“I had a NATO Top Secret during my tour in Germany, and it reverted to Secret when my tour ended. “Need to know” is a concept foreign to civilians, but we sure thought it was important.”
BOL: There is a nice young manager at the place where have our vehicles serviced. He was telling his help about having a top secret NATO clearance while on active duty with the AF.
In private, I asked him, when he returned to the states, what clearance did he have and if he could get near a crypto site.
He said secret and no.
At the time, there were only two officers in our unit that had it: the Battery Commander and me. Whenever a tac eval occurred, I knew I'd be down in the hole for four days. After two, the zoomies were griping about having to pull 12 hour shifts. lol
My very first time in the hole, I hadn't been there 30 minutes when an NBC input hit. I was in the Eagles' Nest briefing the Wing Cdr on the placement of our weapons systems.
Long story short, the Base Disaster Prep Officer went overboard, calling for an alarm red, where everybody has to put on mask and garments. I spoke up...imagine an Army 2LT amongst 5 AF Colonels and other officers, I got the look like "who the hell is this kid?"
I gave the Wing Cdr 3 reasons for upping the alert status to yellow, i.e. no masks. As he concurred, I saw the NATO Team Chief nodding his head.
For the next 18 months, everytime there was an NBC input, the Wing Commander called for me.
It was a piece of cake. One of my many extra duties was NBC Officer for my unit. It would later get me a week in Oberammergau at the NATO School. If I had the money, I'd retire there.