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Surviving Afghanistan with former Army Counterintelligence Agent Jeremy D. Baker
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Join us as we welcome Jeremy D. Baker, former Army counterintelligence agent, Afghanistan combat veteran and author of the novel The Guilty Sleep, a thriller that draws on Jeremy’s personal experiences as a combat veteran struggling to overcome PTSD.
In 2000, after acing his Army entrance exam, 20-year-old college dropout Jeremy was told by his recruiter that he could pick any specialty he wanted. He chose counterintelligence because he thought it sounded cool. A year later, in the wake of 9/11, that choice proved fateful.
As a soldier with the 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion, he was sent to Afghanistan in the first wave of US troops tasked with finding Osama Bin Laden, destroying al-Qaeda, and ousting the Taliban.
Operating in and around Kandahar, he was the CI assigned to the 19th Special Forces Group of Green Berets, a number of whom were older and had served tours in Vietnam. Little did Jeremy know the extent to which his time in Afghanistan would stay with him and shape his life.
With Jeremy as our guide, we’ll learn what ‘counterintelligence’ looked like early on in Afghanistan, what it was like working with Green Berets who’d served in Vietnam, the combat situations they encountered and how our 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan affected him.
Jeremy will also share his experiences overcoming PTSD, utilizing the CERT method, how writing helped him heal and why the fall of Afghanistan moved him to write The Guilty Sleep, the fictional story of Afghanistan veteran Dexter Grant who is broke, reeling from PTSD, and on the verge of divorce when he’s approached by his old Army buddies to help rescue their former interpreter, the man who once saved Dex’s life.
Lee Childs described The Guilty Sleep as being “shot-thru with hard-won authenticity and deep humanity” and USMC veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan Elliot Ackerman praised it as cutting “sharp and deep.”
The Guilty Sleep (Diversion Books) is available online at all major booksellers. To find out more about Jeremy’s work, go to jeremydbaker.com.
We’re grateful to UPMC for Life for sponsoring this event!
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