The Team House - Former CIA Analyst on Counterintelligence | David McCloskey | Ep. 305

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseDavid McCloskey is the author of The Seventh Floor, Moscow X, and Damascus Station. He is a former CIA analyst and former consultant at McKinsey & Company. While at the CIA, he wrote regularly for the President’s Daily Brief, delivered classified testimony to Congressional oversight committees, and briefed senior White House officials, Ambassadors, military officials, and Arab royalty. He worked in CIA field stations across the Middle East throughout the Arab Spring and conducted a rotation in the Counterterrorism Center focused on the jihad in Syria and Iraq. Grab David’s new book “The 7th Floor” here:➡️ https://a.co/d/g2YbberFind David here:⬇️https://www.davidmccloskeybooks.com—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/house____________________________________Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#cia #counterintelligenceBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House. channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go it and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to a Monday edition of the Team House. This is episode 305. 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 and 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. I read this a couple weeks ago, a really good book. I read this a couple weeks ago. Really good book. First, we got a word from our sponsors, though. Thanks for our sponsor tonight, Ghostbed. If you guys sleep hot at night, and I know I do, you know just how disruptive it can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night, or all the above. That's where Ghost Bed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, Ghost Bed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and even cooling bedding. From their signature ghost ice fabric to patent a technology that adjusts with

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Even better, Teamhouse listeners can get up to 50% off sitewide, not up to 50% off site wide for limited time. Just visit ghostbed.com slash house and use code house at checkout. Again, that's ghostbed.com house with code house at checkout to save a whopping 50% off site wide. Check out ghostbed for sure. So David, welcome back to the show, man. And congratulations on the new book. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me on. And 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, the basket station.

And, you know, as I've written the books, I've gotten more and more enthralled with the Proctor character. Like, I just love writing her. She's very cool. I really, 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 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 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, you know, 20 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 short list of suspects, okay? And in any mole hunt story from, you know, Tinker Taylor onward, right? You have a list that you start with to sort of scope the world. And for me, it felt more impactful, more interesting. if that group of people were very, very close to Proctor, 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 25-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 just from a character standpoint. 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 weird. I do a lot of research for that, by the way.

Accentric hobbies. I hope you tapped into Jack for that one. We have a saltwater fish tank here 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 sketched out before I started writing. I 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 probably notice as he was reading. Like, I felt it was very important that I put all of them together at some point in the book. Yeah. 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 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. Go ahead, Dave.

I was just going to ask, 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 volunteers time to also be a domestic abuser, right? 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 did you manage that when you were when you were flushing this out? Man, well, you know, it's interesting because I also fall prey to that impulse. and yet 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 or love who also hasn't had some other side to them that is you know sort of humane or generous or kind of 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, 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. 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 existence. Right. So let's talk a little bit about the intelligence counterintelligence game. And, I mean, 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 Aldra Games and all their. And do you explore this idea that, you know, this could happen again?

Maybe it is happening now, right? 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 was interesting, like a lot of the, a lot of the sources on this are really like Cold War, late Cold War era. I mean, you have this kind of classic year of the spy, 1985. 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 Philby. You've got all these big Cold War cases that 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 true. You know, I mean, within the last few years, we've had kind of, intelligence arrests, you know, in the states of China, Cuba, Iran. And so you can kind of go through this list and, like, you realize that at any point in time,

given how massive our intelligence bureaucracy is, I mean, it is, like, so 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 tempo, you'd have to assume this stuff is going on constantly. And these foreign intelligence services are sure as shit trying to penetrate. Everyone's trying. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, we are, they are like 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, on you and try to try to turn somebody. Okay. So it makes a ton of sense. Here is the flip side with this whole counterintelligence game that, you know, many others have written prolifically about is James Hesuz-Angleton. Yeah. 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 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 starts to seep into anybody. It turns into this thing of like, well, maybe they weren't turned when the source was recruited, but maybe they got turned a year later, or maybe it's a triple game. I mean, you don't, it just sounds like it's a morass, really, to try to navigate. Well, honestly, it was one of the, one of the interesting things about researching the book was, because, look, I wasn't a counterintelligence officer at CIA, right? I was 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. Yeah. 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 are building a giant matrix essentially reporting matrix of anomalies and comparing 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 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, I think the Angleton quote or someone mentioned this about him, was like, you end up in this wilderness of mirrors where there's nothing to really hold on to. Right. Right. Right. And it's a fundamentally slow-moving slog to do these kind of investigations. And so I can totally see how over-reaching,

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 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 very open-ended statement, but very profound when a counterintelligence officer comes to the, you know, the director of Central Intelligence and says, we have a problem. But, okay, what is that problem? You know, how do we put our finger on that?

That line, if I'm remembering, I'm pretty sure I pulled that directly from the main enemy, which is a great milk-bearden book, James Risen book, about The Year of the Spy and kind of the tail end of the Cold War. And that book covers a lot of things, but one of them is. this, you know, intent, like 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 movie, 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 rolled up, but 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 the source of the leak is actually very challenging and and most most espionage novels that deal with a mole hunt I think treat that as a relatively simple thing to figure out and it's it's actually really really really hard and our legal regime in the States, the Espionage Act and the need to prove intent and all this kind of stuff, makes it even harder. Well, and not only that,

but just the moral obligation of a CI investigator because the moment you shine a spotlight on somebody, just as out of curiosity or just to, like, clarify discrepancies or whatever else, you could ruin their life. Right. Yeah. Right.

I mean, and I'm now, oh, man, I forget. at his name, but 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 alcoholic. And he was just completely dogged by the FBI for years and basically had his career ruined. And it turns out is Bob Hansen. You know, so 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 uh ames started showing up at the office wearing expensive suits that he could never afford and and then he goes into milt's office and demands to be put on

russia cases and and then storms back out and they look at each other like like milt and 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 um when i came in we had we had to we had to do these financial disclosure forms like every you know 12 to 24 months or something like that and it was it was all because of aims you know um 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-13 or 12 salary or whatever it was.

Yeah, and, you know, the, it's a little bit, I think the, 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, 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, I, there's a marstic license, but it's a fun to read. It is. Yeah, for sure. And I will say, I'm going to, I'm going to 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 there was rot way, way up, and it just wasn't going to be looked at. Yeah. How far would you go? And you were convinced that it was true, you know, 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. and 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 going to help, you know, find this more? You're just going to walk away. And, I mean, I think that's a bit of an open question throughout of like, what's the right answer to that? Yeah.

The other thing I want to ask you, too, is about the culture at CIA. And I mean, this can be pretty open, an open-ended conversation. And, you know, of course, you can answer however you like. But, I mean, 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 of that nature. And the connection I made in my mind as I was reading this was to the guys who are Havana syndrome victims or anomalous health incidents, as we call it. Because of what those guys experienced, I mean, there's the kids.

espionage portion of their job but then it's the institutional betrayal um that is that is really shocking and you know one one person one source i've 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 going to 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 there. 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 an 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. Um, and I think that it, you know, to some degree, it's a little bit like a person. And I wouldn't want to, wouldn't want to push the analogy too far, but like, a jilted lover. Is that? Yeah, I mean, a little bit, right? Like, you, you, you have from a place like this that is, you, 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 curb, right? And in the moment where you need it most. And so I think, you know, look, 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 convey in the book that like a group of 25 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 in-between this.

Or they see these positions as, you know, purely upward mobility. for their career progression. 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 20, 30 years as a career CIA officer, I mean, it's, espionage can be a cutthroat, McAvelian 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, 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 not much, right? There was that, there's a woman who was fine. The Cuban woman. Yeah. Montez, I believe. Yeah.

That's right. Yeah. That was an ideological sort of Cuban nationalist kind of, yes. It still happens. It is not 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 Iran, 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 egocentric stuff that I think drives or can drive a lot of this, right? Like, I mean, Ames, you know, we talk about Ames. 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 lived up to what his dad had done and was a bit of like 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. It's just not as not what it was in the, you know, 1930s. Do you,

do you think that holds true for today? I mean, like if we look at like 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 um i i i guess you know it's funny i mean i say ideological i'm thinking about like i'm actually even though we talked earlier about not applying like a cold war lens to it um i'm kind of thinking about it in terms of like a communist versus capitalist like sort of ussr versus the free world lens but you know i think montez is 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 nations geopolitics, right? And it's not even, it's not like ideological. Right. Right. Right. There's, like, there's some sort of, I want 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 them, just given the profile of who they've recruited. I mean, it's just borderline unrealistic. Right. Well, 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 background. working on Russia, and from there it kind of felt like a more natural recruitment target. Right. And there's, of course, the China angle in there, which is like the Russians are trying to trade a lot of this information to 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'd, 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 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 counterintelligence. It's a thriller yeah. 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 very interesting. And there is like a kind of a clear arc for both of them in this book. Yeah. Yeah. So both Artemis and Sam are pari over is from the first novel, Damascus Station. Artemis was also in the second one.

And, you know, Artemis was in this book the whole time as kind of the major mole hunter. You know, she's the one uncovering the, conspiracy. And at some point I realize, 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, 10% 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 the mole is, obviously. But, like, Proctor has a longstanding 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, Procter 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 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, 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 right yeah and that's you know i mean i think 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 regs and 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 and is rooting for them and so you know i think there are some there are some aspects of this one that are um you know more out there than that you're

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 that that the agency was, you know, messed up like this. What would you do? Right. 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 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 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 in here. The Vegas stuff was a lot of fun too, by the way, where the protagonists have to go and meet a Russian defector in Las Vegas.

That was very funny to read. 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 degenerate gambler. And he loves going to Vegas. And so when I told him, I was thinking about the scene. and 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 away. And he's like, bring your wife, you know, come, we'll have fun. So we went. And 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 100 grand playing Baccarat in about 35 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 absolutely deranged.

And I had so much fun with it. You know, yeah, it's less of an international thriller than the other ones. and it's a little bit like heart of darkness into Proctor, you know? I mean, you're kind of going slow, you know, 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 mole hunting book,

I wanted to put stuff in there that's like decidedly not, right? Gator Wrestling, Vegas. you know, CIA baseball games and end in brawls, stuff like that to kind of rush Russian illegals that are psychotic and try to kill you. You know, I put stuff in the book that 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 in 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's not going to work. You know, for the story, like the actual way this thing is going to go. just really won't work. And so if that's the case,

I will always prioritize propulsion in the story. Yeah. And I will try my best to break the rules, but to let the reader know that I know I'm breaking the rules. Oh, interesting. I think that's often an effective way to 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.

You know, this is a cartoon. Like, 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 to. For instance, like if we all watch like the Born Identity, we accept the world that they're selling. We know there are hit teams all over the world. Like we know that's not a thing, 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 world.

the story. Yeah. You know, and it reminds me of just like technical consulting, right? It's like the, the protagonist 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, all right. All right. Well, then in this moment, they're not trained or they forget or whatever else. 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 18 or 19 year old students and one week it was an example of a story that had totally hewed to sort of physical you know reality up to the 80% mark and then all of a sudden someone got on a motorcycle and drove it and 800 miles an hour up the top of a skyscraper. And from here on out, I have always talked about, like, is there an 800 mile per hour

motorcycle in my story? Like, is there something where you get to this point and you're just like... Push 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... you've broken the rules. You know, that's what you're trying to avoid. I think we see that a lot 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 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 a rough outline of a scene in my head where I want to get to. But 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 X, 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 going to 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 you, I, 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, 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 get to this outcome that I wanted. I tried doing that on the first book, and 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 Thoris 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 an outline 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. Yeah. 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 too. 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. 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 tics, mannerisms. Here's some things that, you know, like it's the scene that we're in. It 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 are your deepest fears or 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 1 to chapter 70, if I get to chapter 70 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, you know, 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. Sure.

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 there's sort of an epilogue to the book that I felt like you landed 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. Yeah, that was, it was very hard.

This one had more of a structure of a who done it. As we said, in 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 into the reveal right um and i think that that that is the payoff right is like who is the mole um you know it's uh if it were if it were if it were tinker taylor 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, everybody, 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. And so I had to sort of like work that stuff back to a point where I hopefully still maintain

some of the raw, like, connection between the two, like they're friends. And that, you know, there was a point where they, 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. Right. I think 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 Taylor Soldier Spy. I actually have not read the book, but the movie is so fucking good. Yeah, it's really good. I watched it again just recently. It's like, damn.

Yeah, it's fantastic. And, you know, he does a lot of crazy stuff 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, the acknowledgments, like, Like, it is definitely a tip of the cap to John La Corray because I think, 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 CIA mole hunting in the early 90s, it's like, it's a bunch of church ladies and like weird long dresses. and like they've been in the agency for 40 years.

I mean, it's the same stuff. And, you know, he based most of his story, of course, off of Philby, but also off of the British double-cross system in World War II. 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 some real, like, stuff that's consistent over time in the space that I wanted to make sure that I, you know, tip my cat to.

So look, McCloskey, you're on a roll here. Three books. What's next? What's rattling around in the back of your mind that you're working on now? So I am close to finishing a fourth book. It's an Israel-Iran story. It is a Mossad versus the Quds 4 story. And 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 to hit specific Mossad officers inside Israel as kind of retribution for what Mossad is done inside Iran. And it's a back and forth of the Iranians hunting these Mossad guys and the Mossad 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've 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, can you get to a point even between people of there 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 it'll definitely change. So I won't. It's just working draft of book four. Yeah. That's fantastic. What has your research process been on that? like because obviously you knew things have come out about Israeli capabilities. I mean, the whole pager operation, the shaping out was incredible.

Like, I don't know if, 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. Yeah. 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 Persian Jewish dentist 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 and former 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 that 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 woman, is being used by the Israelis, recruited by the Israelis, but she doesn't even know.

How would they pull that off? So that was the, that was the vibes of 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 a secretary in the U.S. embassy, and they did it by posing as if they were MI6. So like maybe not quite as threatening. Like, hey, we're just the British. We just need some, you know, situational awareness on what the Americans are doing so we can be closer, you know, and they worked her like that. I remember that 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, there's- 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 the false flag stuff, but then it's also like, you know, I think a lot of, lot of Chinese kind of outreaches this way of finding somebody on LinkedIn and basically trying to get them, they're like, oh, you know, we're interested in your consulting services. You know, and 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 There's not a hostile foreign government on the other side of this offer.

It's just a consulting firm, you know? Right. David, 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 have any exploding dental work yet in this book, but it's not to say. I mean, I'm early enough in the process where I'm sure I could include. loot it. So you will get an honorable mention if I

do end up working that end. What? What? That's awesome. Do we have any questions for David? Let me see. M. Corby, 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 it's hitting men 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 that. 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 say. 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 what is what what's cold that's in my mind recently is so you have the series of events right like just like you describe it's like kind of a a bit of a bit of schoolyard bullying, but yeah, 2016, 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. While the Russians aren't stupid, obviously they know they're being heavily targeted all of a sudden. Yeah. And what happens next? Havana syndrome. 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 my, I totally agree. And I guess my question would be like, the response from our side on Havana syndrome has been to sort of, uh, pretend it's not real. Right. Denegrade, denigrate the actual victims and to 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 there obviously are a group that are probably not representing, you know, that didn't happen to. But there's a, there's like very clearly a group of humans who were formers at, you know, CIA and states and otherwise who,

like, experienced something. And it doesn't seem like our response has been robust, you know, to that. Like, what have we, what have we done? like are Russian intelligence officers afraid to be working the America target?

You know, like, I thought we're going to push them into a car trunk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but that, but that's 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 interesting because when the agency's denial first came,

came out about it. And I assumed initially that it was basically like the U.S. government 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, and 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 though 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 intelligence case and the Bellingpat stuff, like, I kind of don't. Well, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's the, that's the propaganda from the seventh four. Um, the department of state and DOD had had had a much better reaction to it than CIA did. And the CIA officials behaved as though the way they took this was that this is the new Moscow.

signal from the 1970s and 80s. 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 to deploy overseas, that dependents don't want to deploy overseas. Like, our predecessor got blasted over there. Right. 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, yeah. You've got all these potentially great officers who were 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. I'm going to get no backup from the agency if it happens. And I might, like my wife and kids might get hit when I'm at home because the Russians don't get fucked.

You know, why do it? 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 you'd be saying that the bigger impact is actually like right the secondary the people who are like no way the denialization and yeah and the lack of the the the the way it destroys faith in the institution with from within yeah yeah yeah that's right well i mean i'm putting myself in the shoes of an officer who's like if you're going out to tashkent right and all the sudden you're like do i want do i want do i want want to take that.

Right. Right. That position, do I want to be analyst in station Tashkent 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 instead. Yeah. Yeah.

We just had another question come in. Mohamed Savani. Thank you very much. how should American America combat the Chinese intelligence infiltration of our academic institutions? Example, DOJ's initiative against economic espionage and Lieber Harvard case, them taking the F-22 plan, etc., etc. Yeah. Can we? Can we?

Good grief. I mean, I don't. No pressure, David. 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, 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, really mission critical, like supply chains. But the problem is it just so broad, right? The effort to like hoover up all this IP and information and just everything. it kind of feels hopeless to me at this point. I mean, I think one of the things that I know a bunch of my former colleagues and friends are involved in or trying to help big organizations, be they Fortune 500s or PE firms or whatever, is like to understand their level of sort of, you know, insider threat risk or frankly where their capital is actually coming from.

Yeah. Because I think there are some practical things that, you know, people can do. But it does seem like the sort of horses out of the barn on that stuff. I mean, I don't have any, you know, sorry to the intrepid listener, but I don't, I don't have any particularly practical ideas on that front. Yeah. That wouldn't be like ridiculously draconian. I mean, I've talked to people who say that there's, you know, you.

who are kind of in that field and who say that there's probably not a single piece of military tech that we have that the Chinese don't have. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Does it go the other way, do you think? No. Yeah. No, I really don't.

I think that, you know, that one of the challenges of a free society. Yeah, it's an open society problem. It's an open society. It's an open society problem. And, you know, and we don't want to give up that. open society. So, and China doesn't have that problem. You know, I mean, if they can control their people with social credit scores and, you know, the, 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 in, you know, in the communication systems we brought in, you know, to lose close, you know, close to 30 Chinese assets in a, over, over a very short period, is. like how do you operate in that kind of environment? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, I've 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, have an advantage. And I think it's very fashionable, of course, to like, like, you know,

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 we don't, you know. I mean, they have the ability to knit. Like, I mean, are 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 know. It certainly has some distinct advantages over the way we're doing things right now. Sure. And I agree. I think 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 of 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 largely free flow of you know capital and goods and ideas and people it's just it's you know it feels it feels ridiculously challenging right now. Yeah.

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 feel that that, especially when we look at like the agency and 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 path for America than these old white founding fathers.

You know, 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 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 22 necessarily.

But when they're like 25, 26, 30, you know, it's just the pay 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 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 10 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, you have a bunch of really lousy GS-13 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, Dave, 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, millennial take on Gen Z, I don't know. Right, 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 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 10 years, after 15 years, after 5? Like 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 wokeism 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 their idea that America is based on colonization and anti-colonial activity, and they feel like that's the better way than, you know, it's not like they're anti-American, but they may be anti-American ideals that we were founded on or printed on.

Yeah. 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? There's that lens.

And there's another lens, which is. 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. Right. Do you know what I mean?

Like, yeah. And so I think, I think a lot of people, have a very warped view. 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, uh, you know, your average 22 year old who's like, oh, it's not Jack Ryan or, you know, you're, you're, you're torturing people. Like, it just, there's no, right, there's no ability to kind of deal with these places in reality. Yeah. Like what, what disadvantaged government did you overthrow last week? Yeah. It's, I, I mean, I encounter it like just talking to people on, like, social media where the CIA is this 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 4D chess but also fucking up everywhere they go. Like it 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 encounter these people on social media and it is this weird mixture of like, you know. Oliver Stone movies.

Yeah, exactly. Or NK.K. Ultras. It's kind of weird conspiracy theory mashup or, you know, even at conversations, you know, my past life at CIA was all on Syria. and so there is a very common pro-Russia threat out there on Syria now, which is like, oh, you know, Syrians didn't use chemical weapons. Assad's kind of a good guy. Okay, dude, right. You know, 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. 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 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. 100%. I wanted to point everybody to your, to your first episode where we did

talk more about your career and everything, which is episode 234. So if you guys haven't seen that, please go check it out. I have another question that came in. Mohamed Samani, thank you very much for the very generous donation. Would you consider TikTok the biggest Chinese sci-up-siggin-op of all time? They destroy the America's youth's mind with be dancing on our platforms and promote science plus athletics to their own citizens, plus gain network info. I just don't want a lot of those videos to go away, you know, so I'm kind of torn. 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 seems fairly straightforward to me. I think that, I mean, in general, I do have some. some kind of old fogy 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. of intel on plans and intentions. You know, like, I can, 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. 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 mean, I would love the government to declassify something that says that here's how the Chinese government is using this.

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, 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 going off of. intel that you know but in your author brain as somebody who has worked at the CIA um the chinese

owning the data to uh genetic testing 23 in me or or um you know pregnancy you know testing testing stuff um uh 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 20, 30 years ago, you needed, you know, several hundred million dollars, a bunch of very educated lab monkeys 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.

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 their garage and some kind of weird devotion to figure out how you might. might create artificial life. Well, we are now in a world where the barriers to entry, 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, is like if you mash the technologization of life with the technologization of intelligence, you know, you end up with a situation where the rule that has thus far appeared in nature has largely been that like the transmittability of a disease is, you know, basically the more infectious of disease is,

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. Ancubate for the longer period. 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, Am Shon Rico. death cult with, you know, better tech, right? I think that that stuff is terrifying to me as a human, but also, you know, as a spy 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 is like, yeah, do you end up with just a situation where someone has created a thing that, you know, can kill 20% of the humans on the planet within, you know, six to 12 months. Right.

That's a realistic future that we live in, unfortunately. So next Friday, we're going to have Chris Feistel on the show, spent 26 years in the Drug Enforcement Agency and is featured in the Narcos television show. So we'll be back with that. We had one more question come in, too, after you plug your book. Yeah, I got to plug the book here. We Defy coming out December 9th, the lost chapters of special forces history. It's up for pre-order now.

Go check it out, guys. Last question just came in. Bobby H., thank you very much. What edge does FBI counterintelligence have on CIA counterintelligence 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 counterintellism, intelligence 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'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 threat. And because ultimately the counterintelligence function is like, the nearest thing that we got at CIA 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 Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin or Bashar al-Assad, 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, And my senses, again, having not worked it, is that in particular since the sort of Hansen Ames years of the early 90s, 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 & Noble, pretty much wherever. It's in e-book, audiobook, hardcover. Obviously not paperback yet, but in a year, yeah, in 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.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 4. Thanks, guys. This is a ton of fun. Thanks for having me back on. Thanks, man. Yeah, anytime.

And we will see all you guys on. on Friday.