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or in the combat information center, individuals must be qualified to “stand watch” on the captain’s behalf for the operation and safety of the ship. Throughout the entire qualification process, an officer learns the accountability and responsibility each watch qualification brings with it, and the personal integrity it requires.
    After just over a year and a half on the ship, I would undergo a series of oral examinations by a qualification board, who would then certify my readiness to the commanding officer. In the end, I earned my Surface Warfare pin and had it proudly pinned to my chest during a ceremony in the wardroom with all officers in attendance. Even with this milestone behind me, there was plenty of hard work to come.
    In December 1984 I left the Fairfax County and in the spring of 1985, after attending Communications Officer School in Newport, I reported to one of the Navy’s newest ships, USS Yorktown , an Aegis guided-missile cruiser, in Norfolk, Virginia. Yorktown was at the leading edge of Navy
technology and shipbuilding prowess. The Aegis combat system, which integrates sophisticated anti-aircraft, surface-to-surface, and anti-submarine weapons, powerful radars, and computer-driven command-and-control complexes, represented an order of magnitude leap in the Navy’s ability to protect an aircraft carrier battle group and to project power globally. Two months after I reported aboard, the ship deployed to the Mediterranean for what would prove to be the most exciting deployment of my early career.
    At first, we enjoyed routine port visits along the coast of Spain, France, and Italy. We conducted numerous exercises with NATO allies and were occasionally shadowed by spy ships from the Soviet Union. Then, on October 7, 1985, Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro . During the course of the hijacking, the terrorists took a wheelchair-bound American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, shot him, and dumped his lifeless body overboard.
    Three days later, I was sitting in the combat information center as USS Yorktown and USS Saratoga raced to the southeast Mediterranean in an attempt to intercept the airplane the hijackers were using to try to escape justice. Early in the morning on October 10, F-14 fighter jets, launched from the Saratoga and monitored by the Yorktown, intercepted the aircraft and forced it to land at the Naval Air Station at Sigonella, Italy.
    Because of the distance from the ships to the F-14s, I could barely make out the pilots’ radio conversation as they made the intercept on the hijackers’ aircraft. After the plane landed, both Italian and U.S. forces surrounded it and a standoff took place. Following some tense negotiations, the Italian authorities took custody of the hijackers. Unfortunately, the Italian government did not have the stomach to confront this new type of warfare, and after only a short period of imprisonment, freed the terrorists. In fighting terrorism, I learned, politics has too often preempted doing what was right, even when lives were at stake.
    By Christmas 1985, the ship had settled into a seemingly regular routine of at-sea exercises and port visits, but it was only a matter of time until terrorism again reared its ugly head. On December 27, at the international airports in Rome, Italy, and Vienna, Austria, terrorists detonated grenades
and used automatic weapons to slaughter eighteen innocent civilians and wound 138. USS Yorktown shortly got underway and over the next three months rigorously practiced combat operations, preparing to hold Libya accountable as one of the chief sponsors of those terrorist attacks. At the same time, in another bellicose act, Libya claimed the Gulf of Sidra as its territorial waters. Drawing a “line of death” at 32°30” north, the Libyan dictator, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, proclaimed that any “unauthorized” ship below that line would be attacked. This was in clear