John Kiriakou's Dead Drop - S1E26 Did John Le Carre Invent The Modern Spy?

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

THE BLURB: In this episode, we ask a question: did author and ex-spy John Le Carre invent the modern spy by channeling his experiences as a Cold War spy into novels like "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold", "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "The Night Manager, The Constant Gardner, Russia House and The Little Drummer Girl? What about real spies did le Carre capture that makes real spies respond to his fictional spies - and then imitate them and their language? We'll also talk shop about writing and the many challenges of repurposing a life in espionage as art.SHOW NOTESFor more information about Barry Eisler, visit barryeisler.com.For more information about Glenn Carle, visitFor more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production. John Kirooku, welcome to Dead Drop, What Makes a Spy Tick? As always, we thank you for listening and for keeping us part of your regular podcast regimen. Whether you listen in big bites or little ones, we thank you for biting. And we especially thank you for liking, rating, reviewing, commenting on, and sharing the podcast via whatever platform you're listening to it. In this episode, we're going to bite into a question. Did John LeCarray invent the modern spy? Graham Green, another spy-turned-author, said this,

quote, being a novelist is similar to spying. Both require watching, listening, and analyzing human behavior. Unquote. As you've heard in this podcast, the good spy needs to be a people person, too, especially if the information thereafter sits inside another person's head. A talented spy is adept at using a story, real or created to compel other people to tell their stories for the spy's purpose, whatever it is,

good, bad, or indifferent. You've also heard in this podcast how the CIA wanted people with sociopathic tendencies. That's because while sociopaths themselves can't be trusted by their bosses, well, because they're sociopaths, people with sociopathic tendencies can be trusted. People with sociopathic tendencies, me for instance. Well, we see black and white. We see a higher purpose and a greater good, but we also see gray. And the truth is, there's a lot of gray out there separating the black from the white. People with sociopathic tendencies have no philosophical issues navigating the gray, understanding how to navigate the gray. But things can get murky fast in a gray world. Murky and morally ambiguous. It's the ideal entry point for a compelling

story. John LaCarray was hardly the first former spy to put down their sword and pick up a pen. Other well-known authors who had also been spies include Roald Dahl, Frederick Forsyth, Peter Matheson, Graham Green, and Ian Fleming. Of them all, Ian Fleming probably had the most interesting career as a spy. He was principally responsible for imagining Operation Mincemeat, where British intelligence used a corpse, planted with fake intelligence, launched from a submarine onto a Spanish beach during World War II, to deceive the Nazis into thinking that the Allies,

were about to invade Greece when in fact they were about to invade Sicily. The bond books, by the way, were a lot more grounded in reality than the movies they inspired. Take Casino Royale, Fleming's first bond book. The gambling scenes were inspired by something that actually happened to Fleming during World War II. Fleming was headed to America via Lisbon, Portugal. While in Lisbon, he went to the casino at Estoril, knowing that it was frequented by German spies. There, Fleming started playing a game called Sheming the Fein It's a version of blackjack.

Against a few of these German spies. With just $60 in expense money in his pocket, Fleming started playing determined to bankrupt the Germans. Alas, what worked later for James Bond didn't actually work so well for Bond's creator. Fleming went bust, but he did get his own back in a way in the book when James Bond bankrupts the book's villain, Les Chieffre at Chamin Deferre.

Closer to the John Le Carre mark was Graham Green, a writer thought of as one of the giants of 20th century literature. Green was already a successful author who traveled the world when his sister Elizabeth, who worked for MI6, the British External Intelligence Service, recruited him in 1941. There was a world war going on. MI6 posted Green to Sierra Leone, of all places. But then Green's supervisor at MI6 and someone he considered a friend was none other than Kim Filby, the notoriously successful Soviet agent. Green, whom the Guardian newspaper called, perhaps the ultimate moralist thriller writer, wrote books like The Heart of the Matter,

the Quiet American, the End of the Affair, and the Power and the Glory. He also wrote Our Man in Havana about a Russian agent in Havana who begins to make up intelligence because nothing is happening and he ends up creating an international incident. Just for the record, John LaCarray himself happily admitted that his book, The Taylor of Panama, was his version of that Graham Green story. And that brings us back to John LaCarray. L'Care. L'Carré grew up David Cornwell, son of Ronnie Cornwell, a charming, narcissistic conman who drank, gambled, and wasn't above beating his son. L'carre became his father's accomplice on multiple occasions and not always by choice. Quote, spying did not introduce me to secrecy,

unquote, L'Carre wrote in his memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel. Quote, evasion and deception were the necessary weapons of my childhood, unquote. Those are strong words. Then there was was the world of English public schools and all of their secrets and secrecy. Le Carre studied foreign languages. He served in the British Army's Intelligence Corps, vetting refugees who crossed the Soviet border. He attended Oxford University. While there, in 1958, he was recruited by MI5. That's the British Internal Intelligence Service.

And he began gathering intelligence on left-wing friends who wrote for a radical journal. In time, he found himself running a bunch of informants and settling into a more bureaucratic existence. At that very moment, double agents like Kim Filby were handing information to the Soviets. Sitting on the train during his long commute through London, La Cary began to write his novels on tiny notepads. The character George Smiley appears in LeCore's very first novel, Call for the Dead, published in 1961.

Le Carre would continue adding to Smiley's story for another 58 years. The book that really put John La Cary on the literary map was his third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. While his first two books had gotten great reviews, the Birmingham Post said of Call for the Dead that, quote, one really believes in the skillfully drawn atmosphere of the service, unquote. Spy who came in from the Cold became a huge best-selling hit, a feature film starring Richard Burton and the best career launching pad a writer could ever ask for. But you have to remember, LeCarray did all. this while still working as a spy. In 1964 after being outed by Kim Filby,

La Care left the Secret Service. But of course, as we know, it never really left him. Lecari must have poured a lot of reality into his writing because after he quit, former colleagues went after him, in person mostly, for the unflinching depiction of the world they called home. In an article called Don't Be Beastly to your Secret Service, Lacare told about being buttonholed by a former MI6 colleague at a diplomatic function. You bastard Cornwell, fume the former colleague, you utter bastard, not very constructive criticism. L'Carre always felt that he had painted British intelligence as being more competent than the one he'd experienced in reality. Kim Filby, in a letter to the wife

he left behind in Beirut when he defected to the Soviet Union, confessed to, quote, admiring the sophistication of the spy who came in from the cold, after all that James Bond idiocy, unquote. That's high praise indeed. Lacare wrote 26 novels. Among them are some of the best books about spies and spying ever written. That's because La Care's other strength was his ability to see his spies as people, first and foremost. His heroes often did things they believed for the best of reasons, only to learn they'd been betrayed somewhere along the way,

undermining the thing they believe. Betrayal, especially where love is concerned, runs rampant in Jean-Lacare's world. It's the thing his characters can all say. still betray or be betrayed by love of a person or a country or an ideal. Plenty of writers write about spies, including lots of ex-spies. But none of them actually impacted the business of spying, its vocabulary, its recruitment even, the way John LaCarray did. He literally introduced vocabulary to spying the way Shakespeare introduced new words into

the English language. Before John LaCarray, I don't know of any intelligence officer who referred to the agent's working for him as his joes. La Caree invented the word lamp lighters to describe surveillance agents, honey traps, to describe using sex to compromise targets, and laundries to describe locations used as cover for a base of operations. While he didn't create the term mole to describe a deeply embedded enemy agent, he did popularize it so much that the Oxford English Dictionary says, quote, it is generally thought that the world of espionage adopted it from Le Carre. rather than vice versa, unquote.

But what does the OED know, right? Beyond just the words, John McCaray's vision of spies and spying, his perception of this gray world and the people in it, it didn't just captivate people interested in becoming spies. It inspired us to be like it in both word and deed. At least, that's the premise on the table today. Did John McCaray invent the modern spy? And if he did, how in the world did he do it?

To help us pick through the intel and try to discern something from these nebulous shadows, we have friends. First is Barry Isler. You met Barry back in episode 11 of this podcast where we asked the question, have human spies become obsolete? Barry spent three covert years with the CIA's Directorate of Operations. He worked as a technology lawyer and startup executive and so far has written three incredibly successful espionage thriller book series, including number one bestsellers, The Detachment, Livy Alone, The Night Trade, and The Killer Collective.

You heard Glenn Carl a few episodes back talking about his experiences refusing to take part in the CIA's torture program. Glenn wrote the excellent book The Interrogators, so you know he's got the right bona fides. Also joining us is Alan Katz. Alan co-writes and produces Dead Drop, and, along with the rest of us, is a huge John LaCarray fan. Gentlemen, great to have you.

Thanks for joining. Absolutely. Thank you for being here. is Alan, by the way. As the only non-spy here, I'd like to kick this conversation off by asking, before we zero in on John the Carre, as you all went into the business you went into, were there any other writers or influences that colored in any way your view of that world and perhaps inspired you to want to be part of it? Go ahead. Glenn, you want to start? The reverse is sort of true. I think I came to appreciate and discover

and read a lot of the spy espionage authors after my career had begun. Before I got into my career, I read a lot of books about espionage, but they were almost all nonfiction because I was trying to figure out if I wanted to do this for a career. And some of those books are quite influential, and the author of one of them became the man, really, who got me into the agency. and I now say that he wrote the second best memoir by a CIA officer. Who was it?

David Attlee Phillips wrote The Night Watch. It came out in 74, I think. No, that's too early, 76 or thereabouts. I was going through the process in the late 70s, early 80s. I met him while I was at graduate school and sort of pitched why I was the best thing ever for the agency. and told him that if he was still a patriot, he should get me in. And he agreed. Maybe they were just desperate for personnel, who knows.

So it wasn't that I was inspired by spy novels. I have a very clear ranking and feelings and senses of the different textures of the authors, but it wasn't fiction that drew into the agency. I read the spy who came in from the cold after having been in the agency for about a year, maybe 14 months. And it was so good and so compelling that I actually, I was overseas when I was reading it. I was in Kuwait just as we were liberating the country. I took it in with me. It was the only thing that I brought in with me besides my clothes.

It was so good and so true to life that I actually was afraid of what someone would think if I got. caught with it. Oh, he must be a spy. And so I took it to the embassy and I left it there. And I would only read it on my lunch hour. That's funny. You could have told him millions of other people have read this book, I promise. And not all smartness. That's right. What about you, Barry? I read Ian Fleming, all the Bond books when I was in high school. And LeCarray, I discovered when I was in college and then kept reading him through law school. And I wouldn't say that spy fiction had that much to do with my, at least as far as I'm aware, didn't have that much to do with my decision to join the agency. It was more that by the time I graduated from college,

I'd gotten quite interested in the way the world really works. I was reading a lot. I was a psychology major, and that was a default major. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I went to law school, like a lot of people sometimes do a friend of mine who went to law, one of my college assignments, called it YEP Youth Extension Program. I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I thought maybe YEP. While I was in law school, that's when I started thinking, well, what? I mean, you're really interested in the way the world really works. You're reading all these books and periodicals on that topic.

And I've always been interested in what I later came to call forbidden knowledge, which is anything that, John, you and I might have talked about this at some point, but anything that the government wants only a select few people to be able to do or to know and everyone else to be prohibited from it. That kind of stuff is just always interested me. I remember reading David Morel's book First Blood. I think I was in college at the time. And I just thought it was the coolest thing.

The concept that this guy was a Special Forces Vietnam veteran who learned all these skills that were only supposed to be known and practiced by a small group of people in quite select place and circumstances. But then he comes back with this stuff and starts using it at home. And I just, I always thought that stuff was great. The CIA seemed like a place where I could combine a burgeoning interest in geopolitics with an interest in what I called, uh, forbidden knowledge, what Lecara liked to call the secret world. I went to, this is way before the internet. I don't

remember how we used to do things, honestly, but I know that I was at Cornell. They had a career center. And I went up there to see if I could find a brochure, because I didn't know how, how else do you get in touch with the CIA? This is maybe 1988 or something. had a brochure in the Cornell Career Center, along with the General Electric brochure and all the other places, Berkshire Hathaway, I don't know what. I called an 800 number and that's how the ball got rolling. Joe Weisberg, a former colleague of ours in the Counterterrorism Center, wrote a novel, quite a well-regarded novel that didn't really sell very well. And after that one novel, he created The Americans, which became a blockbuster dramatic television series, blockbuster.

I couldn't tear myself away from it. Why did the two of you decide to go into literature, whether fiction or nonfiction, rather than go the Hollywood route? Glenn, do you want to... Sure. Well, I think lack of discipline, lack of self-confidence and purity of character are the reasons for me. I ended up, I think relevant is they take a half step back, actually, from the question, and address the path that Barry just described, but for myself, I got into the agency because I was true to myself,

and I'm being both facetious and serious. And that means after college, like Barry, like a lot of people with liberal arts, Renaissance minds, I didn't know what I really wanted to do. There was only one thing I ever truly was keen on, really driven and excited about it, in a similar way to how I had felt as a kid or as a college student about playing hockey, where some activity will consume you and you lose awareness of the outside world

and you are just in a pure concentration and absorption of the universe of that activity. That was the foreign service. I grew up in Boston, essentially. I am. I could go on for a long time, how I truly am, the quintessential, stereotypical, the quintessence of the New England Yankee. I grew up in Brooklyn, I went all the way across the Charles River to Harvard. I used to jog home once every six weeks with my laundry, which shows how many clothes I had or how dirty my clothes were. Either way, I love Boston,

but even before I went to college, I always had wanted to see something else. And I realized, I always felt that one's education, half of it was to challenge one's assumptions and what one knew. So I wanted to get out of Boston. I also had always wanted to learn a foreign language for reasons which I'll skip just to save the time. And the one language, foreign language that I knew anything about was French. I had studied French. And that was because in the Brookline School System at age 12, there was a choice of two languages. One was French and the other was Spanish. And my mother said, French is the language of diplomacy. You will speak French. That's what I studied. So where do you go if you want to learn a far language, the only language you know? at all is French, well, you go to France. And so I took a year off and I went to France and I loved it. So that gave me a love for things foreign. The other element in knowledge was in my family, focusing on yourself is a sign that you are at best not a full person and probably to be a good person. And a full person, you have to try to get out of yourself and devote yourself to others or to some external task or challenge. Public service was what my father did.

did, and that's, so I was drawn to that. He was in local politics for much of his life. So how does one combine an interest in learning a foreign language with this sense that unless I was engaged in some activity beyond trying to make money or to promote myself, that I was not a full person, and with what had come to be this love of things foreign? Well, that's the foreign service. So I pursued that, but it's hard to get in. It's a slow process at best. And there were twists and turns. And I then said, well, I really have to do something that challenges me to my limits intellectually and morally. I don't want life to be easy and even physically because I was a big job.

And I thought, well, I know being a spy must be crazy, wild. I'll try that. At the same time I'm pursuing the Foreign Service. Like you said, Barry, you think this is 1979, 80. How do you contact people who are in the dark? And I figured I knew. So I went to Harvard's Career Services Center, and I knew the director of it. She was a good friend because she was trying to help me figure out what to do with myself.

And I said, Margo, how do you contact the CIA? And she went like this. I thought you knew to ask. By calling that number, Glenn. And so I went home and I called that number, and that started the whole process. And there are many twists and turns. But that's how I got in. and that's what motivated me to go in.

And then to close this little tale, why was I true to myself and sort of foolishly and admirably at the same time? You may have already sensed, and I'm being completely serious here, even when I'm making my witticisms. I always have equated, it's a psychological trait of my, and in my family,

that what is hardest is what is best. Well, that's not true. What is best is what is best. But I always have equated, what is hardest with what is best. And so it turned out when I was in graduate school on Monday, the week before Thanksgiving, the Foreign Service called me and offered me a job as a political officer. And on Wednesday, the CIA called me and offering me a job as an operations officer. And I had to decide. And I thought, well, which one is harder? And I decided that being an

operations officer was harder. And I am correct. It is harder. That's why I chose. And I will tell you in confidence of a recorded conversation that I made, you know, I loved much of my career, but I made the wrong decision because I am a perfect, not that it would have been, you know, the greatest diplomat in all time, but I think I am perfect for diplomacy. I thrilled to my cover work and I did it really well. I came to be in some ways an excellent operations officer, in some ways a competent one, than in other ways, one who was pissed off that I had to do things that I had to do.

That's how I get in. You know, I'll add, too, that like you, Glenn, I thoroughly enjoyed my cover duties at the State Department. I was an economic officer. Loved every minute of it. I enjoyed the demarches and the

white papers and smoking cigars with ambassadors so-and-so and chewing the fat. I enjoyed it very, very much. to the point where I think I was good at it, but then other Americans who worked in the embassy and didn't know I was really a CIA officer

would ask behind my back, what's wrong with John? He never seems to get promoted. Everybody else is becoming a DCM or an ambassador. John's still a first secretary. And oh, it just killed me that I had to say, no, silly, that's just a cover position. And then finally, oh boy, oh boy, when I got to my final posting, I said, look, you have to make me a minister counselor or something because these cover positions just are not working anymore.

I believe sincerely that I am the only CIA or intelligence officer ever that the United States, meaning the Department of State, has allowed to represent the United States alone as the U.S. to the United Nations National Security Council. I loved it. The State Department gave me several exceptional performance citations or whatever it was, which they withheld out of kindness, because they knew that it would totally screw me in the CIA that I was doing pussy work. But that's the career that should have been.

I also applied to the Foreign Service. Probably it was around the same time. I applied to the agency. The agency was my preference, and that job offer came quite a bit sooner, so I accepted it. And I'd been at that, I don't remember because it was so long ago, but at least six months, I'd been at the agency for quite some time at this point when I got the acceptance letter from the Foreign Service.

And I thought they took so long that I had a great moment that I'll never forget, which is I just scrawled in pen on the acceptance letter. You guys take too long, folded it up and sent it back to them. And it's wonderful. I was like, really? You think I'll still wait around here later? You'd get over yourselves. But that was my experience with Foreign Service.

I'd like to ask both of you, too, about the way literature is treated by senior CIA officers. I've got several friends, more than several, who did their 30-plus years, almost always in operations, and then took positions as scholars and residents at either their alma maters or at schools in the cities where they decided to retire. They were all teaching classes like espionage in Soviet literature. I said to this one friend, I said, come on, that's not a real class. And he said, sure, it's a real class. I teach it every Tuesday and Thursday.

Espionage in Soviet literature. And let me guess, everybody who signs up for that class, signs up because they know you're a retiring CIA officer and they all want help getting into the CIA. And he said, well, that's kind of the idea, isn't it? But is it? Or is this about literature? We're all supposed to be so well read and we're supposed to be able to think the big thoughts and half of us retire and write books.

So is that just a novel new cover? I read a book when I was, I think. newly at the agency because like you were saying, Glenn, I read a lot of nonfiction. Not that attracted me to the agency, but once I got the gig, I remember thinking, geez, I should really learn as much as I can. And one of the books was called Cloak and Gout by a guy named Robin Winks. And it was about the Ivy League pipeline to the agency back in the day. So maybe that kind of pipeline still exists. I don't really know where the agency is looking for people with some sort of liberal arts education that they can assess through former people.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you have to be, no, no, no, I was very much, as I have been in every social setting in my entire life, very much a dinosaur. The hand in the shoulder at the social club or the country club or the reunion or something, talking to the son of a classmate died really before and was made. illegal. A few years before any of us showed up. It was, you know, the mid-70s that was stalled, because it was viewed correctly as biased towards certain socioeconomic circles. Yeah, and I could see where it would start to get, you'd get a kind of inbred understanding of the world, regardless of what you start with, it's just never going to adapt. And that's

probably not a good thing for any organization. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, what I would say about about college, if it's being done right, which in my experience, in my opinion, it ordinarily isn't, is that what it really comes down to is a clear and accurate understanding of human nature. You can't conduct any kind of successful affairs in this world. I mean, I was going to say foreign policy, but that's way too limited a category. You can't get things that you want in this world through any form of give and take with other humans, if you don't have that clear and accurate understanding of human nature, in that sense, I think probably there's a connection between what novelists do and what spies have

to do, what diplomats do, you have to start with that accurate understanding. If you don't have that, you just won't be able to do things, and eventually you'll have to resort to force, which is one of the two, I think, universal languages of humanity, the other. logic, but it's just not widely spoken. Everybody speaks force, punishment. And if you can't, if you don't understand how the humans work in any more sophisticated way, if you're not able to put yourselves in their shoes, if you're not able to understand how culture influences what we all have in common, but ultimately we are all the same species with the same fundamental drives. If you don't have any of that, then force is going to be the only thing you've got, which fast

forward to the current, I think, the current regime. If you're enjoying Dead Drop, and of course, we hope you are, then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great, granular story podcast from the Custard and Touchstone family. Just the photographer with David Swanson does for photojournalism what Dead Drop does for spies. Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Swanson

tells you stories his amazing news photos just can't, what it felt like being in all those dangerous places like war zones and natural disasters doing his job taking pictures. Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this. Just the photographer will put you right there on the ground right next to David. Inside his head, in fact. It's a hell of a podcast and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at costard and touchstone.com.

There's a link in this episode's show notes. In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at Costard and Touchstone. Like the donor, a DNA horror story, the hall closet, sage wellness within, and the how not to make a movie podcast. Who knows, your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now back to Dead Drop. When I was at Harvard, an article appeared in the alumni magazine in Harvard magazine, which maybe was done by them or whoever it was, it was in the magazine. And it had looked at Harvard graduates over the previous decades. I don't know how long.

And tried to measure their success and correlate it with grades. And success can be defined in many different ways. But I suppose it was income status within one's chosen line of work and so on. And they found that the most successful people, and this was a great consolation to me, The most successful people were the B students and not the A students because they concluded they have greater social skills or more sensitive to those around them. They might have sharp elbows, but they know how to win someone over, or at least they're more graceful in the social settings. And I think that is in my life assessment experience. That's true, accurate. That speaks to your point, Barry, on who makes or what makes a good operations officer.

And it's all psychology. The whole job is it's to be a good psychologist and to understand other people. And I have told many, many times an anecdote. This is when I had switched to become an analyst, actually. I was in the National Intelligence Council. But the point, I think, is the same. and I was briefing one of our political appointees on something going on in Lebanon

and I was at this time the terrorism guy and so I said well his bill of this and Hamas that the Israelis is the other thing and then you know Assad is going this way and the Turks going that way and of course the Russians are mucking around

and so but then you have the droos and you know I'm just going on and around like this and I say so it's very complicated and you have to weigh these very fast And he said, Glenn, stop. Just find me the fucking terrorists. And then he walked away. Yes.

Get up. So nuance was not particularly well viewed in certain circles of operational life, which is tragic because that led to us, you know, waging war, playing whack and ball that's killed the chief of operations. And maybe we can, by blowing stuff up in Iran, we can change the nature of the society and the regime. You know, another good idea. freedom bombs. So I think that is a crucial constituent.

That's the central element or equality that one that has to have as an operations officer to be successful. And the last thing to the comment you made about literature and the agency, John, I had, and maybe I'm being a snot here and unfair, and I think I might be being a little unfair. But I had almost the reverse experience. and the first time I was ever mentioned in a book was without my name being mentioned but it was one of my C-Tmates who resigned

and then he wrote a book which was an attack on the agency and he described he said essentially he said the problem is the following let's see how did the hell do you tell the thing yeah Joe Blow and he gave a name which was not mine but it was me walked in and he said you know the got the problem

with this goddamn place is that the only use the case officers have for books is as a recognition signal for an operational meeting. And then he cracked up and I cracked up. And I had said that. I did say that. He accurately quoted me without using, you know, attributing my criticism to myself. And so I found that there was an anti-intellectual bias. There was this disdain that was obligatory for the State Department because they were worried about what made sense instead of what we should do to the others. I had a boss who would refer to State Department people as the nerds across the river. And then when I did my first rotation to the State Department, sure, many of them were nerds,

but I was fascinated by how deeply intellectual they were. One of the desk officers that I was working with made an offhanded comment. I wouldn't want to tilt at that windmill. I chuckled because I thought it was witty. And everybody else, all the CIA people that were meeting turned and looked at me. Like, they didn't get it. And they didn't understand why I thought that was so funny. Oh, no.

I had the same. Well, we have had the same lives. He had the same lives. A different briefing, again on Lebanon, to my boss, who didn't like me because he could tell that I thought he was a fool. He was a political appointee, and he thought that Newt Gingrich was, you know, Alvin Einstein. Okay.

So I was describing once again the Lebanese situation, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I said, and I was not, I truly don't think that I was being elitist or anything like that. So essentially the problem in the Levant is the follow. And he said, Glenn, what's the Levant? And he was the fucking national intelligence officer for terrorism. Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah. That hurts. Yeah. It's interesting because that's a map issue. One of the things I did when I was in college that it turned out to be quite good background for some of the standardized tests I took when applying to the agency, I realized I knew almost nothing about the world. I'd barely been out of the country. I just didn't know anything. So I bought a globe about this big in some local store and I would just lie in bed, turning it around, saying, what's close to this? What's the capital of that? How would you sail for?

from here to there. And then I don't know what the test might have changed over the years, but one of the tests I had to take was a 50 question test for the CIA. And some of the questions were, I mean, they didn't make it easy. It was multiple choice, but it wasn't like if they asked you, what's the capital of Australia? It's not like some of the choices were going to be Rangoon or anything like that. They'd give you a couple of Australian cities, whatever.

And I got a 50 out of 50 on that test. I'm still proud of that because that was most of that, was self-learned. Anyway, the map is extremely important. But it came across an expression that I'm surprised I only heard recently. It was from Steve Walt, who's a professor of political science at the Kennedy School. Really interesting guy. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, he's wonderful. He said, he was quoting someone else. I don't remember whom, but he said, if you want to understand the world, you start with a map and you wind up with Shakespeare. And I think there's a lot to be understood then and maybe some of what else our attempts to engage with the, our meaning America's attempts

to engage with the rest of the world, there's both a map, a map deficit, but maybe also a bit of a Shakespeare deficit too. I will second that and triple down. Absolutely. I'm an ardent proponent of the liberal arts is what should be a required foundation for everyone, even if they want to become the next plasma researcher. Like the two of you, I was a map nut as a kid. I was a shortwave radio listener too. In fact, I was so proud of myself. Glenn, you'll like this then.

I was so proud of myself when I was 14 years old, 1978, I joined the American shortwave listeners club. I think I paid, it was a lot at the time. It was like 20 bucks a year. And they would send this photocopied magazine every month. month. It turned out in October of 1978, I was one of only two people in the country that was able to log and verify Radio Ulan Bator Mongolia. I sent them, it was called a QSL sheet saying, this is what I think I heard. I think you were speaking Chinese. They corrected me and they said

we were not speaking Chinese. We were speaking Mongolian. And this was the signal strength and this was the propagation disturbance and this was the overall quality. And they sent me a postcard from Mongolia. And I happened to send a copy of it to the magazine. And they put me on the cover of the magazine for Radio Uluru and Bata, Mongolia. But in my little, I had a walk-in closet in my bedroom that I turned into what I called a radio shack. And I had the map of the world on the wall and every time I would I would be able to log a station and get confirmation in writing, I would put a pin in the map. And looking at that map, every single night for years was a real foundation for me.

Like Barry with his globe, I used to spin my globe around and just put my finger on it and fantasize about going on vacation wherever my finger happened to stop on the globe. and that was really why I wanted to go to the agency. Sure, public service. My grandparents instilled this real necessity to going to public service. But then at the same time, for selfish reasons, I just wanted to see the world. And I knew that I otherwise didn't have the money to do it. I wasn't in the shortwave club.

I forget the name that you gave it. I was, however, a true member of the DXER Society, which is a little different. Yeah. It's domestic. I wasn't a ham guy. A friend of mine was in a big way. But this was sort of taken from my father.

And it's listening. It's recording as many, not literally recording, noting down, keeping a ledger of, all of the AM radio stations that you can receive. from a given location. And so Boston is at a disadvantage because half of the universe is ocean. But once the sun goes down,

AM radio will transmit about a thousand miles depending on atmospheric conditions. And there was the DX's guide to radio listening and a book that I had. I bet you I still have it in my junk. And this was in the 60s. My father had done it as a boy in the 20s and 30s. and I did it then, but not the shortwave,

although I listen to shortwave all the time. In fact, I learned to speak Spanish in part by listening to Radio Moscow International Informa and Comenta. I listened to Rikia Moscow every night in Spanish so I could practice. And they are superb language. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

The Soviets were great. Just like you, I started with AM. My dad and I went to an auction. I was nine years old. And at the end of the auction, all the junk that didn't sell, they just threw into one box. And my dad got it for 50 cents. It happened to have a tri-band radio in it, AM-FM shortwave.

We put two batteries in it, and it worked. That night, I turned it on and was just going through the AM dial. And like you say, as soon as the sun sets, a lot of these stations boost up to 50,000 watts. I remember WRVA in Richmond, Virginia, the 50,000-watt voice of Virginia, they used to say. But that night, I got KRLD. WGN in Chicago. WGN flagship station, WGN, Chicago. Whoa, whoa, radio in wherever it was, Des Moines, Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Fort Wayne, Indiana. And I got KRLD in Dallas. And I remember thinking, Dallas, Texas, it's so far away. I had never been that far away from Newcastle, Pennsylvania. The next night, I thought, well, if I could get Dallas, Texas on AM, what could I get on shortwave? Well, a couple of nights later, I got, I still remember what they said. This is Greek radiofonia to yoresi and phonistice cellados. This is Greek radio and television, the voice of Greece.

And my grandmother cried when I played it for her. And I thought, wow, this is fun. I'm on to something here. And then even just recently, I went to Havana two years ago. And a buddy of mine who was also a, he's a little bit older than I am, he was also an avid AM radio listener said, would you do me a favor? He said, I've never been to Cuba. But would you take a radio with you and tell me what you can hear on AM?

Well, I could hear everything on AM in Havana that I could hear north of Pittsburgh. Any major league baseball game you wanted to hear. Any radio station pretty much from South Florida is easy, especially because it just has to cross the water. And then once the signal is boosted after sunset, it's easy. And also there was Radio Mosque International all the time I listen to all the time. All the time. And my other regular station every night was Radio Toronto, which was just wild to listen to.

There was this unbelievable. And for Hoja, I hated everybody, including Mao and Stalin at the end. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I miss radio. There were so many times, and I only learned what this was after joining the agency. Well, let me back up. I went to another auction with my dad, and I bought an old World War II communications device, big tubes in the back of it. They would give me an electric shock every time I would touch him.

And I would always forget that I had to turn it off first before I touched the tube. It would shock me. But anyway, it picked up all the shortwave bands and all the military bands. And so every once in a while, I would go on to one of these obscure bands just to hear what I could hear. And once in a while I could hear ship to shore transmissions from cruise ships. People had lost all their money in the casino on the cruise ship and they needed to have more money wired, stuff like that. But every once in a while, I would hear almost always a man's voice just say things like eight, five, three. Oh, absolutely.

Two. I used to listen to that. I'm like, what? What is that? And it wasn't until I went to the agency that I realized it was spies reporting back. reporting back probably to Moscow using their one-time pads and speaking in one-time code. The Russians still do it, or at least they did recently.

I literally heard one not long ago. George Smiley was probably John LeCarray's signature creation. In fact, George Smiley is in the first sentence of the first book that he ever wrote, A Call for the Dead. A Call for the Dead. George Smiley's right there in the first sentence. He was writing about George Smiley until a legacy of spies, 50 some odd years later. And George Smiley appeared regularly.

Aside from the core trilogy, Graham Green wrote some great, conflicted characters. But he didn't create a George Smiley. From the perspective of both espionage professionals, but also authors, writers, what did John LeCarray capture in George Smiley that in George that really that gave that character that kind of breadth? They've almost done as many versions of Tinker, Teller, Soldier, Spy as Superman and Batman at this point. Yeah. They keep going back to that character and that character seems to be the repository for an awful lot of, if John LeCarray invented in any way the modern spy creating the language, the language,

it seemed to flow out of that character and his world. At the end of the trilogy, when he's beaten Carla, someone says, George, you've won. And he says, oh, yes, I suppose I have. That too seems to capture something quintessential about the person who walks into this world. world and does this for a living. With that, I'm going to shut up. Okay, I'm going to jump in.

I agree that Smiley is a three-dimensional character. He's a real person in a three-dimensional world. It's a real world. And Lakari describes superbly the world of intelligence and espionage in the world, the real world in which all of us, you know, lived. Those are substantial reasons why he's become sort of the defining or central figure. He's a man of the time and the era and brilliantly done. He's not an Ian Fleming character who, you know, sips, martinis and seduces girls and never has a ruffle in his clothes.

That's all to the courage credit. I'm not the hugest fan. I find he's brilliant in describing the empty half of the glass of the life of intelligence. I spent a lot of time in that empty half of the glass, but the glass is half full too, and there is human war, and there is honor, and there are successes that are sometimes unalloyed, more frequently not because life is contradictory and messy, but that's not a comment about intelligence. I have found him, frankly, too dark, as good or better than anyone, but not the best, and to me, not the definitive one, except that he really has, you know, he's had a recurring character. He's had Sherlock Holmes of the Cold War. And Graham Green could have, had he wished, but he wrote tales that were not part of the series of a single world, really. So I think that is why Smiley and La Cari get the credit, or the the attention, much of which is deserved, but not exclusively so. And I don't think at all that he is

the father of the modern novel. He might have brought parts of it to apotheosis, and he's great, but Graham Green wrote world historical literature. The Quiet American is one of the greatest books written by a human since writing was invented 5,000 years ago. One can trace the evolution of the modern of the spy novel pretty clearly. You know, John Buchan gave us international stakes in intelligence. Conrad, who is my, if I had to choose the one person to read in the Desert Island, or would be Conrad. Conrad gave us international ambiguity and psychological

darkness and complexity, unsurpassable, really. And Moms, Somerset, Mom, in Ashton, described perfectly what intelligence operations officer work is like.

I mean, he just wrote his autobiography. I don't think he even changed the names. And he shows the banality of the work and the, and the boringness. And at the same time that the stakes are literally often existential. and that was 40 years before, 50 years before, before, before, Lecari. And for all of his detachment and skepticism, he's not a neolithic cynic in the way that

sometimes Lechari I find is, which offends me a little bit, because I find it inaccurate, not holistic. It is correct, but it is partial. and then contemporary, a little later, of Lachari's, who was very successful and didn't, but not as successful. He's not the defining author of the era, the genre, is Charles McCary. And he's, if anyone, the American. Man, the Tears of Autumn. Yeah, the John Lachari of America.

He was also a wonderful man. I knew him, and he blurred my book, so he's a man of a fine taste. respect. And actually, John LaCari and I spoke a couple of times. I asked him to blur my book, and he agreed. And then shortly before the time would have, you know, fixed the commitment. He called me up and withdrew his, you know, the blurb. And I think...

Did you tell him it's too late for that? Yeah, I should have. said that. He wouldn't give me a reason why. He said, I've changed my mind. That's unquote. I think because he was actually quite hostile to American culture and policy, which I, well, fine, you know, that's okay. But I tried to argue with him that even were that the case that should lead him to want to blur my book, because my book was. was criticizing the things that I think that he objected to. But he didn't, in any event.

So to get back to the literature thing, I think he's great. I don't think he's the definitive or necessarily the apex or the founder. Le Carre came up with George Smiley as in some ways a kind of antidote to James Bond. And I think the two kinds of fiction are appealing for really different, almost opposing reasons. James Bond is wish fulfillment. I think it's fair to say. The books are actually more nuanced than the movies. No disrespect to the movies. I love the movies as much as anyone else does. But the Bond is a wishful fulfillment character. For all the reasons, you were just saying, Glenn and others. Smiley, not so much except in so far as there's just an inherent fascination with what La Cicari always called the secret world. Smiley and any other character set in that world is going to have that going for him. But I think, I think what, look, so much of this will be projection. If you love books, you'll retro. fit logical sounding explanations for why you love the books, and maybe some of that is false. But what has always made me, I love the Corre's books, is the dimensionality of the characters, just the way he depicts some aspect of what it means to be human, what it is

to be alive, what is this, what is life, what is a good life, what are mistakes, how do we live with them, all the things that any human has to grapple with or should grapple with. He depicted that in a heightened setting, which is the setting, the realm of espionage, that, that to me is really, the reason that La Carae is rightly, in my opinion, treated as literature, not as genre fiction. And that's a whole other question of what's genre. Look, I'll, since I raise the terms, I'll quickly define them as I understand them, as I see them. Genre fiction is a fiction that is driven relatively more by genre elements, could be actually. action, could be espionage, could be cowboys and Indians, whatever it is, that's more central to the book.

And when you start shading more and more into literature, you're getting, you're driven by the complexity of being human. You can still have cowboys and spies and everything else. But what really the heart of the books becomes the heart of the matter becomes humanity, all the triumphs and tragedies just of being human. So I think the enduring appeal of La Cáres' books, I think, has much more to do with his depiction of what it's like to be a fully realized, flawed, struggling human being. And then the espionage feels real because these people feel so real. And whether you know anything firsthand of that world or not, it's going to feel real to you because the people feel so real. I think that's in some ways you could say the secret sauce. Makes it sound easy,

but obviously it isn't. That's what I was exactly going to ask. Is it the development, the rich development of these characters that makes these books so sustainable over the course of decades? Is that what it is? That's what I think. I mean, someone else would give you a different answer.

But again, like with, I went back to some of the Ian Fleming books. It's already been a while ago. I was asked at some point to write an introduction for a, I think it was Penguin UK was reissuing the books and they asked some spy fiction authors to write intros for each of the books,

which was an interesting, thing for me to do because I'd at that point read those books 30 years earlier or something like that. So I went back and reread a few. And I would say they were still fun. Some of it feels dated. I mean, in terms of like the sexism and that kind of thing, likewise, the movies. And some things we've now seen like Bond ordering very specific things, brand names, that kind of thing. Ian Fleming was the first guy, I think, to do that. Instead of someone ordering a scotch, he's going to order something like an 18-year-old Highland Park or I don't know what. The bond is very particular about these things, and people seem to like that.

So some of it, when you go back to it, it's like, yeah, this doesn't seem so new, but at the time it was, it still felt like wish fulfillment to me, which, by the way, I've got nothing against. I hope my characters are dimensional, and I hope that what I do on the page will illuminate some aspect of the challenges and difficulties and the rest of the best. being human. But I also think there's an element of wishfulfillment in a guy like my character, John Rain, who's extremely adept with violence.

And I think most people, if they're being honest with themselves, of course, they would never use it except an extremist. But if you really needed to take somebody out, to be able to do it like that, would be, that would be a pretty cool thing. And Rain can do that. So that's a wish fulfillment element, hopefully baked into the rest of the three-dimensional stuff. I think the best literature is something you come away with and you feel like, oh, my God, these people are real.

Recently, I took four reasons that need not detain us. I went back to Lonesome Dove and Larry Mertree's book and also the Empire Falls. Great American novel. Oh, my God. And I mean, what makes Lonesome Dove tick? Is it Cowboys and a Cattle Drive? Not really. I mean, you needed those things.

Otherwise, it wouldn't be Lonesome Dove. But the characters, and I'm not just talking about call and, and, uh, McCrae. I'm talking about Dietz. All of them. He just bounces right. They feel they're so unbelievably real that you almost can't believe that he invented these people. And I don't know that much about art, but I think if there's a purpose to art, I think it's so that when you see or read or hear or whatever, you experience art that someone else has created, it induces a feeling in us of like, oh my God, that's exactly what it feels like. Then go to Starry Night. No one's ever seen something. that literally looks like that, unless he's on LSD or something.

But when you see it, it feels like a thing you felt. And some other human was able to convey that, and you see what, or if it's music, it'll be here, but in this case, see it. And you have that feeling of, yes, like, that's exactly what it feels like. And suddenly you're not alone in this world. It brings us together in this profound way. I don't think genre fiction can do that, or at least not very well. Again, I read genre fiction myself in many ways.

I'm not putting it down. But I think it's the characters like Smiley who have that dimensionality who make us feel like, I know exactly how you feel. It might not have been the same thing, but I know exactly how that feels and it brings us together. May I ask both of you a question about that? Stephen King famously wrote on fiction, 25 years. On writing, yeah, yeah.

On writing, sorry, on writing. It's the only nonfiction. book that he's ever read. And I read it. I have to say, because I'm a fan, even though politically he's got in directions I wouldn't advise going in. Yeah. He did have a second nonfiction book called Donce Mocob, which is an examination of horror fiction,

horror movies, blah, blah, blah, blah. That I read way back in the day. But on writing is the better normal. I'm glad that you steered me in the right direction there because I'm going to pick it up. I've been a longtime fan. And I read on writing when it first came out. I was surprised at how. brutal and unforgiving he is when analyzing other people's fiction.

And I reread it two weeks ago. It's the 25th anniversary reprint that's just come out. And it's as brutal as I remembered it being. Now, I recently got representation. Thank you very much. And my agent says, fiction, fiction, fiction. I told them I'm afraid of fiction. never written fiction. He said, oh, you're going to write fiction. He said, you're a great storyteller.

You just need to get over that, that initial hump. So I reread on writing. It's at least as daunting as it was more than two weeks ago. The two of you struggle in that same way, especially when it comes to character development, because it seems like Le Carre didn't struggle. Even pulp authors like Vince Flynn, God rest his soul, didn't struggle. He could really come up with a character. What about the two of you? Do you struggle with character development? You know, let me just say this. Actually, the fact that you don't see someone's struggles in the final product, I don't know. Everybody has an easier or harder time, whatever it is, they do, anything with different aspects. But, you know, if you see ballet, if they're doing their job

right, by the time you see them, they are. My God, it looks easy. They're just floating above the stage. But I'm sure that everyone who can do that struggle mightily and different people will probably have struggled with different parts. What I would say about, and this could turn it to its own topic because I love talking about craft, but I'll just say this for the moment. Different people are going to be organically, inherently, instinctively good at different aspects of the craft of writing. Again, same thing. with anything else in this world. Some of the authors we've been talking about and others,

I'm sure characters maybe just came to them by instinct. They didn't really have to do any kind of conscious analysis of characters and respect. I mean, if you've got that knack, that's fantastic. Other people probably approach characters with a little bit more conscious, deliberate craft structure. And I can say I have, I think looking back, I've been writing, my first book was published in 2002, so I've been in this game for a while. And I think I have, I think looking back, I have pretty good instincts for characters, but I've gotten better by reading books like I'm writing and taking various courses, masterclass has some great classes. There's Robert McKee, I recommend, and a whole bunch of others. there is definitely an approach you can use if you're having trouble coming up with whatever

it is you need for great characters. And I'll give you just one example that I learned through McKee, but ultimately credit goes to Matthew Weiner, the guy who created Madman. What Weiner would have his writers do the exercise he would have them do. Again, like if you have great instincts, you don't need this exercise, but it couldn't hurt if you, at least to know it. he would have his writers analyze his characters based on four levels, very briefly. Public, private, secret, hidden. Public is the way people know you in public. At the office, at church, whatever, like the public you.

It's just what it sounds like. Private is the way your family knows you and maybe your close friends. It's a bit of a different self than the way people know you in the office. It doesn't mean they're going to be contradictory. Probably they're not. But it's just additional aspects of you that only, close, people who are close to you will know. Secret level, the third level, those are the parts of you that not even the people in your private realm know, but you know those things. And then the final

level is the hidden level. It doesn't matter what you call these things. But the final level is the hidden level. And these are the aspects of your being that even you don't, can't, won't recognize. These days, I really like thinking about even my own characters who start off seeming pretty intriguing. Thank God. Otherwise, why would you want to spend a year writing about someone who didn't interest you? But still, I will go through these levels. And my wife, who's also my literary agent, Laura Renner, we do this all the time and it's fun. And when I do this, I've retrofitted this with my first character, John Wren, who I started writing those books 30 years ago. The first one was published in 2002. I look back and I'm like, wow, you can really do the four-level analysis

with this guy. It works. It works well. And so that's one of me where I feel like in that area, I have pretty good instincts, but still being able to do it rigorously, consciously is helpful. Other areas I've needed to be much more conscious about learning the craft structure, for example, especially when it comes to screenwriting. That's just not something that I would say I had an intuitive feel for. If anybody's interested in some of these topics, I've got a substack page, you can find a couple of articles in a video I did where I really talk a lot about craft resources, better for the resources you can get into a lot of things that I wish I had known when I was

starting out. I would have become a better writer faster if I had known these things instead of just doing it and doing it and doing it. And then at some point, patterns start to emerge from your own process. And you're like, oh, I think. And that could have been a shortcut if someone else had shown it to me. But I was too unimaginative at a younger age to really chase these sorts of how-to things down. I've read a ton of how-to books and I've done Robert McKee's seminars. I've read all his books and a bunch of other books and videos and webinars, etc. besides, I would say most of what I've experienced has been good. Some of it, I don't think it's been so good, but some of it will appeal to you more and some less. It doesn't matter. It's like what Bruce Lee said,

absorb what is useful, discard what is not useful, make it uniquely your own. Do that with everything you encounter. If it doesn't really do it for you, some thing that someone's explaining is a process thing, a craft thing, maybe that's not the way, it just doesn't resonate with you. Don't worry about it. Find something else that does resonate with you. There's a lot of really good information out there. Okay, I'm going to say one last thing, and I wrap this up. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go on so long. Told you this stuff engages me. What's the word that's the opposite of being a fan? I have a strong antipathy to when people say things that are true, but they're wildly misleading. And so it's the truth of it will engage people. And they'll be like, oh, yeah, that's right. But they don't, the truth obscure is just how misleading it is. And one of those things for me has always been this, this trite expression that, well, you can't, you can't treat, you can't teach writing. You can't teach art. That's what people say. Can't teach art. And it's true. You can't teach art. Art is what your soul expresses in its unique way, whatever. But you don't need to teach art. And yes, you can't. You shouldn't even try. But what you can teach, and absolutely you can teach. And absolutely you can. You can teach.

teach it and learning is craft and there is no art without craft. The greatest art that's ever been created is built on craft. I don't care who you're talking about. Michelangelo, Shakespeare. If you know what you're looking for, I don't know much about painting, but I can tell you in Shakespeare, I can tell you on a craft level why this stuff works. It doesn't mean the man wasn't a genius, but there's craft behind the art and the expression of the genius. So anytime you hear someone say like, well, you can't teach art, you might not want to get into an argument, but don't let that slow you down even for a second. Craft can be learned. Of course it can. And anything that can be learned can be taught. So anyway, that's one way to become the better writer for Assteris to go out there

and find a lot of this good stuff in the world. You know, I wish I had the guts that our former colleague Larry Devlin had. Larry passed away several years ago. But what he did is he wrote a book called Chief of Station Congo. Yeah, I have it. I have it. I do too. I read it yet, but I have it. Oh, you'll like it.

Even the title is a security violation. That's true. That is true. And what he did is he told a story, a captivating story about his entire career in CIA operations. And he told his daughter. publish this the day after I die. And that's what she did. And they never went to the publications review board.

Well played. Boy, I'll bet those secrecy agreements have been tightened up since then. Right. At least if the lawyers are worth anything. Barry Eisler and Glenn Carl, thanks again. And thanks for sitting in and talking shop today. This was a lot of fun. And thank you, ladies gentlemen, for listening.

Please remember to like, rate, review, and share the podcast. on whatever platform you listen to us, and don't forget to tell your friends. We really appreciate it. Until next time, I'm John Kirooku. Dead Drop is written by John Kriaku and Alan Katz. Costard and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast,

and John Kriaku, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers. This podcast, it's a Costa and Touchstone production.