Latest / Best of Business / David McCloskey: former CIA agent hopes Donald Trump's planned changes won't impact its core mission

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David McCloskey: former CIA agent hopes Donald Trump's planned changes won't impact its core mission · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
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  Speaker 2: Now.
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  Speaker 3: I don't know about you, but I find the world
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  Speaker 3: of secret service and spies and espionage utterly fascinating, which
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  Speaker 3: is why I am so excited to talk to my
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  Speaker 3: next guest, former CIA analyst turned author David McCloskey. In
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  Speaker 3: his years at the CIA, David worked in field stations
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  Speaker 3: across the Middle East. He had access to all sorts
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  Speaker 3: of classified information. He gave testimony to Congress as well
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  Speaker 3: as providing White House briefings. David left the CIA in
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  Speaker 3: twenty fourteen and is now using his lived experience to
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  Speaker 3: write the best spy thrillers books so good former cias
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  Speaker 3: former CIA staff have said that they are the most
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  Speaker 3: authentic accounts of CIA operations you'll find in print. This week,
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  Speaker 3: David McCloskey released his third book that's called The Seventh Floor.
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  Speaker 3: He is with me from Texas. Good morning, David, Thank
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  Speaker 3: you so much for being with.
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  Speaker 2: Us, Thank you so much for having me. Thrilled to
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  Speaker 2: be here.
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  Speaker 3: You wild critics with the first two books, How much
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  Speaker 3: of that success do you think is down to this
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  Speaker 3: lived experience that you're writing about.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think certainly some of it is. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: I am trying in all of the books, you know,
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  Speaker 2: first one Siria, second one's Russia. Third most current one
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  Speaker 2: is the seventh Floor at CI headquarters. So it's kind
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  Speaker 2: of a Langley book in each of them. I am
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  Speaker 2: trying to be, you know, sort of real and authentic
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  Speaker 2: to the actual operations of CI, but also the culture
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  Speaker 2: and the way the place feels and what it's actually
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  Speaker 2: like to work there. And so I think to some degree,
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  Speaker 2: having lived that and knowing a lot of people you
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  Speaker 2: know very closely who did as well, you know, it
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  Speaker 2: makes it easier, I think, to really tell those stories
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  Speaker 2: than if I were coming at this fully from the outside.
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  Speaker 3: It's interesting you mentioned culture because that's what I pick
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  Speaker 3: up on. That's what I love about the books is
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  Speaker 3: that you kind of bring that unique culture of the
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  Speaker 3: CIA at light. You write in the book Langley managed
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  Speaker 3: to be dull and smug, tribal and bureaucratic, and nerves
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  Speaker 3: seem to and totally remove from where the espionage actually
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  Speaker 3: happens the field. Tell me a little bit about those
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  Speaker 3: different fragmentations within the CIA, because you do pick that
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  Speaker 3: up in your books.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, you know, I think to some degree,
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  Speaker 2: the CIA is like any other big organization where you
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  Speaker 2: have a big bureaucracy, You have a lot of people
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  Speaker 2: who are pretending to do work but actually aren't. You
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  Speaker 2: have people spending all day in you know, vicious and
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  Speaker 2: pointless meetings and sending emails, and you have this tension
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  Speaker 2: between a headquarters and the field, which if you're working
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  Speaker 2: in any big organization you know that has a bunch
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  Speaker 2: of stores everywhere or a bunch of railroad terminals or whatever,
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  Speaker 2: you're going to have that tension. So I think to
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  Speaker 2: some degree there's there's there are themes around the work
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  Speaker 2: of CIA that will resonate with anybody, right. But at
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  Speaker 2: the same time, the CIA is doing some really weird stuff.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, we're out there trying to convince people to
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  Speaker 2: commit treason and give us, you know, sort of or
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  Speaker 2: sell us the darkest secrets that their country might have.
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  Speaker 2: So that's a bizarre thing for an organization to do.
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  Speaker 2: So both of those dynamics are present every day at CIA,
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  Speaker 2: and I think I kind of I wanted those to that.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know, that reality right to come through in
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  Speaker 2: different ways in each of the novels.
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  Speaker 3: You're so right, It's part of it is just so
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  Speaker 3: foreign to many of us. In the other parts you
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  Speaker 3: can just relate to so easily. It's just it's a
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  Speaker 3: general organization, very well put. Look, I get a sense
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  Speaker 3: that people when they work for the CIA, they truly
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  Speaker 3: believe in the work they do when they love it.
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  Speaker 3: But I get the feeling from your book that the
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  Speaker 3: CIA doesn't necessarily love you back.
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  Speaker 2: Well again, I think it's this reality of working in
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  Speaker 2: really big organizations, right, is that we can all convince
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  Speaker 2: ourselves if we've served in one of these that were
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  Speaker 2: invaluable and were irreplaceable, you know. And the fact is
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  Speaker 2: is that, you know, the CIA is just like that
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  Speaker 2: where you could spend thirty years there and you get
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  Speaker 2: sent out with a kind of you know less than
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  Speaker 2: you know ticker tape parade, let's say, and all of
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  Speaker 2: a sudden you're out. You're actually out. The building moves on,
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  Speaker 2: the people move on, the organization, the operations move on,
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  Speaker 2: and you're sort of, you know, left. I think dealing
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  Speaker 2: with frankly, you know, this question of what did you
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  Speaker 2: give to a place that doesn't actually give you that
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  Speaker 2: much back in the end, and so I really wanted,
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  Speaker 2: especially in this book The Seventh Floor, to kind of
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  Speaker 2: explore that tension or that dilemma of you work at
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  Speaker 2: a place forever, it makes you, you know, you help
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  Speaker 2: make it to some degree, but when you're out, what
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  Speaker 2: do you take with you? What do you have left?
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  Speaker 2: You know, it's kind of a I think it's an
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  Speaker 2: evergreen question for people who have been loyal to an
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  Speaker 2: organization for a really long time.
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  Speaker 3: And is that how you out when you left?
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know, actually, you know, I'm ashamed of it,
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  Speaker 2: not really, I mean because I wish I had I
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  Speaker 2: wish I had some great answer that.
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  Speaker 1: Kept out that door.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah I'm done, I'm good things.
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  Speaker 2: I kind of thought, you know, I left for very
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  Speaker 2: mundane reasons. It was just I looked at the people
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  Speaker 2: who were five plus years ahead of me and said,
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  Speaker 2: I'm not exactly sure this is what I want to
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  Speaker 2: be doing. I want to go out into the world
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  Speaker 2: and see what there is. So I didn't leave with
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  Speaker 2: a sense of I don't think i'd been in for
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  Speaker 2: you know, I hadn't been in for three decades, and
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  Speaker 2: so I didn't have this built up sense of the
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  Speaker 2: whole place was my life, you know. But I do
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  Speaker 2: know people who have stayed in for multiple decades, some
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  Speaker 2: for thirty, you know, five years, and there is this
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  Speaker 2: you know that hearing those stories, I think is what
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  Speaker 2: allowed me to fill the seventh floor with that kind
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  Speaker 2: of feel and vibe.
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  Speaker 3: Tell me about you know, when you leave the CIA,
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  Speaker 3: you are writing from quite a privileged position with sort
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  Speaker 3: of information around national security and things. Do you have
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  Speaker 3: to submit to your manuscript to the CIA to cheek?
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  Speaker 2: Like?
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  Speaker 3: How do you balance that? Like what you can write about,
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  Speaker 3: what you can take from your lived experience and share
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  Speaker 3: on the page.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I am required to send everything to what
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  Speaker 2: we call our publication review board. So everything from you know,
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  Speaker 2: updates to my resume, to op eds I might write
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  Speaker 2: for the newspaper, to the novels, everything goes to them.
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  Speaker 2: Now they are actually you know, you think big government agency,
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  Speaker 2: maybe this thing's terrible to deal with. In reality, they're
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  Speaker 2: actually pretty fast. I like to think maybe they just
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  Speaker 2: love the book so they get them back to me
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  Speaker 2: so quickly, you know. At I've convinced myself of this,
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  Speaker 2: but they're pretty fast. They are actually very thoughtful and
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  Speaker 2: I think fair in what they choose to redact. They
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  Speaker 2: do send stuff back. It's kind of humorous actually. So
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  Speaker 2: you send them the document, you know, word document, and
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  Speaker 2: they'll send back PDFs, like multiple pdf in some cases,
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  Speaker 2: like twenty or thirty PDFs. It's all caps. Everything's been capitalized.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know why, what program they're putting this into
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  Speaker 2: that capitalizes everything, and then they redacted with a black highlighter.
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  Speaker 2: And that's the stuff that you can't put in, you know.
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  Speaker 2: And the reality is I do a lot of frankly
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  Speaker 2: self censoring upfront because I want to be responsible. There
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  Speaker 2: are elements of the operations in the Tradecraft that I
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  Speaker 2: know are just off limits and frankly would probably be
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  Speaker 2: boring to the reader, and so I choose to just
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  Speaker 2: not not include that. So I've gotten kind of this
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  Speaker 2: down after now, you know, just sent my fourth book
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  Speaker 2: to them, like I've now got this down to kind
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  Speaker 2: of a process and not a science, I would say,
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  Speaker 2: but it moves pretty smoothly.
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  Speaker 3: A lot of the I'm sure that a lot of
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  Speaker 3: what you write about obviously, as we've talked about, comes
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  Speaker 3: from your lived experience and things and quite an extraordinary job.
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  Speaker 3: And I know that you spent eight years covering Syria,
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  Speaker 3: and you lived in Damascus and things like that. Has
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  Speaker 3: writing extra been a way for you to process, maybe
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  Speaker 3: and deal with some of the situations and issue you know,
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  Speaker 3: issues and things that you've had to deal with as
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  Speaker 3: an analyst.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very much so. I mean, you know, the
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  Speaker 2: Syria experience really was the start of this for me.
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  Speaker 2: You know, Syria, I worked on it from the time
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  Speaker 2: when it was kind of you know, pre civil war
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  Speaker 2: to them when it was really in the thick of it.
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  Speaker 2: And that experience of just watching an entire country pull
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  Speaker 2: itself to pieces, you know, hundreds of thousands of people killed,
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  Speaker 2: the whole place shattered, you know, ninety or so percent
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  Speaker 2: of the country in you know, sort of in poverty,
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  Speaker 2: tens of thousands of people disappeared. I mean, it was
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  Speaker 2: a it was an experience where you feel you're very
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  Speaker 2: connected to the place, and yet all the things you're
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  Speaker 2: writing are kind of these strategic analyzes that are you know, anodyne,
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  Speaker 2: really bureaucratically and for good reason. And so for me,
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  Speaker 2: the writing when I got out was really an attempt
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  Speaker 2: to try to connect, i think, to some of the
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  Speaker 2: humanity of what had happened there, and to write stories,
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  Speaker 2: you know, and again I didn't start thinking this would
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  Speaker 2: turn into novels, but just to kind of write stories
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  Speaker 2: that would help me process what I had seen and experienced.
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  Speaker 2: And then it just went from there.
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  Speaker 3: That's interesting.
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  Speaker 1: Did you.
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  Speaker 3: Did you always think that this is what you were
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  Speaker 3: going to do, right, novels when you left the CIA?
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  Speaker 3: When did that idea come up? Is this something you've
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  Speaker 3: always been king to do?
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  Speaker 2: No, I mean, the idea actually came up sort of
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  Speaker 2: embarrassingly late, I think. I mean, I left the CIA,
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  Speaker 2: and I had time in between leaving and starting a
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  Speaker 2: new job, and I didn't actually have to have a
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  Speaker 2: job for those you know, three or four months, and
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  Speaker 2: so I spent a lot of that time, pretty much
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  Speaker 2: all that time writing But at no point did I
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  Speaker 2: think that I would turn it into a book. It
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  Speaker 2: was just for me really, And then, you know, I
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  Speaker 2: realized as I was writing that I loved the process
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  Speaker 2: of writing, the input of it, just sitting down and
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  Speaker 2: actually you know, spending six eight hours putting words down
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  Speaker 2: on paper. And so, you know, sort of fast forward
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  Speaker 2: like five years from that, and I had this manuscript
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  Speaker 2: which I thought, you know, was like maybe halfway decent,
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  Speaker 2: but actually was terrible. I mean it was, you know,
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  Speaker 2: really atrocious, like no plots, you know, totally disjointed characters
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  Speaker 2: because it was all just like a diary.
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  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 2: It's like, you know, Matthew McConaughey published his diary, but
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  Speaker 2: I'm not McConaughey. So there was no market for you know,
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  Speaker 2: David mccloskey's Syria diary. And but at that point, five
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  Speaker 2: years on, I thought, look, I loved writing so much.
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  Speaker 2: Let me see if I could turn this into something
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  Speaker 2: that not only I want to write and read, but
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  Speaker 2: that other people might. And so that idea came actually
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  Speaker 2: very late, and it was years after I had left CIA.
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  Speaker 3: Well that's interesting, because they're so excellent. I thought maybe
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  Speaker 3: you'd been right. Well, obviously you had been writing as
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  Speaker 3: an analyst, but not quite like this. And I should
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  Speaker 3: just mention if people want to hear a little bit
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  Speaker 3: more about how you feel about what's going on in
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  Speaker 3: Syria at the moment. You did cover that in your
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  Speaker 3: podcast at the Reese is Classified, which which is fantastic.
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  Speaker 3: And let's have a little talk about the podcast, because
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  Speaker 3: I've spent my summer listening to it. It's a podcast
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  Speaker 3: you co host with Gordon our career, and you take
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  Speaker 3: us sort of into the mysterious world of spies Andy Spinach.
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  Speaker 3: But these are actually true stories. What is the importance
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  Speaker 3: to sharing these stories?
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think I will say that one
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  Speaker 2: of our one of Gordon's and I's kind of key
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  Speaker 2: goals is, of course we're trying to entertain people with
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  Speaker 2: these stories, but we are also trying to make them
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  Speaker 2: as authentic as possible to the reality of the espionage business.
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  Speaker 2: And so I think what we're trying to accomplish, frankly,
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  Speaker 2: is to shed some light on a really misunderstood world
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  Speaker 2: where most of us, I think, get our you know,
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  Speaker 2: kind of cues or our hints about what it's like
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  Speaker 2: from Hollywood, right, and I think the reality of the
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  Speaker 2: business in many ways is actually far more interesting because
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  Speaker 2: at the core of most of the stories we're telling,
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  Speaker 2: it is just it's people who are like us, but
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  Speaker 2: who happen to be in various parts of the espionage business.
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  Speaker 2: Is their job either their intelligence officers, you know, or
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  Speaker 2: they're the actual spies who have been recruited to go
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  Speaker 2: and you know, give secrets, And it's just kind of
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  Speaker 2: fascinating the choices that these humans have made, because they
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  Speaker 2: tend to be caught up in, you know, games where
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  Speaker 2: the geopolitical stakes are very high, where the personal stakes
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  Speaker 2: are very high, and where many of them are sort
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  Speaker 2: of living in existence where they're telling one group of
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  Speaker 2: people one thing and another group of people another thing,
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  Speaker 2: and so there's all these themes of betrayal and deception
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  Speaker 2: that kind of infuse the stories. So, you know, it's
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  Speaker 2: frankly just the case that there's a lot of material
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  Speaker 2: out there, right, and we do believe that even people
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  Speaker 2: who are not you know, maybe they're not reading spy
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  Speaker 2: thrillers regularly, we do believe that they'll be interested in
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  Speaker 2: these worries because at the heart of them are just
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  Speaker 2: really interesting people.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely are you would all concerned for the Secret Service
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  Speaker 3: and President Trump?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think I am. I am trying to,
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  Speaker 2: I think maintain kind of a cautious hope that there
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  Speaker 2: will be more smoke than fire and that the headlines
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  Speaker 2: that we're seeing that a lot of the kind of
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  Speaker 2: concern won't really translate into an effect on the CIS mission.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, when I talk to people who are on
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  Speaker 2: the inside, who were there for the first Trump administration
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  Speaker 2: have been there, you know, since I left. They would
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  Speaker 2: tell you that there was you know, really almost no
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  Speaker 2: disruption to the CIA's court mission over the course of
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  Speaker 2: that you know time that the CIA just kind of
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  Speaker 2: runs and there's bluster and you know politicking, you know,
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  Speaker 2: at that sort of the thirty thousand foot level, but
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  Speaker 2: not really when you get down to what's happening inside CIA.
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  Speaker 2: You know, I think the buyouts that have been offered
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  Speaker 2: kind of strip me as maybe not the best idea,
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  Speaker 2: in large part because it's just not really focused. You know.
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  Speaker 2: I think it's probably the case that in any massive organization,
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  Speaker 2: there are efficiencies to be had of just you know, jobs, people, roles, etc.
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  Speaker 2: That either need to be moved or maybe don't need
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  Speaker 2: to be there. But you've got to be really targeted
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  Speaker 2: about that kind of stuff. And so I really do
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  Speaker 2: hope that again more smoke than fire, and I'm sort
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  Speaker 2: of cautiously hopeful that that will be the case in
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  Speaker 2: Trump two point zero as it was the first time around.
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  Speaker 3: David just finally, you know, I read the books and
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: I love them, and it reflects sort of current day espionage.
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  Speaker 3: I listen to the podcast and some of those stories
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  Speaker 3: are historical espionage stories, and I wonder has the trade
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  Speaker 3: actually sort of changed that much over the years, or
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  Speaker 3: or a spy still essentially doing the same thing, maybe
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  Speaker 3: just with some bitter tech.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, I think I think the answer is
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  Speaker 2: busy yes to both of those things. I think that
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  Speaker 2: the trade has changed significantly because basically a combination of
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  Speaker 2: you know, cameras, biometrics, sensors everywhere, plus dirt cheap storage,
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  Speaker 2: plus analytic tools to make sense of all that information,
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  Speaker 2: many of which are AI powered. All of that means
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  Speaker 2: that the fundamental kind of trade craft of how you
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  Speaker 2: go through an operation to let's say, recruit somebody and
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: run them in Moscow or Beijing or Damascus or wherever,
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  Speaker 2: that's totally different now, right, So it has changed. It's
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  Speaker 2: also true that you know, secrets that you know, maybe
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  Speaker 2: in the past were not digital. They were physical. It
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  Speaker 2: was paper, it was in people's heads. There's now a
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  Speaker 2: lot more digitally to be stolen. Right, So there's there
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  Speaker 2: are kind of, you know, i'd say, massive changes to
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  Speaker 2: the overall business. That said, I think it's still true
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  Speaker 2: that having a really well placed human source, you know,
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  Speaker 2: be they in the Kremlin with access to Vladimir Putin,
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  Speaker 2: or be they Inassa's presidential palace, or you know, from
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  Speaker 2: the Russian standpoint, and you think about my book the
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  Speaker 2: Seventh Floor on the seventh floor at CIA's headquarters at Langley,
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  Speaker 2: you know, having an agent or asset in those roles
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  Speaker 2: is still an absolutely unique and extremely valuable thing for
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  Speaker 2: a foreign intelligence service to have. And I don't think
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  Speaker 2: the value of that is going away. I think that
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  Speaker 2: it's getting more expensive to do that. I think it's
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  Speaker 2: getting harder to do that, but it's still exceptionally valuable.
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  Speaker 2: So a lot of the old school espionage stories that
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  Speaker 2: we're doing on the POD, I think I actually do
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  Speaker 2: have present day kind of analogs or you know, relevant
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  Speaker 2: implications because you know, you think one story we just
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  Speaker 2: did recently, Adolf Tolkachev, the spy in Moscow at the
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: height of the Cold War. You know, we would kill
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  Speaker 2: to have an Adolf Tolkachev today embedded in Moscow, you know,
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  Speaker 2: kind of key defense industries in Moscow telling us everything
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  Speaker 2: about what the Russians are developing for the next twenty years.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: We would love to have that today. So it's still
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: very relevant.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, David Thank you so much for your time. It
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: has been a delight to talk to you well.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. Wonderful to be here.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: That was former CIA analyst now spy author David McCloskey.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: His new book, The Seventh Floor, release this week, is
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: in stalls now.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: For more from News Talks at b listen live on
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.