TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT

Like many of my generation (I turned 66 on Monday), I grew up with the works of J.D. Salinger, not only The Catcher in the Rye, but his short stories in The New Yorker, which I subscribed to for years, including when I was in the Marine Corps.

When Salinger died last month, I tended to agree with the numerous obituaries that portrayed him as an enigmatic figure who frittered away his talent by abandoning the literary life of Manhattan for a reclusive and unproductive existence in Cornish, N.H.

A letter from a Marine, Paul Kane, who serves in the Marine Corps headquarters' public affairs shop, to the Financial Times on Feb. 6 nudged me to a deeper understanding of Salinger - and his service to the nation. In his letter, Kane took sharp exception to the newspaper's obituary on Salinger, which began, "Seldom has a man who wrote so few words attracted so many as J.D. Salinger . . . ." The article pointed out he had not written anything since 1965. (Hapworth 16, 1924, which The New Yorker published in June, 1965, just before I returned home from Vietnam.)

Kane told the FT that "Salinger's writing was informed by his exposure to very real world experiences," such as his Army service, which included a landing on Utah Beach in France on D-Day.

Salinger, Kane wrote, then "fought across Europe in four other campaigns and saw continuous combat action in the Battle of the Bulge. He was among the first soldiers to liberate a German death camp and witness its inhumanity.

"After the war, he stayed in Europe and applied his fluency in German and French doing counter-intelligence work, interrogating prisoners and hunting war criminals."

Taking aim at the FT's core audience, Kane also pointed out, "In a world today where bankers, chief executives and fund managers wince when they hear the term 'personal adversity,' and think of how they once lost 20 percent of their portfolio, Salinger's generation was made of tougher stuff, investing in themselves and taking risks to defend and repair a broken world."

Based on Kane's online biographical information, he's made of tougher stuff, too, and has taken the kind of risks avoided by many of his generation and education, which includes an undergrad degree from the University of Maryland and a fellowship in the International Security Program at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.

Kane joined the Marine Reserves after graduating from Maryland, did a tour in Iraq in 2003 as an enlisted man and returned to active duty at HQMC in 2008.

Semper Fidelis.

Jungle fatigues are not the best clothing for 26-plus inches of snow, but the Three Soldiers at the Vietnam Memorial seemed to weather the weather well on Sunday, in this picture taken by my pal Joe Mancinik, a Navy veteran attending The George Washington University, whom I mentor.

Joe, a junior at GW, hails from Deland, Florida, has never seen so much white stuff as what fell on Washington this weekend.

One of the most tantalizing lines buried in the fiscal 2011 budget request for the Defense Information Systems Agency is a $102.8 million single item for a Senior Leadership Enterprise communications system.

The DISA budget says the system supports "National Leadership Command Capabilities and is classified."

Darn. So I can only speculate that DISA has somehow developed a secret gizmo much like the Star Trek Communicator,which, when you get down to it, looks much like a 21st century cell phone.

Of course, Senior Leaders need encrypted phones, so maybe DISA will supply them all with secret decoder rings used as premiums to kids by Ovatltine (a beverage I loathe) in the 1930s and 1940s.

Anyone care to enlighten me as to the real components of the Senior Leader Enterprise system?

Yesterday I reported that the White House plans to tap Teri Takai, chief information officer for California, as the new Defense Department CIO.

I'm told that after my item ran, Takai briefed her staff in California on her planned move to Washington, although I'm still waiting confirmation from her office that she did so.

Although Takai has no federal or military experience, through her membership in the National Association of State Chief Information Officers she is wired into key technology players in the Obama administration, including Aneesh Chopra, the chief technology officer.

See this photo (second page of the document) of Takai, when she served as Michigan CIO, and Chopra, when he was Virginia Secretary of Technology. And we can probably expect more from the duo in their federal roles.

I interviewed about 10 people Inside The Beltway on Wednesday and Thursday from my office here in The Original Las Vegas, N.M., and before we addressed the topic I wanted to discuss, each and every one of my interviewees felt the need to tell me a tale of woe about snows, past, present and future.

What's the big deal with snow in D.C.?

Last week we had a storm that closed I-40 -- from 20 miles east of Albuquerque to all the way across New Mexico, through the Texas Panhandle to the Oklahoma border -- and, as far as I can tell, folks in these states viewed the snow as a minor inconvenience, not a D.C.-style National Emergency Weather Event.

I guess I have been away from the nation's capital way too long.