In the mail this week came a reminder to pay my annual dues to the
AFOSISA: the Association of Former Office of Special Investigations Special Agents. The
OSI is the Air Force equivalent of the FBI, the model on which it was created
on
August 1, 1948, under the brilliant,
innovative and inspiring leadership of General Joseph F. Carroll, a former FBI
agent, supervisor, and special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover.
Sixty years ago, I was an airman serving as the Legal Clerk
in the 3650th Air Base Group at Sampson AFB, New York. Sampson had been
a Naval Training site during WWII, but when the Korean War started the Air
Force took it for basic training of new recruits. The 3650th was the
house keeping group on the base. I wanted to transfer to the Office of Special
Investigations and in the spring of 1953 the deputy group commander, Lt. Col.
John A. Brock, recommended me for such service.
(In 2013, AFOSI is the second-most requested career-field
choice in the Air Force.)
Within a few weeks I was on my way to Washington, D.C., and
posted as the Senior Administrative Airman in the Sabotage & Espionage
Branch, Counterintelligence Division, Headquarters, OSI. When I arrived in the
spring of 1953, street cars were operating on Pennsylvania Avenue, and cherry blossoms
were in full bloom around the tidal basin facing the Jefferson Memorial.
Our offices were located in buildings built at McLean
Gardens in NW Washington as “temporary” during World War I. The OSI mission
in the early fifties was to provide personnel, criminal and counterintelligence
investigative services to the Air Force around the world. It was an AFOSI agent
who first alerted Gen. Douglas MacArthur's headquarters of the attack from
North Korea that began the Korean War in June of 1950.
(Today, OSI is a federal law enforcement and investigative
agency operating throughout the full spectrum of conflict, seamlessly within
any domain; conducting criminal investigations and providing
counterintelligence services.)
In September 1953, I went to the OSI Special Agents’ training
school and was graduated in November. For the next six years I served in a
variety of assignments, stateside and overseas. My
special interest was with counterintelligence and I took
advantage of my status and opportunities to learn everything I could. When I
left the Air Force in 1959, after eight years of service, I was employed by the
United States Navy as a security administrator and director. I was the first
civilian security officer hired by the Naval Supply Corps, which in Charleston,
SC, had responsibility for world-wide support of the nuclear powered submarine
force carrying Polaris-Poseidon missiles as the Navy’s first line of deterrence
against the threats posed by the Soviet Union. Later I was elected to the S.C. House
of Representatives and was a senior manager at the state’s Department of Corrections.
Looking back it was the totality of my eight years work and specialized training and duties in the Air
Force which set the stage for my life’s work. To this end, I will always be grateful
for the opportunities I had and the men and women who helped me along the way. That
is why I will send off my dues this week and remain in the brotherhood of former
OSI Special Agents.
The AFOSISA was incorporated on December 7, 1966, and its
objectives are to maintain and further friendships emanating from service with
or employment by AFOSI; to assist one another through combined efforts and
mutual association; to perpetuate the ideals and principles of AFOSI; to
facilitate contact with members on a worldwide basis; and to unite former and
present AFOSI Special Agents in the common interest of promoting the security
of the U.S. Air Force
.
