Jere Van Dyk

Jere Van Dyk is an analyst/consultant to CBS News. He covered the Afghan-Soviet war in early 1980s, as freelance reporter for New York Times, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, getting to know men who today are leaders of the Taliban. He authored "In Afghanistan." He was executive director of Friends of Afghanistan, overseen by NSC and State Department, 1984-85. In 1987, he became a contract writer for National Geographic, traveling the length and going to source of the Amazon River, the Brahmaputra River, and going to other far away places. In 2001 he became a consultant to CBS News on Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Qaeda. In 2006, he was an adjunct professor at NYU. Course title: The politics of Islam. He later was the Afghanistan advisor on the 2007 movie "Charlie Wilson's War." From Dec. 2006 - Feb. 2008 he lived and traveled, off and on, disguised as a Pashtun, on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. In Februrary 2008, he was kidnapped by the Taliban in the tribal areas of Pakistan and released April 1. He wrote "Captive," Times Books, 2010, about his time as a prisoner of the Taliban.