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An Overview Of The Book

The Book Fighting Blind: The Heroines Who Saved and Loved Him is a photographic memoir of events that I am compelled to recount for my own well-being and the country's well-being.

The Book is a heart-wrenching Kafkaesque nightmare, lightened and saddened by several profound romances (some fellow agents) that circumstances shatter. We see a green-eyed, bushy-tailed, helpless romantic become a hardened, well-trained Marine warrior / CIA operative working the black-market exchanges on the streets of Japan and then into Vietnam, laundering cash through the International Banks of the World's elite to special secret accounts. The purpose was to drain a country's economy for control and slush money for CIA special Ops that Congress would never fund. He became a disillusioned, hopeless, isolated individual suffering from PTSD while being chased, abducted, and drugged by his own people.

After seeing many of his brother Marines and many in his outfit wounded or blown to bits, along with civilian Vietnamese, including a little girl he had once saved from wounds blown up in front of him, he questions the entire thing. Ultimately, he takes matters into his own hands, moving money into "frozen accounts," the numbers that exist only in his Memory. The CIA will stop at nothing to get these numbers, even when he returns to the United States and, shortly after returning, finds out that his first love is pregnant with their child, and he cannot see her. He must feign death to protect them from abduction or death in the high-stakes battle to access the multimillion-dollar accounts. But his memories are shut down. The key to unlocking their residence is his therapy sessions with a doctor who saves his life.
These sessions are the glue that keeps the narrative together as it moves geographically between Chicago, Arizona, LA, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, the Caribbean, and Europe, spanning the mid-Sixties to the present.

For the country, the events stress the need for appropriate oversight of rogue secret agencies, such as those that exist within the CIA, that indoctrinated me to accrue huge profits in black market currency exchanges soon after my enlistment as a 19-year-old Marine and later fighting the Vietnam War.
Over many years I was able to finally add an automated piece to my system that would make it impossible for anyone including myself to ever access these funds.

SAMPLE BOOK Chapter
Chapter 34
Regaining My Memory

With Dr. Goldman's information, she thought she had a good idea of what drug they had used on me. The CIA had been working on mind control drugs. Not just truth serums that had not been successful. They wanted mind control. They were experimenting with drugs. LSD was a drug top of the CIA list from the 50s to 70s they were exploring the possibilities of a truth drug and mind control. Experiments were conducted that involved psychological Torture. They used Doctors to conduct experiments. This was a top-secret project by the CIA. I did not know about this, but Dr. Goldman found out and knew all about it. They were never able to achieve their goal of mind control.
“You were determined not to give anything up,” she said. I told her that was correct. She asked me, “Do you trust me?” I did. She told me she would use a combination of drugs and hypnosis. But I had to be willing to do it because no one could be hypnotized without their willingness to be. With my consent, we started slowly. This was not a quick process.
The following week, she gave me two pills to help relax me so she could hypnotize me. She believed everything was just below the surface and waiting to come out naturally. After a few minutes, I felt total relaxation. Then she started telling me I was safe; nothing would happen. She said I would feel better if I went back and remembered all that took place. She then asked me to remember what I had already told her about being invited to join the CIA special unit when I was in Yuma. I told her what I had told her before, but it was now so clear to me. I remembered an encounter I had forgotten in boot camp and another contact I had with the CIA when I first started driving at Yuma. Then, the desert encounters.
We started slow, returning to where I had most of my memories of Yuma to Japan. I did remember most of that already. Some things were fragmented in my mind, but Dr. Goldman could put me right there in the moment, and it was all clear to me. She never put words or suggestions in my head; she just placed me where I was at the moment and asked me what had happened. Never leading me, only taking me to the door in my mind and letting me open it. I just told her what was on the other side.
We spent a couple of weeks getting through my training, my great love for Alexandra, my wild ship crossing to Japan, working and building my network in Okinawa, and my love, Tomoko. Yes, it was clear, so clear, and I was back there. It was working.
We planned a session for the next week to begin going into Vietnam. It was terrifying, and my chest pains were awful that week. I knew I had to get it out, all of it.
Then, a call from Dr. Goldman. She got to her office, and it was completely torn apart. She never kept drugs in the office, so that could not be why. No files were missing. They were just thrown all over the place.
“I think this is a warning because they did not try to hide; they were there,” I said. “If they wanted, they could have slipped in and gone through your files; you would never have known the Company was there looking for my file.” They must not have found it. “The Company left you a message to stop.”
This would not be the first or the last time I heard Dr. Goldman swear. “Those bastards are not going to scare us off. Do they want a fight? I will give them a fight. David, are you with me?”
“Dr. Goldman, I worry for you. Nothing they can do to me that hasn’t been done already.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I am feeding people information. If anything happens to any one of us, it will all come out. You hear that?” she yelled into her office. “If you are listening in, you will not break us.” My god, the strength this woman has. God should bless her.
We had some regular sessions over the next couple of weeks. We discussed what happened and talked like we would stop for a while to throw them off because we knew they were listening. Dr. Goldman had the office swept for bugs again. This time, she deactivated them.
She called me in to start again with the drugs and hypnosis. She put me in a hypnotic state so I could think about Vietnam. She knew nothing because I had buried it, but it was about to come out over the following months of sessions. We had to go slow. She did not want me to stress too much, and we would discuss after sessions what happened to help me deal with it. It would be too much to try to get it all at once.
Dr. Goldman urged me to remember every detail, and I did. When we were told we were leaving for Vietnam, the doctor asked me, “How did you feel about that? What happened?”
“The major called us out, telling us we had two hours to pack.” Yes, that came clearly to my mind. I had remembered being called out and packing up before, but now it seemed so real. She asked what we did next, and I told her about leaving the base and going to the ship. It suddenly seemed so clear in my mind; I felt I was there. I could see it. I had control.
“What happened next?”
I told Dr. Goldman I had filled out my last will and testament. (How many fill out their last will and testament at twenty?) We then went to church. I laughed because we were all Catholic that night. After all, it was all they had on short notice. No one complained. We had a small service and communion. The priest blessed us all and prayed for us as we were going into battle. That hit home; everyone went silent.
After each session, she would tell me to wake up on her command, and I would remember everything. In the next session, we would discuss everything I remembered. We had two sessions a week. We always knew the Company was listening and waiting. She always reminded me to go nowhere alone.
As the weeks and months passed, we recovered much of my memory. It was a long process. Details were becoming crystal clear. Dr. Goldman’s office would be broken into and trashed twice more along the way. They got nothing, but the Company sent a message.
The details of what I did and the experiences were now precise. Not only did I have to deal with war issues, but I had the Company wanting their money from the accounts. Yes, the funds; I knew every detail. We purposely left those numbers blocked in my brain just beneath the surface. Dr. Goldman added her own block, and she was the only one who could unlock it. We did that very quietly so the Company did not know. But they must have gotten another bug in the office. They did know most of my memory was back. The Company was getting ready to move on me. They could not get what they wanted from our sessions in Dr. Goldman’s office. They decided to get me at home.
We were living in Waukesha, Wisconsin. I called my wife at work around 11:00 a.m. I told her I was going to the car to see what was wrong with the brakes. (We had a second car I had obtained in Florida and brought back to Wisconsin. A nice older mercury convertible. A short time after the trip back, the brakes went bad. They were not completely bad. The car would stop, but the pedal was soft, and I knew it needed a brake job. I did not want to spend the money right then, so I parked it and took off the insurance until I fixed it. I was handy at fixing cars.)
“Do not go.”((Dr.Goldman had told her I should never go anywhere alone.)
“I will be careful. Shouldn’t be a problem, I told Sharon, since I could get into the garage without going outside.” I went down to the car in the garage beneath the apartment and was immediately grabbed, punched, and hit with a needle. I don’t remember much else.
My wife arrived back home after she finished work. When she pulled into the driveway, she knew immediately something was wrong. I always did certain things as a creature of habit, but I also did it on purpose so someone who really knew me would know something was wrong. She knew, for instance, there was a crack under the garage door. I would always put my foot on it from the inside to close it flush with the ground. But the garage door was up about an inch, and the light was on. That would never happen. She ran to open the garage door. When she lifted the door and found no car, it set off alarms in her. I had purposely taken the car insurance off my car since we were not using it. It was a 1970 Mercury convertible. It did run. However, I believe it needed brakes. I had always told her I would never drive a car around the block without insurance. You could be sued if you had an accident.
She ran upstairs, sure she would not find me, and she was right. They had me. She called her parents, who lived about ten miles away. They came over, hoping I went out and would turn up any time. Sharon, deep down, knew I wouldn’t.
I remember waking up a little before the car stopped. I heard voices. I was groggy. We were in the middle of nowhere. It was like farmland. I was put in a shed, blindfolded, and tied to a chair. Two guys interrogated me. They wanted the numbers of the accounts and how to access them.
“I cannot access them.”
“You better be able to.”
“Or what?” I said. Then I felt a needle.
I heard one tell the other, “Leave him awhile and let it take effect.” I do not know how long I have been there. I knew I had to get away somehow and fight whatever they gave me.
Things went a little blurry. I heard a car outside. Someone said, “He isn’t going anywhere. Let’s get a bite and come back. He will be ready then. By the time we get back, the doc will be here.”
In my haze, I thought, This is my only chance. I have to get out of here. I have to fight. I
couldn’t sleep; I had to move. If I moved, it might take off some of the effects. The question was, could I? My hands were tied to the arms and my legs to the chair legs. The chair was old, heavy wood. I could feel the armrests were a little wider than my arms. I managed to half stand. God, this chair was heavy. Or was it me? The legs were slightly wobbly, and I shuffled as hard as I could backward. Surprisingly, I almost fell—I had more room than I thought. I hit the wall behind me. The chair creaked, but it was still intact. Crap. I stumbled forward a distance and threw myself backward. I hit one of the arms and felt it was getting loose. Twice more, I stumbled forward, and with the last gasp, I thrust backward, trying to land on the armrest that was weakening.
Thank you, Marine Corps, for teaching me I had more in me than I even knew and pushing
me beyond my limit in boot camp, time and time again. Thank you, CIA, for teaching me to get out of situations like this at all costs. The Marine Corps and the CIA taught me mental and physical strength for these situations. In seconds, all the training came into play automatically.
I crashed into the wall, and the chair started to splinter, the armrest almost off. One more
short but painful thrust. The armrest gave way. My arm was free. I ripped the cloth mask off my face and looked around. This was some kind of torture room, a Dimly lit wooden shed, a good-sized room with no windows. A table on the wall near the far end of the room. A battery is on the shelf below, and cables are neatly placed. —I figured they didn’t plan to let me leave until they had what they wanted this time. I hobbled over to the table. The chair legs had splintered a little. There were a couple of odd-looking knives and other tools on the wall. I grabbed one and cut my legs free, then one arm and the other. I saw another table along a wall with some burlap bags on it. Then, I spotted a water basin in the corner. I dunked my head underwater in the tub, trying to clear my brain. I shook my head and heard a car pull up. Then another. David, clear your head. You will get out of here! You made it through Vietnam.
I heard one say, “Take the doc inside. I will report in at the house.”
The door started to open; they were still saying something. I wanted to grab the knife, but it slipped from my hand to the floor. I grabbed an arm of the chair as the first one came in the door and smashed him in the face with the jagged piece. I stomped as hard as possible on his foot and threw him in the room. He still turned and got two punches to my face that threw me back. As he stepped forward, his foot would not hold him; he was yelling in pain. I got him square in the face and again and again as he went down. This time, for him, there was no getting up.
The doctor was in shock. He wanted out of there, but we were fighting in the way of his exit. He tried to stab me with a needle he had prepared, but I grabbed his hand and punched him twice in the nose and face. With a twist of the hand and another knuckle punch to the throat, he crumbled to the floor. I had the needle.
I headed for the door, but at that moment, the guy who went to the house must have heard our disturbance and burst through the door. I jumped aside and stabbed him with the needle in the neck, squeezing the plunger. The guy was big, though. He shoved me away, then came for me. I could see he was staggering but, my god, still on his feet. He started to punch. I blocked, but it hit me in the face, and another got me in the ribs, making me stagger. David, reach down for that extra ten percent. Do not go down; do not blackout. I stumbled back, and he attacked. I do not know where it came from; it was just basic instinct and reaction; I got off a kick to his kneecap, and I heard a snap. He still started for me but went down on one knee as he fell. I got off a kick to the face, followed by a swift knuckle punch to the throat. That did it; it was over.
I had no idea if there were more in the house or if it was just them, but I had to get out. I staggered through the wooded area but stayed on my feet, looking behind me as I went. Nothing so far; my ribs cried out in pain. It was hard to breathe. I had to keep going.
I was maybe a block away when I saw a car pull up. I immediately hid behind a tree. Three men got out and looked around. When I saw them head into the shed, I took off deeper into the woods and kept going as quickly as possible; every bone in my body hurt. My head was hazy. God, I had to keep going in what I thought was the direction of the road. I could not see; I had to guess. I knew they had to be looking for me desperately by now.
Finally, not sure how long, I found the highway. I could see headlights. I tried to flag down a couple of cars that would not stop when their headlights hit me, and they saw an injured man. I can’t really blame them. Then it hit me. They are out looking everywhere by now. Get off the highway. I no sooner got into some trees when a car crept by relatively slowly; they had a searchlight going back and forth over the woods.
I peeked out as the light passed. What was extremely difficult for me now was guessing where I was going. I could not see, only when lights passed by. From what headlights I saw here and there, I headed along the highway but stayed off the road. I tripped more than once. I could not see where I was walking, and I hit some roots or stones. Finally, some apartment lights came into view—no matter what time, someone was always up. A couple of cars whizzed by. I stayed out of sight, but it helped me to know where I was.
I barely remember getting to the apartment. It is incredible what you can do when you have to, and your life depends on it. I remained cautious, though, sure they were watching the apartment. Across the street was a field. The lights in the condo guided me as I got close to the brush. I saw the light inside a van about a half block away. It was only for a moment, then out. It had to be them.
I would have to muster everything I had. A light between the garage and the front door stayed on at night. I waited until I saw what I thought was an ordinary car coming. Then I realized another car was coming from the other direction. This was my chance. I took off across the street, hard as I could, and made it to the door. One car slowed and looked. It looked like just an ordinary passerby. I got my key in the door, slipped inside, and slammed it shut behind me.
Our apartment was upstairs, and I was really hurting after that run, so I collapsed halfway up. Sharon heard the commotion and came out of the apartment to find me on the stairs, half out of it, and blood everywhere. She grabbed me. I made a final effort, and she got me up the stairs to the apartment. I collapsed again.
It was about 2:00 a.m., and she called 911. The ambulance came. They immediately went and got the stretcher. Sharon said my face was all puffy and bloody. I seemed to be on drugs, and my ribs were hurt. They put me on the stretcher and started to strap me down. I told them no straps. I was out of my mind and did not want to be bound again. They finally convinced me to let them put the straps on loosely. Then they carried me down to the ambulance.
At the hospital on March 27, 1978, they ran tests and tried to make me comfortable. The police also took a report and gave me a receipt. They told us they would assign a car to pass by the apartment frequently, but that was about all they could do. I asked if they could keep some files for me for safekeeping. At first, they said yes, but when they saw it was a boxful, they said, “Look. Honestly, we are not equipped to deal with your stuff. We are a small police department. If someone comes here with federal government credentials and tells us to stop what we are doing or asks us to turn over your stuff, we will do it. They have more power than we do. This is out of our league. We will keep an extra eye on your apartment, though.”
I was released from the hospital the following afternoon. They gave me some meds for pain with instructions to take it easy for a while. Nothing was broken. There’s nothing much you can do for ribs but let them heal. It just hurts to cough or laugh.
Sharon had already called my father. He and my mother immediately drove a hundred miles from their house in Chicago to our apartment. My mother was upset, and my father kept walking around the block, seeing if he could detect if anyone out of the ordinary was around. My poor parents. I felt bad because this was my fight; there was not anything they could do. My dad called Senator Hatfield and filled him in on what happened.
“I think they want to kill my son.”
“Dr. Jones,” the senator said, “if they wanted your son dead, he would be dead, believe me. No, they want something else. He knows something they want. I will keep looking into this to see what I can do. Tell his doctor to get in touch with me.” We did just that. Dr. Goldman started writing again to Senator Hatfield about my case.

We knew our letters were being opened. And knew we were bugged. So we were cautious. Things got quiet for a while from the CIA. Still, I took all the precautions I could, like trying never to be alone. I could feel their presence. It was not a question of whether they would strike again but when!