Jim is a retired Foreign Service Officer (Diplomatic Service).
Born in Missouri and raised in Minnesota, Jim joined the NAVY at the age of seventeen – to see the world. He also learned that the whole world doesn’t turn to ice in October and remain so until April. (That’s why he lives in California.) He learned Morse code and then other codes. He served one enlistment and moved on (because he gets seasick in a bath tub).
He is a veteran.
Jim joined the Diplomatic service in 1966 and served abroad for 23-years, where his travels brought him to mostly third world countries where he and his family actually thrived.
He received a rare civilian decoration for VALOR for actions he took while under hostile fire in Cambodia, in 1975.
Jim worked in embassy code rooms, as a Diplomatic Courier and progressed to wear several other hats throughout his career. Officially an Administrative Management Specialist, Jim was often involved in making embassies secure from intruders and safe from violent attacks. Jim has worked on visa lines, in logistics and warehousing, armoring fleets of vehicles.
Jim also gathered intelligence and worked in areas of Counter-Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism where he garnered death threats and even attempts on his life. Trained in weapons by the Secret Service and Israeli Defense Forces Commandos, he served as an embassy Security Officer and in positions where he was called on to provide Presidential level VIP security and work as a translator for Secret Service details, etc.
At the end of his diplomatic career, he retired to California where he and his wife could Americanize and raise their children. His serendipity did not last long, and the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11/2001 roused him.
Of the 23-years that Jim was overseas, he lived and worked in Islamic countries for over a decade where he came to observe and learn about Islam in action at first hand. After 9/11, Jim embarked on a self-study program that, combined with his long experience with Islam up-close and personal, has rendered him to be one of the top experts on Islam in America. He understands Islamic terrorism very well. While Islamists derisively call him an Islamophobe, he counters that he acutely Islam-Aware.
Jim writes about Islam, government, and more.
