The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Handler by M.P. Woodward

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

The Handler by M.P. Woodward A disgraced former CIA operative must go back in the field with only his ex-wife as his handler in this electrifying thriller from a former intelligence officer. Meredith Morris-Dale is a CIA case officer and a damn good one...even if this last mission did go terribly wrong. Now she has been summoned back to Langley where she expects to be fired. Instead, she is met by the Deputy Director with stunning news. A single well-placed CIA mole in Iran’s uranium enrichment program has kept the terrorist nation from building a bomb by sabotaging the performance of their covert centrifuge arrays. But after losing his daughter in an airliner shootdown, the mole wants out—leaving the world on the brink. His one demand: a reunion with the only handler he ever trusted, John Dale—Meredith's disgraced, fired, wayward ex-husband. As Meredith and John struggle through their fraught relationship, a craven CIA political hierarchy, Russian interference, and the rogue spy’s manipulation, they must reach deep within their shared connection to maintain, recover, or kill the asset.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. But guess what? You don't have to wear a mask anymore.

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Our 122,000 group on LinkedIn. Search for that as well. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my

business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. Or order the book where refined books are sold. Today we have an amazing author on the show. He's got a hot new book coming right off the presses. This thing is so hot, it still has that print smell that can get you high, which is not a reason to order a book, people. I don't recommend that in any way, shape, or form. But some of you

are going to consume this in an audio book, and that won't get you high. I don't know what that has to do with anything this morning, but his new book is out May 31st, 2022. The book is called The Handler by M.P. Woodward. He's going to be on the show talking about this hot new book that's out. And some of his background is going to be kind of interesting in what he brings to the authoring of this new book. M.P. Woodward is a veteran of both U.S. Intelligent Ops and the entertainment industry. As a naval intelligence officer with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, he scripted scenario moves and counter moves for U.S. war game exercises in the Middle East.

In multiple deployments to the Persian Gulf and Far East, he worked alongside U.S. Special Forces, CIA, and NSA. Most recently, Woodward ran international distribution marketing for Amazon Prime Video, having launched Amazon's original video content in over 40 countries through more than 100 media partners. He collaborated closely with content creators and distributors in driving viewer awareness and engagement. Welcome to the show, MP. How are you? I'm great, Chris.

Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Awesome sauce. Awesome sauce. So do you have any plugs like.coms, places you want people to find you on the interwebs? Yeah, of course I do. You can find me at mpwoodward.com, and Twitter is mpwauthor. There you go.

There you go. There you go. So what motivates you on to write this book? This is your debut novel too, right? Yeah, debut novel. Something I'd wanted to do for quite some time. You've mentioned my background and that it actually got me pretty close to the kinds of things that would make a book interesting. I had always thought. But while I was doing that type of work, that type of intelligence work, life kind of got in the way. And before you know it,

you're married, you're raising kids, you have a business career, everything else. And then that business career really introduced me to a whole bunch of things, exposed me to a whole bunch of things that made me want to go back to writing. So I kind of drew on both experiences of the intelligence world as well as the, you know, being a tech executive. I would imagine that experience in the intelligence world gives you a lot of, what's the right word, fodder material for your book. Yeah, without a doubt. I think particularly on just plots as opposed to characters. There's certain characters I think is something that you can derive from, you know, the rest of your life. You can meet somebody and be like,

no, don't put that guy in the middle of a high stakes geopolitical environment. Let's see how he reacts, right? Those kinds of things. But certainly when it comes to thinking about the deployment of forces and thinking about something that we used to call all source intelligence, when the products of the 17 or 18 United States intelligence agencies all come together to fuse into a picture for the warfighters. That's something that I'm intimately familiar with and used quite a bit in the book to help drive suspense. Wow. So give us a 30,000-foot overview of the book, if you would, please. Yeah, you bet. So the book is about a divorced couple where the wife is still a committed career professional in the CIA,

and she and her husband have been divorced for about two years. And then with the Iranian negotiations happening, in the background, the U.S. kind of had an ace in the hole in that we had an embedded asset within background, the U.S. kind of had an ace in the hole in that we had an embedded asset within Iran, a scientist. And then something happens that makes that scientist want to do. But as it turns out, that scientist will only deal with his former handler, who's the ex-wife or sorry, who's the ex-husband of the woman that's still in the CIA. And he makes it a precondition that he'll only deal with that guy. And he has since left the agency and wants nothing to do with it or his ex-wife.

Wow. Yeah. Therein lies the conflict, I guess. So who are the main characters in the story? Well, it probably helps to think a little bit about what inspired the story. So when I was back, you know, so many things happen in the story? Well, it probably helps to think a little bit about what inspired the story. So when I was back, you know, so many things happen in the world. It's easy, and we all have such short memory spans, it's easy to kind of forget about some things. But I was really struck by something. It was 2020, great year, and on January 8th, a Ukrainian airliner, I know we

hear a lot about Ukraine in the news today, this had nothing to do with the current conflict. It just happened to be a Ukrainian national carrier. And it was taking off from Tehran with a lot of Iranian students on board, many of which were going back to Canada to return to school because it was January, right? So winter break was over. And shortly after liftoff, the Iranians, the IRGC Air Defense Command, the Iranian, sorry, Revolutionary Guard Corps, their air defense command, fearing aggression from the U.S., thought that this airliner was a cruise missile,

and they shot it down. So that real world incident happened. And when that happened, it really made me think kind of deeply and empathetically about the families that were left to deal with that and how they might react to their own government making such a mistake and what they might do. And also some of the things that had led to that mistake. At that time, the U.S. and Iran were sort of on a back and forth, tit for tat escalating, where they had recently launched some missiles into a base in Baghdad. And so it made me think a lot about that geopolitical situation. And then in my former life to think about how the U.S. intelligence community would react to something like that. So those were the things that brought it together. So one set of characters are the Iranians and the families affected by this. The other set of characters are the divorced couple that I mentioned earlier. Then there's a third set of characters who are really spoilers. And this gets to the geopolitical aspect of our modern world. And they're the Russians who think they know why

these things are happening, but they don't really. So those are sort of the main players in the drama. Were there any favorite characters that maybe you identified or took from people in maybe your experience or real world or something that helped shape your characters? Yeah. One of the themes I tried really hard to emphasize was the value of Meredith, who's the CIA professional still in the service, and her ex-husband, John, and the jams that they get into and how they rely on that relationship, even though they're divorced, to sort of come through and save the day. And I identified with all of these characters to a certain extent i tried to make them so they're not they're not you know too young they're all

kind of in their in their four old enough to have to have experienced um some things so highly flawed some of them are are led by by like, you know, greed and ambition and a desire to get ahead into large organizations within which they work. And of course, I experienced that a lot in my daily life. I've certainly, you know, I had to swim with the sharks in large companies and those kinds of things. So I wanted to bring those aspects into these large intelligence bureaucracies. Yeah. And so for the most part, she and he work for the CIA. Is it largely a CIA-based novel?

Yes and no. They are definitely the main protagonists, and she's still in it. He's out of it. And the CIA is at the core of the drama because they're the only ones that really knew about this one intelligence asset or it was you know controlled by them but we bring in the defense department quite a bit because the extension of intelligence policy ends up being a lot of different a lot of different agencies so yes centered around the drama but with hopefully a broader tableau of the other intelligence agencies acting out as well. Would you say it falls in the vernacular of like a Jack Ryan sort of stuff, those sort of thrillers?

Yeah. A question I get often is like, who influenced you? I think, sure. When I was growing up in the 1980s, Tom Clancy was extremely popular in those kinds of books. And if you look at those books that we called techno thrillers at the time, one of the things that they do really, really well is they discuss the inner workings of an agency highly accurately. So I wanted to capture that. They also describe the technology used back then, particularly for weapons and things, in a very accurate way. I wanted to update that approach in a couple ways. One is our technology is much different today. And having been a tech executive, I really wanted to bring in what we see in modern telecommunications and internet technologies, I really wanted to bring that into the intelligence world

and think a lot about how that would affect intelligence operators. I also wanted the book to be a bit more character-driven and to have truly flawed characters who were maybe doing things out of their own personal interests, not always necessarily the things that their job required. Well, that makes all the difference when it comes down to it. What are some other, what do you think kind of sets it apart from other books in the genre? What do you think makes it stand out?

One of the things that I, well, at least reacting to some of the comments that I'm getting back from people, probably a big one is the empathy for people that are traditionally villains. We don't have people in this book who are just, you know, flat out evil and they're just driven by, you know, every bone in their body or they're non-American and so they're bad. Everyone in the book has a personal motivation. So you might not necessarily agree with that motivation, but you can certainly empathize with it. And in some respects, you might even root for them a little bit, even though you might, you know, want something else to happen. You can certainly understand the roots of a conflict. And that's something I was really trying to go for so that we didn't have something where it was just sort of good versus

bad or rah-rah side and a not rah-rah side, but to really try to plumb the depths of that complexity in geopolitics and intelligence. Yeah. So a pretty interesting book. When you wrote it, did you see any Hollywood characters? A lot of these books get picked up for Hollywood shows, even Amazon and Netflix and all this stuff. Were there any characters maybe that you had in your mind from Hollywood that you're like like i could see like uh you know tom cruise playing this you know i i think that's a temptation for authors but i think it would be a dangerous thing to do and if i'm honest you know you mentioned this is a debut a debut book when i started it it was really for fun i mean it was really for me it was a it was kind of a hobby and an idea and

something that I was exploring. And so, yeah, I wouldn't have kidded myself for one second that, oh, yeah, no, this is going to be, you know, this is going to star major movie stars. That said, I've been surprised at the amount of interest. I've been surprised and not surprised because having been in the streaming industry, I do understand the incredible thirst for stories, for new content. There's the appetite for streaming media, of course, famously has gone up quite a bit and only more so since COVID. The other thing that I have seen happening that's kind of interesting is that, you know, you mentioned the Jack Ryan types of books. And of course, Amazon has a series, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. But the intelligence thrillers for the last,

you know, decade or so have really been closer to terrorism and the war on terror because, you know, we kind of left the Cold War behind. But now I think most recently, in some ways, you know, I would say sadly, we're back to that great power competition, where people are thinking deeply about China and what does China mean as a threat? They're thinking deeply about Russia, of course, and Iran. And so we see this, it's sort of, it's, you know, it's Cold War 2.0. And so I'm starting to see more and more intelligence thrillers that come from that side of things. Mine certainly comes from that side of things. And that's what I had intended to highlight.

In fact, geopolitics probably moved faster than I thought they would to the point where, you know, I look at the book now and in a way it has more relevance than i ever than i ever dreamed it would and that that's not necessarily something that pleases me that's just that the way the world has uh has evolved kind of weird how that works everything seems to be circling around yeah you know it's a life imitates something right yeah it's going to be even more interesting there's rumors that on may 9th i think it is the may day for the russians they're looking at expanding this war at least i think they is the may day for the russians they're looking at expanding this war at least i think they'd use it to bring more people you know national draft or more conscripts into the war it's super depressing because i was i was reading in the newspaper yesterday they were interviewing some man on the street russians some of whom were accepting coffins back from the conflict.

And, you know, they're believing what they're hearing from the national government, from, you know, propaganda sources, you know, so they're blaming the West. They're saying, hey, look, and they're, you know, they're kind of taking Putin's line. And that's rather distressing. And it hits on a theme I was trying to get into this book, that in our modern world, information just moves a lot differently than it has in the past. And it can be manipulated and it can move very, very quickly. And it can come from just about anywhere. And that has an effect both on politics as well as our policy. You know, it has been interesting, the sort of information war that it has. The Ukrainians have been brilliant. I think we have the author of a biography coming on in June for Zelensky and his

use of social media and, you know, Zoom telecommunications and stuff, you know, being able to speak to different congresses around the world. The fact that I guess my understanding of what Russia did with their communications, they built some sort of new communications devices that revolved around 3G, but you have to have cell towers to use them. So if you invade another country, take out their cell towers, you can't use your communications or something like that. And so that's why they're stealing phones and crap because they can't. And then they're being picked up by, I guess, intelligence, you know,

listening in and then Ukrainians pick it. It's just astounding because you see a real failure of just, you know, being able to communicate and, of course, exposure. And then the Ukrainians have been brilliant about, you know, calling it out. He's been that Churchill who's, you know, trying to get the U.S. to stand in the war and stuff. Yeah, no, Zelensky's been super inspiring. And I think watching that communications thing,

it is a comment on our modern times in a couple ways. One is how are they, publicly available wireless technology? Well, there's a reason. It's because their own communications, you know, that we call in the world C4I, their own communications and intelligence platforms just weren't that robust. And so they had to rely on public communications.

And so, you know, I remember when the war force first started, there was that really long convoy that was 40 miles outside of Kiev. And you can picture communications breaking down and a general getting frustrated and saying, you know what, put me in the Jeep, take me up front. I need to talk to these guys. And, you know, that exposed them to snipers and everything else. So communications, having a communication advantage is everything and once you wander into somebody else's country you better be pretty good at it or it's gonna it's gonna fall apart i think that's what we've seen yeah it's quite extraordinary it's like from the looks of

it i mean the way their tanks are built and everything are they're eating i think new york times put out a thing on how the tanks are built and they have a jack-in-the-box it was wash wapo or new york times or maybe wall street journal but they have a they have a jack in the box. It was WAPO or New York times or maybe it was wall street journal, but they have a, they have a jack in the box feature to them where the, the ammo is underneath the cage of the men. So when you light that, you know, it basically shoves everybody and kills everybody through the top.

That's why those turrets are on there. I've been watching the war going, where are all those turrets blown up? I've seen that with tanks. Right. That doesn't seem good. Yeah. You wouldnrets blown up? I've seen that with tanks. Right. That doesn't seem good. Yeah, you wouldn't want to be in there. You wouldn't want to be between them.

So I've been learning a lot about military. I'm always fascinated by military books and military, you know, the whole operation of how people are thought. And, yeah, it kind of seems like we could probably take Russia in a week if it wasn't for nuclear weapons. I think that's super dangerous speculation. You know, every battlefield is different. But we have certainly witnessed Russian vulnerability. Let's put it that way. Well, we have a lot of John Deere's here.

We just send those in. Yeah, that was kind of, you know, an interesting meme from the beginning of the war is all the tractors towing the tanks. It was insane. That's a fairly lasting, iconic image. Yeah, I can't imagine what they're doing at the Pentagon where they're just like, what the hell is going on? Yeah, get the tractor division on the phone. It's starting to bring me back to the movie, what was it, The Russia House? Did you ever see that movie?

I did see it, yeah. Do you remember when they find out that basically the Russian crap doesn't work? Yeah. We're spending all this money. I think what's-his-face is, we can't sell a war. We can't sell the Congress military equipment. Anyway, it's funny. Anyway, so there should be.

It is similar to that. I agree. their equipment anyway it's funny anyway so it is you know it is similar to that i i agree i i what's fascinating about this though is that in the last uh since about 2014 russia's been spending disproportionately on the military modernizing the military and they've done things like they they launched uh cruise missiles out of the i believe it was the Caspian, and they sent them into Aleppo. And they were so proud of this over the horizon targeting that it's on YouTube, right? So they're like, hey, look at us. And so the force component has just changed dramatically. And whether we knew this would happen, you know, in Kiev, that they would have these many issues, I don't know.

But I think it's better to be safe than sorry. Yeah. And then drones. I mean, who knew drones were just going to be so crazy? The smaller ones, not those big ones, but the small ones are using to do stuff. It's just crazy. Yeah, and it's an example of, like, technology is affecting absolutely everything right down to the battlefield itself, where you see these drones that are, you know, kamikaze drones, switchblades that take off, fold their wings, and dive right into a tank, right, coming out of an old-fashioned mortar tube. And I feel like, you know, war colleges are putting together,

all their American war colleges are putting all their material together as we speak. I think they didn't necessarily, we didn't necessarily know the effectiveness of some of these things. And so you see a run at manufacturers on these kinds of weapons. And I think it'll dramatically change the force component of our infantry forces going forward. Yeah, kamikaze drones and stuff. I was reading somewhere there was a theory that, you know, tanks are kind of obsolete these days because, I mean, they're just sitting ducks, basically, in these. But it'll be interesting. And it'll be interesting how many books are written, you know, between novels and, like I said, military intelligence manuals on this new style of war technology.

I think one of the most interesting things is that the classic way you think of a battlefield is, you know, there it is. The battlefield's over there. There's, you know, the two sets of opposing forces are facing off. Or maybe it's urban warfare and they're kind of going from building to building. And we're all steeped in movies like that. And in this case, the battle, the division between civilian and military is really blurry. And I feel like that is a very modern thing and is partially enabled by new communications technology. I saw something where, you know, it was an interview with a woman who had gotten a bunch of Javelin anti-tank missiles

and she's driving her, I think it was a Prius, and she's driving her Prius around, you know, getting out and firing. And she called it her eco-friendly killing machine. And then you're reading about hackers who are joining in. I mean, just to go on Reddit and kind of get the live feed from folks, it's very interesting.

So you're seeing a lot of people join into these things that wouldn't normally have had a stake, but I think the nature of our times means that they do. Yeah, it's definitely an information war. I think it was Putin, if I recall, who said that the future of war is ai and i think he's finding out the hard way yes that he doesn't have as much a or as much i as he thought yeah plenty of a not enough i yeah yeah anything more you want to pitch on in your book tease on in your book we of course can't give away the ending in the middle so that's the fun part about

novels because you got to go now yeah you can't you can't give away the ending in the middle. So that's the fun part about novels because you got to go buy the book. Yeah, you can't give away the ending. I would just say, look, if you've been looking for that intelligence thriller, you're a fan of Le Carre and you'd look like a reboot into modern times with modern tech. That's really what this is about.

There you go. There you go. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show, MP. We really appreciate it, man. Hey, Chris, it's been great to be here. Thanks very much to your audience for listening as well. There you go. Give us your plugs before we go out to your dot coms, if you would. Yeah, it's mpwoodward.com, and Twitter is at mpwauthor.

There you go. There you go. Thanks, Vianis, for tuning in. Go you go. Thanks, Juanes, for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, 4ChessChrisFoss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com, 4ChessChrisFoss.

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