After Cutler, I didn’t get to choose my next assignment. The detailer had a critical fill in Guam and I was the body that fit the billet. The person replacing me in Cutler was — literally — the person I was replacing in Guam. That’s how the Navy works sometimes.
My new home was Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station Western Pacific — NCTAMS WESTPAC — in Dededo, Guam. The jump from a small, specialized VLF transmitter station in rural Maine to a multi-floor master station supporting the Third, Fifth, and Seventh Fleets was significant. This wasn’t a detachment. This was the communications hub for an entire ocean area.
The critical billet I was filling: VERDIN/ISABPS — same as Cutler, but now at a command that operated at a completely different scale.
What made it even better was that NCTAMS WESTPAC also operated CUDIXS — the Common User Digital Information Exchange System. Where VERDIN/ISABPS was the submarine broadcast system, CUDIXS served the surface fleet. Different mission, but much of the underlying equipment overlapped. I had depth on VERDIN coming in, and I built CUDIXS expertise on top of it. Both systems underwent major upgrades during my tour, and I wasn’t just supervising the work — I was the SME in the room. I also picked up the SATCOM systems on the upper deck. By year two, the awards were stacking up.
Then year three happened.
The command was facing an Inspector General inspection, and the N6 department needed to give up a billet to support N1 — the Admin department — to help get the Management Control program ready. Since I was rotating out after the inspection anyway, I was the logical choice. My new boss (ETCS) in N6 broke the news to me, then added: “The bad news is you’re leaving N6. The good news is you’re going to work for my wife in N1, and she is way cooler than me.”
He wasn’t wrong.
My new supervisor (RMCS) handed me a coil of parachute cord the day we met. She said something along the lines of: “I don’t care if you work 16 hours a day or 2 hours a day. Get this program IG-ready.” Then she threw it to me and said: “You can either climb with that or hang yourself. Your choice. Your career.”
I had walked into a program that had been unmanaged for about a year after the civilian responsible for it was let go and never replaced. No continuity. No documentation. No audits. Discrepancies everywhere.
So I did what made sense to me: I inventoried every single discrepancy, documented it, put it in a binder, and built a remediation path for each one. I wasn’t going to hide it. An IG inspector is going to find what’s there — the only question is whether you know about it first.
When my turn came in front of the inspector, I handed him the binder.
He opened it. Reviewed it for a minute or two. Closed it. Set it on the table. Looked at me and asked: “Son, do you know what the purpose of an IG inspection is?”
I gave him the textbook answer.
He replied: “It’s to show you how [messed] up you are — because most people are so arrogant they don’t even know. You know exactly what condition your program is in and you’ve documented how you’re going to fix it.”
He passed me in ten minutes.
My supervisor just shook her head.
I think about that moment often. Not because it was a win — but because of what it confirmed. Transparency under scrutiny isn’t weakness. It’s the only defensible position. Trying to hide findings from an auditor doesn’t protect you. It just tells the auditor you don’t have control of your own program.
That lesson didn’t stay in Guam. It followed me into every audit, every assessment, every compliance program I’ve touched since. When I sit across from an organization today as a CMMC assessor, I’m not looking for people to fail. I’m looking for the person who already knows what’s in the binder.
Those are the programs worth betting on.
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