"The way it works is this," my friend J. O. was nursing his V.O. while he described a new neutralization technique he was learning in spook school, "we isolate the target - in most cases someone with information we want to keep stuffed. Then we insinuate ops in every circle of his life - some are pros, some are just people we recruit without a clue what's going on. They all work independently of one another, so there's no following one strand to the rest of the web, that's the beauty part."

"So?" I asked, being more polite than anything, covert matters weren't all that fascinating to me.

"Well," he laughed, "pretty soon this guy is feeling it from all angles; has nowhere to turn, starts trusting no one, begins doubting himself. Totally beauty."

"Uh-huh," I still wasn't seeing much beauty in any of this, "then what happens?"

"The target snaps, gets pressured into acting out, then we can lock him down in jail, or a nut ward. Or he starts questioning his own sanity, jumps off a building; goes into hermit mode. Either way we keep him quiet."

"Uh-huh. Why not just kill him?" Having spent my life in the private sector selling cars, I had a craving for efficiency.

"Bud, don't wanna blow your mind, but some people you just can't kill."

"Why not?"

"Don't want to blow your mind."

At the time the only thing J. O. could've said that would've blown my mind was that the blonde I had broken up with five years earlier still wanted my head between her thighs. J. O. and I were just a couple of school chums, renewing acquaintances after a coincidental encounter, swapping lies. Years later when I was that 'guy,' the target so to speak, I became eternally grateful to my old classmate for sharing this information. It helped me find a way out.

In the fall of 1992, I was let in on, quite accidentally, to one of our nation's best kept secrets. Maybe the Magilla of hidden info, I don't know. I'm sure there are many bofu skeletons idling away in the closets of D. C., other seats of authority, but the one laid in my lap has to rank highly among the bone rattlers. Besides, knowing what I know now doesn't make me feel a strong desire to be confronted with too many more dark truths.

I was working in San Diego. At a phone room. For Republican candidates. I was no one important. Just one of the guys walking the aisles, making sure the phoners were really dialing, not play acting into dead lines. One night after carpetbomb calling most of Arizona, another supervisor(whom we'll refer to as Mr. Edgy) and I chilled out in the break room. He was leafing through a hefty manuscript. I bit.

"Watchya reading?"

"Something I put together with a friend. Like to take a look?"

Obviously, had I said no, this article would be ending right here. But me, curious little motherfucker that I am, had to poke my nose in his book.

The manuscript detailed how a vast apparatus of military-intelligence-industrial organizations working in unison since shortly after WWII were keeping a certain truth from an unsuspecting public. To be honest, the subject of this certain truth wasn't something that I found personally stimulating. But the text was easy to follow: there were diagrams, pictures, copies of reports, graphs detailing hierarchies, tactics, so forth. Over the course of the next few days my co-worker allowed me to skim read the book in its entirety. When I was done, I asked what he planned to do with it.

"We're still looking for a publisher," he said.

"That shouldn't be too tough. I got through it. Liked it. And that stuff never even interested me before."

He gave me a 'duh-the-subject-matter-has-its-own-perils-inherent-with-parties-involved-willing-to-continue-a-cover-up-by-any means necessary' looks.

"Wicked tough, huh?"

"Listen the reason I wanted to expose you to this was..." he went on to pitch this angle. Seems the word around the campfire was I had some Hollywood connections. Truth was I'd once had an agent. That and a pooper scooper entitled me to be part of the Taco Bell dog's entourage. But my new found buddy wanted to know if maybe I might help him place his 'project' in the proper hands. I told him I'd see what was possible.

In reality, I did have one or two sets of proper hands I could check out. However, I didn't quite have the zeal to go promoting his manuscript as the truth, the whole truth, nothing but. Yet. See, I can be very skeptical. Like most folks I rely on a limited array of intelligence gathering resources: a set of ears, eyes, a tongue, a nose, some skin. Up until then I had never heard, seen, tasted, smelled or felt anything remotely connected(or so I thought) to the secret revealed in the text. So, I had to rely on the one criteria I use in situations lacking irrefutable proof: consider the source. My co-worker appealed to me as slightly edgy and somewhat semi-paranoid. Previously, I had overheard him relating how he had a roommate who made C-2 explosive in the microwave. Not exactly a bonafide recommendation for me to go charging up I-5 with his material.

But over the course of the next few weeks, I started noticing - perhaps, due to my new awareness - certain things in the news that if spun correctly locked up with some of what I'd read. Other weird shit began happening. Having already been under surveillance because of poor judgement in making past acquaintances, I had an acute sensitivity to that type of activity.

A parade of re-occurring faces in unlikely places got my antennae going. Strangers approached me under the guise of general how ya doin conversation and turned the subject toward the matters mentioned in the text as if they were trying to elicit my opinion. Then hours later, we would replay the same dialogue in another part of town. At first, I suspected my co-worker was behind the semi-obvious mind games. But then I reasoned such a set-up was far beyond the resources of an eight dollar an hour wage earner. Whoever these people were, I decided to place myself above the play with a stock response of, "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about." Gradually, the activity diminished.

After the campaign, the phone room dispersed. I went to work for guy managing a local special election; kind of lost touch with Mr. Edgy; didn't think too much about his manuscript or its contents. My main concerns became a new wife and our child on the way.

The wife and I relocated to Sacramento (she had family there), established our own business. Things went well enough that I had time to catch the writing bug again. My former co-worker's story sprang to mind. If you ask me why, I'd have to admit I couldn't come up with anything more compelling at the time.

Business took me back to San Diego. I tried to hook up with dude to run some ideas down about a screenplay adaptation of his manuscript. He had given me the number of a woman who 'could always reach him.' She told me it would take a day for him to get in touch with me. Par for the course in his world, I figured. I gave her the number at my hotel.

Next day, he called sounding even edgier - and if it was possible - even more paranoid than I remembered. I threw my 'takes' at him. He informed me he had already made a connection with a television producer and he wouldn't by needing my services, fuck you very much. But there was something he wanted to discuss with me - just not over the phone. Humoring his paranoia, I agreed to meet him the following day.

The address he had given me as his new workplace turned out to be a Vietnamese pawn and jewelry shop. I called the go-between, asked her what was up. She relayed the message; he called me at the hotel, proceeded to tell me he wasn't who I thought he was, that he had adopted the identity of a dead Army buddy's persona blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. By now, basically I'd had my fill of his drama (I'm already dealing with a hormonal pregnant woman understand), so I clicked him off.

Back in Sacramento, I was pleased to discover I somehow had a recollection of much of the pertinent stuff I'd read in drama boy's manuscript. Since it was purported to be history, I saw no problem in fashioning an action picture out of it. At least, there were no rights to worry about infringing.

I wrote the thing in about three weeks (there was a lull in my political business), called my bud in L. A. - another old classmate - and ran the whole shebang past him. He sounded excited so I FedEx him the script.

A week later I'm taking a meeting with a woman who was fresh off of sharing a production credit on an Academy award winning movie. I pointed out the possibility of interference from a shadowy cabalistic organization, based on Mr. Edgy's strange behavior and my own brief interlude with the 'mystery conversationalists' of San Diego.

Ms. Producer seemed to take serious consideration of these possibilities. She talked about doing a low budget 'guerilla' production. It would be fair to say she was hyped about the project. Naturally, she had some suggestions about tweaking the script. Nothing major. I said I would do a little revising and we'd talk over the next week.

When we talked again her passion for the project had noticeably cooled. There could've been a thousand reasons for this - Hollywood being Hollywood. I discussed her change of attitude with the friend who had brought us together. He was someone I had known for almost twenty years. We met at his office at the studio. He seemed anxious, like something was troubling him. Yet when I asked about it, he deflected the question. When I asked him directly if any pressure had been placed on him or the other producer by outside sources, he denied it, but was obviously made uneasy by the question. During the course of the conversation, I noticed a man standing within earshot by a window opening onto a patio. The guy looked really out of place.

First off, he was smoking - something the health conscious heads of this particular studio discouraged. Plus the suit was incongruous even for someone from the accounting department. There was something of a cheap FBI blandness to its cut, something of a G-man grayness to his whole demeanor. I left my friend's office with two firm resolutions. Number one: the stuff in Mr. Edgy's book was true. Number two: I had better prepare myself for the onslaught J. O. had described years ago. I hear what you're saying - all this based on a suit. Well, that's the beauty part of having the life experience I've had. My gut works out insights that would only befuddle my mind.

I knew I was going to have to dig in for a long-probably life-time of nuisance, b. s., and worse. I struck on a strategy right from jump. No way was I ever giving in; no way was I ever going along with the program. There were things specifically detailed in the manuscript, especially involving children, that were beyond the scope of what I find acceptable. I am always going to be a problem for these bastards, they would have to come after me. Knowing they were coming, knowing how they would come, thanks to J. O., gave me a boost when it came to figuring out counter measures. Also meant I could rely on nothing but divine providence.

I devised a plan, that when first decided on seemed ludicrous, but when looked back on reeks of brilliance. So how much credit can I really take for it? I've seen me in action - I make Maxwell Smart look like James Bond. If it wasn't for grace I'd be no place. Literally. I was going to give my adversaries everything they wanted. On the surface. I was going to act stressed out. I would make it appear I was falling into despairing drug dependency. I would make it appear I was in some jeopardy of losing my mind. I would enter their stage of bizarre mind fuck and follow their script and by doing so let the force of their arrogance, superior numbers, and resources turn their own game against them. It wasn't so much I would trust no one; I just wouldn't confide in anyone. Until now. No sense putting another innocent in harm's way.

The strategy cost me a marriage, my business, financial solvency, and some other things I would have liked to have had but probably don't have a use for. If you are reading this now, thank the publisher and his staff for having the balls to do the right thing; also thank Mr. Edgy for opening my eyes to a path of awareness I don't for a minute regret taking. Although I have to tell him now wherever he is: just because they all maybe after you doesn't mean you have to be paranoid about it. As for me I am owed nothing, I've already been given far more than I could ever earn.

Back to the drama. I needed to flush the bugs from under the bed, expose the strands linking the web, lift enough veils to confirm the truths Mr. Edgy had related, to be given a chance to see the breadth and width of the cover-up as well as the modus operandi used to neutralize inadvertent infiltrators such as myself. I was also curious about the motives of the various participants. I was to find out some were plain evil, some were confused, more than a few were fearful, more than a few were victims of their own misguided human sympathy.

My first order of business was to separate the bulls from the steers. According to what J. O. had laid down, it didn't take but a few worms to funk up the whole bushel. Enough with the cliched metaphors already, I had to winnow the assholes from the butt chaff.

According to Mr. Edgy, the secret keepers recruited participants from the population of substance abusers. Hence my choice of cover as a user. It was an easy sell. I have some history. (Who among us from the 60's and 70's doesn't). It became evident early on that my adversaries fit a classic bully's profile. They would exploit any opportunity if they thought they had an unfair advantage.

Their degree of boldness in carrying out their mission was in direct correlation to how squirrelly I acted. They could be fearlessly open lured into a false sense of security by my apparent screwiness.