In Kosovo, he shielded lawyers and judges conducting war crime trials and helped military units scoop up war criminals. In Iraq, he aided an intelligence task force in its search for weapons of mass destruction. And in Afghanistan, he flew around in Russian helicopters raiding Taliban-run opium farms.
Then, thrust into a 9-to-5 for the better part of the past decade as a director for an aerial imagery company, Phil McTigue realized he needed a new challenge. He decided to return to school in his 40s and finally get that degree he’d been putting off after dropping out of college to join the Marines in 1989.