Tom Diaz

I was born into a military family (on an actual horse cavalry post, Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia). I was raised largely in the American South and West. I learned to shoot in the Boy Scouts in Mississippi, and was on a rifle team in high school in Florida. I served on active duty and in the U.S. Air Force Reserve (1958-1964), and also the D.C. Air National Guard as a small arms specialist. I enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard in the late 1970s and served as an anti-tank platoon sergeant. I worked as a civilian administrative officer for the Department of Defense (Advanced Research Projects Agency) in Thailand during the Vietnam War. It was during this post that, as Top Secret Control Officer, I had custody of the first assault rifle I had ever seen, an ArmaLite AR-15, soon to become the M16.

I also served three years as a District of Columbia Police Department reserve officer.

I attended the U.S. Naval Academy Preparatory School and the U.S. Air Force Academy, and graduated from the University of Florida (BA Pol. Sci. 1962) and the Georgetown University Law Center (1972, editor, Law Journal). I've followed a wandering career course, practiced law in and out of government, became a journalist and ended up serving six years as an assistant managing editor at the very conservative The Washington Times newspaper in Washington. I also reported from Central America, Russia, India, Pakistan and the first Gulf War before leaving The Times. I then spent two years at a small think tank in Washington studying terrorism and international organized crime, and from there went to work in 1993 (following the first WTC bombing attack) as a Democratic counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Crime Subcommittee, where I worked on legislation and hearings involving terrorism and firearms.

I am now retired and concentrating on writing books. I love doing deep research on the study of crime, terrorism, and history.