His career began when he took an early enlistment at 17. It spanned four decades and an equal number of continents before it came to an end 40 years later with retirement at the end of February 2025.
He was a typical high school kid from a small town. Active in athletics, he was a member of the 1986 state champion Shoshoni High School football team, scored 24 points in his last basketball game as a Wrangler, and ran the 1600 and 3200 meters at the state track championships. But Michael Dye didn’t have a purpose in life as a 17-year-old. That purpose came to him before his senior year began in the fall of 1985.
“Between my junior and senior year, I went down on a whim and met the recruiter in Riverton,” Mike said. “I was only 17. I didn’t tell mom I was doing it. The next thing I knew, I’m on a plane flying to Denver, and I was signed up for a delayed enlistment.”
Mike’s father served in the Army, but it didn’t have an influence on his decision.
“I spent my entire senior year in delayed entry. I knew that on 6 June I was leaving,” Mike said. “My senior year was carefree. I didn’t stress about anything. I didn’t have any friends or relatives that said, Hey, have you thought about the Army?”
He didn’t know why he chose the Army over any of the other services, he just did.
He had three classmates who entered the service as well. Brothers Kenny and Ron Howard joined the Army, and P.J. Wells enlisted in the National Guard.
The Evolution of a Soldier – h/t Mike Dye
“I told Ron and Kenny, if I had friends who signed up, I could make PFC, they didn’t care, I got nothing,” Mike joked.
The change from life in a small town like Shoshoni, to the cosmopolitan nature of the United States Army can be a drastic one.
“I was absolutely unprepared. I was the most naïve, sheltered person, nothing prepared me for what I was going into, I could run, that was it,” Mike said. “Nothing mentally. I had to grow up real fast as a smart assed 18-year-old. The first black person I ever met was in basic.”
He headed off to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, soon after graduation, arriving in June.
South Carolina in the summertime is a special kind of hell to a boy from the temperate, arid summers of Wyoming.
“I met humidity in Fort Jackson,” Mike said, “June to August 1986, the dead of summer. I did well there, I just kept my mouth shut. I didn’t do any prep, I just went.”
After graduating from basic training, he headed to Fort Gordon, (now Fort Eisenhower), Georgia to train for his MOS 31C as an AM radio operator.
“I didn’t know anything about that either,” Mike said. “When I joined, I said you have to send me to Germany, not knowing that everyone went to Germany.”
He earned his trip to Germany.
“I didn’t have any perceived ideas. I placed well on the ASVAB. It didn’t seem too strenuous, and it wasn’t,” Mike said.
An inkling of what was to come in his military career came as he finished training at Fort Gordon.
“I was the Distinguished Honor Graduate in October 1986. I went home for 10 days, then Germany,” Mike said. “I knew I wasn’t an athlete. I wasn’t a smart kid. I wasn’t a farmer. I just didn’t fit in at Shoshoni.”
In 1990, he made a major career change.
“I decided I’d been in the army for four years, and I only enlisted for three,” Mike said. “I liked the Army and the structure, but I never got to do what I was trained to do. I talked to an officer about 97B, a counterintelligence agent. I wanted to go to Arizona. Fort Huachuca, nobody gets there accidentally. I picked that MOS because it seemed interesting, and I got a $20,000 bonus. I also got to wear civilian clothes when I was done. I was an E4, and it sounded really good. It was the best decision I ever made.”
A 35-year career in counterintelligence (CI) was about to begin.
“In 1990, I completed CI Agent training at Fort Huachuca, was promoted to SGT/E-5, and hit the streets running for my initial CI assignment with the Fort Belvoir Resident Office.”
Operation Desert Storm was ongoing, and the Northern Virginia area was a hotbed of reportable CI activity. The need and daily routine of CI advice and assistance, security awareness training, liaison functions, and our own CI investigations, lit the fire of my CI passion,” Mike said. “In 1992, I completed the Army’s Advanced Foreign CI Training Course, now the Joint CI Training Academy (JCITA) curriculum, and a one-year assignment in Korea supporting counterespionage operations and investigations.”
Korea was an eye-opener. Though many don’t realize it, the friction between North and South Korea is a war zone.
“In 1993 I went to Seoul, Korea,” Mike said. “I was only there for a year, but it was the reality of protecting our army, our soldiers, and our equipment. The threat was real every day, technically they’re still at war.”
After serving in Korea, he attended a Spanish language training at the Presidio of Monterey.
“I was assessed into a Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2, career program where I am the longest serving member in the program’s history,” Mike said. “My unique career afforded me the opportunity for multiple, longer-duration, and repetitive assignments to hone and master my CI craft, the purpose of the G-2’s program. For nearly 20 years, I did this with the US Army Foreign CI Activity (USAFCA) where I conducted and led physical surveillance (missions and training) and some of the most complex CI Operations around the world.”
He deployed as the Operations Officer for the Joint CI Unit, Afghanistan, and I am the only Warrant Officer to be a USAFCA Detachment Commander,” Mike said. “From 2016-2020, I was the first 902d MIG Command Chief Warrant Officer (CCWO) and finished my career as the Army Field Support Center CCWO.”
In 1997, Mike entered Warrant Officer Training at Fort Rucker (now Fort Novosel), Alabama.
While in Warrant Officer training, he met his wife, Amy, who was also training to become a warrant officer. They were married in August 2000.
They have two children: Rachael, born in Germany in 2004, and Aaron, born at Ft. Meade in 2005. Mike has another daughter from a previous marriage, Ashley, born in 1993.
In 2001, they were assigned to Darmstadt, Germany. They stayed there until the summer of 2005.
“I made lots of trips to Bosnia, with deployments to Afghanistan,” Mike said. “I was there when 9/11 happened. It changed the world for everything.”
In 2005, they returned to Fort Meade and have been there ever since.
He serves with the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command.
“I’ve been with them for most of my career, just done different jobs with different units,” Mike said.
When asked about memorable events in his life, Mike jumped back to high school and a tiff between the Old Time Fiddler’s Contest, which was once held at Shoshoni High School, and his graduation with the Class of 1986.
“I remember that stink about the Old Time Fiddler’s contest,” Mike laughed, ”They had to buy us all new announcements.”
His most enjoyable experience was in Europe.
”I loved Germany, being able to see world history and experience it,” Mike said. “I have pictures from everywhere.”
Meeting Amy, his wife of 25 years this August, was perhaps the most memorable. “She’s been very supportive of me,” Mike said. “Counterintelligence isn’t sexy. I got to meet Dick Cheney in his office when he was Secretary of Defense. My boss was Dave Negrette, from Lingle. It worked out by coincidence that we were working in the Pentagon. We met Pete Williams for a debriefing, and he said we have three Wyoming guys together, would you like to meet Mr. Cheney? We went up a few years later with our wives and met Cheney.”
The biggest moment of his professional career was easy to name.
“Becoming a warrant officer, was a career-defining moment. I knew I wasn’t going to be a sergeant major,” Mike said. “Soldiers work, officers lead, warrants work the technical aspects.”
In 1997, when he was promoted to Warrant Officer, his late father Dale Dye, was able to promote him.
“I’ve had an amazing career,” Mike said. “I wouldn’t change any of it.”
Time has a way of letting a man know when it’s time to step down, and at 57, Mike realized his time was near.
“I wanted to stay doing what I was doing, as long as I was able to do my job, and the Army let me do it,” Mike said. “I stayed three years, then four, a warrant officer is a 6-year hitch. I was at 22 years, I could have gotten out at 20, then it was 26. I have to be relevant. I would never let the Army tell me when it was time to go. I got a little older and it was time, my career was my passion.”
Retirement is a great choice for Warrant Officer 5 Michael Dye.
“Because I stuck around so long, almost 39 years, my retirement pay is only slightly less than my active duty pay right now. At 40 years its 100 percent base pay. I’m at 98.5%,” Mike said. “By the time I factor in my retirement and VA disability, I’ll be making $300 a month more retired than I am on active duty. I don’t have to work. I’m not jumping back in to do the same job. I want to find something else; that’s the challenge.”
Mike and Amy’s children are working and going to school. Amy can retire in four years.
“Amy is a DOD civilian. She is a retired warrant officer,” Mike said. “She retired in 2009 from the guard/reserve.”
The rank of Warrant Officer is strange to many people, even those in the military.
“When I became a warrant officer, it was all about being technically proficient. For the Army to make you an expert,” Mike said. “I wanted to just do my job. I didn’t want to be a first sergeant or a platoon sergeant. We build them a little differently now.”
The insignia on a Warrant Officer 5 resembles that of a lieutenant.
“It looks like a lieutenant, only skinnier,” Mike said. “They call us unicorns because you don’t see a lot of us.”
In the United States Army there are 1,000 general officers with the rank of brigadier or above. There are less than 1000 W5s.
“A lot of them are aviation. It used to be heavy aviation now it’s changed,” Mike said. “There are 17 different career fields that have W5s”
There are 24,000 Warrant Officers in the US Army, half of them are aviators, and the other half technical.
“In the Army today, when I retire, by my date of rank, there are only three other warrant officers on active duty in the Army longer than me,” Mike said. “Most senior military intelligence officers came on in 2002 or 2003. I’ve been a W5 since January of 2013. The two other guys joined in March and April of 1986; I have them for date of rank as a warrant.”
Mike is retiring from the Army, but he isn’t leaving his fellow warrant officers.
“I’m most proud of being able to mentor and train folks in my specialty. We’re all about mentoring, training, and coaching,” Mike said. “I had a hand in training the people that are replacing me. I know that the army is in good hands.”
Mike has trained and mentored young soldiers who are now colonels.
He was honored recently as the speaker at the Warrant Officer Graduation at Fort Rucker.
“You pay it forward,” Mike said.
His latest project, one that will keep him busy after retirement, is serving as the National President of the US Army Warrant Officers Association.
“It’s the only organization in the DOD that takes care of Army Warrant Officers. It’s a big deal for me. It ties right into the mentoring part of it for me.”
From the high desert of eastern Fremont County to the deserts of Afghanistan, the DMZ in Korea, and other locations around the world, Michael Dye of Shoshoni has made the world a better, safer place.