The Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC) is the nation’s premier non-profit for connecting veterans with their fellow Americans through inspiring stories of service. We’re the place where veterans can share what they’ve seen and done—and where everyone can listen and learn.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a special Book Release Edition of VBC Live celebrating the publication of the new, updated edition of Consequences: An Intelligence Officer’s War by former Air Force counterintelligence officer David Grantham.
This event also marks the launch of VBC Books, the Veterans Breakfast Club’s new publishing imprint created in partnership with Blue Ear Books. We couldn’t imagine a more fitting first title.
In 2006, David Grantham entered Iraq as a young counterintelligence officer with the elite Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI). Fresh out of training, he found himself operating in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and eventually at Camp Bucca—the sprawling American detention facility that would later become known as the incubator of ISIS. His mission was not to fight on the front lines, but to gather intelligence, recruit sources, protect American forces, and understand an increasingly chaotic battlefield where every decision carried unforeseen consequences.
Written as narrative nonfiction, Consequences offers a rare, ground-level view of intelligence work during the Iraq War. Rather than focusing on secret gadgets or Hollywood-style espionage, Grantham reveals the patient, uncertain, and deeply human work of earning trust, weighing evidence, and making decisions when lives—and history—hang in the balance. Reviewers have praised the book for opening a window into a world few Americans ever see and for exploring how choices made during wartime can echo for decades.
During this special conversation, David will discuss:
- What counterintelligence officers actually do in wartime
- The hidden intelligence battle behind the Iraq War
- Camp Bucca, Iran’s growing influence, and the rise of ISIS
- The burden of making life-and-death decisions with incomplete information
- Why he decided to tell this story—and what he learned by writing it
We’ll also celebrate the beginning of VBC Books and discuss why preserving veterans’ stories in print remains one of the Veterans Breakfast Club’s most important missions.
Whether you’re interested in military history, intelligence, the Global War on Terror, or simply a remarkable personal story told with honesty and humility, this promises to be an unforgettable evening.
Come help us celebrate the launch of a new book—and a new chapter in the Veterans Breakfast Club’s mission to preserve, publish, and share veterans’ stories.
When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Americans mourned a fallen leader. But behind the scenes, the U.S. military launched a worldwide response that remains little known today.
Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a conversation with researcher and former Marine officer John F. Davies, whose years of work in newly released government records and veterans’ accounts examines how the armed forces reacted during the tense hours and days following the assassination. Davies argues that military commands around the world were placed on heightened alert and that concerns about Soviet involvement created fears of a much wider international crisis.
We’ll explore what happened inside the Pentagon and overseas commands, hear from veterans who were serving at the time, and discuss how one of the most shocking events in American history intersected with the dangers of the Cold War.
This event is free and open to all. To join the conversation live on Zoom, please use this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6402618738.
Or tune in on Facebook or YouTube at 7:00pm ET. Whether you have something to share or simply want to listen and learn, we welcome you to be part of the conversation!
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The Veterans Breakfast Club (VBC) is the nation’s premier non-profit for connecting veterans with their fellow Americans through inspiring stories of service.
Our goal is to build a nation that understands and values the experiences of our military veterans so that every day is Veterans Day.
We do this by bringing together–in-person and online–men and women from all walks of life, all ages and eras, and every branch of service to talk about what they’ve seen and done. We want to hear how people’s military service has shaped them. “Every Veteran Has a Story” is our slogan. We want to hear every one.
We share the stories we hear in our weekly VBC Bulletin email newsletter and our quarterly VBC Magazine. We also record a weekly podcast, The Scuttlebutt, about military culture from the people who lived it.
We do all this because we believe the best way to thank a Veteran is to listen.
Listening is what the VBC has been doing for the past 15 years, when we held our first small event outside of Pittsburgh. Since then, we’ve held over 1,000 programs in-person and online and have welcomed over 20,000 different people at our events, Veterans and non-Veterans coming together to listen.
We value every veteran’s experience, no matter who they are or when or how they served. We’ve seen up close the power of storytelling, as the memories shared at VBC events connect, heal, educate, and inspire an ever-expanding circle of listeners.
THE VETERANS HISTORY PROJECT
Preserving veterans’ stories so that this living history is never forgotten.
We pair passionate VBC volunteers with military veterans for one-on-one oral history interviews over Zoom. If you are a veteran, or you know a veteran, who would be interested in sharing his or her story with us, let us know. If you are someone interested in conducting these interviews, please reach out!
At any given event, you might hear from the newest members of Space Force to a 101-year-old World War II veteran.
We’ve welcomed Tin Can Sailors and Montford Point Marines, Vietnam Sky Soldiers and Cold War intelligence officers. We’ve heard stories from the Horn of Africa to Antarctica, the Bering Sea to Diego Garcia, and all points in between.
LORAN Coast Guardsmen and Radar Station Airmen have told us about serving in some of the most remote places on earth.
Korean War veterans have borne witness to their “forgotten war.”
Other “forgotten warriors” shared their memories of Beirut, Grenada, and Mogadishu.
Some of the first women authorized for combat shared stories of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of the Purple Hearts they received.
