Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD by Jason Kander
Since November 8 was election day and last Friday was Veterans Day, I thought that it would be good to write about a book that tells the tale of an Army veteran who got into electoral politics after he returned home. After graduating from Georgetown Law School in 2005, Jason Kander was commissioned as a US Army officer. He had participated in the graduate school Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) as he was learning the law. After graduation, he was in the military and on his way to Afghanistan as an intelligence officer.
The book begins in October of 2018 as Jason is waiting to see a psychologist at the Veterans Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. Since leaving Afghanistan, he had done very well in politics, winning election as a state representative and as secretary of state of Missouri. He narrowly lost a contest for the US Senate. Jason had even met with President Barack Obama to talk about a possible run for the White House. The day he went to the hospital, he was leading in the race to be elected mayor of Kansas City. A major problem was that Jason suffered from PTSD even as he was fanatical about shaking hands and convincing people to vote for him.
For many years, he had been in denial about his condition even as friends and his wife urged him to get help. For ten years after leaving the service, Jason had been very good at compartmentalizing pieces of his life and ignoring the bad stuff. The book takes us along his journey as he finally accepts that he has a big problem.
Jason joined ROTC in the fall of 2002, during his first year at Georgetown Law School. Like many, he was motivated by the 9/11 attack on America to do something for his country. He got a buzz the first time he put on his uniform and he enjoyed his military training a lot more than he enjoyed law school. Jason liked the structure and order of the military, and he really did want to serve his country. Jason’s parents and their friends had lived through Vietnam and were anti-military as were his professors at American University which he graduated from in 2002. They thought he was nuts.
Jason spent weekends and summers doing military things - marching, crawling, shooting, reading maps, learning first aid - and he loved it. He spent more time reading military books some weeks than reading law books. While his classmates studied law, he did a four-day training at Fort Belvoir, VA, where his unit tracked down “insurgents” and lived off the land. He loved it.
Jason received his commission as a second lieutenant at graduation in May, 2005. His parents, who were shaky on this military thing, were very proud of him as was Diana, his long-time girlfriend whom he had married during law school. Jason was assigned to Military Intelligence.
Jason was sent to Afghanistan in November 2006. He was sent to the middle of nowhere and was charged with talking to local leaders to figure out what the enemy was doing. He and his translator traveled together, often without any armed backup. While he missed some of the comforts of home, he liked the fact that he didn’t have a cell phone or even a mirror. He enjoyed being a cowboy.
The mission in Afghanistan was always a bit muddled, but a central goal was to gain the confidence of the public and political leaders so that the people would come to believe that they could defeat the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS and any other bad actors that wanted to take over their country. This was the classic “win their hearts and minds” approach that hadn't worked in Vietnam.
Lt. Kander was told that one reason he ended up in the intelligence unit was that he had a law degree. He quickly discovered that this credential was useless in his work sneaking around rural Afghanistan and trying to come up with reliable information. His translator, his most important asset, was Salam, an Afghan-American who grew up in Kansas City as had Jason.
The author compared his job of gathering intelligence to “being a gossip columnist in Kevlar.” (Kevlar is the material of body armor.) He would attend meetings of local leaders and take notes. Most of the talk was braggadocio, wildly exaggerated tales of the participants’ bravery in the face of the enemy. Much of the information was distressing - Afghan soldiers raping and pillaging, extensive government corruption, crooked tribal leaders who played to both slides of the conflict.
Sometimes Jason and Salam were part of a bigger team, with two soldiers, Kevin and Todd, helping him get information. They had been in-country for a long time and had good contacts as well as solid military experience. One point that Todd tried to share with Jason was that you should never use turn signals when driving a vehicle. No native did that; by signaling your intentions you were identified as an American.
Jason and Salam looked forward to hot meals at bases. The food was pretty good and you would be safe while eating. Almost everyone prayed before eating, although many of the diners were not religious, including Jason.
Jason had regular meetings with other intelligence personnel. He was part of a psychological operations unit (PSYOPs) and the leader was a trained psychologist. During one meeting, the unit planned to go to the city of Jalalabad on a mission of meeting with three different local groups who supposedly had solid information about the Taliban. This was dangerous since the enemy could be anywhere. The intelligence unit grew to nine people, mostly experienced battle veterans. The Americans couldn't be sure if the people they were meeting with were supporting the Afghan government or the Taliban, so these could be dangerous liaisons. The day turned out to be productive, but there were many moments of terror along the way.
Jason called his wife, Diana, often. She recalled that he was always upbeat and just told her the funny stuff, not the scary stuff. He was in denial about a lot of bad things. Diana kept a diary of his phone calls which were helpful to him ten years later as he sought mental health treatment.
One of the jobs of intelligence personnel was to recruit local people as sources. Many of the intelligence gatherings were useless because people with very different interests and concerns would be at the same meeting. No one would say anything important. During a meeting where they tested a group of potential recruits, a gun battle broke out outside of the building. Jason was terrified. If the fight came inside, his group was severely outnumbered. Everyone ducked and prayed. They got through it and the potential recruits acted as if nothing had happened. They were used to chaos and continued to answer the test. Jason couldn’t help but think that taking the LSAT, the test he needed to get into law school, was a lot easier and no one was shooting near the test site.
Another problem was that often the intelligence unit would get lost This was before reliable GPS could set out your route so they used maps, which were often outdated. What was a friendly place a month ago might now be a Taliban hotbed. Jason told several stories about being terrified as he and his crew tried to figure out where they were and how to get back to friendly territory.
Once back at the forward operating base (FOB), wherever that was, Jason and his colleagues unwound by watching movies, reading tattered paperback books, and playing video games. Many soldiers had their own personal PlayStation waiting for them when they got back from being out in the field. People also could call home on satellite phones. The FOB was home.
Jason returned home in February 2007 after a four-month tour. He still had a couple of years to serve in the army but he was out of harm’s way. He noticed that after he left Afghanistan, he developed a twitch in his left eye. When he got back to Kansas City, he saw a doctor who assured him that his twitch would go away. It didn’t.
Jason always wanted to run for office so he became a candidate for state representative after he left active duty and switched to the reserves. Both Diana and Jason became corporate lawyers by day and campaigners by night and weekend. They were each 26-years old. Once a month, Jason would spend the weekend doing Army things which he still loved. Jason’s campaign didn’t have a lot of money and running for a local office like state representative really involves more personal voter contact than developing an expensive paid ad campaign. Jason spent over a year knocking on many thousands of doors and Diana created a database to keep track of what he was doing. Behind one door, he came across a woman who was the mother of one of his friends from an early Army deployment, Kevin. He asked how Kevin was doing and his mother said that he had recently died in a car accident. Jason was devastated. He had intended to catch up with Kevin but he hadn’t bothered to do that. Now that couldn't happen.
While Jason was working or campaigning, he was fine. When he went home at night, he had nightmares and the eye twitch got worse. He hated fireworks on the Fourth of July because they sounded like bombs and bullets. Diana urged him to get help but he insisted that he was OK. After all, he was a successful lawyer and doing very well in his campaign, so he must be fine.
Jason thought that he couldn’t have PTSD because he had never been in an actual live firefight. He had been on the edges of some and he had experienced many incidents of pure terror meeting with high-level Afghan warlords who were thought to be affiliated with the Taliban, but he survived. He also felt guilty about having been in Afghanistan for only four months but that was his normal tour. After he got back home, he was angry with much of the world, especially himself. He channeled that anger into focused activity, perhaps with an obsessive component to it. He hated to stop working because he always felt that there was more that he should be doing.
He certainly did enough in the campaign. In August of 2008, he easily won the Democratic primary for state rep against two better-known candidates. That meant that he would take office in January of 2009 since there was no Republican opposition to him on the November ballot.
The legislature sat in Jefferson County, Missouri, 150 miles away from where Jason lived in Kansas City. He was always working, even personally responding to every email he received. Most of his colleagues had other jobs since the pay wasn't great and there weren’t a lot of mandatory duties. Jason felt that anyone who didn’t go 24/7 on dining the people’s business was a shirker. He didn’t get home much.
Jason was elected at the same time as Stephen, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War. They were both very progressive and were determined to fix the world. The two took on ethics reform. Most state legislatures could use that. After months of hard work, their bill did pass. It didn’t fix things but it was a step in the right direction.
Diana, Jason’s wife, had dated him for five years before they got married during their second year of law school. She knew him well. He had always been high-energy and driven, but he knew when it was time to back off and relax. That changed after he returned from the Middle East. He became almost manic in his approach to life. He didn’t take breaks. She was very worried but she couldn’t get through to him.
Jason had been a state rep for one term so it was time for him to seek higher office. He heard that the incumbent secretary of state was not going to run for reelection. Jason was in. He had to get around the county executive, Mike, who was a major Democratic Party presence.
Jason met with the county executive and told him that he wasn’t right for the job and that Jason would outwork him tirelessly during the primary campaign. Mike took a few days off to think about it and decided not to run. Since nobody else was running, Jason would be the Democratic nominee.
Just as Jason was organizing his campaign, he got a call from his reserve unit. He was being deployed to Kuwait. That made no sense since nothing was going on in Kuwait. Jason had felt guilty about spending only four months in a combat zone and he wanted to go back to Afghanistan. He negotiated to make that happen but he failed to get the assignment changed. Faced with nine months doing nothing in Kuwait or running for secretary of state, Jason resigned his commission. That upset him because he did love the military but he wasn’t going to go to Kuwait and wait until he could come home. Jason’s wife, Diana, thought that Jason’s wanting to go back into combat was nuts, but a lot of what he was doing was nuts.
Leaving the Army was disorienting to Jason. Even when things were spiraling out of control his being a soldier helped stabilize him. Now that was gone.
Early on election night 2012, Jason was losing the secretary of state election. His campaign manager, Abe Rakov, wasn’t worried. It was early but Jason had trouble breathing - he was panicked. The campaign had been rough, with both Diana and Jason spending all of their time campaigning. They had no personal life. All that mattered was winning. They did win. The early returns had not included Kansas City, a huge Democratic vote-producing machine. When those numbers came in, Jason rolled to victory.
As secretary of state, Jason had a staff of 250 and he could do things. He wanted to make sure that everyone who was eligible could vote. In 2013, many Democrats were claiming that elections were fraudulent because of the restrictions put on voting. The Republicans dominated the legislature and did propose legislation to make it more difficult to vote. Jason went ballistic on the airwaves and got enough people upset about the voting limitation bill to kill it. The new secretary of state was getting noticed nationally. There was talk of Jason running for president. Of course, one problem was that he wasn’t yet 35 years old, a requirement for being the nation’s chief executive.
Diana, who had enabled all of Jason’s behavior, was getting worried. She saw him becoming increasingly paranoid, checking their home and any public places they visited for bombs and terrorists. It was getting over-the-top. In 2013, their son, Kander, was born. The couple was delighted but now Jason had one more thing to obsess about: SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), a very real thing but also very rare. Jason was also convinced that bad people were going to kidnap his son. He was unraveling.
In February of 2014, just after a year as secretary of state, Jason decided that he would run for the US Senate in 2016. He had discussed the issue with several top Democrats in Washington, and they encouraged him. He would run against incumbent Senator Roy Blunt, a low-key establishment Republican. Early polling looked good as it often does.
The author does discuss the fact that many voters would see him as overly ambitious. This would be his third run for a new office in five years and he was 33 years old. Jason was dismissive of this because he wanted to do good things which makes his ambition worthy.
Secretary of State Kander spent most of the balance of his term campaigning all over the state for the US Senate. He was not in the State House doing the people’s business. He spent much of his time raising money. He had many meetings with rich Democrats all over the country, meetings he feared because he thought that they might be out to get him. He flashed back to situations in Afghanistan where the person at the meeting was not the person who was supposed to be at the meeting and that was dangerous. He would have panic attacks that would have to be calmed down by his staff.
Jason enjoyed meeting actual voters. He made a point of shaking hands with every person who showed up at his events, even the big ones with hundreds of people. He campaigned 24/7 and ran himself down. He was losing weight and not sleeping. He kept stumbling - his balance was off.
During the campaign, Diana usually stayed home with their son. After quitting her high-pressure corporate law job, she had become a successful consultant and could do some work from home. Her career took second place to his but that was OK for now. The national Democratic Senate Campaign Committee was irritated that Diana had her own life; she should be supporting her husband's campaign 24/7. That was certainly ironic coming from the progressive party that supposedly exalts women’s rights and career success.
Jason called her everyday but the conversations were rambling and short. He kept reminding her that people were out to get them and for her to make sure that the doors were locked. There was some basis to his concerns. The Kanders were Jewish, probably the most visible Jewish family in the state. While he was campaigning, a Ku Klux Klan member killed three Jewish people over a two-week period in Kansas City.
When the candidate did come home, he was a lousy husband and father. He really couldn’t turn the campaign off, even for a day or two. Jason had met many veterans along the campaign trail. Some would confide in him that they had trouble sleeping and that they were not giving their families support. Jason never connected the dots and thought that he might have some underlying war problems.
Secretary of State Kander never became Senator Kander. He narrowly lost to Senator Blunt. Jason was of course devastated. He was really depressed. Diana convinced him to see a therapist and he did. He would not open up to her, so the sessions were worthless and Jason decided that therapy wouldn’t work for him.
Shortly after the election, Jason received a call from the Democratic National Committee. They had been impressed by his campaign and wanted to hire him to reach out to young voters. He accepted the job and received invitations from all over the country. Jason gave really good speeches that engaged people. He was becoming a rock star, at least in the Democratic Party. He was a regular on CNN and the major newspapers routinely covered him. He even got to meet Oprah.
His defeat actually opened up some doors. In January of 2018. Jason was invited to meet with former president Barack Obama. The topic was how to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. Many national Democrats thought that Jason might be a good candidate for president. He had finally turned 35-years-old, so he could run and legally serve. Jason was brought into meetings with high-dollar Democratic donors for very preliminary conversations.
Many liberal celebrities wanted to meet Jason. Jason Sudekis – Ted Lasso! – was from Kansas City and knew Jason Kander. That relationship opened up other doors. The defeated candidate for US Senate started to develop a posse of celebrities.
Naturally, Jason super-egoed the mild interest in him for national office and saw it as “I must run! The country needs me!” Diana was not looking forward to a national campaign. She was finally getting her consulting business humming and she knew that she would have to sharply pull back to support her husband. She also thought that a national campaign would really flip out Jason. Jason did what he always did - what he personally wanted to do. He told his inner circle that he was running for president.
Jason was still doing speeches all over the country for the DNC and had picked up additional duties in his life, but he was so sure that he could save America and he knew he could fit everything into his schedule. He was hyper-scheduled, including spending a few hours either at home or on the phone with Diana.
He gave a major speech in Manchester NH in April, 2018 to hundreds of Democratic Party operatives. He was a smash hit. He went around the country talking to campaign organizers and potential donors. He slept very little and was still paranoid about being kidnapped or having his family harmed by his enemies. At some point, he realized that he no longer enjoyed the crazy schedule that running for president required. The thrill was gone. He met with his political advisor, Abe Rakov, who suggested that maybe Jason didn't have to run for president. He could come home and run for mayor of Kansas City.
The campaign for city hall was on. Jason was in great shape to compete. He was well known and liked in Kansas City. He had a national profile that would get him on cable and network TV. He had tapped into major campaign donors all over the country.
Jason campaigned for mayor for three months but something was missing. He was always angry and didn’t take any joy in meeting voters the way he had for most of his electoral career. He did enjoy working with the Veterans Community Project, a local organization that provided housing and medical services for veterans in need. The group believed that giving veterans their own small place to stay was a key factor in getting their lives back to normal.
But most of Jason’s life was miserable, and Diana discovered that he had suicidal thoughts. This was getting really out of control. Jason called the hot line at the Kansas City VA Hospital. He really wanted help this time. The woman on the other end asked if Jason had suicidal thoughts and he broke down and cried. She told him to come in right away and he did. He was most impressed with the fact that she was so calm when talking to him as he was falling apart. Apparently, Jason wasn’t the first soldier she had spoken to who needed help.
Jason knew that you had to be a little crazy to go into politics but you couldn’t be mentally ill, which he was. He had to drop out of the mayor’s race and withdraw from all of his other activities so that he could give himself a chance to get better. He went public with his mental illness and received strong backing from everywhere, including US senators and representatives, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and presidential candidate Joe Biden. He also received supportive telegrams and letters from thousands of people all over the country who shared his PTSD problem.
Jason kept a low profile, despite being asked by the media to share his story. He thought that it didn’t make sense for someone like him, who had denied having a PTSD problem for eleven years, to speak out about the condition.
One issue that Jason became very aware of was the lack of capacity of the Veteran’s Administration to provide adequate mental health treatment to all who needed it. He was a celebrity and he had to wait for VA help.
Diana noted that her husband was probably the most famous depressed person in America. People came up to Jason, not to talk about his political career, but to thank him for being open about his problem.
When he was running for office, Jason had made friends with the head of the Kansas City Veterans Community Project (VCP), Bryan Meyer. Now that he was not in a political campaign, he spent more time with VCP. He was amazed at the good work they did in building small homes for veterans that helped them stabilize and cope with the trauma of war. Bryan got Jason into therapy through VCP.
Jason finally got into VA treatment and therapist was very good. She was amazed at how he had survived so long with such serious trauma. She helped him understand that going out to rural Afghanistan with just an interpreter was a trauma incubator.
After Jason had stabilized, he got a new therapist, Nick. Nick saw PTSD as The Monster and they were going to beat The Monster. Things went well, with the patient gradually overcoming his fears and phobias and starting to like himself for a change. Jason described therapy as “getting a master’s degree in yourself.”
As time went on, the media, including the Boston Globe, started to suggest that Jason Kander should become much more visible and public in his recovery so that others could be inspired to get help. That sounds good in theory but the last thing a damaged individual who is trying to recover from mental illness needs is publicity.
As the patient’s wife, Diana was a victim of secondary trauma, a major problem for many. She received therapy and it took some time for her therapist to convince Diana that she was damaged and needed help. Diana, like Jason, was a wicked smart alpha personality who thought she could get through anything on her own. Jason and Diana would compare therapy notes after sessions and that brought them together in understanding where they were.
At the end of 2018, Jason was making good progress, punctuated by ups and downs, which is the nature of The Monster. In early 2019, Jason was beginning to think about what to do with the rest of his life. He still had a lot of work ahead of him to get and stay better, but he felt he could be productive.
He had learned a lot in therapy. He saw that the fear and paranoia that were problems in civilian life helped keep him vigilant and alive in Afghanistan. He learned that people could control only about 3% of their daily lives. Trauma survivors think that the percentage is much higher. Jason thought it was 85%. Perhaps the most important lesson was that every day was not going to be great. In life, all of us have good days and bad days. Having a bad day is not your fault since we control so little of our lives.
Even after a year of therapy, Jason worried about a lot of things. He felt that he was getting better but he worried that PTSD victims do not recover so something must be wrong. In fact, with the right intervention, people can and do recover from PTSD. Nick, Jason‘s therapist, pointed out that the biggest problem with therapy is that patients give up on it too soon. Then it doesn’t work. If you stay with the program, there’s a good chance that you'll get better.
Jason was feeling good enough now to accept an invitation to record an interview with anchor Lester Holt for the NBC Nightly News. Jason was nervous about resurfacing in public. Lester asked some tough questions but the interview went well.
The last part of the book gives the reader a short course in what Jason learned about how to deal with trauma. You don’t get over trauma but you learn how to manage it so that it doesn’t dominate your life.
After the United States had a very rocky exit from Afghanistan, Jason went public, reassuring his fellow Afghan vets that they had done their job well. What happened at the end had nothing to do with them. Jason wanted to help vets not take our government’s botching of the withdrawal as their fault, a thought which could trigger a traumatic response by the soldiers. Jason and Diana also set up various operations in Afghanistan to get people out of the country. They managed to get airline flights out for 400 people who would have been persecuted by the Taliban.
Jason now works to expand the Kansas City Veterans Community Project, which gives vets a home and helps them with their trauma. The VCP now has sites all over the country. He has a popular podcast, Majority 54, which covers progressive politics. He still works with the non-profit, Let America Vote, to get more people to participate in elections. Finally, he does a lot of fundraising to help trauma survivors.
After all, Jason Kander ended up in a pretty good place.
Bob’s Take
The beginning of the book has a humorous vignette about how, when Jason finally decided to go to the VA hospital for help, he was recognized by everyone in the waiting room. That’s not the best way to start your recovery.
Jason’s description of what was going on in Afghanistan confirmed the belief of many observers that the place was a mess. Graft and corruption were rampant, and it was hard to tell the good guys from the bad ones.
Jason was gifted. He was smart. He breezed through Georgetown Law School while spending most of his time doing ROTC things. He also was a superb athlete and was pretty good on the campaign trail.
Jason’s wife, Diana, was from Ukraine. She was as gifted as her husband, perhaps more so, but she put her ambitions aside to help him out. Even though Jason ignored most of her suggestions about seeking help, she was the stabilizing influence in his life.
Jason probably had a lot of serious mental illness even before he went to war. Those conditions were not caused by his experiences in Afghanistan but were exacerbated by them. He was obsessive, paranoid, depressed, panicked, and probably bipolar. Bob in the Basement observes this, with absolutely no credibility.
Jason was ambitious to a fault. The ambition rolled over into selfishness, when he did things to hurt the people who voted him into office. He spent most of 2015 and 2016 campaigning all over Missouri, running for the senate, and not fulfilling the duties of secretary of state.
