84 AMERICAN SPYIn the 1980s, military chow halls weren’t as nice as today’s dining facili-
ties (DFACs), like those found on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. DFACs
offer a variety of healthy food options and generally do a pretty good job of
it under the circumstances. The Farm’s mess hall featured typical Southern
fare found on US military bases everywhere: lots of sugar- and salt-laden
deep fat fried foods, and seconds were encouraged. I loved the mess hall.
When I asked the “lunch lady” what scrapple was, she informed me that
this tasty breakfast side dish from the mid-Atlantic states was “everything
from the pig but the oink.” Count me in!
Just as nothing from the pig goes to waste with scrapple, nothing else
went to waste in the mess hall either. One of our more beloved and col-
orful colleagues was Big Dale, a “strapping buck” (his term) force recon
US Marine. As we were finishing chow, he would loiter among the tables,
politely asking in his northeast Philly accent, “Youse gonna eat those
scraps?” He’d then grab and devour them as we headed out to PT. Big
Dale’s stated preference was for fresh pork. If we dallied on our way out of
the mess hall, he’d announce, “Make a hole!” a split second before plowing
through the middle of us.
I couldn’t tell you what I had for dinner last night, but I’ll never forget
Big Dale’s antics. One of the primary reasons we all have such fond memo-
ries of CIA training is because of the shared secret experience, camara-
derie, and endless laughs with colleagues like Big Dale who remain trusted
friends to this day.
In addition to relentless PT, we practiced basic “parachute landing
falls,” aka PLFs. Since we would jump using army-standard MC 1-1 Bravo
parachutes, we would not touch down lightly, the way civilians do today
during one-day commercial jumps. No, depending on the wind (or lack
thereof), our descents could be fast and landings could rival those made
when jumping off the roof of a two-story building. If you failed to land
properly, you’d break bones. Mastering the PLF was essential to avoiding
being hauled off the landing zone in the back of an ambulance.
To simulate exiting an airplane in flight, we jumped repeatedly out of
a forty-foot tower. Just before jumping we had to shout our training alias
and badge number, to demonstrate we still had rudimentary control over
our mental faculties. It’s not easy to make yourself jump out of a forty-foot
tower, even with a safety harness attached to a cable. For fun, we got to