Former CIA case officer John R. Seeger led ‘Team Alpha’ behind enemy lines in Afghanistan in the months after 9/11, an incredible operation mentioned briefly in Chris Hemsworth’s film 12 Strong but it’s certainly not the whole story.
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The Spy’s Spy

Meeting J.R. Seeger is intimidating - not just because he’s 6’ 4” and we are meeting at the Special Forces Club in London surrounded by burly soldiers. It’s also because he jumped on a horse weeks after 9/11 and galloped through the Afghan mountains on a mission to track al-Qaeda and bring down the Taliban. The Spectator calls Seeger ‘The spy’s spy’.

He was in his late-40s back then, the leader of the eight-man US Team Alpha, a group of seasoned operatives who’d spent decades keeping their Afghan contacts active and their eye on the Taliban. Now, more than 20 years later, the former archeologist-turned-spy handler is still firing on all cylinders. He’s published 11 books, had just visited Toronto, and started writing a WWII murder mystery set in Camp X, Canada’s ‘dirty tricks’ spy school.

It’s hard to keep pace with a man whose entire life is a spy thriller. At one point, I offer up a measly story about once being in a Belfast riot but we both know I’m just scraping by. Seeger is as gracious as he is clever though: “Really? You were in a riot?” He has the CIA agent handler’s gift of putting people at ease while his mind is whirring away.

The Army paratrooper and senior intelligence officer spent 27 years in the US government. He speaks Dari, Farsi, and Tajik, picked up survival German while serving in Europe, and can hold his own in Spanish. Tonight he seems to be using his English to steer the conversation away from himself but I’ve read his file.

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J.R. Seeger, SPYEX Consultant

J.R. Seeger’s SPYEX bio lists him as a former CIA division chief of operations and an expert on counterintelligence, insider threats, counterterrorism, and unit leadership. He wasn’t born into the manor though.

Seeger grew up in East Aurora, near Buffalo, New York. His father, a blue-collar railroad fireman and engineer, died when J.R. was 17, three months short of his high school graduation. J.R. still has his father’s watch, a chronograph: “Time is everything,” he believes. Money was tight. His mother needed to find a job but J.R. won a scholarship and studied at Eisenhower College, a school designed to create a cadre of people steeped in world events.

He headed to the University of Iowa to study anthropology and dreamed about becoming a scholar cloistered among stacks of books. Fate had other plans. “I was a fine student - don’t get me wrong - but a really crummy scholar.” After a year of working on archeological digs in Wyoming, J.R. was looking further afield. He’d met his future wife, Lise, at university, but echoes of his father's WWII service resonated; J.R. couldn’t ignore the call to serve his country too, steering his life along an unconventional path.
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The CIA initially rejected his application so J.R. joined the US Army in the 1980s, served in the Sinai Peacekeeping Force and supported the logistics of the US invasion of Grenada. It was his first ‘real’ experience of war and J.R. was pumped with adrenaline while serving in the 82nd Airborne Division. At one point, his Battalion Commander tapped him on the shoulder and told him to get some sleep: “J.R. You can’t stay awake for a whole war. I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work.”

The lesson stuck with J.R. over a career that would soon see him transfer from the Army into the CIA - this time, it was the Agency that picked up the phone and offered him a job. No application required.
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A CIA Case Officer Behind Enemy Lines‍

The CIA sent J.R. to language school to study Afghan Persian with a push out the door: “By the way, class started 10 days ago and you’re late, so get down to the State Department.” His colleagues at the CIA training facility - known as the Farm - thought he was doomed, sentenced to learn an obscure language, spend two years abroad, and then come back and study a 'language that matters' like Russian. “Didn’t work out that way,” Seeger says.

His first assignment was working with Afghans in Pakistan in the pre-9/11 years, allowing him to build a network. He spent three years, night after night, debriefing Afghan soldiers six nights a week for three to four hours and his language skills flourished. His career included a tour in the eastern desert of Saudi Arabia during the 1990s Gulf War - Desert Shield and Desert Storm - where he was a liaison officer doing what he refers to vaguely as counterintelligence and counterterrorism ‘stuff’.

J.R. built his career in stages, first as a case officer/agent handler and later overseeing 20 case officers running agents. Seeger and his wife Lise Spargo - an artist and archeologist who also joined the CIA - were on the West Coast of the US on 9/11 when four planes slammed into the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field. US commercial planes were grounded for days and the couple found themselves stranded 2,500 miles from Washington, D.C., Ground Zero, and Langley HQ.

By mid-October 2001 though, J.R. Seeger was on the ground in Afghanistan. His job? Lead Team Alpha - and eventually both Team Alpha and Team Bravo - behind enemy lines. They'd need to consolidate three warring anti-Taliban tribes, turn them into a fighting force against the Taliban, and support US Special Forces in their parallel combat mission. Unfortunately, all did not go according to plan in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif. As Toby Harnden describes in his book First Casualty, US paramilitary officer Mike Spann was interviewing extremists held in Qali-Jangi fortress when hundreds of men who’d supposedly surrendered revolted on November 25, 2001.

Spann became the first American killed in combat in Afghanistan. “It was a tragic ending to an exceptionally successful mission,” J.R. Seeger would later tell the Rico’s Watches podcast. “There’s no good way to process the loss of a friend.”
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J.R. Seeger: Novelist

J.R. Seeger finished his Afghanistan tour, returned to the US, and finally retired from the CIA in 2007. He wasn’t quite done yet, however. Up until 2023, he served as a trainer and subject matter expert for the US military.

It’s only lately that Seeger has had time to fully focus on his new passion: writing. He’s already a prolific author of books including eight books in the Mike 4 series. His latest work tackles the Steampunk Raj genre, which he describes as Rudyard Kipling’s Kim meets Stan Lee’s Dr. Strange, complete with Tibetan mysticism and ghosts. His wife Lise serves as the illustrator for the Raj series.

The Mike 4 series are military thrillers with an intelligence edge. One of the main characters is Chief Warrant Officer Sue O’Connell, a Special Operations Force surveillance and counterterrorism specialist who finds trouble wherever she roams - including post-9/11 Afghanistan. An injury has left her with a BTK - a below-the-knee amputation - but that doesn’t stop O’Connell.
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The fictional Chief Warrant Officer was inspired by an Army officer Seeger trained at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. At one point, the officer told Seeger he was finding it difficult to be hauling himself all over the Arizona woods and arroyos. By way of explanation, the trainee rolled up his pant leg to show Seeger that his lower leg had been amputated.

“I had no idea he was a BTK,” Seeger said. “It was at that point I realized that story needed to be told. Obviously, I couldn’t tell the story about him. But I could certainly tell a story about a person who was severely injured and willing to stay in the fight.”

It’s a story Seeger knows only too well.