Background
Truscott was born in Japan to United States Army Colonel Lucian K. III and Anne (née Harloe). His father Lucian III served in the United States Army in of Korea and Vietnam, retiring as a colonel.
Truscott was born in Japan to United States Army Colonel Lucian K. III and Anne (née Harloe). His father Lucian III served in the United States Army in of Korea and Vietnam, retiring as a colonel.
Truscott attended the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1969.
In 1968, Truscott and other cadets challenged the required attendance at chapel services. Later a court case filed by another cadet along with midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy resulted in a 1972 United States Court of Appeals decision (and upheld by the Supreme Court) that ended mandatory chapel attendance at all of the service academies. He was then assigned to Fort Carson, Colorado.
There, he wrote an article about heroin addiction among enlisted soldiers and another about what he felt was an illegal court martial.
He was threatened with being sent to Vietnam, so he resigned his commission about thirteen months after graduating, receiving a "general discharge under other than honorable conditions." The association owns the graveyard at Monticello. During a November 1998 appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show he invited descendants of Sally Hemings to the family reunion in 2000.
The Hemings descendants had not been allowed to join the association, or to be buried in its graveyard. Starting in 1970, he joined The Village Voice as a freelancer and later staff writer
He had previously written for the Voice as a cadet, submitting "conservative, right-wing letters" that the newspaper eventually started to publish.
One such letter, describing Christmas 1968 among the hippies at the Electric Circus nightclub, was published as a front-page story. Another piece, written a few weeks after he graduated from West Point, described the riot at the Stonewall Inn on June 27, 1969.
Quotations: "a thoroughly satisfying mystery story with an uncommon setting.".
He is a member of the Monticello Association, the members of which descend from Thomas Jefferson, who was Truscott"s great-great-great-great-grandfather.