A Little Token of Our Appreciation—How I Finally Got my Medal

Fact is, little tokens of appreciation are ordinarily quite well appreciated. I went to Iraq from June to September of 2004, not because I wanted any recognition, just doing my job. Two years later I decided to go back to teaching, which I continue to do.

I learned even later that after my departure from the NSA, a civilian medal had been created which acknowledged service in war zones performed by federal employees.

The Global War on Terrorism Civilian Service Medal is to be issued to employees satisfying the following criteria:

* 30 or more consecutive days in the field of operation. (I satisfied that times three.)

* Must have worked in direct support of the Coalition efforts (I did, though I can't say much more about it than that.)

* Must also have been a federal employee during this service, not a private contractor. (I was a federal employee, though I remain annoyed to this day that someone screwed up such that during my time in Iraq I had to wear a green badge implying I was a contractor or something. Wow, look at me in that picture. I had just landed in Iraq. I look scared. I was scared.)

The regulations for the medal did also explicitly state that the medal is to be issued to personnel who have subsequently left federal employment. And the medal was retroactive for anyone qualifying all the way back to September 11, 2001.

So, I qualified. Even though I was now a mild-mannered Latin teacher at a public high school, I am supposed to get this thing.

And I'll admit, I wanted my medal. A federal level medal is a big deal. I qualified for it and, darn it, I deserve it.

But here's the catch. Just because you qualify, doesn't mean you have been awarded or issued the medal. It still has to be issued by a division of the Department of Defense qualified to issue it. And I was now outside the NSA.

I still have friends on the inside, however, with whom I maintain email contact. So I wrote to a fellow that had been in Iraq after me, asking if he knew about this medal. I learned that he and everyone he knew that qualified had already been issued the thing! This seemed like great news, because if they got it, then I'm going to get it too. So, I asked him to please send a message inside the NSA to the people who issued him the medal, asking how a former employee goes about getting the medal issued to them.

I received no response for some time and I wrote back and learned that he had sent the message up the chain of command and received no reply as yet. But he told me he would write again to see what happened on the matter.

And what followed was a frustrating period of several months in which more than one person inside the NSA tried to get this matter addressed, and no one could succeed.

I suspected what might be going on. The issuing of that medal actually does require someone within management filling out a form, writing a formal letter or whatnot, and sending it somewhere. In other words, it requires some effort on their part. And the reality was that management really has no incentive whatsoever to expend effort on a former employee. Yes, out of justice I earned the medal and should be issued the medal. But a manager gets something out of issuing a medal to current employee. The gratitude the recipient has will translate into loyalty and performance. But a former employee is a different matter. It's a Catch-22 for me. It sucks for me, but it's even understandable.

I had started my little campaign in March of 2011. In February of 2012, I decided on a new tactic. If no one inside the NSA seems to have any sway on my behalf, perhaps my Congressman could. I wrote the office of Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, explaining the situation and asking if the Congressman could help. I received a prompt reply requesting some documentation from me describing the situation in full detail. I sent it in and hoped that perhaps finally something might happen.

About a week later, I got a call on my cell phone. It was someone from the NSA telling me that they are so sorry that I never got the Global War on Terrorism Civilian Service Medal issued to me and that it has been issued immediately. Furthermore, the woman told me that they would be mailing the hard copy of the medal, but the Certificate itself would follow later after receiving the appropriate signature.

The next day, I come home and find a FedEx package by my door. They had over-nighted the medal to me!

I did learn later that a friend inside the NSA felt he was getting close to getting my situation resolved, but the manner in which the NSA acted, one week after the Congressman got on the case, makes it pretty obvious that it was he who lit a fire under them.

I called the Congressman's office and conveyed my gratitude for his efforts on my behalf. And then, to my surprise, I received a letter from him thanking me for my service. He is a class act and I appreciate his letter as much as the medal itself.




The Certificate did arrive later. Notice, they back dated it to the time when I was still in Iraq.  

The Certificate and the Congressman's letter hang in my study. I actually wear my medal on my Coast Guard Auxiliary uniform. I'm proud to have served my country. And, I'll admit, this token of appreciation is kinda nice.

Iter in Aulam Memoriae - A Journey into the Memory Palace

Grading final exams has me once again face to face with the quandary of how to teach vocabulary. Some did quite well, others didn't know words that I spent considerable time trying to reinforce. As a successful self-taught language learner, I know the secret that there is no such thing as teaching someone else vocabulary, or anything for that matter. Ultimately, one simply must teach themselves, that is to say, take responsibility for spending the time necessary to commit these facts somehow to memory.

My most successful student displayed on her final exam traces of the method she must have used in part to achieve her impressive vocabulary acquisition. She had drawn little pictures next to some of her answers that matched images from the stories in which we learned these words. By visualizing words with some memorable add-ons, many learners find that they can retrieve the words more efficiently when they need it.

The most developed version of this memory technique is to place  the words you want to memorize in some grid or architecture in your brain, through which you then imagine yourself walking. This is known as the

Method of Loci (Places), or the Memory Palace. It's quite an ancient method, discussed by Classical Greek thinkers, utilized by Renaissance men like da Vinci, and still widely used.

Basically, in this method, you picture yourself in some familiar setting, perhaps your own house, or another place you know well. You imagine the things you want to remember as being in specific locations of that place, coupled with memorable images.

Here's an example I used as a youth learning Latin in high school. The word tandem means 'at last, finally'. We had a tandem bike, my twin and I. I imagined us riding past someone on that bike. They saw the front tire, they saw me, then they saw my twin, then finally they saw the rear tire. I pictured this as taking place on Willard Avenue, Madison WI. And I have never forgotten the word since.

I recently stumbled upon someone who is about as close as you can come to a true Renaissance man in the modern world. Anthony Metivier is professionally involved in a dizzying range of pursuits, from music to film script writing. But he's best known for his advocacy of the Memory Palace method. If you're interested in learning anything from Spanish to Medical Terminology, Dr. Metivier has a book that will instruct you on how to apply the Memory Palace method.






Here are his books.  If you are interested in learning any of these topics, these books are an excellent place to start:

       

                                                            

Memories of a Birthday

I reflect on the most memorable birthday of my life, spent flying to Amman, Jordan, knowing I would be then proceeding immediately to Iraq for three months. A stranger showed me an unexpected and unforgettable kindness.

The Common Sense Way to Stop Leaks at the NSA

UNCLASSIFIED/SENSITIVE/EMBARRASSING

I worked at the NSA for four years after 9/11 as an Arabic linguist. I'm proud of the work I did there. It included three months serving in Iraq in 2004, for which I was awarded the

Global War on Terrorism Civilian Service Medal. 

Immediately upon returning from Iraq, I was assigned to the Counter Terrorism Office, where I would serve for two more years, at which time I left the NSA to return to teaching. I'm currently a Latin teacher at a public high school in New Jersey. While in the Counter Terrorism Office I was honored to serve in the critical capacity of direct anti-terrorism efforts, which included, I'll admit, being involved in the controversial Stellar Wind program, the so-called Warrantless-Wiretap Program. 

I remember sitting one day in the Counter Terrorism branch and I looked at my computer. The NSA buys computers from standard vendors, such as Dell, but then connects them to a Classified Network that is unconnected to outside networks such as the Internet. I looked at my computer and realized, this is just like my computer at home. It's got a thumb drive portal and even a CD burnable disk drive.

My boss happened by and I asked her, "Does this thumb drive on my computer work?"

She puzzled just for a moment over the question. "I assume so," she finally replied.

"Well, it shouldn't," I said. "If I ever need to send a file on my computer to someone else, I attach it to an email." (And, trust me, there are no file size restrictions inside the NSA.)

I remember her saying that whoever decided that our computers still have working thumb drives must know there must be a good reason. But I insisted there simply wasn't a good reason. These things should be disabled, hell, they should just be removed before these computers are connected to the Classified Network.

I left the NSA in 2006. Four years later, Bradley Manning walked out of a Classified facility with hundreds of thousands of Classified documents. He had downloaded them and removed them from the Classified network on, you guessed it, thumb drives!!!!!

Now, you would imagine the government, trying to make sure that a leak like Bradley Manning could never happen again, would identify that functional thumb drives on Classified computers is simply a stupid idea. I mean, really, there is no reason for them. If you need to send a file from your computer to another person in the Classified network, you email it. You don't move it from one computer to another on a thumb drive.

2013. Edward Snowden walks out of NSA Hawaii with Classified material. Saved on, you guessed it, a thumb drive!!!!!!

And so, what can we conclude? NSA Hawaii Classified computers have working thumb drive ports. This, after Bradley Manning proved an embarrassment to the Intelligence Community by stealing secrets off the Classified Network three years earlier.

I'll repeat what I said all those years ago. Computers in the Classified Network should not have working thumb drives. This is such a ridiculously easy fix!!

When I went to work every day, I drove past soldiers pointing machine guns at the passing cars. I walked past multiple security checks before I would eventually sit down at my work station and begin processing intelligence to try and keep America safe. And again, I'm proud of the work I did there. But the NSA security plan is stuck in the Cold War. The main security effort is designed to keep a Soviet agent from sneaking in. But recent news has shown that the greatest threat is some dweeb with a Top Secret Security Clearance walking out the front door with information on a thumb drive (which he downloaded from a computer that simply shouldn't have a working thumb drive!!!!!!!!!!). 

One final point. I must state that my former boss, General Keith Alexander, is a class act and a true Patriot. I had the honor of actually meeting him when I was called upon to brief the Director of the NSA and explain something I had done which other Intelligence Agencies which shall not be named (See, I, Aah, shouldn't say) disagreed with. He supported me and I am grateful. I describe the incident in question in more detail in the semi-autobiographical novel

Amor Vincit Omnia: an Andrew Valquist Adventure. I was required to submit the novel for approval to the NSA, lest I even inadvertently include a classified detail. They did require me to remove some things from the manuscript of that novel. But I was as equally surprised at what they let me keep in the manuscript, including my telling of the time I met the Director of the NSA. 

In closing, the people at the NSA really do bend over backwards to preserve the Right to Privacy of US Citizens. You don't need to worry that the NSA is listening to your phone conversations. They are working 24/7 to uncover intelligence that thwarts terrorist plots and keeps our homeland safe. I'm proud to have served in their ranks. 

UPDATE July 19

General Alexander today in an interview stated that the following measures are being taken to prevent incidents like the Snowden leak in the future:

"the government is limiting the number of employees who can transfer files to removable drives and changing security protocols at NSA offices."

This is what I said, all those years ago...

A Drink from the Bubbler, and other ways I know I'm from Wisconsin...

Growing up in Wisconsin, the thing you all call water

fountains or drinking fountains, I called a "bubbler." I had no idea just how peculiar this was until a friend sent me this wonderful and colorful way to display linguistic differences in the United States: 22 Maps that Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently from Each Other

Turns out this linguistic peculiarity is found only in Wisconsin and Rhode Island, of all places.



As I looked at the other maps, I realized many other things that indeed I say so differently from the people around me here in New Jersey. I'm sure a lot of these things will water down over time (no pun intended).