Nelson Blakely was a member of the CIA and was very brilliant. Blakely studied how one big event could cause a bigger event, such as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand leading to World War One, dubbing it a linchpin. He discovered an enormous linchpin that the United States would never recover from. Realising that the agency would exploit his genius, he faked his death and start going by the name of Scott McGreggor, with only two people knowing that he was alive; Thomas Gage, and a female friend of his from MIT.