Jack Bauer: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Jack Bauer is a fictional character played by Kiefer Sutherland as part of the television series, 24. Former Delta Force member and Silver Star recipient, he is a CTU special agent in Los Angeles.

In the TV series, Bauer is a former Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team member, and a former member of the US Army's elite Delta Force. He now works as the Director of Field Operations for the CTU Los Angeles Domestic Unit. His latest mission is stopping a nationwide biological attack on the United States masterminded by former MI6 agent Steven Saunders.

Bauer formerly held the position of CTU Los Angeles Director during the attempted assassination of President (then Senator) David Palmer. During that day Bauer's wife Teri, and daughter Kim, were kidnapped by Victor Drazen, a man who Bauer thought he had killed in a covert mission called Operation Nightfall in Kosovo years earlier. Bauer's colleague/former love interest Nina Myers (who turned out to be a traitor) killed Teri Bauer before being arrested. Jack Bauer was so distraught over Teri's death that he resigned as CTU Los Angeles Director and became an inactive CTU agent.

During the second day of the series, Bauer was called back to duty by the National Security Agency (NSA) to help CTU stop a terrorist group known as Second Wave from detonating a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles. Bauer initially refused, but under persuasion from President David Palmer, he agreed to take part in the operation to stop the bomb.

The first part of Bauer's day involved getting undercover with Joe Wald, a leader of a gang that was connected to Second Wave. Since Jack had previously worked undercover trying to arrest Wald, to get back with the gang, he had to take out Marshall Goren, a witness who had testified against Wald in his trial. Bauer accomplished this by beheading Goren with a hacksaw, and delivering the head in a duffel bag.