Hey Bubba, while not "military," Mr. McClung claimed to have worked for the CIA at age 14. That's fairly high in the Secret Squirrel hierarchy. (Dark Genius: Kevin McKlung, Stephen J. Rivele, Hardcover, 1991)
From Kirkus Reviews
Spellbinding autobiography of a child prodigy--gifted in the black arts of weaponry--who enters the shadow world of international-arms sales. Raised in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 60's, McClung was the son of an aeronautical engineering genius and gave early proof of his own prodigious grip on ``mechanix'' by secretly building a complex electric rifle when he was four. McClung was accepted by the Bay area's genius education program for ``Mentally Gifted Minors,'' whose special scientific projects were constantly sifted by the CIA for ideas--with the best projects (including McClung's vest for bugging and eavesdropping) stolen and passed on to CIA scientists. At 14, McClung met OSS-CIA master spy John Colling, who taught him the basics of spy-craft. Then falconer and top CIA assassin Ray Goodreau taught him about falconry and animal training, unconventional weapons, and commando tactics; McClung had already shaped his body into a lethal weapon through the martial arts. Goodreau also sharpened him into a remorseless anticommunist death-dealer. Eventually, McClung fell in with Marty Rhymer, a CIA wire-man, and Gabe Margolis, a boorish Mossad commando, who together had formed Amida Ltd., later a CIA secret business whose cover was selling weapons, uniforms and support gear to California law enforcement agencies but which quickly became a feast of international arms dealing. McClung refined a new Diplomat poison- tipped pen-gun, and, with his deadly book-gun (a copy of The Book of the Dead that fired bullets) and always accurate laser rifle, etc., etc. (diagrams for many of the weapons are given), became the company's chief inventor of killer ``toys.'' Then Ibriham Haddad, fat and perfumed king of arms dealers, invaded Amida and took it over, adding his own poison to Amida's already irredeemably corrupt juices. When Amida set up McClung to be assassinated, he hid out in the wilds for three years and abandoned dealing death downward from the top of the food chain. The rotten underbelly of US Intelligence, grippingly sliced open. Film rights sold. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From Publishers Weekly
Fresh out of high school, McClung in the mid-1970s went to work for a small firm in California's Silicon Valley designing such items as a pen-gun, a laser-sighted rifle, an exploding ashtray and a high-tech thumbscrew, all for sale in the international arms market. He was shocked to learn that the company was run by "crass profiteers and mean-spirited opportunists" whose business dealings were often illegal. Later he discovered that they were thinking of having him murdered, fearful that he was going to blow the whistle on them. McClung went into hiding, camping out in the Sierra Nevada for a couple of years. He now produces custom-made guns and knives "somewhere in central California." Basically this is an entertaining tale about a precocious young man who got involved in a sleazy fly-by-night business that may or may not have been backed by the CIA. Rivele is coauthor of Lieutenant Ramsey's War . 50,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo; movie rights to Paul Mas lan sky.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Readers of this book should ignore coauthor Rivele's overly dramatic prose and concentrate on the story of a mentally gifted child (McClung) being manipulated and groomed by the CIA in the 1960s. Enrolled in an experimental educational program at the age of seven, McClung grew up to be a special weapons expert and was involved in several secret operations in the 1970s and 1980s before a falling out with his superiors. However, the interweaving of a parallel story of his CIA "handlers" before they met McClung is confusing. Actually, this book is more of an interesting tale of secret missions in Asia and Latin America, along with a description of how to conduct clandestine activities through "front" companies, than a straight account of McClung's adventures. Recommended for espionage collections in public libraries.
- Daniel K. Blewett, Loyola Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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