Jack Daly

On 4 April 1997 I was a Naval Intelligence officer hanging out the door of a Canadian Sea King, photographing a Russian intelligence collector in the Strait of Juan de Fuca — five nautical miles inside U.S. territorial waters, between Port Angeles and Victoria. She fired a laser into my eyes. The pilot beside me, Captain Patrick Barnes of the Royal Canadian Air Force, was hit as well. He never flew again. He died in April of last year, still in chronic pain from an injury the United States has never officially acknowledged.

The Department of Defense Inspector General found me eligible for the Purple Heart. The Navy has refused to award it for nearly three decades. I couldn’t talk about any of this while the material was classified. The twenty-five-year window closed. Now I can.

BLIND TREASON: The True-Life Story of an American Spy Left Out in the Cold releases September 6, 2026, with a foreword by Bill Gertz of the Washington Times. It went through government prepublication and declassification review and came back with zero redactions — which is itself part of the story.

[OPTIONAL — GERTZ FOREWORD PULL QUOTE, one or two sentences, permission on file.] — Bill Gertz, national security columnist, The Washington Times

Why I’m a low-risk booking: fifteen years in Naval Intelligence focused on the Soviet Union and Russia, prior national television experience, and I’m a working voice actor who narrated the audiobook myself from a treated home studio. You’ll get broadcast-quality audio, on schedule, without a publicist in the middle.

Three angles, whichever serves your audience best:

1. The act of war nobody reported. A Russian directed-energy weapon fired on U.S. personnel inside U.S. waters in 1997 — and what it says about where directed-energy weapons stand today, from Havana Syndrome to the South China Sea.

2. The cover-up. Not the attack — the response. How a chain of command decides an incident didn’t happen, what that costs the officer it happened to, and why the Purple Heart is still being withheld.

3. What twenty-five years of silence does to a man. The oath, the family, the career it ended, and what it takes to wait out a classification clock instead of leaking.

Media kit, one-sheet, high-res covers and headshots: blindtreasonbook.com/pages/media-kit

Happy to send an advance copy in whatever format you prefer.

Respectfully,

Jack Daly Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy (Retired) 302.217.6030 | [email protected] | blindtreasonbook.com