Phil McTigue’s has seen quite the contrast in his life. From shielding lawyers and judges conducting war crime trials and helping military units scoop up war criminals in Kosovo, to aiding an intelligence task force in its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and flying around in Russian helicopters raiding Taliban-run opium farms in Afghanistan, he has done it all. Later, he has worked 9-to-5 for the better part of the past decade as a director for an aerial imagery company. McTigue realised that the marine-life was turning out to be comfortable for him and hence looked for a different challenge.
He decided to resume college, from which he had dropped out in order to join the Marines in 1989. Earlier, he was frightened of the idea of having to attend college but now he had the most important skill required to pull him through: self-discipline. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Homeland Security at the American Military University in West Virginia and then went on to earn his master’s in homeland security from Northeastern University. Now, he wants to return to get his doctorate.
He said that his mother always told him he would end either end up becoming a great cop or a great criminal. As it stands, he went on to have an illustrious career in law enforcement in his hometown of Rochester, New York. Then came the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and the entire trajectory of his career took an unexpected turn. In the next decade of his life, he worked as a security contractor in some of the most dangerous countries: Kosovo, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, and Afghanistan; before switching gears to enter the corporate world.
McTigue said he’d like to return to Northeastern University as a professor in the near future. He says he could see himself running a course on something like the exploitation technology by terrorists for their own nefarious purposes.
Subarna Basu