Clifford enlisted in the Navy at 17 and quickly rose to Airman Apprentice soon after boot when he got to Pensacola Naval Air station. Brilliant in math with a photographic memory and the ability to see things spatially, his career  in the Navy looked very promising. Clifford knew little of politics but was soon to get a hard lesson when he met a girl and asked her out on a date to the movies showing over in  Mobile.

During World War II Mobile Alabama had blossomed in t fairly large metropolitan city and had all the good bars, restaurants and theaters so it made sense that Clifford wanted his date to be impressed. With that in mind going to the Big City was the only choice to make.

Three mistakes.  1 Clifford was enlisted  2 the girl was a Commanders daughter  3  Mobile is across the state line.

Upon leaving the theater just after the movie let out the Navy Shore Patrol picked Clifford and his date up and separated them. Clifford was then taken back to Pensacola and arrived having been beaten up in a bad way. He had been told it was because of his use of poor judgment and then he was unceremoniously  tossed in the brig charging him with statutory rape. They didn't go easy on him.  

In the 1950's in the South, it did not matter if you didn't touch hands, have sex or even if kiss. If your father did not want dating someone, especially being an officer and the kid chasing your daughter was enlisted, then that kid takes her across state line and she is under 21. You bet that young man is Toast!. Fortunately for Clifford he had a weak Mitral heart valve from childhood onset of Rheumatic fever. 

Clifford's Old man, Otis Holley, had retired the Navy as a Master Chief and had on the occasion in China pulled more than one dumb ensigns butt out of the fire. Some of those ensigns lived long enough to make fine officers and then at least one proceeded to piss it all away and settled for being an Admiral doing a desk job. Clifford's Dad pulled in his favors and convinced the Commander (via a Rear Admiral in Bupers) to drop charges against Clifford if Clifford would take a medical discharge from the Navy and leave Pensacola (and his daughter) and move back to Oklahoma.  So Clifford moved back to Oklahoma and went back to College at NSU and later TU where he would fully discover Mathematics and Engineering and his talent in both.

This frustration in not being able serve in the military (as his father did) and see the world would later be the forbidden fruit which would draw a successful engineer into volunteering to be a spy when asked. Of course his ability to look at a mechanical drawing and commit it to memory was the candy that would draw intelligence agencies to Clifford.

In 1970 Clifford got his chance...