I was born in New London, Connecticut, on August 16, 1939, the son of two Irish immigrants. After the death of my father in July 1940, my mother, my brother Bill, and I moved to Greenport, Long Island, New York, where I was raised and from where I graduated high school in 1957.

Upon graduation from Albany State Teachers College, I taught history and coached the track team at Cohoes High School for a year in upstate New York.

The years 1962–1967 were spent in the U.S. Army, learning Russian and German and being trained as an agent handler. Military service was followed by a year of graduate school at Michigan State University, where I was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency.

From June 1968 until August 31, 1999, I was a polygraph examiner with the CIA. In that capacity, I conducted approximately 6,000 polygraph examinations, worked with more case officers (agent handlers) and met more spies than anyone I can think of.

In 1969, while traveling abroad, I met my wife, Leonor “Lee” Tijerina, another CIA staff employee. We were married on August 29, 1970, have two grown sons, and two grandchildren.

Four of my Agency years, April 10, 1971–April 10, 1975, were spent in Vietnam, and my Vietnam experiences were the basis for my first book, OF SPIES AND LIES: A CIA Lie Detector Remembers Vietnam, which I wrote after retiring, and which was published in 2002.

Currently, Lee and I live in Reston, Virginia, where I write, play with our grandchildren, and worry very much about the current state of the world.