A couple of years ago I flew in the simulator at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City. I heard two bangs and the pilot said we are going to simulate a landing with two blown tires. Later in the week I was on a flight from Dallas to Tokyo. As we took off I heard two bangs, bangs. The pilot announced we had blown two tires. We circled the airport, dumped fuel and landed safely. Bang, bang.
In 1976 I co-authored a pioneering study on terrorism, which my students helped to compile. It was published in the Daily Oklahoman in an eight-part series entitled “Can Terrorism Be Stopped” which was later syndicated internationally to leading foreign newspapers by the New York Times. I never got credit from my department since my study did not appear in a refereed journal. It was at that time that I started to ignore the conventionality of academia.
I will also remember my first trip from New York City to Oklahoma. I was picked up at Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City, which resembled a bus station with a runway. I was then driven to Norman, but my host got lost and we ended up on a gravel road. I wondered what I had gotten into. After 38 years at the University of Oklahoma I have traveled a long road but interesting one.
I was probably the worse radar navigator in the US Navy. One time while I was guiding our ship into New York Harbor in a mock-up of a Combat Information Center. I had to report that because of my taking of the wrong ranges and bearings our ship had veered to the starboard and hit the Empire State Building. I will not tell you the response of the captain.
Violence has played a central part in my studies. The reality of violence and politics and chaos forcefully came home when I was in Bali after the attempted Indonesian coup of 1965. I was stopped on a road leading to a burning village by a groups of peasants armed with bamboo spears. I asked if the people of the village were communists. His answer was chilling. “No they are devils.”
I was highly honored when Siddhanta Shaha, a Rana Princess and aunt of the then king made me her brother in a long Hindu ceremony. In honor of the occasion She had tailor made beautiful Nepali traditional suit for me. At times when I wore it on my way to the university because of my sun tan and sunglasses I looked like a member of the royal family. As a result the police often saluted me. This was as it should be. After all I was an honorific uncle of his majesty.
My sister Siddanta was married to a leading political figure Rishekeh Shaha. A Rana Princess, when she was in New York when her husband was Ambassador to the United Nations she took a course on hair dressing. When she returned home she opened up her own salon behind her house. All the wives of the leading political figures went to it. Siddhanta simply said, “They talk about this and that.” In reality the gossip was often politically charged. Siddhanta therefore became a one woman C.I.A. She knew everything that was happening in the Kingdom.
I was conducting a 24-hour plus highly realistic simulation in the West Berlin. I had to been in the facility where the “terrorists” seized the “hostages.” The “terrorists” were outstanding; they very quickly took control of the situation. As I watched one of the younger “terrorists,” who looked like a clerk in a super market, asked me if I was satisfied with his fear inducing performance, Of course I answered “yes.” Much later I found out that my “terrorists” were the Berlin Detachment of The US Delta Force. No wonder they were so good and so modest.
I was conducting a simulation on the fair grounds of a medium sized town near a Strategic Air Command Base. The state and local tactical teams were out in force and continually engaged in rappelling off a wall. Their skills had nothing to do with the exercise. I guess they just enjoyed the challenge. I was observing events from a car that was parked across from the barricaded area when a rider less horse proceeded to race down the road between my vantage point and the building where the “terrorist” held the “hostages.” A local sheriff stopped his car and asked me had a seen a horse. In true Oklahoma fashion I said, “He went that away.” Totally oblivious to what was taken place he “peeled rubber” and went after the errant horse. The Wild West had come to my simulation.
I was sailing aboard a destroyer escort when I served in the Navy. It was a rough sea and I was sick for 4 days. I had no sympathy from my shipmates who offered me sardines and any other number of foods to make my symptoms worse. On the way home, we hit Cape Hatteras and its rough weather. I had gained my sea legs and all my mates were ill. Needless to say, I offered all of the kinds of the most disgusting combination of foods. There is justice.