Tom Glenn's Blog, page 130

Suzanne (2)

By the time I was twelve, my father was in prison for embezzling money from his clients, and my mother was a functioning alcoholic working as a telephone clerk in a jewelry store. During my teens, my father was in and out of prison on a variety of convictions. My mother periodically binged and called in sick. I worked part time to be sure I’d have something to eat and clothes to wear.

I put myself through college (University of California) working twenty hours a week and then enlisted in the army. I was newly married and assigned to the National Security Agency in Maryland when I got an emergency call that my mother had gone on a bender and was unable to work. I immediately flew to Oakland, closed down my mother’s apartment, packed her and her possessions, and brought her back to Maryland to live with me and my wife. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Virginia, where her mother now lived, and resumed her career as a teacher. A few years later, she died of lung cancer, the consequence of years of smoking. She never stopped drinking.

My father, while I was still on the west coast, had taken to forging checks against my bank account. So I changed the way I wrote my name in my checking signature (added a “III” to the end of my name) and went out of my way to assure that he had no idea where I was or how to reach me. Five months after my mother’s death, I learned that he had been killed in a bar brawl.

All these years later, I find myself pondering to what degree my parent’s descent was due to Suzanne’s death. All I know for sure is that the death of one of my children would unhinge me. My guess is that my parents would have fared much better had both of their children lived.

And I find in myself a tiny pocket of emptiness that once was filled by my sister. As I age, I understand better that the death of a loved one leaves a void that is never filled.

Suzanne

When I was four years old, my sister, Suzanne, then aged 6, died of polio. In the aftermath, I was sent off to stay with my maternal grandmother, Ora Mae, in West Virginia. My parents stayed in California.

I remember asking my grandmother why everyone was so focused on Suzanne. That made me feel like I was unimportant. I made my grandmother cry.

My parents ended up separating. My mother returned to West Virginia where she and I lived with my grandmother in a small town called Mullens. My mother took courses to be qualified as a teacher and taught school. Whenever Suzanne’s name came up, she cried.

As I have come to understand as an adult, Suzanne’s death changed my mother and father and their relationship. My mother, already an incipient alcoholic, drank more. My father pursued his law practice in Oakland, California and became more daring in the means he used to succeed. When I was six, my father persuaded my mother to return to him, and we moved back to California to be with him. Things went downhill.

Heavy drinking was accepted, even expected, behavior in the circle my parents moved in. Both of them regularly drank to excess. I was more and more left to my own resources. I learned how to feed myself, get myself to bed and up in the morning. Because drinking was a normal part of life, my mother’s addiction to alcohol attracted no attention. I remember discovering the bottle she kept under the sink in the kitchen which she accessed covertly day and night. At the time, I knew nothing of proper adult behavior and only gradually began to realize that her constant drinking was unhealthy.

Through it all, the memory of Suzanne loomed large.

More tomorrow.

Vietnam, 1962 (2)

In 1962, the French colonialists were still everywhere throughout Vietnam. In Saigon, French was almost as commonly spoken as Vietnamese. It was the language of the Vietnamese upper class who considered their own language, Vietnamese, primitive. Some of them were less adept at Vietnamese than I was, so I spoke French with them.

The city felt safe. I bought food from street vendors or ate at local restaurants, especially the little cafés near my apartment on Tu Do Street, in the heart of downtown. On my rare days off, I toured the city and nearby suburbs, and I regularly had dinner at the cheap but excellent Chinese restaurants in Chợ Lớn, the Chinese quarter. I visited temples and the tomb of Lê Văn Duyệt in a park set aside to commemorate the famous general. I learned to depend on xích lô máy, motorized cyclos (three-wheeled vehicles in which the rider sat in front and the driver behind) for movement about the city.

When I came back to Vietnam in 1963, the country had already started to change as it moved into war. Saigon was less leisurely as terrorist incidences on the streets became common. The French colonialists became markedly fewer. The presence of military, both U.S. and South Vietnamese, slowly transformed the country to a war zone.

The transformation became more pronounced as the years passed. I was in Vietnam at least four months every year between 1962 and 1975—I had two complete PCS (permanent change of station) tours there and many shorter trips, called TDYs (temporary duty, usually four to six months). By the end, in 1975, the gracious southern city of Saigon had become the last bastion free from North Vietnamese aggression. It was filthy, in disrepair, and overwhelmed with refugees who mobbed the streets to the point that cars couldn’t get through. The stink was overwhelming.

Despite the chaos and destruction of the end, I still remember the Vietnam of 1962, the amiable, unhurried center of southeast Asian hospitality. At its center was Saigon, the Paris of the Orient.

What a difference a war makes.

Vietnam, 1962

The National Security Agency (NSA) hired me as soon as my army enlistment was finished in 1961 and less than a year later sent me to Vietnam for the first time. I spoke Vietnamese and French, the two principal languages of Vietnam (Chinese would come later), and I had proven myself adept at intercept of North Vietnamese radio communications and reporting the results. My job, over the next thirteen years, would be to support U.S. military forces on the battlefield. For my first four months in Vietnam, I was assigned to the newly-created Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). Its commander was General Paul D. Harkins.

I spent most of my time on that trip at the MACV headquarters on Pasteur Street in Saigon. Initially, I operated infrequently on the battlefield because U.S. forces were sparse and engaged not in combat but in advising South Vietnamese military forces.

I learned early on that the U.S. military was woefully ignorant of my profession, signals intelligence (SIGINT). Few at the MACV headquarters were cleared for SIGINT, and it was a new and strange discipline for those allowed to see its results. NSA had worked hard to keep SIGINT’s existence secret. Few Americans had even heard of it. Few in the military service had ever come across it before. It was strange, elusive, and often ignored.

As the only civilian at the headquarters, I was assigned working space at the rear of the building on the top floor in the Special Security Office (SSO) where highly classified material was kept and only the cleared were permitted. I rented a one-room apartment downtown (on Tu Do street) and traveled by taxi. My association with NSA was classified. I was, in short, an oddball.

Vietnam in those days was still a relatively peaceful country. The city of Saigon struck me as a lazy but gracious southern town, hot and slow moving. The people went about their tasks at a leisurely pace, and a siesta during the hottest part of the day—mid-afternoon—was standard for all, even Americans.

More tomorrow.

Trump

As I’ve noted here several times, I avoid politics in this blog. But Donald Trump’s attacks on the intelligence community have forced me to protest. Now, with information coming out in the impeachment hearings, the actions of Trump being revealed are so heinous that I can’t maintain my silence. This is no longer a question of politics; it’s now a question of damage to my country that I have risked my life to defend.

That Trump sought to compel Ukraine to launch investigations against Joe Biden is no longer open the question. The evidence is overwhelming. Trump’s refusal to provide subpoenaed documents and forbidding administration members from responding to subpoenas is unmistakable obstruction of justice. Trump’s tweets attacking witnesses is unconscionable and is accurately described as witness intimidation.

Such egregious behavior from a president of the United States requires me to speak out, lest I be counted among those who refuse to object to acts destructive to our democracy. Silence in the face of crimes is complicity.

I welcome comments from readers.

How Many Children Must Die?

The words above are the title of a Washington Post editorial dated 18 November 2019. It recounts that while Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) was pleading for more strict gun control laws on the U.S. Senate floor earlier this month, a mass shooting was underway at a school in Santa Clarita, California. Two more have occurred since.

The editorial goes on: “Thursday’s shooting was the fifth mass shooting at a U.S. school or school event so far this year and, overall, there have been 369 mass shootings catalogued by the Gun Violence Archive in 2019 as of Sunday.” The House last February passed and sent to the Senate a bill to require universal background checks. The Senate has not acted.

The editorial ends: “How many more [mass shootings] will there be before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) decides it is time to stop sitting on his hands and do something about the problem?”

In the U.S., we have  120.5 firearms for every 100 residents. Every day, 310 people are shot in the U.S. Every day. What will it take to get us Americans to reinterpret—or better yet rewrite—the Second Amendment to the Constitution to restrict the number of firearms available for killing each other? How many children must die?

The 2700

When Saigon fell on 29 April 1975, we left behind to the harsh mercies of the North Vietnamese tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who had labored by our side to fight the enemy. Among them were 2700 Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) soldiers who worked with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), my employer.

I knew these men. I had tramped through the jungles with them, shared meals with them in their homes, celebrated the birth of their children, mourned when one of them died. They addressed me as anh, older brother. I had with them the same kind of bond I had with American fighting men on the battlefield: we were brothers in arms.

I did everything I was capable of to get these men and their families safely out of the country when it became obvious that Saigon was going to fall. But no U.S. government funds had been allotted to the evacuation of non-Americans. The U.S. ambassador, Graham Martin, was confident that the North Vietnamese would want to establish a coalition government with the South Vietnamese. He rejected my warnings, based on intercept of North Vietnamese radio communications, that the enemy was preparing to attack Saigon. And he never called for evacuations. By the time he was countermanded from Washington in the pre-dawn hours of 29 April, it was too late. The North Vietnamese were already in the streets of Saigon, and we couldn’t reach any of the 2700.

All of them were killed or captured by the North Vietnamese. Those who survived were sent to so-called reeducation camps, really concentration camps, where the death rate was high.

In sum, we betrayed our loyal friends and abandoned them. I have never stopped grieving over their loss.

The Challenge of Aging (2)

Yesterday, I talked about the difficulties that aging introduces into one’s life. The body slows down, the senses grow weaker, the brain is less adept. But the mind, that incorporeal essence, grows as the physical organs wither.

I find that as I age, my thinking reaches new depths. I am able as never before to tackle what it in past times I found most difficult, concepts like what spirituality means (especially to a agnostic like me), the quality of serenity, the expanse of creativity. My artistic bent strengthens as my intellect, dependent on the functioning of the brain, weakens. I am better able to understand and articulate the non-physical world.

And I am better able to write than I have ever been. While the brain struggles to remember vocabulary, the spirit finds new and better ways to convey ideas and experience.

I see that as the mind strengthens, my understanding of life and its meaning deepens. I see why it is generally accepted that wisdom grows as the years of age increase. I now comprehend ideas, concepts, beliefs that eluded me when I was younger. My grasp of the world of the spirit, that is, all that is beyond the concrete world, is firmer and deeper.

So I accept aging with joy. I am more than willing to accept the physical debilities in exchange for the expansion of wisdom. Aging ain’t for sissies. It’s for the wise.

The Challenge of Aging

I’ve lost touch with a good friend. For years, once a month, this man and I got together for lunch. When I was getting ready to move late last Spring, I told him I’d have to forego the lunches for a while until I got settled in my new house. A month ago or so, I emailed him that I was ready to resume our lunch dates. When I got no response, I emailed him again, then twice telephoned him. No answer.

My friend was close to ninety. It was obvious to me he was failing in several different ways. He was having more and more trouble getting around, walking, sitting, getting into the car. But my guess had been that he’d be with us a while longer. He had moved just before I did, and I don’t have his new address. I have no way of locating him.

My best guess is that he is sick or perhaps has died. That fits the pattern I see with growing regularity. Barely a week goes by that I don’t hear about another of my contemporaries who has died.

I accept that losing friends is a part of getting older. So is dealing with a failing body and the inability to perform tasks we’ve always done as a matter of routine. My hearing and eyesight aren’t what they used to be. I have a bad right leg, a bad left arm, lungs that don’t work right.

I see the effects of aging on friends and acquaintances. I see them in myself. The worst, from my point of view, is that the brain doesn’t work as well as it once did. I have trouble remembering names. I reach for words when I’m writing, and they’re not there. I have more trouble that I have ever had thinking in modes that I’m not skilled at.

None of this is easy. It puts new demands on my ingenuity and creativity. And I have to plan on taking more time than I used to do simple tasks.

I and others my age, in short, face new challenges that test our ability to overcome difficulties. Aging ain’t for sissies.

More tomorrow.

Trump: Security Threat

We now have testimony that President Trump is a major threat to our security. In Kiev on July 26 2019, Gordon Sondland, in an outdoor café,  discussed classified information with Trump using his insecure cellphone. This came a day after Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he pressured Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. We know about the Sondland call from the testimony of David Holmes, the political counsel at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, that he was at the restaurant in Kiev—a public place where anyone might have overheard the conversation—on July 26 when Sondland spoke to Trump over the phone.

All of us who, as government employees, have worked with classified information, are trained never to mention anything classified outside secured spaces or on an unsecured telephone. The same applies to email and internet chatter. We already knew that Trump gave Vladimir Putin a highly classified document during a discussion sometime ago. I wonder how many other security violations Trump may have committed.

Those not familiar with the government’s classification system may not understand the seriousness of this issue. Intelligence is the eyes and ears of our government. It allows us to know what our adversaries are doing and sometimes what they plan to do. To the degree that the intelligence we hold, all of it classified, is revealed to our intelligence targets, to that same degree we lose the ability to know what are our adversaries are doing.  A major source of information is monitoring telephones and especially cellphones. Those surveilled can easily block the surveillance once they know it is going on. That puts us in great danger.

We already knew that Trump dislikes the U.S. intelligence establishment because it revealed in detail Russia’s effort to get Trump elected in 2016. I have expressed my concerns in this blog about what Trump may have done to intelligence in retaliation for its reporting of the truth. Since all actions by intelligence agencies are classified, we may never know what damage Trump has inflicted. All of us will suffer for the loss.