He attended school there and was subsequently appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute recognized General Soyster for the highest average grade in math and science in his school.

[1][2][3] Soyster has held a wide variety of important commands and staff positions including tours in Vietnam and Korea.

His initial overseas assignment was in Italy with the 1st Battalion, 80th Artillery as platoon leader and assistant operations officer (AS3).

After attending the National War College at Fort McNair, he was assigned chief of the Audit and Inspection Compliance Division, U.S. Army Inspector General Agency, Washington, D.C.

Upon promotion to brigadier general he was assigned as Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C.

It supplied decision makers with intelligence support concerning the final Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, events surrounding the downing of two Libyan jets, the civil war in Liberia, the Flight 103 investigation at Lockerbie, Scotland, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in China.

Weapons acquisition issues, counternarcotics, counterterrorism remained a high priority throughout the Defense Intelligence Community.

Emphasis was placed on improved management of DoD-wide intelligence production, but reduced resources threatened to have a negative impact on Agency objectives and manpower levels.

Organizationally, the general emphasized the functional manager system as a programming mechanism for addressing the issues of the Unified & Specified Commands.

In post-military work General Soyster was employed by L-3 Communications Corporation's Military Personnel Resources Incorporated (MPRI), retiring in 2005.

In response to a query regarding his view on torture in 2007 – in the aftermath of the disclosure of "waterboarding" of Al-Qaeda terrorists – General Soyster gave the following opinion: Experienced military and intelligence professionals know that torture, in addition to being illegal and immoral, is an unreliable means of extracting information from prisoners.

Much is being made of former CIA official John Kiriakou's statement that waterboarding "broke" a high-value terrorist involved in the 9/11 plot.