BLIND TREASON — SUGGESTED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
For journalists, podcast hosts, and producers

The following 15 questions are organized in four categories. They are
intended as starting points; please adapt to your audience, format,
and time allotment. Jack is comfortable on long-form (60–90 minute)
interviews as well as short segments. Email contact:
jackd@blindtreasonbook.com

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THE INCIDENT — April 4, 1997
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1. Walk us through what happened on April 4, 1997. You were flying
surveillance over the Strait of Juan de Fuca. What did you and
Captain Barnes know about your target, the Kapitan Man, before you
launched — and what happened when the laser hit?

2. Most Americans don't know that a Russian intelligence ship fired
a directed-energy weapon at U.S. and Canadian aircrew in sovereign
American airspace. Why has this story remained so far below public
awareness for twenty-nine years?

3. The Kapitan Man wasn't a warship. It was a commercial vessel.
What does it tell us about Russian intelligence operations in U.S.
waters that a merchant ship was carrying a laser weapon capable of
attacking American aircraft?

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THE COVER-UP
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4. You name specific people in Blind Treason — Deputy Secretary of
State Strobe Talbott, FBI mole Robert Hanssen, the Office of Naval
Intelligence officials who handled the photographic evidence. Take
us through how the decision was made, at the highest levels of the
U.S. government, to bury this story rather than confront it.

5. Kodak's forensic team documented more than seventy digital
manipulations to the photograph ONI released of the Kapitan Man.
Dr. Russell Kraus established the manipulations under sworn trial
testimony. What were those manipulations designed to hide, and how
did you come to have that evidence?

6. Robert Hanssen had foreknowledge of the U.S. collection
operation that put you and Captain Barnes in that helicopter. He
was reporting to Moscow at the time. What do you believe Moscow
knew, and when?

7. The Department of Defense Inspector General has found you
eligible for the Purple Heart. The Navy has refused to award it for
twenty-nine years. You write in the book that this refusal is not
an oversight — it's deliberate. Why?

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THE HUMAN COST
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8. Captain Patrick Barnes died on April 15, 2026, still suffering
the laser injury. He carried it with him for twenty-nine years.
What was his life like in those decades, and what did his death
mean to you?

9. The book opens with witness testimony from Michelle Barnes,
Pat's widow. Tell us how that testimony came to be in the book, and
why you wanted her voice in the opening pages rather than as an
afterword.

10. You've lived with the laser injury for twenty-nine years. What
does that injury look like, medically, day-to-day? And what has it
been like to carry the documents and the truth alongside the
physical injury all this time?

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INSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE READER'S ROLE
==============================================================

11. Senator Bob Smith — a former U.S. Senator from New Hampshire
who chaired the Strategic Forces Subcommittee — has endorsed the
book and counseled you on its framing. He told you to focus on
institutional accountability rather than on the Purple Heart. Why
was that the right framing, and what is the institutional question
the book asks the U.S. government to answer?

12. The book closes with a direct charge to the reader — a call to
contact their members of Congress. You've built a Take Action page
on your website with sample letters and talking points. Why is the
reader the mechanism, rather than asking POTUS or the Pentagon
directly?

13. In 1999, a single reader of a Reader's Digest article
contacted Senator Jesse Helms about your case. Helms made one phone
call. You were promoted to Lieutenant Commander instead of being
discharged from the Navy. What does that history teach us about
what one reader's action can do?

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LOOKING FORWARD
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14. You're a retired Naval Intelligence officer, not an activist or
a journalist. What made you decide that a memoir was the right form
for this story rather than, say, working through congressional
channels privately?

15. If a producer or filmmaker is listening to this and thinking
about adapting Blind Treason — what is the part of the story you
most want adapted faithfully, and what is the part you most worry
will be dramatized in a way that misses the point?
