White House
I went to military school for all but my last year in high school in Miami Beach and that entire year I couldn't wait for it to be over so I could leave home. I already had the wonderlust and being around my parents was not enjoyable. I wanted to do things, to see the world, to have an adventure.
On my high school prom night after taking my date to the party I left with a buddy to walk on the beach and to talk about our future. We took a couple of bottles of wine with us and when the bottles were empty we both decided we would enlist in the military in the morning. It was already morning so we didn't have long to wait - and that is exactly what we did. I never did go back to the prom nor did I take my date home. I don't remember her name but I am certain she never forgot what a jerk I was. I'm not even sure if I danced with her. I was so drunk I don't even remember being sworn in to the United States army. A few days later my friend and were interviewed on a local R&B radio station which I'm certain motivated some other kids to join up too.
We left a few weeks later for Ft Jackson, S.C., where I was to be stationed twice, once for basic training and once more years later while awaiting orders for overseas and while there I was then assigned to a training company as a drill instructor.
After basic training on Tank Hill at Ft. Jackson I received orders for Ft. Monmouth to undergo a serious of training programs and my friend was sent off to Ft. Gordon for advanced infantry training and Ranger school. I also wanted to go into the rangers with my buddy, but my high test scores and my FCC radio licenses and skill in communications was enough for NSA to take an interest in me and I received an assignment to attend microwave, crypto and advanced crypt schools and then NSA training. During the nearly three years of army schools, I did well enough for a final interview for a very special assignment and in 1959 was on my way to Washington where I was outfited with civilian cloths and taken by limo to the "shop" for my orientation.
My assignment was to the White House Communications Agency was to ensure we consistently provided leading-edge technologies to the president and his staff. We were the premier communications, army security and crypto services for the president. We had all the leading edge Defense Department capabilities at that time and they still do today for presidential activities. In the most technologically advanced country in the world we had the most advanced technology. It was a hoot.
The mission was to provide reliable, redundant, robust, secure and non-secure voice communications, data and video connectivity (though at the time there was little of that available) but we had what was leading edge packet radio and pulse modulation multiplexing, microwave and high frequency communications. We didn't have a satellite then. I missed that.
Our command was a small detachment then of only about 300 personnel. Today it is in the thousands. When I was there everyone knew everyone else by first name. Everyone wore civilian cloths.
The unit fell under control of the Signal Corp and began following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. During the initial installation of our unit at the White House in the 40s the unit began with just 30 people, two of them officers and 28 of them enlisted soldiers. Their job then was to operate and maintain radio communications and provide cryptographic services at the White House, officially established March 25, 1942 (I got there in 1959).
The unit was established first as the White House Signal Detachment by orders of the War Department during the Roosevelt Administration. We worked out of the White House. We had a special communications bunker in the basement and equipment in all of the offices. We provided communications support to the president with mobile radios, teletype, secure telephones, crypto text and crypto voice security and during the Eisenhower Administration when I was there we reorganized and was renamed the White House Army Signal Agency.
Our role continued to expand and support included wide-band communications and television and some additional security services and eventually satellite systems, etc.
In 1962, WHASA disbanded by order of the secretary of defense under President John F. Kennedy and was transferred to the Defense Communications Agency. There have been many organizational realignments pursuant to need.
I then worked at USREAR in Orleans, France for three years and then was reassigned to the Pentagon to work for the Chiefs of Staff in the War Room providing secure communications and cryptology.
During that time I attended helicopter school but washed out because of the requirment for uncorrected vision, which probably saved my life. I was there for the beginning of the Vietnam War but decided not to do another tour and resigned from the military. I was however requested to go to the Middle East in 1973 during the Yom Kipper War, which I did and was in the Negev when the IDF surrounded the Egyptian 3rd army.
"We animals are the most complicated things in the known universe.
The universe that we know, of course, is a tiny fragment of the actual universe."
(Richard Dawkins, "The Blind Watchmaker")
|
"The detachment was
activated under the Military District of
Washington to provide normal and emergency communications requirements
in support of the President of the United States. WHSD provided mobile
radio, teletype, telephone, and cryptographic aids in the White House
and at Shangri-La, now known as Camp David... In 1954, during the
Eisenhower Administration, WHSD was reorganized under the Office of the
Chief Signal Officer, Army Signal Corps as a Class II unit and renamed
the White House Army Signal Agency (WHASA)." |
| "The Agency evolved over the past 60 years from a small team of 32 personnel working out of the basement of the White House (and not much bigger when I was there) to a self-supporting joint service command. Headquarters for WHCA is at Anacostia Navy Yard." Just like military school I pioneered the White House for Jews. I was the only one in the detachment. There were no blacks there at all and only one other Jew in the secret service. |
While I was still with WHASA at the White House, I was also temporarily assigned to the Naval Security Agency (or group, as it is called now) and that was one of the times when I had to wear my uniform. There were other branches of the service there also but only two of us were from the White House. There is where I became proficient with some other aspects of voice security and the KY1 machine. I was there not only with other members of other branches of the military but also agents from various intelligence agencies.
My duty at the White House also brought me in contact with secret service on a regular basis, and I performed some support functions for other security agencies and helped in the engineering and development of wide-band communications at the White House.It became part of my job to change the codes in the machine ever morning and sometimes I would change them when the president was there. And Ike always said hello.
I don't know about other presidents but I really enjoyed working for Ike. He sometimes had parties that we were invited to also. It was a very special time. I imagine all that has changed a lot since then. Most of my friends who worked with me are gone now but we were family and we stayed in touch with each other. I miss them and the good times we had also.
Jane and me in front of a destroyed tank in Israel
During one of my enlistments, I served a tour in Orleans, France [ComzRear] while there with NATO Forces. My job there was also cryptology and it was a exciting experience, learning first hand about another culture and for the first time emerging from my insular American cocoon to become a bit more political - but not enough to keep from being reassigned to Washington, this time with the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff in the "War Room" at the Pentagon.
The timing was particularly propitious. While there at JCS a war got started in an out-of-the-way place called Vietnam. I established secure voice crypto communications between the Chiefs of Staff and the commanders on the ground. That was my job. And when the Chiefs of Staff took their show on the road, I sometimes went with them to those distant and exotic jungle vacation spots and when there was a memorandum asking for helicopter pilots, I volunteered.
Richard (37) in the wheelchair.
That's Jane in the middle.
I'm on the right in the western hat.
Taken in 1999.
Muse - Mt Weather - White House - DSA - Humanity - POTUS
Re-up - Coevolution - France - War Room - Ike - Hackers - ENIAC
Teddy - Patriot - Ana-Mae - Ancestors - Hotel - Military School
Army - Special - FBI - Jane - South - Luca - Link - Reason - Shop
Up-Hill - Capitalism - Family - Down-Hill - Struggle - Vagabonds - Left
Children - TN - Liberal - Angst - Faith - Extinction - Curse - Blast #1
Blast #2 - DARPA - WormHole #1 - WormHole #2 - Crypt #1 - Crypt #2
Hack Attack - High Crimes - (BHG) Jewelry - Golem - Pyramid
Epilogue - Epilogue to the Epilogue - No Coherence - Nature of Nature
G 0 l e m D e s i g n s
On the Internet since 1982
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