After 21 years, six months and 10 days of active military service, I am now a civilian.
I was in the military, and then I went to university to study biology.
I was an infantry Marine, and there are only so many things you can do when you get out of the military that you can apply your job to. Either a janitor or a cop. I tried to do both of those things because what else are you going to do?
Look at all the marriages that have been wonderfully successful where fellows finished their army service and came home to go to college on G.I. bills and their wives worked.
I am in the infantry for 17 weeks and after that I don't know where I am going.
How do you expect people to actually join the military if, when they leave the military, they can't integrate back into the free market they're supposed to be protecting?
When I got out of the Navy... all those hotshots, the guys that were really smart and attractive and all that, guess where they were going? They were going into advertising. That was the hot thing then.
What do you do when you get out of the military, you stop serving? There are 26 presidents who served in the military. More than half of our presidents... that means that you stop being an American?
After the navy, I transferred to Harvard and finished there. I was there the spring term of 1951 and I stayed through the summer term and a whole other year, so I was able to do two years in a little less than a year and a half.
When I started at Baruch in January 2002, I was almost 23 years old. I'd previously spent five years as an officer the Israeli Navy. I did what I thought you were supposed to do at that age - a little studying and a lot of trying to have fun.
I left the Army in 2000 and went into industry before I started appearing on TV in 2003. My best job there was on a series called 'Crafty Tricks Of War' for the BBC. I loved that because it celebrated how clever and inventive people are and the ingenuity that goes into solving problems.
After 12 years as an Air Force officer, I turned in my wings for a notebook, earned a law degree and went to work for Proctor & Gamble.
After I left the Marines in '46, I wanted to stay in the Marines; I was very happy - I loved that life.
After I was discharged from the military, it was difficult trying to become a civilian.
I retired in 2016 as a Lieutenant Commander and immediately went to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
