[3] Although Turner and fellow transfer student Jimmy Carter were in the same class at the Academy, he received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and attained a commission in the United States Navy in June 1946 as part of an accelerated three-year curriculum, the result of World War II.

[4] He was a Rhodes Scholar at Exeter College, Oxford while serving in the Navy, graduating with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1950, which was promoted to an MA per tradition.

[8][9] He commanded Cruiser-Destroyer Flotilla 8 as a rear admiral, leading a task group in 1970–1971 consisting of the aircraft carriers Independence and John F. Kennedy monitoring the Soviet Fifth Eskadra in the Mediterranean.

President Carter wanted reforms on the intelligence agencies, whose reputations were discredited due to the Watergate scandal (Church Commission), and other controversies that involved spying on citizens, against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups in the United States, and international assassination plots (Human rights violations by the CIA).

[18] During Turner's term as head of the CIA, he became outraged when former employee Frank Snepp published a book called Decent Interval which exposed incompetence among senior U.S. government personnel during the fall of Saigon.

[2] The Court forced Snepp to turn over all his profits from Decent Interval and to seek preclearance of any future writings about intelligence work for the rest of his life.

[2] Ironically, the CIA would later rely on the Snepp legal precedent to force Turner to seek preclearance of his own memoirs, which were highly critical of President Ronald Reagan's policies.

[20] On March 12, 1980, President Jimmy Carter and Turner presented Tony Mendez with the CIA's Intelligence Star for his role in the exfiltration of six U.S. State Department personnel from Iran on January 28, 1980.

[10] Upon leaving the agency, Turner became a lecturer,[21] author,[15] and TV commentator, and served on the boards of several American corporations, including Monsanto (1981–1991) and the National Life Group (1985–1992).

[4][5] Turner served as a member of the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography's Marine Advisory Council and the United States Naval Academy's Board of Visitors.

[4] In September 2003 he wrote that "most of the assumptions behind our invasion have been proven wrong: The intelligence did not support the imminence of a threat, the Iraqis have not broadly welcomed us as liberators, the idea that we could manage this action almost unilaterally is giving way to pleas for troops and money from other nations, the aversion to giving the U.N. a meaningful role is eroding daily, and the reluctance to get involved in nation building is being supplanted by just that.

"[22] In 2004, Turner was among 27 retired diplomats and military commanders who publicly said the administration of President Bush did not understand the world and was unable to handle "in either style or substance" the responsibilities of global leadership.