". . .HAS FAR TO GO."
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The following letter was received from the man I once knew as The Captain, shortly after I began working on this book. Tysons Corner, Virginia Dear Michael, I was not in the least surprised to hear about your latest project. One thing I remember about you was your inability to ever let things lie. What surprised was the amount of time it took for you to decide to tell the rest of your story. I am an old man now and anything you might write about me would be inconsequential. The Organization, as you knew it, no longer exists; so little damage will result from your exposé. Of course, as you are no doubt aware, since 1976 there has been an official policy against any member of the United States Intelligence community performing duties as an assassin or taking part in a political assassination. As a policy it reads well, and places our nation in a position of always being the good guys, but life continues for those of us who must live by the rules of the real world. It has been nearly thirty years since the Vietnam debacle and your leaving The Organization. The one thing you, of all people, should know about time is that it allows one generation to forget, and the next generation will not care about what has gone before. Knowing your hatred of officers I have often wondered how you felt returning to the States and being discharged as an Air Force Captain. Believe me, Michael, it was not an action taken out of spite. It was the only way I could insure you would not be killed before you returned to the States. There were many in our group who disagreed with my decision and wanted you terminated. But I felt the damage you instigated had been done and nothing would have been gained by your death, in fact it would most likely have shed even more light on us. There were also the personal feelings I had, and still have, for you. I always felt responsible for what you ultimately became, and to have you terminated would have been to punish you for my mistake. When you were recruited you were the youngest member in the history of The Organization and because of that I saw tremendous potential in you. In many ways you not only lived up to my expectations, but also exceeded what any of us could have imagined. You were the finest killing machine we ever produced. You always performed as instructed, without question, passion, or remorse. Perhaps it was your youth that made it easy for you to do, what for most people, would have been an impossible job, or perhaps it was something we were not aware of that made killing so seemingly natural for you. Somehow, somewhere we missed a major step in your training. You were smarter than we thought in being able to hide things from us, things that would have made it impossible for you to work for The Organization. But then, on retrospect, joining us had never been your idea. You were quite resourceful in gaining access to the files in Virginia and destroying the Jorge Mendoza connection. I would be curious to know which of the young ladies in the records group you compromised for that fait accompli. There has never been a doubt in my mind it had to have been a woman, because you always had a way with the fair sex. Of course I had my own copy of that file, but you may rest assured it was also destroyed many years ago and will never come back on you.
Whatever we missed during your training and your years with The Organization finally surfaced in Southeast Asia; allowing you to expose our operations and ultimately dissolve our association. You had always performed in a flawless manner; taking on each sanction without question or hesitation, then inexplicably you changed. What was it that caused you to change direction and to turn your back on The Organization? A strictly rhetorical question, Michael, for I do not expect an answer. I must give you credit for not exposing the full scope of our operations, a move that could have been extremely damaging to our country in the eyes of the world. You were damned clever in giving your reporter friend just enough information to force us to shut down operations in Southeast Asia, without ever actually mentioning The Organization. Perhaps Lyndon Johnson was correct when he said, "It is better to have someone inside the tent pissing out, than to have him outside the tent pissing in." We learned a hard lesson from that experience and as a result modified our training, security, and psychological testing to the point we never had a similar incident.
As I said earlier, I am an old man and what I have to say to you may fall upon deaf ears. There is precious little time left for me, but many of the people you worked with have long and productive lives ahead of them. For that reason I implore you to be cautious. These people remember well their training and some would not hesitate to terminate anyone they felt might pose a threat to them, their families, or their lives. Please be careful, Michael, be very careful. The Captain The Captain passed away shortly after writing the above letter. I never discovered how he knew this book was in progress, but he always had at hand the resources to find out anything about anybody. The Organization might officially be dead, but a similar operation continues with the knowledge gained from it, along with people still loyal to The Captain. He was a powerful man – one who made J. Edgar Hoover look like a bush leaguer. But, unlike Hoover, he used his power wisely. He was also the man responsible for the sanction on Hoover. I did not reply to his letter, but out of a sense of respect to his memory, to prevent possible exposure or embarrassment to those I worked with, and to comply with the wishes of the Organization of today, the majority of names have been changed and some operations moved to cities or locales different from where they occurred. The astute researcher will recognize the who, what, when, and where – but I will neither confirm nor deny any of this information. However, for the record, the story is true. Those who were there and know what actually took place will recognize that truth. It is now long past time for an honest disclosure of The Organization, and the part it played in maintaining the freedom and democracy of our nation. This story is not to be considered as a condemnation of those actions; for to insure freedom there will always be a need for covert operations, up to and including assassination. To those who would demand the government tell them everything it is involved in, I can only say, the truth will not make you free, it will terrify you. The following is simply a record of one individual, how he became involved with The Organization, how he was trained to function as an assassin, and how he was used to perform those duties under the orders of the United States government. Michael Andrew Nelson
March 6, 1999
Evergreen, Colorado
August, 2001
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About the Book
The running ends as Michael Nelson joins the Air Force in order to find security and a place where he may finally belong. But life will never be easy for Michael. Within a short time he is confronted with an incident that occurred while on the road ("-- and Thursday’s Child -- ") that thrusts him into the world of covert operations, where he is trained to become one of the most lethal men in the world. Initially sent to Berlin during the challenging period of the early 1960’s, he works throughout Europe and eventually becomes a victim himself. A transfer to England presents an entire new set of problems as a superior who does not respect his work makes his life a living hell. At a time when the Viet Nam War is escalating he is ordered to South-East Asia to exercise his expertise in areas off-limits to the military. After three years of jungles, bureaucrats, and terror, the war becomes a nightmare of conflicts and Michael makes a move that forces him to return to the United States under a cloud. " -- HAS FAR TO GO" takes the reader into a shadow world few people have ever heard of – the world of major covert operations, where a young man is forced into a life so bizarre it stretches the bounds of credibility. From the opening lines "-- HAS FAR TO GO" pulls the reader along through locales around the globe, never missing an exciting moment in the life of a young man working in a world he learns to hate. The second book in the trilogy introduced with "-- and Thursday’s Child --", this new offering demonstrates why Bob Moore is one of the most exciting novelists of the new millennium.
About the Author
Bob Moore has been a Roadie all of his life. With a father who thought nothing of driving six to seven hundred miles in a day, the Road has always offered a world of adventure for Bob. In 1961 he hitchhiked around the United States and discovered that life is not always the way we want it to be. In the 1980’s Bob formed, in conjunction with Christina Crawford (Mommie Dearest), the Survivor’s Network – Utah, an organization dedicated to dealing with the problems of adult survivors of child abuse. He was the founder and publisher of The Mother Road Journal, the first periodical devoted to the world of Route 66, and is the author of Craps With Confidence; Zenith Trans-Oceanic–The Radio Powered to Tune the World; the best selling Route 66–The Illustrated Guidebook to the Mother Road; the novel, "-- and Thursday’s Child --," and now he brings us into the shadow world of covert operations with, "-- Has Far To Go." the second book in a trilogy. During the corporate hysteria of the early 1990’s, following a successful twenty-five year career, he was downsized from a major telecommunications company. Bob’s thoughts on the downsizing, "The best thing that ever happened to me was being tossed out of Dilbert-ville." Bob has worked in radio, both as a DJ and talk show host, and has been writing for over thirty years. But it is his love of the desert southwest, Death Valley, and the two-lane roads of America that keep him the most active. He has organized and conducted tours that exposed travelers from around the world to the wonders of America. He is well known in Europe, both for his Route 66 work, as well as his continuing series about Area 51, the secret base hidden in the Nevada Desert. He is currently the managing editor of Route 66 Magazine, and Operations Manager for KRTE-FM, "The Voice of Route 66."