty I drove home for a day at a time and worked for two days at a time. My job was to get the new crypto equipment installed and operational, which I did. It was a site where in case of a national emergency the Chiefs of Staff and their families would go there and so would I.
Also, while I was at the Pentagon, the war in Vietnam was just getting started and helicopter pilots were needed so I volunteered and picked to go for the pre-qualification examination which I didn't pass because I had corrected vision and they wanted helicopter pilots who could fly without glasses (in those days) and LeMay was mad when he found out about it. He said there would be plenty of trips to Asia and I would see enough to want to be in Virginia and he was right.
"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology."(Michael Parenti)
