Walters rose to the rank of lieutenant general in the U.S. Army and is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.

At the age of sixteen he left school and returned to the United States to work for his father as an insurance claims adjuster and investigator.

In later years he seemed to enjoy reflecting on the fact that he had risen high and accomplished much despite an almost total lack of formal education.

He served as a link between the commands of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force and U.S. Fifth Army, earning medals for distinguished military and intelligence achievements.

He was at President Harry S. Truman's side as an interpreter in key meetings with America's Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Latin American allies.

In Europe in the 1950s, Walters served President Dwight Eisenhower and other top US officials as a translator and aide at a series of NATO summit conferences.

[4] While serving as a military attaché in Paris from 1967 to 1972, Walters played a role in secret peace talks with North Vietnam.

During his four years as DDCI he worked closely with four successive Directors as the Agency and the nation confronted such major international developments as the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the subsequent oil crisis, the turbulent end of the Vietnam War, the Chilean military coup against the Allende government and the Letelier assassination.

At the critical moment he ... refused to involve the Agency and bluntly informed the highest levels of the executive [branch] that further insistence from that quarter would result in his immediate resignation.Walters himself reflected on those challenging days in his 1978 autobiography Silent Missions: I told [President Nixon's White House counsel] that on the day I went to work at the CIA I had hung on the wall of my office a color photograph showing the view through the window of my home in Florida.

When people asked me what it was, I told them [this] was what was waiting [for me] if anyone squeezed me too hard.During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Walters worked as a business consultant.

[10] The Washington Post wrote in 1985 that despite being unknown to the public, "no one has been closer to this country's foreign affairs since World War II".