Defense Intelligence Agency

The mug says “Defense Intelligence Agency,” and it’s where I started my career. The Agency, that is, not the mug. Starting your career in a mug would be really hard, unless you’re the size of a naked mole rat; but that is a subject for a different day. We called it DIA. 

The DIA is the Agency that, more or less, coordinates the functions of all of the military and military-oriented intelligence activities. They try to herd the cats that are running hither and thither on missions assigned by the Army, Navy, and Air Force; and they also try to coordinate what all of those cats are doing with the CIA, NSA, and various other intelligence agencies (the United States has around a dozen or so). This is obviously something that should be done. It is also obvious that it is essentially impossible. At least, it was impossible back in the pre-9/11 days. 

None of that mattered to me, of course. As the lowest of the low (I entered the Army as a Private First Class), such overarching, strategic thinking wasn’t in my job description. I also wasn’t capable of it. It was a job. It got me a Top Secret security clearance, and some experience doing something. When I got back to Huntsville, that clearance and that experience got me a job that eventually landed me where I am now as a senior engineer. 

I’ve always been as vague as possible when discussing my time in intelligence, and I’m not going to break that tradition here; but I will tell you what my jobs were. I started my career at Fort Hood, Texas, as an Army Signal Intelligence analyst and Russian linguist. In addition to tactical missions, I translated and analyzed information that was intercepted by somebody who had antennas in Berlin. After I returned to Huntsville, I was part of the 20th Special Forces group, and I did whatever they told me to do. They were very excited to have a trained Russian linguist as part of the team, and I was glad to be part of a Special Forces unit. 

An interesting historical point: the general in charge of my Army organization was a guy named Colin Powell. He later made something of a name for himself. 

Monterey, CA

If you opened the door to our little apartment in Monterey, you could barely hear the surf pounding on the rocks, and could just make out the sea lions barking their contentment as they laid on the breakwater in front of the pier. I say “open the door” because opening one of the two windows in the ancient fourplex would likely have caused permanent damage to that pile of sticks that we called home for nine months. The walls were so thin that you didn’t have to open anything to hear our neighbor calling Bogey the cat to come in for the night; but, if you did slip out that open front door, and if you stood on your tiptoes in just the right spot on the seashell-covered driveway, you could see a tiny sliver of Monterey Bay where the sea otters played their days away. 

The miserable pile of sticks only lasted 9 months because, for reasons known only to my geriatric, dementia-ridden landlord, we could only get a 9-month lease, in spite of being assigned to Monterey for a year. So, 3/4 of the way through my Russian course, we had to find new digs.We were extremely blessed to be able to live in a 2-room gardener’s cottage on the grounds of a big house owned by some rich guy. The bedroom was big enough; but the kitchen/“living room” was so small that we had to sit on the bamboo love seat and eat on TV trays every night. When we were eating, no one could fit between the TV trays and the television. That was fine with us, of course. We didn’t need to walk around while we were eating, because we were sitting down. 

It was wonderful. I was a Spec.4 in the Army, and Sandra worked at Carl’s Jr., so we lived on practically nothing; but we had each other, we had sea lions and otters, and we had a year to learn about life and to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. 

So what did we do with the year? A lot. The Army had me doing 7 hours a day of classroom work on Russian, and then 2 hours or so of homework at night. The weekends were free, but we had to do laundry. For months, we had to spend our free time on Saturday lugging our dirty clothes to a laundromat and sitting there while it washed and dried. We thought we had died and gone to heaven when we bought an apartment-sized washer that we could hook up to the faucet in the kitchen sink. We could wash clothes anytime we wanted! It was glorious!

Sandra worked at Carl’s Jr. until she got a part-time job at the Naval Postgraduate School teaching a Mother’s Morning Out-like class, which she loved. And the weekends / holidays were epic! We drove Highway 1. We went to Big Sur. We went to San Francisco. We went to Yosemite National Park. We went to Disneyland. We went to Marineland (which is now closed). We spent days watching the sea lions on the breakwater and the otters playing in the bay. We went to Carmel (which is the next town over from Monterey), where they had a big sandcastle-building contest on one of our first weekends there. Carmel was a great place to go for local color because some insanely-rich people live there. Sandra took a French class, and the end-of-class party was where the movie stars live. So we can say that we’ve been to a party on 17-Mile Drive … although in truth, the house the party was in was about 1500 square feet, and nothing to brag about; but still. 

Speaking of Carmel, we were there when Clint Eastwood ran for mayor. He represented the rich business owners against the old-money rich people who didn’t want any change. We thought this was pretty cool, so we decided to watch the debate on the local TV channel. I mean, how often do you get the chance to see an A-list Hollywood star debating whether city ordinances should prohibit ice cream cones being sold on the sidewalks? We tuned in and watched Clint debate the establishment candidate. There was one other candidate - an old hippy who represented “The Party Of The Trees”. He had clearly spent most of his life stoned out of his mind; but I liked him because his answers were always consistent with his platform. The entire platform, as far as I could make out, was to be nice to the trees. Don’t cut down any trees. It was the most entertaining political debate ever.

One of the most important things we did while we were there was to get Buster. Sandra wanted a cat, so we went down to the local pet store, and there he was. He was a rescue, and the store didn’t charge for rescues, so we bought all of the stuff he needed from them and took him home. We talked about what to name him on the way to our little gardener’s cottage, but didn’t come up with anything. When we got there, we realized that we had forgotten to buy something, so I went to the store. When I came home, Sandra had named him - and Buster he was from then on. 

The single most important thing we did while in Monterey was to get pregnant with Christina. Specifically, Sandra got pregnant with Christina within the last week that we were there. When we left Monterey and started the very, very, very long drive to San Angelo, TX, Sandra was uncharacteristically sick to her stomach. We put it down to all the hullaballoo of packing and clearing; but it turned out later to be Christina! That, however, is a story for another day. 

I didn’t buy a coffee mug that says “Monterey”, but I don’t need a coffee mug to remember moving to the other end of the continent with Sandra - who had married me a year prior without ever suspecting that I was going to lead her on a crazed, magic carpet ride. An unreasoning sense of freedom and the firm belief that the world will turn your way are the province of the very young and the very foolish. I was both, and I didn’t care. I had my sweetie. I had my wits, and I had the confidence of a fool. The world was wide open in front of me, and I was on a roll. 

Elena Viktorovna (KGB, Part 2)

Elena Viktorovna Petrenko was 72 years old, but she didn’t look a day over 83. She looked like everyone’s grandmother: white-haired, plump, and cheerful. If you were young and inexperienced, the temptation to underestimate her at your first meeting would be overwhelming. 

I think the first words I ever heard her speak were, “I am coming to America in 1946, and I am becoming citizen in 1954. So I am longer American than any of you.” And she was a real American. She loved America and its mission to protect freedom in a way that people who have never been oppressed can never understand. 

Her story came in bits and pieces over the year we spent together. So here, as far as I can work it out and remember it 30 years later, is her story. 

Her family was from Krasnodar, although it was named Ekaterinodar when she was born a few years before the Revolution. She was the granddaughter (or great-granddaughter) of a man who had a problem. He had won the equivalent of a knighthood fighting in Russia’s wars of southern expansion. That was great, except that it disqualified him from marrying the woman he loved because she was a commoner. He realized that he couldn’t live without her, so he transferred the title of nobility to her. Then he went back to the wars and won another knighthood so that they could marry. He must have been quite a man, and she must have been quite a woman. 

Of course, that’s where the trouble started. His outlandish act of love made the family some sort of minor nobility, which went over very badly with the Bolsheviks. They survived the Revolution okay, and didn’t even do too badly through the Red Terror (if only having a few family members murdered can be considered “not too badly”). However, during the ‘30s, Stalin’s NKVD (the sons of the Cheka and the fathers of the KGB) massacred her family. Not all at once, but by ones and twos - which was the way it was done. Her sister was executed for decorating a portrait of Stalin improperly. I never did understand the excuse for the execution of her mother. I just remember that Elena Viktorovna’s story about her mother’s arrest and imprisonment was my first clue to how fearless she was. 

Her mother had been arrested and was being held by the NKVD, so Elena Viktorovna marched herself right down to NKVD headquarters in Krasnodar to see her. During the visit, she lit into the commander, demanding any kind of evidence of any wrongdoing. She harangued him until her mother said, “Elena, there is nothing you can do. You need to go home.” It takes a special kind of gumption to tell off the NKVD. In prison. Where a lot of your family was murdered. It was the last time she ever saw her mother.

During the war, the Krasnodar side of the family heard that the Kharkov side of the family had food. Since it was walk or die, they walked the 470 miles to Kharkov, and were strafed by the Luftwaffe en route. She said, “The bullets went pft! pft! pft! Right into the ground. It was just like in a movie.” As a result, they were in Kharkov when the Nazis entered the city. They had never been so happy to see anyone! Finally! Here were the Germans, who were going to free them from the repressive totalitarianism of Stalin! “We met the Germans with bread and salt,” she remembered. “And it was great until the SS showed up. Someone had killed a German soldier in the courtyard of an apartment block, so the Germans killed everyone who lived in the apartments. It became obvious that Hitler was just like Stalin; but at least Stalin spoke Russian, so we supported Stalin.” 

Not that their support mattered one way or another, of course. They were tiny bits of refuse floating on a giant wave of history. It was in Kharkov that I lost the story of her family because she and her husband were put on separate trains and shipped to Germany to work as slave laborers in one of the war factories. She remembered being marched to work while the German schoolchildren screamed at them. “Russian pigs! Russian pigs!” She didn’t say much about what she did there. One assumes that she survived. 

She and her husband lost contact with each other for the duration of the war, since being a slave means that no one cares where your family is or what happened to them. Somehow, they found each other after the war, and the only happy part of this tale is that they were both in the American zone. Since all prisoners of war were considered traitors by Stalin, that wouldn’t normally have stopped them from being deported back to the Soviet Union and imprisoned or executed for collaborating with the Nazis; but she was a medical doctor, and her husband was a scientist or an engineer, so they qualified to emigrate to the United States under a special program. They landed in Chicago for awhile, and eventually made their way to Anaheim, California. They owned a house and a small tract of land with orange groves on it, until it was bought by a guy named Disney because he had some daft idea to build an amusement park. 

The KGB (Part 1)

Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopastnosti
(Committee of State Security)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” - A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

The Cold War is like 9/11. You had to live through it if you want to know how passionately we misunderstood it. It was like A Tale of Two Cities. America was at its best. America was at its worst. We were holding back Communism - a menace more deadly than Nazism, with a stated aim of world revolution. We were conducting witch hunts for the “Communist under every rock” - trampling everything we believed in while doing it. I could go on; but I would be supported by half the people who lived through it, and damned for a liar by the other half. I’ve already said enough to incite violence at some college campuses.  

Most of this isn’t related to the fact that I joined the Army after I graduated from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 1985. With a shiny new degree in English Literature that had been intended to get me into seminary, but was not likely to get me into anything else, I had some figuring to do. I had been married about a year, and needed to work somewhere other than the convenience store if I was going to support a wife. Seminary, I had decided, was for people who were much more certain about going into the ministry than I was. I knew I was going to need some time and space to think about my decision, and I was going to need money to pay for whatever schooling I needed to get the next degree - the hopefully employable one. 

So I joined the Army. They were willing to give me a reasonable paycheck, a signing bonus, Russian language training, and the GI College Bill in exchange for four years of my life. That sounded like just the ticket! I would have time to think things over, and I would have the next school paid for. It was just what I needed. 

I probably should have told Sandra first; but she was a good sport about it, as she has been about all my insanities.

Anyway, that’s how I ended up working in military intelligence with a Top Secret security clearance and a Russian language qualifier on my title: I needed a job and some space. A year in Monterey, California learning Russian did me no end of good. Working with the Soviet defectors and refugees gave me a clear idea of who we were dealing with. They all had stories, and none of them were good. Next time, I’ll tell one - the story of Elena Viktorovna Petrenko, my teacher. She was the sweetest, kindest grandmother you could ever meet. You would never guess that she had survived war, deportation, slavery, and genocide.

The Coffee Cups

Lining the top of the cabinets in my kitchen; or, rather, in Sandra’s kitchen, are dozens of coffee cups. There are some nice ones, some very cheap ones, one or two historic cups, and many pieces of tourist trap bait. They represent cities, countries, companies, geographic features, and government agencies. They are nothing to anyone except me; but they tell the story of my life, so I won’t give them up. Thankfully, though, she has never complained about them. 

Sometime after I left the Army, I decided that I would get a coffee cup whenever I worked at a company, or took a trip. That would be my keepsake and would help me remember that job, that business trip, that mission trip, or that vacation. I thought that a physical reminder would keep the memories in my brain, so I always bought a cup, was given one, or (in one case) retrieved it from the garbage can. 

Like life, of course, the collection strayed from purity. There’s a shot glass from Moscow, a beer stein from Vienna, a thermos from Kwajalein, a bomblet from a missile, a badge from a missile range, and a piece of an artillery shell from an explosives test. Because I was very fortunate, my experiences were too broad to fit into my plans; but, for the most part, the collection is coffee cups. The tops of my kitchen cabinets have long since been overwhelmed by the cups my life has created, much like the memories have overwhelmed my brain’s ability to hold them; so I am reduced to tucking them into cabinets or into a closet. Occasionally, I’ll see one that I had forgotten about and the memories will roar through my eyes, forcing themselves in on me as if I was still there in that moment. Sometimes I’ll see one and will stare blankly at it for awhile, hoping to remember where it’s from or why I spent my time on it.  Thirty years may not be long to live; but it’s a long time to collect coffee cups, and even my cup-assisted memory is starting to have holes in it. Before the holes grow any wider or deeper, I want to offer you the stories that the cups have to tell. Their stories are important and trivial. They are banal and original. Like the life they represent, they are whatever they are; but the stories belong to the cups and, when you look at all of them, they are my life. 

For some time to come, the blog will consist of a picture of a coffee cup and a story that goes with it. I was going to say “the story that goes with it”; but each cup is a window into a part of my life with a million stories that can never be told with the few words and years that we have at our disposal, so one story per cup will have to do. 

Andrew Pakhomov, Ph.D.

Some Murderers I Have Known

Andrew Pakhomov, Ph.D.

There’s no story here. I really didn’t know this guy; but Andrew Pakhomov was a UAH physics professor (department chair, I think) and I had a lab or two with him several years before the murder. I only include his story because some of you are wondering who the fourth murderer is - and also because this story is so incredibly lurid. 

In late May of 2006, Dr. Andrew Pakhomov murdered his wife, Elena Zakin, and threw her body in the Tennessee River. This case has everything: domestic violence, infidelity, a successful murder, and a botched coverup. It’s such a titillating story that Investigation Discovery used it in “Betrayed”, one of their true crime shows.  The episode is “Blinded By Betrayal”. So, if you’re the sort of person who obsessively watches murder documentaries (Meagan), here’s the link:

https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/tv-shows/betrayed/full-episodes/blinded-by-betrayal 

If you’re not the sort of person who watches murder documentaries; or, more likely, you can’t get access to the site because you don’t have the right internet service, here are a couple of links that will let you read the dishy details. 

https://www.inquisitr.com/3546019/yelena-zakin-andrew-pakhomov-ids-betrayed-missing-wife-found-dead-in-tennessee-river-killed-by-physics-professor/ 

http://www.decaturdaily.com/news/local/pakhomov-s-mistress-testifies/article_3275bca2-c15e-5501-9958-5a45583aed0d.html 

Aaaand here’s the guilty verdict:

http://www.waff.com/story/10949009/jury-hands-down-guilty-verdict-in-pakhomov-trial 

In my defense, he didn’t seem like a raving lunatic at the time. 

Also, I’m not sure why a physics professor can’t figure out how much weight you have to attach to a body to keep it from floating. Those of you who actually critique murders are wondering that, I'm sure. 

Steven Thompson, Part 3 - The Death Row Visit

Some Murderers I Have Known

Steven Thompson, Part 3 - The Death Row Visit

(WARNING: This post is a discussion of a visit to death row. If that’s likely to keep you from sleeping, you should go read Calvin and Hobbes or Pearls Before Swine and wait for next week’s post.)

After Steve and I had corresponded for awhile, I went to see him. His mother needed a ride, and Steve thought I’d be okay to meet. I’m not sure when this was. He was executed May 8, 1998, so it must have been before that; but not too much before. I’m sorry I don’t have a really coherent narrative this week; but the visit was just about 20 years ago, so I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending to remember most of what happened. Let me just jot down some of the memories that jump into my dreams from time to time. 

When we signed in with the guards, our belongings were inspected and we were checked for contraband. This didn’t make as much of an impression on me as it would have a normal human since I’ve been wandering in and out of secure buildings my entire professional life; but I could tell that a lot of the other people were feeling very put-upon by the process.

After I got there, I felt terrible for going. Steve had recently gotten the word that he would be transferred to Atmore for execution. I realized, too late, that every minute I spent with Steve was a precious minute stolen from his mother; and she had a very short time left to talk to her son. Strangely enough, that’s not how she viewed it. She was delighted that her son had a friend his own age who cared about him enough to visit him in prison. She encouraged us to spend as much time together as possible. I still felt bad, though. 

While I was there, I was really curious about how normal all the murderers looked. I expected them to be a particularly rough bunch of men; but the ones I saw weren’t. If they hadn’t been wearing prison clothes, none of them would have looked out of place at a hockey game on Saturday night or in church on Sunday morning. The visiting area was a cafeteria about the size of a basketball court. There were ladies behind the counter who would sell them food if their families were willing to buy it. Steve’s mother bought some candy bars and a coke for him, and he was careful to thank the ladies for taking care of him. It was exactly like a normal interaction in a normal lunchroom, except that he went on to tell them goodbye since he was on his way to be executed “down south” and wouldn’t see them again.

After he got his food, we sat together in a patch of sun and he raised his face to catch all of the sunlight that he could. He paused and luxuriated in the light that had so recently come from the free air outside the prison. Undoubtedly, sunlight was not a frequent visitor to his cell in the depths of the building. After a few moments he lowered  his face, looked at me, and continued with the visit as if nothing had happened.

I was struck by how digital his thinking was. Things were yes or no, right or wrong, black or white. There was no middle, and no gray. Death row doesn’t grant a man very many luxuries, but the opportunity not to have to deal with the subtleties of life was one of them. In all of his communications and in all of his thinking, he was driven to one extreme or the other. He had only a short time to make his soul right with God, make peace with others, and settle his affairs. Time was not on his side, and he had no patience with half measures. 

Unless he was a great actor, his conversion to Christianity was real. He talked at length, and with obvious knowledge, about the Lord and his hope of salvation. He apparently spent a great deal of time in his cell studying the Bible and talking to the prison chaplain. He was not worried about dying. For him, death was immeasurably preferable to living another forty or fifty years with no hope of being free. His life was a constant agony, and he wanted to be free from the pain one way or another. He wanted to either be with the Lord, or to have the hope of one day being a free man in society; but he could not deal with the dreaded Life Without Parole. He was worried about his mother and the rest of his family. He was afraid that his death would kill his mother, that the stigma of being related to an executed murderer would follow his family, and that they would all wrestle with guilt that it was somehow their fault. For himself, he had not one little concern. He was happy and upbeat the entire time I spoke with him.