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Speaker 3: Cobert ops Asbiona the Team House with your host, Jack
Speaker 3: Murphy and David bark.
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to a Monday edition of the Team House.
Speaker 1: This is episode three hundred and five. I'm Jack here
Speaker 1: with Dave and our guest on tonight's show. Returning to
Speaker 1: this show is David McCloskey. He is the author of
Speaker 1: the Seventh Floor. His previous novels were Damascus Station and
Speaker 1: Moscow X. We had him on here talking about Moscow
Speaker 1: X in his career as a CIA intelligence analyst on
Speaker 1: a previous episode, You guys should really go and check
Speaker 1: it out. This is a counterintelligence novel about the CIA.
Speaker 1: Are really excited to talk about. I read this a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago. Really good book. First, we got
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Speaker 1: So David, welcome back to the show Man and congratulations
Speaker 1: on the new book.
Speaker 5: Thanks guys, thanks for having me on and uh Man
Speaker 5: really excited to be back.
Speaker 1: So the seventh Floor, tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: how this idea for book three germinated in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind and how it kind of came to fruition.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so this one.
Speaker 5: You know, readers of the other two books will recognize
Speaker 5: that there are a few characters who come back. Artemis Proctor,
Speaker 5: who's been in both of the first two books, and
Speaker 5: then a guy named Sam Joseph who was a CIA
Speaker 5: case officer who was in the first one to Basket Station.
Speaker 5: And you know, as I've written the books, I've gotten
Speaker 5: more and more just enthralled with the Procter character. I
Speaker 5: got this, I love writing her, and I really appreciate that.
Speaker 5: And I really wanted to write a story that was
Speaker 5: very Langley focused, like just deep at CIA Langley culture,
Speaker 5: both headquarters and of course the field, and to kind
Speaker 5: of watch a group of case officers grow up. And
Speaker 5: you know, for that kind of story, I thought a
Speaker 5: really interesting lens to throw on it would be, you
Speaker 5: know what if one of them is actually working for
Speaker 5: the opposition, right, And so this idea of this kind
Speaker 5: of classic mole hunt story, which is, you know, I
Speaker 5: think maybe has some Cold War vibes to it, but maybe,
Speaker 5: as we'll talk about, is like actually a very present danger, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a very modern problem.
Speaker 6: I thought, okay, well, let's just let's do a bit
Speaker 6: of like an espionage. Who done it right?
Speaker 5: So the premise of the book is essentially that they're
Speaker 5: there's one of Proctor's friends is working for the Russians.
Speaker 5: Who is it right? And the rest of the book
Speaker 5: is an effort for her and her friend Sam to
Speaker 5: figure out who that is. And so, you know, as
Speaker 5: I kind of toyed around with that, it felt like
Speaker 5: a really good way to deal with, you know, the CIA,
Speaker 5: but also just to kind of deal with Proctor and
Speaker 5: her past and who her friends are. Right, So I
Speaker 5: fell in love with it that way.
Speaker 1: And to kind of like set up like the premise
Speaker 1: of the book a little bit. It's mainly about what
Speaker 1: four or five senior CIA officers who, as you say,
Speaker 1: they grew up, they went to the farm together. They
Speaker 1: were part of the same cohort, the same generation and
Speaker 1: coming up through the whole War on Terror, and they
Speaker 1: have this background in the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: and some bad blood about you know, twenty years later
Speaker 1: that kind of rears its ugly head.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no exactly.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, I think as I wrote, I
Speaker 5: was like, all right, well, there's got to be a
Speaker 5: shortlist of suspects, okay, in any mole Hunt story from
Speaker 5: you know, Tinker Taylor onward right, you have a list
Speaker 5: that you start with the sort of scope of the world,
Speaker 5: and for me, it felt more impactful, more interesting if
Speaker 5: that group of people were very very close to Procter
Speaker 5: kind of our mole hunter in this story. And so
Speaker 5: I had to come up with or sort of find
Speaker 5: this world of friends who went all the way back
Speaker 5: to the very beginning together and who had, at points
Speaker 5: throughout the story or throughout this kind of twenty five
Speaker 5: year arc, had been very close and as you see
Speaker 5: in the book, like some of them are you know,
Speaker 5: Proctor hates some of them now they're very like dear
Speaker 5: enemies to her.
Speaker 6: Others are still very close.
Speaker 5: And you know, I think it's an interesting question and
Speaker 5: one that the book. I didn't start the book thinking
Speaker 5: it would become this kind of story, but I really
Speaker 5: wanted to as it went on, kind of just look
Speaker 5: at what happens to a group of friends over time.
Speaker 5: And frankly, and I think this is kind of evergreen
Speaker 5: for anybody. It's like, how much do you really know
Speaker 5: about your friends?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 5: Which has some elements of domestic suspense, I guess you
Speaker 5: could say, which there's something deep inside us that I
Speaker 5: think we look at like you look at your husband,
Speaker 5: you look at your wife, you look at your neighbor,
Speaker 5: and you're like, I have a mental image of who
Speaker 5: they are. I know a lot of things about them,
Speaker 5: but do I really know them?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: And for betrayal for somebody who is actually working for
Speaker 5: the opposition over a long period of time. You know,
Speaker 5: there's some pretty deep stuff there, which I thought was really,
Speaker 5: you know, interesting to explore this from a character standpoint.
Speaker 1: It was it was really interesting how you kind of
Speaker 1: delved into all of their backgrounds and their personality quirks
Speaker 1: like this one doesn't drink anymore, this one drinks a lot.
Speaker 1: This guy's into saltwater fish.
Speaker 6: They have these a lot of research for that, by
Speaker 6: the way, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Et cetera. Cobbies.
Speaker 4: I hope you tapped into Jack for that one.
Speaker 1: Is I we have we have a saltwater fish tank
Speaker 1: here in the in the office. But that and then,
Speaker 1: as you slowly reveal throughout the course of the novel,
Speaker 1: what was this incident in Afghanistan that kind of like
Speaker 1: bound them together in a sense, you know, and led
Speaker 1: to some of the you know, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: complex feelings honestly, the complex emotions that they have about
Speaker 1: their own past and their relationships.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know again, like I don't know, the
Speaker 5: way I write is it's not very linear. I didn't
Speaker 5: have any of this sketch out before I started writing,
Speaker 5: and just sort of.
Speaker 6: Came as I went along.
Speaker 5: But it felt like, even though I will admit that
Speaker 5: I'm breaking some rules of real trade craft in that scene,
Speaker 5: which Jack, as he's smiling here, will probably you know,
Speaker 5: probably noticed as he was reading, like, I felt it
Speaker 5: was very important that I put all of them together
Speaker 5: at some point in the book in a scene or
Speaker 5: a moment of intense sort of personal consequence, right, and
Speaker 5: where there's real physical danger, and you know, I don't
Speaker 5: want to spoil anything, but the essence of that scene
Speaker 5: is one that I think to me as I was
Speaker 5: writing it, it has both these elements of really high human
Speaker 5: sort of like there's valor, there's bravery, there's self sacrifice,
Speaker 5: and yet at the same time, you know, you sort
Speaker 5: of know as all of these people are together that
Speaker 5: one of them later on he is going to betray
Speaker 5: those very ideals and sell out for you know, money,
Speaker 5: some sense of self importance, to the other side. And
Speaker 5: I don't know if that's a dark view of human nature.
Speaker 5: I think it's a realistic one. And I thought it
Speaker 5: wasn't possible to portray kind of the lows of the
Speaker 5: betrayal without the highs of that scene and sort of
Speaker 5: elements of like true friendship that emerge.
Speaker 4: I was just gonna ask, how how did you approach that?
Speaker 1: Because it's I.
Speaker 4: Think that we want to paint villains as villainous in
Speaker 4: all of their behaviors and all of their traits.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: We don't want the guy who gives a ton of
Speaker 4: to charity or or volunteers time to also be a
Speaker 4: domestic abuser, right, Like like we want everything to fit
Speaker 4: into boxes when we look at these people. But people
Speaker 4: are far more complicated than that. So like, how how
Speaker 4: did you manage that when you were when you were
Speaker 4: fleshing us out?
Speaker 6: Man?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, it's interesting because I I also fall
Speaker 5: prey to that impulse, and yet, like I can't think
Speaker 5: of any of I mean, I can't think of anyone
Speaker 5: I've known in my life who I feel like has
Speaker 5: done objectively horrible things to me or to others who
Speaker 5: I know are love who also hasn't had some other
Speaker 5: side to them that is, you know, sort of humane
Speaker 5: or generous or.
Speaker 6: You know, like And so I think it's.
Speaker 5: I feel like it's a matter of just being authentic
Speaker 5: to human human nature, you know that. I mean, there
Speaker 5: are there are villains, I mean, and I'm certainly not
Speaker 5: trying to like be morally you know, I mean, there's
Speaker 5: a moral ambivalence to this, but I'm not trying to
Speaker 5: like equate like the guy who betrays Cia and all
Speaker 5: of his friends is the is the or girl is
Speaker 5: the bad guy in this.
Speaker 6: Book, right, right? Right?
Speaker 5: And yet and yet at the same time, it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, I just think there's a ton of complexity
Speaker 5: in all of us and the capacity to do horrible
Speaker 5: things and great things, like within the span of a
Speaker 5: couple hours.
Speaker 6: And it just, you know.
Speaker 5: That feels more realistic to human nature than than a
Speaker 5: cartoon to me. And I don't you know, I'm not
Speaker 5: trying to write cartoons. As much fun as they can be,
Speaker 5: as entertaining as they can be, it just doesn't track
Speaker 5: with my reality of you know, human human existence.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk a little bit about the intelligence
Speaker 1: counterintelligence game. And I mean that that that provides a
Speaker 1: lot of like complex, a lot of complex subjects to
Speaker 1: explore in the novel. But I mean it has a
Speaker 1: very real analog. I mean, the CIA has experienced these
Speaker 1: things with Ouldra games and others, and you explore this
Speaker 1: idea that you know, this could happen again. Maybe it
Speaker 1: is happening now, right. That's that's always the fear of
Speaker 1: a counterintelligence officer is like what am I missing? Like
Speaker 1: is it here right now?
Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, this is you know, it is interesting.
Speaker 5: Like a lot of the a lot of the sources
Speaker 5: on this are really like.
Speaker 6: Cold War late Cold War, you know era.
Speaker 5: I mean, you have this kind of classic year the
Speaker 5: Spy nineteen eighty five. You've got a number of CIA
Speaker 5: officers who are recruited around then by the KGB. You know,
Speaker 5: you've got Bob Ames at the FBI, like it kind
Speaker 5: of has you go back further into Britain. You've got
Speaker 5: Phil b You've got all these big Cold War cases
Speaker 5: the CIA ran in Moscow, and it kind of has
Speaker 5: this vibe of like this stuff doesn't happen anymore, right, right,
Speaker 5: And the reality it's just not It's just not true,
Speaker 5: you know. I mean, within the last few years, we've
Speaker 5: had kind of intelligence arrests, you know, in the States, China, Cuba,
Speaker 5: and so you can kind of go through this list
Speaker 5: and like you realize that at any point in time,
Speaker 5: given how massive are intelligence bureaucracy is, I mean, it
Speaker 5: is like so that in my book, right having a
Speaker 5: very highly placed asset in the upper reaches of CIA,
Speaker 5: my guess is that's not going on right now, But
Speaker 5: having people inside the organization or with access to the
Speaker 5: organization's information who are passing stuff to the Russians or
Speaker 5: to the Chinese or to the Iranians, like that's happening
Speaker 5: all the time, you know, And I think based on
Speaker 5: the sort of arrest tempo and the FBI sort of
Speaker 5: case temple, you'd have to assume this stuff is going
Speaker 5: on constantly.
Speaker 1: And these foreign intelligence services are sure as ship trying
Speaker 1: to penetrate everyone's trying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly exactly, I mean we are they are the
Speaker 5: best way to sort of get an advantage is to
Speaker 5: just go straight for where the information is, right, So
Speaker 5: go to the go to the intelligence service that is
Speaker 5: collecting on you, and try to try to turn somebody.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it makes a ton.
Speaker 6: Of sense here.
Speaker 1: Here's the flip side with this whole counterintelligence game that
Speaker 1: you know many others have written prolifically about, is James
Speaker 1: heyeseus Angleton. You descend he occupied the counterintelligence office for
Speaker 1: like over a decade at CIA and descended into total
Speaker 1: paranoia and thought that every thought that every source was
Speaker 1: a dangle that thought that every cable, you know, every
Speaker 1: intercept by technical means, was some sort of disinformation. It
Speaker 1: was some sort of like triple game that the Soviets
Speaker 1: were playing. And I've talked to people about this who say, like,
Speaker 1: when you put people in that CI role, you can't
Speaker 1: leave them there more than like three years, four years,
Speaker 1: because that paranoia is starts to seep into anybody. It
Speaker 1: turns into this thing of like, well maybe they weren't
Speaker 1: turned when they were when the source was recruited, but
Speaker 1: maybe they got turned a year later, and or or
Speaker 1: maybe it's a triple game. I mean, you don't it
Speaker 1: just sounds like it's a rafe really to try to navigate.
Speaker 5: Well, honestly, it was one of the one of the
Speaker 5: interesting things about researching the book was because I wasn't
Speaker 5: a counterintelligence officer at CIA, right, I was a Syria
Speaker 5: analyst and it's a very different, very different game to
Speaker 5: analyze these types of threats. But in just doing the
Speaker 5: research on it for the book, like, it makes a
Speaker 5: ton of sense to me why you would go a
Speaker 5: little bit nuts, because you end up with the goal,
Speaker 5: as I understand it is basically okay, if you think,
Speaker 5: if you think there is some kind of leak coming
Speaker 5: out of Russia house right, you were building a giant
Speaker 5: matrix essentially reporting matrix of anomalies and compairing them to
Speaker 5: one another over time and depending on who's saying what
Speaker 5: and what's the actual sort of like, so you get
Speaker 5: into this world of you know, you actually don't have
Speaker 5: four or five sources on a thing to check it
Speaker 5: against itself. You have a couple of things that contradict
Speaker 5: each other and no way to verify initially whether either
Speaker 5: of those things.
Speaker 6: Is true or not.
Speaker 5: And so you end up you can very you know,
Speaker 5: easily end up. And I think the Angleton quote or
Speaker 5: someone mentioned this about him, is like you end up
Speaker 5: in this wilderness of mirrors where there's nothing to really
Speaker 5: hold on to, right right, and it's a fundamentally.
Speaker 6: Slow moving slog to do.
Speaker 5: These kind of investigations, and so I can totally I
Speaker 5: can totally see how over not a not long period
Speaker 5: of time, somebody would be totally gassed doing it right.
Speaker 5: It's very tedious and demanding work, and it's not sexy
Speaker 5: at all.
Speaker 1: There's a line, there's a line in your book, a
Speaker 1: specific quote that I have heard people. People have told
Speaker 1: me this in the past, and the quote is we
Speaker 1: have a problem, and we have That's a that's a
Speaker 1: very open ended statement, but very profound when when a
Speaker 1: counterintelligence officer comes to the you know, the the director
Speaker 1: of Central Intelligence and says, we have a problem. But okay,
Speaker 1: what is that problem? You know how we have put
Speaker 1: our finger on.
Speaker 5: That that that line, if I'm remembering, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 5: I pulled that directly from the main anemmy, which is
Speaker 5: a great yeah, Milt Bearden book, James Risen book about
Speaker 5: Here the Spy and kind of the tail end of
Speaker 5: the Cult War, and it's that book covers a lot
Speaker 5: of things, but one of them is this, you know intent,
Speaker 5: like this this realization inside what was then sort of
Speaker 5: the I think it was called CE Division at the time, right,
Speaker 5: it was even before it was before the Russia House
Speaker 5: book and movies, so they didn't call it Russia House.
Speaker 6: At the time, they knew that there.
Speaker 5: Was something very wrong because so many of their assets
Speaker 5: had gone cold, or they knew they were ruled up,
Speaker 5: but they didn't they didn't know why, you know. And
Speaker 5: that's the other piece of the counterintelligence game that was
Speaker 5: very fascinating to me, was like, it's very It's it's
Speaker 5: one thing to say you have a problem to specifically
Speaker 5: identify if the source of the leak is actually.
Speaker 6: Very challenging.
Speaker 5: And most espionage novels that deal with the mole hunt,
Speaker 5: I think, treat that as a relatively simple thing to
Speaker 5: figure out, and it's actually really, really, really hard. And
Speaker 5: our legal regime in the States, the Espionage Act, and
Speaker 5: they need to prove intent and all this kind of
Speaker 5: stuff makes it even harder.
Speaker 4: Well, and not only that, but just the more or
Speaker 4: obligation of the CI investigator, because the moment you shine
Speaker 4: a spotlight on somebody just just as out of curiosity
Speaker 4: or just to like clarified discrepancies or whatever else, you
Speaker 4: could ruin their life.
Speaker 5: Right yeah, right, I mean, and I'm now, oh man,
Speaker 5: I forget his name, but there was there was a
Speaker 5: CIA officer during the Hanson investigation.
Speaker 1: The dude who was read onto all the Russia house
Speaker 1: stuff but never deployed because he was an.
Speaker 5: Algatholic, and he he was just completely dogged by the
Speaker 5: FBI for years and basically had his career ruined. And
Speaker 5: it turns out his bomb Hanson. You know, so this
Speaker 5: this guy like had his life wrecked by the Bureau
Speaker 5: and he didn't he hadn't done anything wrong.
Speaker 1: You know, as you're talking about this, the line from
Speaker 1: Milt's book, it comes from Aims started showing up at
Speaker 1: the office. Weren't expensive suits that he could never afford,
Speaker 1: and then he goes into Milt's office and demands to
Speaker 1: be put on Russia cases and then storms back out
Speaker 1: and they look at each other, like like Milton one
Speaker 1: of his colleagues, And I think that's where the line is.
Speaker 1: We have a problem.
Speaker 6: We have a problem, Yeah, that guy.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, as a total side note, one
Speaker 5: of the when I came in, we had we had
Speaker 5: to do these financial disclosure forms like every you know,
Speaker 5: twelve to twenty four months or something like that, and
Speaker 5: it was it was all because of Ams, you know,
Speaker 5: because he all of a sudden, I think he bought
Speaker 5: a Jaguar if I'm not mistaken, Like there were a
Speaker 5: bunch of conspicuous consumption, like random purchases he made with
Speaker 5: the Russian money that you know, like were inexplicable on
Speaker 5: his GS thirteen or twelve salary or whatever it was. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and you know, the it's a little bit. I think
Speaker 5: the mole hunting in some ways is a little bit
Speaker 5: like like TSA searches, where you're always looking for like
Speaker 5: the last thing, you know, and it's just very hard.
Speaker 5: I think it's just it's very hard to track these
Speaker 5: people down in real time if they're in especially if
Speaker 5: it's an intelligence officer who kind of has some sense
Speaker 5: of how to manage the tradecraft or the foreign service,
Speaker 5: and to communicate with them, like you know, catching them
Speaker 5: is it's almost impossible. I mean, it's not done quickly
Speaker 5: unless they make a massive mistake.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm not revealing too much of the book,
Speaker 1: but I think this is kind of an exciting part
Speaker 1: of it that would entice people to go and read it.
Speaker 1: Is that your protagonists find themselves in this position where
Speaker 1: the counterintelligence investigation cannot be conducted formally, so they have
Speaker 1: to conduct an illegal investigation.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and look, there's an.
Speaker 1: Artistic license, but it's it's a fund it is, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 5: And I will say I'm gonna I'm gonna sort of
Speaker 5: talk out of both sides of my mouth right now,
Speaker 5: Like I don't like spy books where someone quote unquote
Speaker 5: goes rogue or whatever. I mean, I think those are
Speaker 5: generally ridiculous. At the same time, you know, I was
Speaker 5: I was trying with this book to come up with
Speaker 5: an idea of like, all right, well, if you really thought,
Speaker 5: I mean you put yourself in the character shoes, like
Speaker 5: if you really thought that there was rot way way
Speaker 5: up and it just wasn't going to be looked at
Speaker 5: how far and you were, and you were convinced that
Speaker 5: it was true, you know, what would you what would
Speaker 5: you do? And you know, I think Proctor and Sam
Speaker 5: and some of these other characters. I mean, there's another
Speaker 5: theme in here, which is kind of like, all right,
Speaker 5: you have this, you have this institution, the CIA, that
Speaker 5: has you've grown up here, and it's also treated you
Speaker 5: like garbage all at once. What do you owe a
Speaker 5: place like that? You know, are you going to are
Speaker 5: you gonna help?
Speaker 6: You know, find this more?
Speaker 5: You're just gonna walk away. And and I mean I
Speaker 5: think that's a bit of an open question throughout, like
Speaker 5: what's the right answer to that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the the the other thing I want to ask
Speaker 1: you too is about the culture at CIA, and I mean,
Speaker 1: this can this can be pretty open, an open ended conversation,
Speaker 1: and you know, of course need the answer however you like.
Speaker 1: But I mean the quote, the quote in the beginning
Speaker 1: of your book is you know, you can love the building,
Speaker 1: but the building doesn't love you back, or something something
Speaker 1: of that nature. And the connection I made in my
Speaker 1: mind as I was reading this was to the guys
Speaker 1: who uh are Havana syndrome victims or an animalist health
Speaker 1: incidents as we call it, because of what those guys experienced.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's the espionage portion of their job, but
Speaker 1: then it's the institutional betrayal that is that is really shocking.
Speaker 1: And you know, one one person, one source spoken to
Speaker 1: you know, he was on the phone with his boss
Speaker 1: at the Special Activities Division and was literally saying, I'm hurt.
Speaker 1: I need help, and his boss is like, sorry, brother,
Speaker 1: nothing I can do for you. You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: suck it up. Click. That's a part I mean, I
Speaker 1: know there are some terrific people at CIA, but that
Speaker 1: what I just described is also a part of that
Speaker 1: culture and that exists.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, man, I mean I don't think there's easy
Speaker 5: answers to this, you know, I mean, I think it
Speaker 5: is true that the epigraph of the book is the
Speaker 5: building doesn't love you back, which anytime somebody was talking
Speaker 5: about like going extra mile for the place or like
Speaker 5: doing something that was going to wreck their marriage or
Speaker 5: their family, you know, others around them would sort of
Speaker 5: cautiously chime in, like, the place doesn't love you back,
Speaker 5: you know, if you treat it this way, like it's
Speaker 5: not going to treat you better. And I think that's true,
Speaker 5: and I think it, you know, to some degree. It's
Speaker 5: a little bit like a person. And I want to
Speaker 5: I wouldn't want to push the analogy too far, but like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean a little bit right like you.
Speaker 6: You you have from.
Speaker 5: A place like this that is big and complicated and
Speaker 5: has a lot going on. You know, you have the
Speaker 5: capacity I think, for tremendous you know, sort of camaraderie
Speaker 5: and brother and sisterhood, and you have the capacity for
Speaker 5: betrayal and you know, kind of leaving you by the
Speaker 5: by the curb, right and in the moment where you
Speaker 5: need it most. And so I think, you know, I look,
Speaker 5: I I think readers will come away from the book
Speaker 5: with like probably a different sense of where I come
Speaker 5: down on the place. And I think that's good because
Speaker 5: I was trying to a in the book that like
Speaker 5: a group of twenty five plus your veterans, including some
Speaker 5: who come back in political roles, are going to have
Speaker 5: a really complicated perspective on the place after almost three decades,
Speaker 5: Like there's going to be a bunch of stuff that
Speaker 5: they love and hate about it kind of all at once.
Speaker 5: And it's going to be the rare person I think
Speaker 5: who actually looks at it entirely through the perspective of
Speaker 5: like I love this place and it's an unambiguous good
Speaker 5: and it's all been good versus you know, the other side,
Speaker 5: who's going to look at it as some like force
Speaker 5: for evil, Like it's all going to be these kind
Speaker 5: of shades of between this.
Speaker 1: So they see these positions as you know, purely upward
Speaker 1: mobility for their.
Speaker 6: Career, ya right, for sure, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: All of that stuff is super interesting in the book,
Speaker 1: And you can also kind of like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to rationalize treason, you know, that's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: But you can see if you spend twenty thirty years
Speaker 1: as a career CIA officer, I mean it's espionage can
Speaker 1: be a cutthroat Macavelian type of business, right, and you
Speaker 1: can see how like they might become disenfranchised as time
Speaker 1: goes on and they see things in very like pragmatic
Speaker 1: rather than ideological ways. You know, it's not about you
Speaker 1: know what their job is no longer about you know,
Speaker 1: the old man putting the American flag out on his
Speaker 1: front porch on Memorial Day, Like there is something darker
Speaker 1: going on behind the scenes, and how that could make
Speaker 1: them susceptible to recruitment.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, and I think, you know, very few of the
Speaker 5: espionage cases today have much to do with ideology. I
Speaker 5: really don't think there's many. Like I'm sure there's some,
Speaker 5: but it's it's not much.
Speaker 6: Right. There was there was that there's AE we've been
Speaker 6: spying Cuba.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was an ideological sort of Cuban nationalist kind
Speaker 5: of like that.
Speaker 6: Yes, it still happens.
Speaker 7: It is not the norm, you know, I think the
Speaker 7: norm is I.
Speaker 5: Mean even you know, we're talking about this today, Like
Speaker 5: there were a number of Israelis who got arrested for
Speaker 5: spying for Ron, Like there was a purely financial motive, right,
Speaker 5: we want money. I think there are like, especially when
Speaker 5: you're talking about a complicated place like the CIA, where
Speaker 5: someone has a lot of history, there are very crass
Speaker 5: personal motives around feeling like you got screwed over by
Speaker 5: a place or by people. You know, there's very ego
Speaker 5: centric stuff that I think drives can or can drive
Speaker 5: a lot of this, right, Like I mean aims, what aims,
Speaker 5: Like there were financial motives to that, but I actually
Speaker 5: think at the core of it, it was like a
Speaker 5: you know, he was a second generation agency guy who
Speaker 5: kind of had and lived up to what his dad
Speaker 5: had done, and it was a bit of a kind
Speaker 5: of seen as a deadbeat inside the organization and wanted
Speaker 5: to feel like he wasn't, you know. And the money
Speaker 5: was part of that. It was the glue, but like
Speaker 5: I'm not sure it was you know, the main thing.
Speaker 5: So a lot of this stuff is I don't know,
Speaker 5: it's it's more mundane than like, you know, you think
Speaker 5: Kim Philby was like a devoted communist right, and I
Speaker 5: think that is increasingly rare when we talk about you know,
Speaker 5: moles and traders and people working inside intelligence agencies, just
Speaker 5: as not what it was in the you know, nineteen thirties.
Speaker 4: Do you do you think that holds true for today?
Speaker 4: I mean, like if we look at Jerry Lee, you know,
Speaker 4: and things like that, like it seems like he was
Speaker 4: on China's payroll. I mean, he's Chinese. It seems like
Speaker 4: he was on China's payroll for a very long time.
Speaker 4: A lot of the industrial espionage we see from the Chinese.
Speaker 4: Do you think that still is true today, that it's
Speaker 4: not ideological?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a good point on Jerry Lee. I mean,
Speaker 5: I guess, you know, it's funny. I mean I say ideological.
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about like I'm actually, you know, we talked
Speaker 5: earlier about not applying like a Cold War lens to it.
Speaker 5: I'm kind of thinking about it in terms of like
Speaker 5: a communist versus capitalists, like sort of US star versus
Speaker 5: the free world lens. But you know, I think Montes
Speaker 5: the you know, the sort of the Cuban asset Jerry Lee.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess there's nationalistic reasons too, of kind
Speaker 5: of being like, you know, I'm supporting this other nation's geopolitics, right.
Speaker 6: It's not even it's not like community ideological.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's like there's this other side to win, right,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of cultural affinity taking place in those instances. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But because the Chinese are very clearly I mean, unfortunately
Speaker 1: this isn't like a politically correct thing to say, but
Speaker 1: they're clearly targeting Americans who are ethnically Chinese.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely, And honestly, I mean when
Speaker 5: I started writing this book, I had thought that it
Speaker 5: would be the Chinese behind it, And you know, I
Speaker 5: came up with a group of characters, none of whom
Speaker 5: actually were Chinese, and that wasn't like I just that's
Speaker 5: not how I create characters. I just sort of started
Speaker 5: writing and the characters became who they were, and I
Speaker 5: was like, I couldn't I couldn't really see any of
Speaker 5: these characters working for the Chinese, to be honest with you,
Speaker 5: and just given the profile of who they've recruited, I
Speaker 5: mean it's just borderline and realistic.
Speaker 1: Right. Why do you think a senior CIA officer would
Speaker 1: be more susceptible to the Russians rather than the Chinese.
Speaker 5: The characters that I came up with felt more like, well,
Speaker 5: I mean honestly, I started with them having had backgrounds
Speaker 5: working on Russia, and from there it kind of felt
Speaker 5: like a more natural recruitment target. And there's of course
Speaker 5: the China angle in there, which is like the Russians
Speaker 5: are trying to trade a lot of this information that
Speaker 5: the Chinese blah blah blah.
Speaker 6: But that was initially why.
Speaker 5: But I mean, you know, I would have to imagine
Speaker 5: if you're talking about motives that are you know, financial
Speaker 5: ego or otherwise that you at a base level, you'd
Speaker 5: be just as susceptible to either country's recruitment pitch, right, right,
Speaker 5: just as a matter of fact, so.
Speaker 1: As uh as everything kind of like unfolds in your book.
Speaker 1: And I'm just contemplating here, like, you know, how much
Speaker 1: we don't want to give away too much, especially in
Speaker 1: a book Accounter and Thrillery like this where there are
Speaker 1: some big reveals. Do you want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about about Artemis and Sam and kind of like
Speaker 1: their progression in this book, And yeah, I won't spoil it,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's it's it's very interesting, and there
Speaker 1: there is like a kind of a clear arc for
Speaker 1: both of them in the in this book.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, so both Artemists and Sam are harry overs
Speaker 5: from the first novel, Damaska Station.
Speaker 6: Artemist was also in the second one.
Speaker 5: And uh, you know, Artemist was in this book the
Speaker 5: whole time as kind of the major mule hunter. You know,
Speaker 5: she's the one uncovering the conspiracy.
Speaker 6: And at some point I.
Speaker 5: Realized, Okay, she needs a you know, she needs a sidekick,
Speaker 5: and she needs somebody who is still inside right because
Speaker 5: she is fired, which that won't be ruining anything, I
Speaker 5: think for readers. She is in a very sordid way.
Speaker 5: Let go about you know, ten percent of the way
Speaker 5: into the.
Speaker 6: Book and.
Speaker 5: Sam, I think, became a way to have access inside Cia,
Speaker 5: Like there are some practically some things you would want
Speaker 5: to get out if you were doing a proper mole hunt,
Speaker 5: Like you would want documents and things like that, you
Speaker 5: would want to have some bead on what's going on
Speaker 5: inside Russia house.
Speaker 6: And so he's a way to do that.
Speaker 5: But as I wrote them like it became more of
Speaker 5: a story about a very different kind of friendship from
Speaker 5: the one. And again I won't spoil who who the
Speaker 5: mole is, obviously, but like Proctor has a long standing
Speaker 5: relationship with the mole, and it's very obviously one that
Speaker 5: was at one point very close and intimate and good,
Speaker 5: and one that has become very warped over time. And
Speaker 5: I think with Sam, for me, it became almost this
Speaker 5: other lens on friendship, which is that I mean, Procater
Speaker 5: and Sam have in no way, there's no romantic thing
Speaker 5: going on there at all, but it's this other kind
Speaker 5: of relationship that is, they're loyal to one another, they're
Speaker 5: honest with one another, they love each other, I think
Speaker 5: in a very pure way.
Speaker 6: And you know, I didn't want.
Speaker 5: The book to feel like this kind of overly cynical
Speaker 5: view on just everything and everything in the espionage business,
Speaker 5: everything in CIA is kind of like busted up in
Speaker 5: gross and duplicitous, because I don't think that's true. I
Speaker 5: just don't think it's true, right, And her relationship with
Speaker 5: Sam is I think a bright spot in that they're
Speaker 5: willing to do, they're willing to sacrifice for each other,
Speaker 5: and I think that kind of thing is special and rare,
Speaker 5: and I wanted to write a story that covered it.
Speaker 1: And although what they're doing in the book is illegal
Speaker 1: as fuck. I mean, right they are. They are committed
Speaker 1: to America and like American national security, right Like they're
Speaker 1: not willing to just sit back and let it happen.
Speaker 6: Right right?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's you know, I mean I thought that
Speaker 5: that was kind of fun as I wrote it, to
Speaker 5: be like, all right, well, they're doing things that are
Speaker 5: very much against agency rags and totally illegal, and yet hopefully,
Speaker 5: you know, the reader kind of understands why they've done
Speaker 5: it and why they're doing it and it and is
Speaker 5: rooting for them. And so, you know, I think there
Speaker 5: are some there are some aspects of this one that
Speaker 5: are you know, more out there than the first two
Speaker 5: just from a purely kind of tradecraft or sort of
Speaker 5: you know, operational standpoint. But you know, I think it's
Speaker 5: a bit more of a what if, you know, like
Speaker 5: if you really believe right that the agency was you know,
Speaker 5: messed up like this, what would you do?
Speaker 1: You know? This one, this book has a different tone,
Speaker 1: which I think is good because, as I was telling
Speaker 1: you before the show, I mean, of course, you don't
Speaker 1: want to write the same book over and over again,
Speaker 1: and I think you accomplished that with this one as
Speaker 1: far as like differentiating it from the other two. You know,
Speaker 1: the first one is about Damascus, the second book is
Speaker 1: really about non official cover operatives working against Russia targets,
Speaker 1: and then this one, I mean almost all of the
Speaker 1: action takes place within the continental United States.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 5: Which was you know, in some ways, like it was
Speaker 5: pretty fun. I mean I took a, I guess in
Speaker 5: the end sort of a tax deductible trip to Vegas
Speaker 5: to do research for the novel, which was you know,
Speaker 5: anytime you're in a business where you can write off
Speaker 5: right on Vegas tickets and hotel rooms, you know, that's
Speaker 5: a good thing. And I had a ton of fun
Speaker 5: with Proctor down in Florida at the like alligator themed
Speaker 5: amusement park, and so there's a whole bunch of crazy
Speaker 5: shit I was able to.
Speaker 1: Put it in here. Just the Vegas stuff was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun too, by the way, where you know where
Speaker 1: the protagonists have to go and meet a Russian defector
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas. That that was very funny to read.
Speaker 6: I had. I had a lot of fun with that.
Speaker 5: And coincidentally, so I had like sketched out this kind
Speaker 5: of Vegas arc and one of my very good friends
Speaker 5: here in Texas I had worked with after I had
Speaker 5: left Cia. And he's a big he's a he's a big,
Speaker 5: degenerate gambler and he loves going to Vegas. And so
Speaker 5: when I told him I was thinking about the scene,
Speaker 5: He's like, all right, I will take you.
Speaker 6: I will take you to Vegas.
Speaker 5: We will go together and you will experience a whole
Speaker 5: bunch of different things for your book. And I've been
Speaker 5: traveling a lot at that point, and I was like,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm.
Speaker 6: Not sure I can get a and he's like, bring
Speaker 6: your wife, you know, come, we'll have We'll have fun.
Speaker 5: So we went and it was it was legitimately almost
Speaker 5: everything in that sequence actually happened to us over about
Speaker 5: two and a half days, including him losing. He lost
Speaker 5: like over one hundred grand playing baccarat in about thirty
Speaker 5: five minutes, just like the Russian does. I've never seen
Speaker 5: anything like it in my life. And I'm sitting there
Speaker 5: at the table. I literally had like the notebook, you know,
Speaker 5: like jotting notes down.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 5: It was absolutely deranged, and I had so much fun
Speaker 5: with it. You know, Yeah, it's it's less of an
Speaker 5: international thriller than the other ones, and it's it's a
Speaker 5: little bit like Heart of.
Speaker 6: Darkness into Procter, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, you're kind of going slowly back and back
Speaker 5: and back into this world. And I wanted it to
Speaker 5: look I mean, we talked about mole hunting, like mole
Speaker 5: hunting is fundamentally boring, and so you have to have
Speaker 5: I think, at least for my bull Hunting book, I
Speaker 5: wanted to put stuff in there that's like decidedly not right.
Speaker 5: Gator wrestling Vegas, you know, CIA baseball games that end
Speaker 5: in brawls, stuff like that, Russian Russian legals that are
Speaker 5: psychotic and try to kill you.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: I put stuff in the book that would spice it
Speaker 5: up a bit.
Speaker 4: And how difficult is that for you? Balancing that sense
Speaker 4: of realism, what you know is real vice where your
Speaker 4: story needs to go and what needs to happen.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's tough. I mean I always try.
Speaker 5: To start with the realism, like ground myself and what
Speaker 5: would really happen here? And usually I do that either
Speaker 5: because I already know the answer, or because I'll call
Speaker 5: three or four people and kind of, you know, say,
Speaker 5: give them the what if and they'll say, well, kind
Speaker 5: of be like this, and then I might think, you know,
Speaker 5: and this happened a lot in this book. Actually it's like,
Speaker 5: well that that's not going to work, you know, for
Speaker 5: the story, Like the actual way this thing is going.
Speaker 6: To go right just really won't work.
Speaker 5: And so if that's the case, I will always prioritize
Speaker 5: propulsion in the story, you know, and I will try
Speaker 5: my best to break the rules, but to let the
Speaker 5: reader know that I know I'm breaking the rules. I
Speaker 5: think that that's often an effective way to like have
Speaker 5: a character sort of either in dialogue or as they're
Speaker 5: kind of you know, as you're in their thoughts, like
Speaker 5: you understand that this isn't how it normally goes, but
Speaker 5: this is how it's going.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 5: That's a good way to do it too, because I'm
Speaker 5: always you know, look, i don't know if I've succeeded,
Speaker 5: but I'm always trying to avoid someone, you know, like
Speaker 5: one of you two esteemed readers picking this thing up
Speaker 5: because you know how these things work and kind of
Speaker 5: being like that's bullshit, Yeah, this is a cartoons. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm trying to I don't want that. Ultimately, I'm trying
Speaker 5: to avoid that at all costs.
Speaker 4: And I think it definitely depends on what kind of
Speaker 4: world that you're trying to build too. For instance, like
Speaker 4: if we all watch like The Bourne Identity, we accept
Speaker 4: the world that they're selling. We know there are hit
Speaker 4: teams all over the world, Like we know, we know
Speaker 4: that's not a thing. But but we're going to buy
Speaker 4: the world that they're selling. But if you're trying to
Speaker 4: sell a very very real, based on real life world,
Speaker 4: you know, there are things that have to happen in
Speaker 4: the story.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: And it reminds me of just like technical consulting. Right,
Speaker 4: It's like the protagonists has to lose they have to
Speaker 4: have their pistol taken away in the scene, so they're
Speaker 4: going to hold it out so that the bad guy
Speaker 4: can grab it. It's like, yeah, but if they're trained,
Speaker 4: they're going to go to retention. It's like, yeah, but
Speaker 4: they have to lose their pistols, Like yeah, right, all right,
Speaker 4: Well then in this moment they're not trained or they
Speaker 4: forget or whatever.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, well and I think you know, my.
Speaker 5: So, my my dad and I have a we have
Speaker 5: a good family friend back in Minnesota where I grew
Speaker 5: up who is a creative writing teacher, and he had
Speaker 5: this great This is even before I started writing. He
Speaker 5: had this great example because I would always ask him like,
Speaker 5: what's the worst thing you've read this week? You know,
Speaker 5: because from like the eighteen or nineteen year old students,
Speaker 5: and one week it was an example of a story
Speaker 5: that had totally huge, sort of physical you know, reality
Speaker 5: up to the eighty percent mark and then all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, someone got on a motorcycle and drove it
Speaker 5: eight hundred miles an hour up the top of a skyscraper.
Speaker 6: And from here from there on out.
Speaker 5: I have always talked about, like, is there an eight
Speaker 5: hundred mile per hour motorcycle in my story? Like is
Speaker 5: there something where you get to this point and you're.
Speaker 1: Just like pushed too far right?
Speaker 5: Wow, Like that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: that's you want to avoid.
Speaker 6: That.
Speaker 5: That is the definition of you've built the world, and
Speaker 5: then inside the world you've built.
Speaker 6: You've broken the rules. You know, that's what you're trying
Speaker 6: to avoid.
Speaker 4: I think we see that a lot with with character development,
Speaker 4: where people have established who their character is, how they
Speaker 4: respond in situations, how they act, and then because they
Speaker 4: need the story to go a certain way. In one moment,
Speaker 4: the character acts totally out of character. How do you
Speaker 4: maintain the you know, the the character's identity.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so.
Speaker 5: The way I do that is by I don't outline anything,
Speaker 5: so I don't have any sense at the highest level.
Speaker 5: I have a sense of the emotional climax of the book,
Speaker 5: Like there's this, there's a rough outline of a scene
Speaker 5: in my head where I want to get to, but
Speaker 5: there's no there's no other constraints. I don't know exactly
Speaker 5: where the story is going to end. You know, I
Speaker 5: don't even know who exactly is in that scene. I
Speaker 5: just have some idea for it. So, you know, there
Speaker 5: was I think it'd be giving too much a way
Speaker 5: to say what it is in the seventh Floor. But
Speaker 5: in Moscow Acts, the prior book, it was an image
Speaker 5: of a woman on horseback riding away from a house
Speaker 5: that was on fire. That was it, and I was like,
Speaker 5: all right, I'm gonna try to get there. And so
Speaker 5: really the writing process is an effort from setting to
Speaker 5: discover character, and then from character the plot comes out.
Speaker 6: And so I think.
Speaker 5: If you kind of do it in that direction, or
Speaker 5: at least that's the way I've done it so far,
Speaker 5: you end up with fewer of those contradictions because it
Speaker 5: just it by definition, can't contradict itself. It's coming out
Speaker 5: of the character as opposed to me, the author saying
Speaker 5: the plot should.
Speaker 1: Be this right.
Speaker 5: And then you discover the characters, and the characters like, well,
Speaker 5: we don't want to do that, and you're like, well,
Speaker 5: you have to to get to this outcome that I wanted.
Speaker 5: I tried doing that on the first book, and it
Speaker 5: just it just didn't work, and so I abandoned it.
Speaker 5: That's how I've avoided it so far, at least tried
Speaker 5: to avoid it. I mean, readers will have to tell
Speaker 5: me if I've pulled it off. But you know, I
Speaker 5: think for me, outlines and again this is for me
Speaker 5: because a lot of writers outline and they do it effectively.
Speaker 5: For me, the outlines make it boring, and they make
Speaker 5: it predictable, and they force me into situations like you
Speaker 5: just described, where it's like I've got to force the
Speaker 5: character to do something they don't want to do.
Speaker 1: I've heard Brad Thors say the same thing, that he
Speaker 1: likes to paint his characters into a corner and they
Speaker 1: have to kind of feel their way out that outlines
Speaker 1: would kind of take that away from it, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 6: Think that's totally right. I think that's totally right.
Speaker 5: The outline's like, my general presumption is that if I
Speaker 5: am bored by the.
Speaker 6: Story, is the author the reader is.
Speaker 5: Going to hate it, and that just doesn't work, you know.
Speaker 5: So if I'm surprised by what happened, you know, my
Speaker 5: hope is that the reader will be.
Speaker 4: Surprised to So how how sorry, Jack, So, how well
Speaker 4: do you know your characters when you start with them?
Speaker 4: How well is there is there any point in time
Speaker 4: when you sit down and sketch out like who this
Speaker 4: person is, what they think, what they believe?
Speaker 1: Are they based off real people?
Speaker 4: You know? How do you work the character?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 5: So I typically I don't do any of the profiling stuff.
Speaker 5: And there's one piece of that, which is just pure
Speaker 5: laziness because I don't want to because it's not productive
Speaker 5: to the writing of the book. The second piece of
Speaker 5: it is more practical, which is like, if I'm getting
Speaker 5: to know somebody in life, I do not come away
Speaker 5: from a conversation with you and write up a profile.
Speaker 1: Right, you know?
Speaker 5: I have some sense of like all right, spend time
Speaker 5: with these guys. Here's kind of how they handle themselves.
Speaker 5: Here's how they talk, here's particular ticks, mannerisms, here's some
Speaker 5: things you know, Like it's the scene that we're in
Speaker 5: that helps me understand who you are, right, And so
Speaker 5: I think for me, getting to know characters is first
Speaker 5: and foremost just about writing scenes that they're in, or
Speaker 5: sometimes by like taking a question that's like, all right,
Speaker 5: what is this person afraid of? Right, and just kind
Speaker 5: of writing a response to that from their standpoint, right,
Speaker 5: like to get to know them a little bit. Like
Speaker 5: if I were asking you that question, right, Like I
Speaker 5: would learn more about you if I was.
Speaker 6: Like, hey, what do you what are your deepest fears are?
Speaker 5: Like how do you think you're going to die? Or
Speaker 5: you know, what do you eat for breakfast? I mean,
Speaker 5: all these kinds of things would like reveal pieces of
Speaker 5: your character. And if I knew more about you, I
Speaker 5: would be able to write your voice more authentically. And
Speaker 5: so I think for me, the character development is like
Speaker 5: a lot of time on target and just a lot
Speaker 5: of time with somebody, you know, because what I'll find
Speaker 5: in the books is I'll start writing from the standpoint
Speaker 5: of a character, and even characters who I feel like
Speaker 5: start to work pretty quickly by the time I've gone
Speaker 5: from chapter one to chapter seventy. If I get to
Speaker 5: chapter seventy and I kind of read that voice, that's
Speaker 5: a more authentic voice for the character than what I
Speaker 5: had found in chapter one, and so then I've got
Speaker 5: to go back and rework it. And it's the same
Speaker 5: as if like right now, you know, you know, we've
Speaker 5: now spent a couple podcasts together, but like if we
Speaker 5: all hung out for a week, at the end of
Speaker 5: that week, the way that I would write you would
Speaker 5: be much more authentic.
Speaker 6: Than at the beginning.
Speaker 5: And that's just it's an unavoidable I think, you know,
Speaker 5: fact of doing or trying to do more character driven
Speaker 5: fiction is you've got to spend time with the characters
Speaker 5: to know what the story is.
Speaker 1: There's one other thing I want to tell people about
Speaker 1: the book, you know, as far as getting into the
Speaker 1: end of the book, but without giving specifics here you
Speaker 1: keep people guessing right up until the end. Did a
Speaker 1: really good job on that. But then the other thing
Speaker 1: is the there's a there's sort of an epilogue to
Speaker 1: the book that I felt like you added the airplane
Speaker 1: very well, which you know, it's easy for an author
Speaker 1: to set up a complicated conundrum, but as we've seen
Speaker 1: in so many films and books, it's quite difficult to
Speaker 1: land it. And I felt you did that and you
Speaker 1: kind of like closed all the loops by the end
Speaker 1: of it actually quite.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you. That was it was very hard.
Speaker 5: This one had more of a structure of a who
Speaker 5: done it, as we said, than like an international thriller
Speaker 5: type thing, where like you take four or five threads
Speaker 5: and you sort of smash them together, right. This one
Speaker 5: felt more like how do I parse information out or
Speaker 5: frankly read herrings out.
Speaker 7: Over time to the reader so that you feel.
Speaker 5: Like you might be able to solve it, even though
Speaker 5: if I've done my homework, there's actually no way to
Speaker 5: solve it until, you you know, until the reveal, right,
Speaker 5: And I think that that is the payoff, right.
Speaker 7: Is like who is the mole? You know, it's if it.
Speaker 5: Were if it were Tinker Taylor's soldier Bill Hayden, Like
Speaker 5: the book sucks, you know, because you don't know who
Speaker 5: it is. You have to you have to preserve that
Speaker 5: that suspense, And so that was really important and It
Speaker 5: was also like in early drafts that I shared with
Speaker 5: my wife and other readers, everyone guessed who it was
Speaker 5: because I was trying to build an emotional connection between
Speaker 5: Proctor and the mole, right, and that made.
Speaker 6: It apparent who it was, right, right, right, And.
Speaker 5: And so I had to sort of like work that
Speaker 5: stuff back to a point where I hopefully still maintained
Speaker 5: some of the raw like connection between the two, like
Speaker 5: their friends, and that you know, there was there's a
Speaker 5: point where they loved each other, not in a romantic way,
Speaker 5: but like that was that was very hard to kind
Speaker 5: of figure out, how do you maintain, you know, the
Speaker 5: sort of emotional connection and also make it a surprise.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of a lot of mole hunts
Speaker 5: in spy literature don't have a real connection between the
Speaker 5: person doing the hunting and the mole, and I wanted
Speaker 5: this one to be different, right.
Speaker 1: That's what made Tinker Tailor Soldier spy. I actually have
Speaker 1: not read the book, but the movie is fucking good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really good. I watched it again just recently.
Speaker 6: It's like, damn, yeah, it's it's fantastic.
Speaker 5: And you know, he he does a lot of crazy
Speaker 5: stuff with with friendship and with the British class system
Speaker 5: and all this other kind of stuff that is really
Speaker 5: next level. I mean in this book, you know, I
Speaker 5: say that the you know, acknowledgements like it is, it
Speaker 5: is definitely a tip of the Captain John Leacaray because
Speaker 5: I think, yeah, I discovered as I was researching this one,
Speaker 5: that there's a huge amount of stuff in mole hunting
Speaker 5: stories that is just evergreen, like having really old lady
Speaker 5: like church lady mole hunters.
Speaker 6: You know, He's got one in his book.
Speaker 5: And then it's like if you do research on this
Speaker 5: and you find like who's doing the CI and Moile
Speaker 5: hunting in the early nineties, it's like it's a bunch
Speaker 5: of church ladies in like weird long dresses and like
Speaker 5: they've been in the agency for forty years. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's it's the same stuff. And you know, he he
Speaker 5: based most of his story, of course off with Philby,
Speaker 5: but also off of the British double cross system in
Speaker 5: World War Two.
Speaker 6: There's a great book called Double Cross by J. C.
Speaker 5: Masterman that is like the Bible on this thing, even
Speaker 5: though it's terribly written, So you know he's tapping there's
Speaker 5: there's some real like stuff that's consistent over time in
Speaker 5: the space that I wanted to make sure that I,
Speaker 5: you know, tip my cap to.
Speaker 1: So look, Mkolsky, you're on a roll here, three books.
Speaker 1: What's what's next? What's rattling around in the back of
Speaker 1: your mind that you're working on now?
Speaker 5: So I am. I am close to finishing a fourth book.
Speaker 5: It's an Israel Iron story, is a Masad versus the
Speaker 5: Goods for story, and there's no there's no Americans in it.
Speaker 5: There's no crossover from the first three books, at least
Speaker 5: as of now. I'm not done writing it, but I'm
Speaker 5: getting very close. And it's a story about essentially imagining,
Speaker 5: like what if the Iranians had the capability need to
Speaker 5: hit specific Massad officers inside Israel as kind of retribution
Speaker 5: for what massade is down inside Iran. And it's a
Speaker 5: back and forth of the Iranians hunting these Massad guys
Speaker 5: and the Massad guys hunting the Iranians who were hunting them.
Speaker 5: And you know, of course it's been a bit washed
Speaker 5: over by current events. I mean, I had to like
Speaker 5: incorporate stuff as I've gone along, but I think it's
Speaker 5: become a story.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 5: It's become kind of a story about like whether in
Speaker 5: the midst of that kind of back and forth, like
Speaker 5: and you get to a point even between people of
Speaker 5: their being forgiveness, you know, for what's been done in
Speaker 5: the past. So not to get too airy fairy with it,
Speaker 5: but that's been what the characters have been dealing with.
Speaker 5: So it's been fun and I'm hopeful that it'll be
Speaker 5: out next fall. And I would tell you a title,
Speaker 5: but my editor hates all of my working titles, so.
Speaker 1: They'll definitely changed.
Speaker 6: I won't. It's just working working draft of book four.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's fantastic. What is your research process been on that, like,
Speaker 4: because obviously new things have come out about Israeli capabilities.
Speaker 4: I mean, the whole pager operation, the shaping was incredible.
Speaker 1: Like, I don't know if it's nuts.
Speaker 4: I don't know if anybody could have written that or
Speaker 4: anything like that prior to it happening.
Speaker 5: I mean, honestly, I think if I had written that
Speaker 5: into a book, my editor would have said, this is
Speaker 5: too insane, you need to change it.
Speaker 6: Like, I really don't think he would have.
Speaker 5: He would have accepted it, you know, Honestly, The inspiration
Speaker 5: for me with kind of the crux of this book
Speaker 5: is a Israeli asset inside Iran who is a he's
Speaker 5: a he's a Persian Jewish dentis who's been recruited by
Speaker 5: the Israelis to do stuff for them inside Iran. And
Speaker 5: he's very good with people, he's very charismatic. He is
Speaker 5: trying to convince an Iranian woman who is the sort
Speaker 5: of clerical or admin person inside this assassination team. She
Speaker 5: doesn't know what it's doing, but she's got access to
Speaker 5: all this stuff. He's trying to convince her that he's
Speaker 5: actually working for the Iranian government right another security ministry,
Speaker 5: their Ministry of Intelligence and Security. And for me, the
Speaker 5: inspiration for this was like when I talk with case officers,
Speaker 5: current informer about kind of the future of espionage, you know,
Speaker 5: in a world of sensors and phones and cameras everywhere
Speaker 5: and the ability to store this stuff for basically free
Speaker 5: and to analyze it really effectively, Like how do you
Speaker 5: actually recruit and run people right, you know, over a
Speaker 5: long period of time kind of under the old rules
Speaker 5: And the answer is kind of like it's impossible. And
Speaker 5: more and more I've heard this analogy that like, human
Speaker 5: operations are going to become a lot more like the
Speaker 5: movie The Sting, the old Robert Redford flick, where they're
Speaker 5: conning this guy so effectively that at the end he
Speaker 5: actually doesn't even know that he's been conned, and yet
Speaker 5: he's lost all his money, right, right, And so I
Speaker 5: was trying to set up this operation at the heart
Speaker 5: of it that's like that where you.
Speaker 6: Know, this this woman is being used.
Speaker 5: By the Israelis, recruited by the Israelis, but she doesn't
Speaker 5: even know, right, how do they How would they.
Speaker 6: Pull that off? So that was the that was the
Speaker 6: vibes that kind of the heart of the book.
Speaker 1: I read about one in a book that apparently this
Speaker 1: actually happened where the South African intelligence recruited as secretary
Speaker 1: in the US embassy and they did it by Poe
Speaker 1: as if they're m I six, so like maybe not
Speaker 1: quite as threatening, like hey, we're just the British. We
Speaker 1: just need some you know, situational awareness and what the
Speaker 1: Americans are doing so we can be closer, you know.
Speaker 1: And they worked there like that. I remember even the
Speaker 1: when they met her in the hotel room, the number
Speaker 1: on the door corresponded with with her interest in like
Speaker 1: astrological stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that she feels like it's faded.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: Well it's kind of it's kind of crazy that, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's it's the false flag stuff. But then it's also like,
Speaker 5: you know, I think a lot of a lot of
Speaker 5: Chinese kind of outreaches this way of finding somebody on
Speaker 5: LinkedIn and basically trying to get them like, oh, you know,
Speaker 5: we're interested in your consulting services, you know, and here's
Speaker 5: here's a fake consulting firm that's reaching out to you
Speaker 5: to sort of contract with you, you know, for your expertise.
Speaker 5: So they're kind of stroking your ego, making you feel important,
Speaker 5: giving you a paycheck. And you know, I'm sure a
Speaker 5: lot of people would love to convince themselves that that's
Speaker 5: not a for there's not a hostile foreign government on
Speaker 5: the other side of this offer.
Speaker 6: It's just a consulting firm, you.
Speaker 4: Know, right, Dad, If there is at least one exploding
Speaker 4: molar filling in this, I will be so happy.
Speaker 5: You just gave me a good idea for another scene.
Speaker 5: Actually I don't, I don't. I don't have any exploding
Speaker 5: dental work yet.
Speaker 6: In this book.
Speaker 5: But it's not just I'm really enough in the process
Speaker 5: where I'm sure I could include it.
Speaker 6: So you will. You will get an honorable mention if I.
Speaker 1: Do end work from that end. What that's awesome. Do
Speaker 1: we have any questions for David, let me see m Corbyn.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: She just says, never trust the Russians.
Speaker 6: I can get on board with that, you know, speaking.
Speaker 4: About Russians, you know, because you know, obviously the Russians
Speaker 4: are willing to go places that a lot of other
Speaker 4: intelligence services aren't when it comes to you know, the
Speaker 4: Havana syndrome, assassination, things like that, Like they do a
Speaker 4: lot of things that a lot of intelligence services won't do.
Speaker 4: In your opinion, what is the appropriate response to that
Speaker 4: type of activity.
Speaker 6: I think I think it's hitting them back. I mean,
Speaker 6: I guess.
Speaker 5: I feel like the Russian approach is poking, pushing, prodding,
Speaker 5: hitting until there's a response and then there's a recalibration.
Speaker 5: And it feels very elementary school playground in a lot
Speaker 5: of ways. Like if you have somebody who is big
Speaker 5: and kind of nasty on the playground and they like
Speaker 5: to do that kind of stuff, they will not stop
Speaker 5: until they're stopped, or until somebody draws a line and
Speaker 5: imposes some kind of cost for that behavior. And I
Speaker 5: don't know, I think about, you know, bounties in Afghanistan.
Speaker 5: I think about directed energy weapons. You know, you kind
Speaker 5: of think like and granted I'm not reading the intel,
Speaker 5: so I don't know what's going on, but it doesn't
Speaker 5: seem from the outside like costs have been imposed for
Speaker 5: those behaviors. And if I were the Russians, I would
Speaker 5: assume that that meant that I could continue to do
Speaker 5: them and to get away with it. And so it
Speaker 5: feels to me like you sort of have to you
Speaker 5: have to hit back to deal with an adversary.
Speaker 6: Like what I don't know, I mean.
Speaker 1: Is what's coal that's in my mind recently? Is so
Speaker 1: you have the series of events, right, like, just to
Speaker 1: let you describe, it's like kind of a bit of
Speaker 1: school yard bullying. But yeah, twenty sixteen, the Russians medal
Speaker 1: in the election, they try to Anyways, CIA gets pissed
Speaker 1: off and they get pissy and they have a renewed
Speaker 1: focus on targeting Russia and targeting Russians. Well, the Russians
Speaker 1: aren't stupid, obviously, they know they're being heavily targeted all
Speaker 1: of a sudden. Yeah, and what happens next Havana syndrome? Well,
Speaker 1: like I could be wrong, right, I don't know this
Speaker 1: for a fact. I couldn't say that I know it
Speaker 1: for a fact, but you can start to kind of
Speaker 1: like parse out that there's this tit for tat that's
Speaker 1: taking place.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I guess, Mike, I totally agree, And I
Speaker 5: guess my question would be, like the response from our
Speaker 5: side on Havana syndrome has been to sort.
Speaker 1: Of pretend it's not real, right.
Speaker 5: Denigrate, denigrate the actual victims, and sort of throw everybody,
Speaker 5: even though, of course, like if I took the whole
Speaker 5: pool of people who have come forward and said, hey,
Speaker 5: I've had something, like, they're obviously a group that are
Speaker 5: probably not represented you know that didn't happen to you.
Speaker 6: But there's there's a.
Speaker 5: There's a there's a very clearly a group of humans
Speaker 5: who are formers at you know, CIA and State and
Speaker 5: otherwise who have experienced something. And it doesn't seem like
Speaker 5: our response has been robust, you know to that, like,
Speaker 5: what what have we what have we done? Like are
Speaker 5: Russian intelligence officers afraid to be working the America target,
Speaker 5: you know, like that.
Speaker 1: We're going to push them into a car trunk.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean but that But that's what
Speaker 5: kind of what it comes down to, right, is like
Speaker 5: are we are we willing to.
Speaker 6: Go back at them in the same way to impose
Speaker 6: a cost? Right, It's I haven't seen it.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because when the agency's denial first came out
Speaker 4: about it, and I assumed initially that it was basically
Speaker 4: like the US government during with Agent Orange, that we
Speaker 4: just don't believe these people or we're.
Speaker 1: Not quite sure, there's not enough.
Speaker 4: But then I started wondering if it's the fact that
Speaker 4: they don't want to admit it because they don't have
Speaker 4: a response or don't have not the agent, not the agency,
Speaker 4: but the government in general doesn't have the will to respond.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, well I agree with that.
Speaker 5: The more confusing part to me, though, has been that
Speaker 5: it seems as that there's elements inside the agency, including
Speaker 5: the task force or whatever, that's been doing some of
Speaker 5: the analysis on this that has also been relatively quick
Speaker 5: or not maybe not quick, but that has come to
Speaker 5: the conclusion that it's not actually a foreign adversary, which
Speaker 5: I find perplexing. I don't given just what I've heard
Speaker 5: from some folks who are inside and some of the
Speaker 5: intelligent case and the billing pat stuff, like, I kind
Speaker 5: of don't. Well, I find it to be a very
Speaker 5: confusing picture.
Speaker 1: That's the propaganda from the seventh four. The Department of
Speaker 1: State and DoD had a much better reaction to it
Speaker 1: than CIA did. And these CIA officials behaved as though
Speaker 1: the way they took this was that this is the
Speaker 1: new Moscow signal from the nineteen seventies and eighties, like
Speaker 1: this is just a sort of morass that we don't
Speaker 1: want to have to deal with, and it starts to
Speaker 1: involve personnel issues that people don't want it to ploy overseas,
Speaker 1: that dependents don't want it to ploy overseas. Like our
Speaker 1: predecessor got blasted over there. His mind doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 1: This poor guy, like, why we're not going to deploy
Speaker 1: over there?
Speaker 5: Fuck no, Well, I mean it's exactly proving the point
Speaker 5: for the Russians to do it in the first place. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's like you've got all these like potentially great officers
Speaker 5: who are out there trying to target Russians, and you know,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, a few of them are like, well,
Speaker 5: this isn't worth it. You know, I'm gonna get no
Speaker 5: backup from the agency if it happens, and I might,
Speaker 5: like my my wife and kids might get hit when
Speaker 5: I'm at home because the Russians don't.
Speaker 1: Get you know, in my opinion, it has to be
Speaker 1: viewed through the lens that it's a psychological operation supported
Speaker 1: by a kinetic operation rather than the other way around.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, the bigger even saying that the bigger impact
Speaker 5: is actually like the secondary the people who are like no.
Speaker 4: Way, the denization and the lack of the way it
Speaker 4: destroys faith in the institution from within.
Speaker 6: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean I'm putting myself in the shoes of
Speaker 5: an office or who's like if you're going out to
Speaker 5: tash Kent, right, and all of a sudden you're like,
Speaker 5: do I want do I want.
Speaker 6: To take that? Right? Right? Wrote that position?
Speaker 5: Do I want to be analyst in station tash Kent
Speaker 5: and potentially, you know, get my brain microwaved by the Russians?
Speaker 5: You know, if I've got like a four year old
Speaker 5: kid or something like that, like, you know, maybe I'll
Speaker 5: go work on you know, Indonesian economics or something like that,
Speaker 5: right instead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we just had another question coming Mohamed Savani,
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. How should American America combat the
Speaker 4: Chinese intelligence infiltration of our academic institutions? Example, do OJ's
Speaker 4: Initiative against Economic Espionage and lever Harvard case them taking
Speaker 4: the F twenty two plan, et.
Speaker 7: Cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 6: Yeah, can good grief? I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 4: No pressure, Yeah, I mean, can we combat them? Can
Speaker 4: we stop them without outright just saying no? You know,
Speaker 4: naturalized Chinese people can work on these projects?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it seems crazy hard. I don't I
Speaker 5: don't even know where to begin with that one. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, I think we've done some good things on
Speaker 5: like semiconductors and some of the really really really mission
Speaker 5: critical like supply chains. But the problem is it's just
Speaker 5: so broad, right, the effort to like hoover up all
Speaker 5: this IP and information just everything.
Speaker 6: It kind of feels hopeless to me at this point.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think, Yeah, one of the things that
Speaker 5: I know a bunch of my former colleagues and friends
Speaker 5: are you know, involved in or trying to help big organizations,
Speaker 5: be they Fortune five hundreds or pe firms or whatever
Speaker 5: it's like to understand their level of sort of you know,
Speaker 5: insider threat risk or frankly where their capital is actually
Speaker 5: coming from.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think there are some practical things that you know,
Speaker 5: people can do, but it does seem like the sort
Speaker 5: of forces out of the barn on that stuff. I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't have any you know, sorry to the to
Speaker 5: the intrepid listener, but I don't I don't have any
Speaker 5: particularly practical ideas on that front that that wouldn't be
Speaker 5: like ridiculously draconian.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've talked to people who say that there's
Speaker 4: you know, who are kind of in that field, who
Speaker 4: say that there's probably not a single piece of military
Speaker 4: tech that we have that the Chinese don't have.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, does it go the other way you think?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I really don't. I think that, you know
Speaker 4: that one of the challenges of a free.
Speaker 6: Society, it's an open society.
Speaker 4: An open society, it's an open society problem, and you know,
Speaker 4: and we don't want to give up that open society.
Speaker 1: So in China doesn't have that problem, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, if they can control their people with social
Speaker 4: credit scores and you know, you know, constant surveillance and
Speaker 4: everything else like that. I don't think it's a problem
Speaker 4: at all. I mean when you look at what James
Speaker 4: Lee did or Lee did and uh, you know, in
Speaker 4: the communications systems we brought in, you know, to lose
Speaker 4: close you know, close to thirty Chinese assets and over
Speaker 4: over a very short period, it's like, how do you
Speaker 4: operate in that kind of environment?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's I have gone
Speaker 5: back and forth on this question of like whether it's
Speaker 5: an advantage right now to be an authoritarian you know,
Speaker 5: sort of like techno you know, authoritarian government, or whether
Speaker 5: you know, the sort of free and open systems you know, havingage.
Speaker 5: And I think it's very fashionable of course, to like,
Speaker 5: you know, predict the end of open Western liberalism and
Speaker 5: you know American democracy and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: And I'm not sure I'm there yet, but you do
Speaker 5: have to think that there are some real advantages that
Speaker 5: the Chinese and other closed systems have that.
Speaker 6: That we don't, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, they have the ability to knit like I
Speaker 5: mean our Washington and Silicon Valley are culturally antagonistic, and
Speaker 5: you know, also on separate coasts, right, and just completely
Speaker 5: opposite to one another. Like the Chinese have the ability
Speaker 5: to sort of mesh that sort of defense you know,
Speaker 5: national security system with the tech right, and I think
Speaker 5: there's a whole bunch of deadweight loss that comes with
Speaker 5: that that our system doesn't have. Right, But over time,
Speaker 5: you know, is that a more Is that a more
Speaker 5: effective way to apply you know, sort of AI to fighting?
Speaker 5: Is that a more effective way to apply synthetic biology
Speaker 5: and AI together into fighting? You know, things like that,
Speaker 5: Like it's just maybe it is. I don't I don't know.
Speaker 5: It certainly has some distinct advantages over the way we're doing.
Speaker 6: Things right now.
Speaker 4: Sure, but I and I agree, I think that the
Speaker 4: that the open society has, you know, far more advantage
Speaker 4: when it comes I mean not just for the citizens
Speaker 4: and basic human freedom, but in terms of innovation and
Speaker 4: things like that, Like we far outpace any you know,
Speaker 4: those other countries. The problem though, is that when that
Speaker 4: tyrannical government, when all of our innovation just walks right
Speaker 4: out the door into their lap.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And you know, I feel like the weird and
Speaker 5: narrow path that we're going to have to walk as
Speaker 5: a society is like, how do we how do we
Speaker 5: keep some of the essentials of that inside while also
Speaker 5: retaining the open character, right, you know, which which is
Speaker 5: very hard in a you know, with the telecom environment
Speaker 5: that we have, with the networked environment that we have,
Speaker 5: and with the free flow of you know, large largely
Speaker 5: free flow of you know, capital and goods and ideas
Speaker 5: and people. It's just it's a you know, it feels
Speaker 5: it feels ridiculously challenging right now.
Speaker 4: What do you think that you know, the current state
Speaker 4: of our education system in terms of I would say,
Speaker 4: and I think Jack might disagree with I'm not sure,
Speaker 4: but I would say heavily infiltrated by Marxist ideals, but
Speaker 4: also infiltrated by you know, foreign money.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: Do you do you.
Speaker 4: Feel that that, especially when we look at like the
Speaker 4: agency in the NSA, like these are the kids that
Speaker 4: they're bringing on, right, and these kids might not necessarily
Speaker 4: be anti American.
Speaker 1: But maybe they think there's a better, a better path.
Speaker 4: For America than these these old white founding fathers.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Do you do you think that that is a challenge
Speaker 4: that we potentially face.
Speaker 5: Well, look, I mean I think on the I think
Speaker 5: on the recruiting side, we have a bunch of different,
Speaker 5: like really significant problems. I mean, I think one of
Speaker 5: them is that we cannot pay competitively inside the government,
Speaker 5: and it's just it seems like it should be an
Speaker 5: easy problem to fix.
Speaker 6: It's not. I think it's really hard to retain people.
Speaker 5: It's not so hard to bring them in when they're
Speaker 5: like twenty two necessarily, but when they're like twenty five,
Speaker 5: twenty six, thirty, you know, it's just the A ceases
Speaker 5: to be competitive, and I think that is a massive problem.
Speaker 5: I think we have big, big problems with the security
Speaker 5: intake process across particularly our you know intelligence you know,
Speaker 5: our IC agencies, Like it takes you know, a year
Speaker 5: plus to get in.
Speaker 6: So people who are weighing.
Speaker 5: Other offers, like who might actually be really good inside
Speaker 5: NSA or CIA or whatever like decide to just bail
Speaker 5: and go do something else because they get the offer
Speaker 5: from you know, Google in two weeks and the CIA
Speaker 5: offer won't be there for another ten months. That's a
Speaker 5: massive problem. I think there is an absolute crisis of
Speaker 5: completely shitty middle management inside most of these places that
Speaker 5: is deadening to people and is honestly a lot of
Speaker 5: the times, Like people don't necessarily leave places, they leave managers.
Speaker 6: And so it's like, well, if you do.
Speaker 5: Have a bunch of really lousy gs thirteen managers who
Speaker 5: are leading all these you know, bright young people, like
Speaker 5: they're going to eventually leave, and I, you know, and
Speaker 5: I do think you have less you know, to your
Speaker 5: point dat like I think there are less and less.
Speaker 6: There's less and less civics being taught in school.
Speaker 5: People don't have a sense of history, people don't have
Speaker 5: a sense of you know, the value of the United
Speaker 5: States of America. And I think there's there's less. My
Speaker 5: sense is there's maybe less of a missional aspect to it,
Speaker 5: although that is a potentially uh you know, uh millennial
Speaker 5: take on gen Z. I don't know, right, but I
Speaker 5: think there's something. I think there's something there. But I
Speaker 5: think all that stuff like together, you know, at the
Speaker 5: same time, the agency is getting a ton of applications
Speaker 5: and so you know, there's there's there's a bunch, there's
Speaker 5: some facts on.
Speaker 6: The other side of it. I just think, particularly when
Speaker 6: you talk about like retention over time of your.
Speaker 5: Best people, it's like less of an attraction point. I
Speaker 5: think it's more of a like, if people are really good,
Speaker 5: how do you keep them after ten years, after fifteen years,
Speaker 5: after five I think that to me that you know,
Speaker 5: again I don't have access to any of the HR data,
Speaker 5: but to me, that feels like the biggest, the biggest
Speaker 5: issue I haven't seen. Looking at this again as impressionistic,
Speaker 5: I haven't heard of I've heard anecdotes of sort of
Speaker 5: like wocism at the agency and how that's impacted things,
Speaker 5: But I don't know if it's a broader crisis.
Speaker 6: I'm probably too far removed to have an answer.
Speaker 4: To that, And I don't want to assume, you know,
Speaker 4: it's just it's just one of those things that I
Speaker 4: And again it's not that I'm saying that kids coming
Speaker 4: out of college are anti American, but you know, if
Speaker 4: if their idea that America is based on colonization and
Speaker 4: anti anti colonial activity and they feel like that's the
Speaker 4: better way, then you know, you know, it's not like
Speaker 4: they're anti American, but they may be anti American ideals
Speaker 4: that we were founded on were founded on.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 5: Look, I think that there are basically like two lenses
Speaker 5: that most people come to CIA through. One of them
Speaker 5: is like superhero spies, in Hollywood, which is Jack Ryan.
Speaker 5: There's like car chases, everyone's hot stuff blows up. It's
Speaker 5: completely there's no connection to reality whatsoever. Right, So there's
Speaker 5: that lens, and there's another lens, which is the CIA
Speaker 5: is some kind of morally dubious group of people who
Speaker 5: have consistently tortured other people and oppressed them and spied
Speaker 5: on them and do horrible things. And I think those
Speaker 5: two like looking glasses, are not a good way to
Speaker 5: run your sort.
Speaker 6: Of pr campaign, do you know what I mean? Like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And so I think as I think a lot
Speaker 5: of people have a very warped view, even even intelligent
Speaker 5: people who are reading the stuff that's out there, they
Speaker 5: just have a very warped view of how these organizations work.
Speaker 5: And ultimately, and what I'm getting at is like why
Speaker 5: is this place important? You know, this place is important
Speaker 5: because it potentially gives us a huge information advantage over
Speaker 5: our adversaries. Most Americans should want that, We should want
Speaker 5: an information advantage, and so you should want to go
Speaker 5: work there to help us get that advantage. Right, But
Speaker 5: there's there's a difficulty kind of connecting that I think
Speaker 5: to you know, your average twenty two year old who's like, oh,
Speaker 5: it's not Jack Ryan or you know, you're torturing people.
Speaker 5: Just there's no right, there's no ability.
Speaker 6: To kind of deal with these places in reality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like what disadvantage government did you overthew last week?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I mean I encounter it like just talking
Speaker 1: to people on like social media, where the CIA is
Speaker 1: the sort of like choose your own adventure thing where
Speaker 1: they're hyper competent but also hyper incompetent all at the
Speaker 1: same time, and it's like, this can't be true, Like
Speaker 1: you realize it's impossible for them to be doing the
Speaker 1: like playing four D chess but also fucking up everywhere
Speaker 1: they go. Like it doesn't that doesn't that doesn't really
Speaker 1: make sense.
Speaker 5: I completely agree with that, and I don't know, I
Speaker 5: honestly don't know how to answer that, like that question
Speaker 5: or even how to engage with people who view it
Speaker 5: that way at this point, because I also encountered these
Speaker 5: people on social media and it is this weird mixture.
Speaker 1: Of like all over movies, yeah.
Speaker 5: Exactly, conspiracy theory mashup or you know, even had conversations.
Speaker 5: You know, my my past life at CIA was all
Speaker 5: on Syria, and so there is a very common pro
Speaker 5: Russia thread out there on Syria now, which is like, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, Syrians didn't use chemical weapons US. It's kind
Speaker 5: of a good guy, right, you know, Russia. Russia was
Speaker 5: kind of coming in to, you know, kill a bunch
Speaker 5: of terrorists, so we should be happy. And it's interesting
Speaker 5: because I will try to they will try to bait
Speaker 5: me or goad me into saying things that back up
Speaker 5: that narrative, and if they can twist something I say,
Speaker 5: they'll take it and be like, oh, there's a former
Speaker 5: CIA officer that says this about this. But then if
Speaker 5: you say something that doesn't go with it, the fact
Speaker 5: that your CIA is is then used against you. And
Speaker 5: so it's this very like it's just a very twisted
Speaker 5: up Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's bizarre world. It's true or not true based
Speaker 1: on what you want to believe at that moment.
Speaker 4: I want to point everybody to your to your first
Speaker 4: episode where we did talk more about your your career
Speaker 4: and everything, which is episode two thirty four. So if
Speaker 4: you guys haven't seen that, please go check it out.
Speaker 6: Check it out.
Speaker 1: I have another question that came in.
Speaker 4: Uh Mohammed Samani, thank you very much for the very
Speaker 4: Gernerstone Nation, would you consider TikTok the biggest Chinese syop
Speaker 4: singan op of all time? They destroy the America's my
Speaker 4: youth's mind with be dancing on our platforms and promote
Speaker 4: science plus athletics to our to their own citizens, plus
Speaker 4: gain network and film.
Speaker 5: I just don't want a lot of those videos to
Speaker 5: go away, you know, So I'm kind of I'm kind
Speaker 5: of toorn. I mean, look, I think the Chinese are
Speaker 5: absolutely using it for purposes of sort of social profile
Speaker 5: and understanding how our system works.
Speaker 6: Right like that seems obvious.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you guys would agree or disagree
Speaker 5: with that, but it's it seems fairly straightforward to me.
Speaker 6: I think that.
Speaker 5: I mean, in general, I do have some kind of
Speaker 5: old fogey belief that these kind of videos are like
Speaker 5: wrecking our minds and that they're the equivalent of you know,
Speaker 5: mainlining sugar all day, which is bad for you and
Speaker 5: bad for critical thinking and just generally bad for productivity.
Speaker 5: I guess what I'm missing in this picture and what
Speaker 5: I kind of continually want, and maybe it's just in
Speaker 5: classified stuff that I can't see, is like some kind
Speaker 5: of intel on plans and intentions, you know, like I
Speaker 5: can create a very plausible scenario in which a Chinese
Speaker 5: company that is connected, of course to the Chinese Communist
Speaker 5: Party has created something that is immensely valuable, gives them
Speaker 5: a bunch of useful data, but stop short of being
Speaker 5: some kind of massive conspiracy. Like I think that is
Speaker 5: a plausible, you know, sort of assessment to come to
Speaker 5: based on what we're seeing. I would just love I
Speaker 5: would love.
Speaker 6: I mean, I would love.
Speaker 5: The government to declassify something that says that here's how
Speaker 5: the Chinese government is using this, using it, here's how
Speaker 5: it fits into a broader strategy, right, Like we get
Speaker 5: some of this with the less structured versions of Russian
Speaker 5: disinformation campaigns, where you get the kind of plans and intentions.
Speaker 5: Bit I just I would love to see it on
Speaker 5: this side. I just don't know where it is.
Speaker 4: So so David, I branching off this and my last
Speaker 4: question I hope is you know, because we talk about TikTok,
Speaker 4: we've talked about like the Russians willing to you know,
Speaker 4: use directed energy weapons or whatever. So in your author brain, okay,
Speaker 4: not not going off of intel that you know, but
Speaker 4: in your author brain, as somebody who has worked at
Speaker 4: the CIA, the Chinese owning the data to genetic testing
Speaker 4: twenty three and meters or or you know, pregnancy, you know,
Speaker 4: testing stuff tailored viruses, things like that. Where in your
Speaker 4: author brain can can that.
Speaker 1: Sort of go?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, where it initially goes is that basically,
Speaker 5: if you have so, my view on synthetic biology would
Speaker 5: be that twenty thirty years ago, you needed, you know,
Speaker 5: several hundred million dollars a bunch of very educated lab
Speaker 5: bunkies who had PhDs and whatnot, and you needed a
Speaker 5: lifetime of education to be able to do any kind
Speaker 5: of gene editing whatsoever, or any work with DNA like
Speaker 5: you just that was that was the point of entry,
Speaker 5: which meant that you didn't have randos who had a
Speaker 5: couple hundred grand and the right computer software and some
Speaker 5: kind of weird devotion to figure out how you might
Speaker 5: create artificial life. Well, we are now in a world
Speaker 5: where the barriers to entry and the sort of marginal
Speaker 5: cost of like Mayhem is exceptionally low.
Speaker 6: And so what I am most scared of?
Speaker 5: I mean, and I think I haven't worked it into
Speaker 5: a plot of a book, although it would not be
Speaker 5: hard to do it. It's like if you mash the technologization
Speaker 5: of life with the technologization of intelligence, you know, you
Speaker 5: end up with a situation where the kind of the
Speaker 5: rule that has thus thus far appeared in nature has
Speaker 5: largely been that like the transmittability of.
Speaker 6: A disease is you know it.
Speaker 5: Basically the more infectious the diseases, the less lethal it is. Right,
Speaker 5: So that rule, as far as I understand it, is
Speaker 5: not one that necessarily would hold. So you could create
Speaker 5: something that would be highly lethal and highly transmittable incubation period.
Speaker 5: And that's and that's super scary, right, I mean, and
Speaker 5: you don't have to be you don't even have to
Speaker 5: be North Korea to do that, you know, you just
Speaker 5: have to be somebody who's got a little bit of
Speaker 5: money and the desire to do it. You could be
Speaker 5: a small you know sort of you know olmshen Rico
Speaker 5: death cult with you know, better tech.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: I think that that that stuff is terrifying to me
Speaker 5: as a human, but also you know, as a Spye novelist.
Speaker 5: That's what that's the kind of stuff that actually keeps
Speaker 5: me up at night, much more than like Chinese industrial espionage,
Speaker 5: which I'll admit is scary.
Speaker 6: It is like, yeah, do you do you end up?
Speaker 5: Which is the situation where someone has created a thing that, yeah,
Speaker 5: I know, it can kill twenty percent of the humans
Speaker 5: on the planet within you know, six to twelve months. Right,
Speaker 5: That's that's a realistic future that we live in. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: So next Friday, we're gonna have Chris Feistel on the show.
Speaker 1: Spent twenty six years in the Drug Enforcement Agency and
Speaker 1: is featured in the Narcos television show. So we'll be
Speaker 1: back with that.
Speaker 4: And oh, we had one more question come into after
Speaker 4: you plug your mother.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got to plug the book here We Defy
Speaker 1: coming out December ninth, Lost Chapters of Special Forces History.
Speaker 1: It's up for pre order, now go check it out, guys.
Speaker 4: Last question just came in Bobby Ash, Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: What edge does FBI counter intelligence have on CIA counter
Speaker 4: intelligence and vice versa? And should the deputy of the
Speaker 4: CIA CE group be an FBI agent or should law
Speaker 4: enforcement intel be kept apart?
Speaker 5: So my understanding is that the head of the Counterintelligence
Speaker 5: Mission Center right now at CIA is an FBI special agent,
Speaker 5: and that that is I'm not sure if that's like
Speaker 5: a mandate, but that that that's been the general rule
Speaker 5: going back for a while now. I'm not sure how
Speaker 5: far back that goes. I think that probably makes sense
Speaker 5: given the nature of the of the threat and because
Speaker 5: ultimately the counterintelligence function is like the nearest thing that
Speaker 5: we've got at CAA to like law enforcement, and that's
Speaker 5: what FBI is doing, right, So that makes a lot
Speaker 5: of sense to me because it ultimately is more of
Speaker 5: an investigation. It's not like, how do we go out
Speaker 5: and collect intel on Xhijin Paning or Vladimir Putin or
Speaker 5: Bashar Alasade, right, It's like, how do we find people
Speaker 5: and prosecute people, largely American? Who are you know, committing
Speaker 5: these crimes? That makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 5: I think the connection has gotten my senses again having
Speaker 5: not worked it is that in particular since the sort
Speaker 5: of handsome aims years of the early nineties where the
Speaker 5: FBI and CIA kind of went head to head, more
Speaker 5: is that it's gotten a lot more streamlined and tight
Speaker 5: between the two agencies, which I think is good. So,
Speaker 5: you know, again, I'm not sure how the nuts and
Speaker 5: bolts of it are working inside today, but my view
Speaker 5: is that we've made real improvements over the past couple decades.
Speaker 1: So tell people where they can go and find the
Speaker 1: seventh floor. Where's the best place to go and buy
Speaker 1: this book?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you can get it wherever you get your books.
Speaker 5: That could be Amazon, Indie Bound, Apple Books, your local
Speaker 5: neighborhood bookstore, Barnes and Noble, pretty much wherever. It's in ebook, audiobook, hardcover.
Speaker 5: Obviously not paperback yet, but you know, in a year
Speaker 5: be out on paperback.
Speaker 1: And we have a link down in the description for
Speaker 1: people to go and click and they can get it
Speaker 1: right there.
Speaker 5: Awesome, awesome, And yeah, you can learn more about me
Speaker 5: at David McCloskey books dot com.
Speaker 6: It's got all the books and you know more about
Speaker 6: me and my life and experience there. Cool.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you David so much for joining us again
Speaker 1: and we look forward to having you back for book four.
Speaker 6: Thanks guys, this was a ton of fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me back on Thanks, Yeah, anytime, and
Speaker 1: we will see all you guys on Friday.