88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary Read Online Free Page A

is best for the Navy.” That gave me pause; I opted, instead, for a civilian education. But as I look back, I can see a young man instinctively primed for a life of public service, even if he was largely unconscious of the reasons for it, and had no idea where his proclivities might lead.
    In those days, and particularly among the prep school set, it was expected that if you did well, you would naturally go to one of the “good” schools. For me, reflecting typical New England parochialism, that meant the Ivy League. When I arrived at Dartmouth, though, something changed. I had worked so hard to get there, but now, to my surprise, it felt like I had merely traded a small prep school for a bigger one. Going to college was supposed to be moving on; this felt like treading water. I rebelled, at least after a fashion. Rather than focusing on my studies, in my first year I set about addressing what I felt were the real gaps in my education. I spent much more time than was prudent hitchhiking around New England to see friends. I learned to drink, was introduced to recreational drugs, and began seriously dating girls. My grades slipped badly. My parents were shocked.
    The summer after that first year, my dad pulled me aside for one of our rare little chats. A successful contractor, he framed the problem in straightforward business terms: “When I agreed to pay for your college education, I saw it as an investment,” he said. “Right now, this isn’t looking like a good one.” My grades improved thereafter, but I remained naive, idealistic, and wildly impractical. I had no idea what sort of career I might want, and while I understood the need for money, its pursuit held no interest. College, it seemed to me, was a time to discover fundamental truths: I became a philosophy major.
    The Philosophy Department at Dartmouth did not prove a good fit. With few exceptions, my college professors were a disappointment to me. I had expected to find earnest seekers of truth. What I generally found instead were smart, glib fellows who knew a great deal about what other people thought. Hanover, New Hampshire, is a beautiful place, and I enjoyed the company of an eclectic group of characters in the ramshackle, countercultural fraternity I joined. But they and the few compatible professors I found were a limited antidote to the college experience itself. For reasons that said more about me than them, many of those around me seemed self-satisfied, conventional, and oddly anti-intellectual. Eager to get out of school, I managed to complete my studies in three years, which left me with the suddenly acute problem of what to do next.
    I had loved boarding school and was eager to return. It may sound strange, but within what some might perceive as a straitjacket of form and tradition, I had encountered far greater freedom of thought, and far more interesting people, than I ever encountered in the supposedly freewheeling intellectual ferment and drug-fueled hedonism of 1970s eastern academia. The economic downturn of the mid-1970s had hit many private secondary schools hard, however, and there were few jobs to be had. In response to the many letters of introduction I sent out, I received only one invitation for an interview.
    The position on offer at Concord Academy, outside Boston, was not at all what I had in mind. Concord had for years been a small, exclusive girls’ school, the tone set by the many socialites who sent their daughters there. Caroline Kennedy had graduated a year earlier, before going off to Harvard; the student body was dominated by old-money eastern establishment families, leavened with the offspring of film, television, and theater people. The school had only recently become coeducational, and was looking for a dorm parent for one of its few boys’ residences. It wasn’t a teaching job, but it was a foot in the door. Only slightly older than the charges I was to supervise, I was offered the position.
    The following year,