Jacek Waliszewski

Jacek Waliszewski is an award-winning author and U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret—who was only three months old when he committed his first crime.

He smuggled Solidarity paperwork in his diaper to Polish resistance leaders. His father, a co-founder of the movement, spent a year in a Communist jail before being given a choice: leave as political refugees, return to prison, or be traded to the Soviets.

He chose America.

His parents arrived with two suitcases, two toddlers, and no English. His father painted houses by day and repaired computers at night; his mother cleaned homes while neighbors watched the kids. Against every reasonable prediction, they built a life—and taught their son that freedom is never theoretical.

Jacek is the author of the acclaimed WWII thrillers CODE NAME: SPIKE and CODE NAME: TRIFECTA, stories drawn from real OSS missions, declassified histories, and the kind of legends veterans only tell after midnight. His work has been praised for blending meticulous research with raw humanity, capturing the gray space where ordinary people are forced to become dangerous.

A career Special Forces Warrant Officer, Jacek has served across multiple combat deployments and traveled to more than forty countries. His final mission to Afghanistan was documented in the Emmy-winning National Geographic film RETROGRADE, where he appears as “Chief Jack.”

Whether writing Cold War espionage, Balkan resistance, or modern war, Jacek explores one enduring question: Who do we become when the rules disappear? Some of his stories are true. Some are almost true. All of them are written for the reader sitting in the dark, wondering what they would have done.