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