My next guest is someone I profiled for a print story published in the summer 2022 limited edition issue of Coffee or Die Magazine. The story inside the magazine is called “The Great Adventure”: Neal McCallum’s 46 Years of Dedicated Service to Uncle Sam.
Some inside baseball for ya, in December 2021, I went to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to cover the 80th anniversary of the attacks. I wrote a couple dispatches and met some interesting people, including former NFL linebacker Donnie Edwards, who played for the Kansas City Chiefs and, at the time, the San Diego Chargers. He now runs Best Defense Foundation where he brings World War II veterans back to their battlefields. Donnie introduced me to Neal.
At the time, I was only privy to Neal’s background as a US Marine having served during the Battle of Okinawa during World War II. But after speaking with him on numerous occasions, I later learned Neal had accomplished far more than I initially perceived.
After World War II, Neal became one of the very first Sky Marshalls in the 1970s in an effort to combat the growing problem of plane hijackings so he helped enforce new anti-piracy laws. We also briefly cover Neal’s 20 years as a criminal investigator for US Customs — you can read about his big cases (which, a link will be in the description) as well as Neal’s government work with the US State Department in the 80s in Russia.
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