Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 2: Could they be true?
Speaker 3: Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible.
Speaker 3: This is part two of John and Jerry's conversation with
Speaker 3: David McCloskey, their old CIA co worker, former analyst, and
Speaker 3: current spy novelist and the host of the podcast The
Speaker 3: Rest Is Classified.
Speaker 2: So as a writer, as an author, everybody wants a
Speaker 2: conspiracy on their plot right as they're replete with conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: Do you find, as do we to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: that outside of maybe the Beltway some you know, people
Speaker 2: who are like foreign policy walks, then it's hard to
Speaker 2: keep fictional conspiracy theories and what the CIA and what
Speaker 2: the intelligence community and what the US government actually is
Speaker 2: and can do like the deep state. Do you find that,
Speaker 2: you know, you feel questions from people where they're they're
Speaker 2: not quite sure of where the line is between like
Speaker 2: a fun fictional conspiracy and books or a movie or
Speaker 2: you know, the way shit really works, and how do
Speaker 2: you resolve of that.
Speaker 4: So I continue to be surprised, although I shouldn't be,
Speaker 4: at just how little most people know about the way
Speaker 4: the intelligence community or the CIA more more particularly works.
Speaker 4: I mean, most people, even you know, very smart, well
Speaker 4: read people, just don't have an understanding of the way
Speaker 4: it functions. And I think almost all of the primary
Speaker 4: source material for people's perceptions come from Hollywood. They come
Speaker 4: from spy films and TV shows and and spy novels. Right,
Speaker 4: that's the way.
Speaker 1: People president of the United States understands how it functions.
Speaker 4: Just to be clear, by the way, I didn't realize
Speaker 4: this is not actually a tangent, although it'll sound like it.
Speaker 4: We write a the CI writes like a chapter in
Speaker 4: this book that they put out every presidential transition about
Speaker 4: the transition for the like the briefings and all of
Speaker 4: that to kind of get the new potus in office.
Speaker 4: And the chapter in the book for Trump the first administration,
Speaker 4: because they haven't done the second one yet, was called
Speaker 4: Donald J. Trump a unique challenge. That was literally that
Speaker 4: that was literally the title of the chapter, and it
Speaker 4: did confirm that he's not I don't think he's he's
Speaker 4: not really a PDB reader kind of guy, let's put
Speaker 4: it that way. That is, by the way, the reason
Speaker 4: why I think there continues to be a tremendous demand
Speaker 4: for spy related, espionage related content because people don't it's
Speaker 4: it's sort of secretive. And if you, as a reader
Speaker 4: or a watcher of spy content, feel as though you're
Speaker 4: being led into a secret world, there's something interesting and
Speaker 4: intriguing about that. And I generally try to write things
Speaker 4: to be as authentic as possible, but you you sort
Speaker 4: of get to a point in every story where something
Speaker 4: has to happen for the demands of the story that
Speaker 4: are not the way it actually happens, and yeah, there's
Speaker 4: there's there's somebody the directors working for the Russians or something.
Speaker 4: There's got to be something big and that sets the
Speaker 4: stakes for the whole story, and that that tends to
Speaker 4: break the rules of the way things actually work. And
Speaker 4: so I think as a you know, as a writer,
Speaker 4: I'm generally trying to create enough of a sort of
Speaker 4: foundation in the novel that you, as the reader, are
Speaker 4: willing to take those leaps, or maybe are just so
Speaker 4: kind of a lulled into the world of the story
Speaker 4: that you don't even know that at three or four
Speaker 4: points along the way, I'm positing a scenario that you
Speaker 4: know is extremely unlikely to happen, although I would say
Speaker 4: what I'm generally also trying to do, And you talked
Speaker 4: about conspiracy conspiracies, and I think I'm trying to create
Speaker 4: a scenario in the novels that is highly improbable, But
Speaker 4: in the world of the novel and the characters of
Speaker 4: the novel and the rules of the novel, it's not implausible. Right,
Speaker 4: So you read it and you'd be like, this never happens.
Speaker 4: But if you dip into the world of the.
Speaker 2: Book's internally consistently.
Speaker 4: It's internally exactly how these places work. There actually is
Speaker 4: material out there available to you. You can listen to
Speaker 4: this podcast, you can listen to my podcast. You can
Speaker 4: go out there and get the memoirs of any number
Speaker 4: of CI officers who have written actual books about the
Speaker 4: way the place really functions and read it. It's not
Speaker 4: that there's some dearth of material. It's that very few
Speaker 4: people actually know where to look, or frankly are probably
Speaker 4: not even maybe that interested in the reality of it.
Speaker 4: They just they want the spy spy attainment.
Speaker 1: To go, then to the stories and the content. You've
Speaker 1: now had a number of episodes with your new podcast,
Speaker 1: which is very popular and getting quide attention and good praise.
Speaker 1: Do you have some favorite stories? You guys have covered
Speaker 1: Edward Snowden, You've covered the Israeli killing of nuclear scientists.
Speaker 1: You've covered MK Ultra and tests, tests inside the CIA,
Speaker 1: Klaus Fuchs and the atomic program, spies inside of Russia.
Speaker 1: Do you have any sort of favorites or anything you'd
Speaker 1: like to aim people towards.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, well, so I would point people toward
Speaker 4: the Snowden series that were just dropped recently. That one
Speaker 4: was really interesting for me because I was at the
Speaker 4: Agency when that happened, and of course not involved in
Speaker 4: it in any way, but had some awareness of sort
Speaker 4: of how it had gone down, but had never spent
Speaker 4: days researching it and talking about it with Gordon. So like,
Speaker 4: getting into that story was really really interesting and confirmed
Speaker 4: all of my preconceived biases about ed Snowden. Also, I
Speaker 4: would say I was not. My opinion of the man
Speaker 4: was not changed, So that was a really fun one.
Speaker 4: The other one that I've really enjoyed doing was there
Speaker 4: was a spir ring of Bulgarians who were operating in
Speaker 4: The Minions. The Minions. Yeah, I love the Minions one
Speaker 4: because I've got three kids and they're avid watchers of
Speaker 4: the Despicable Me franchise and the Minions, and I had
Speaker 4: a legitimate work reason to rewatch those movies and to
Speaker 4: go deep into like internet research on all the various
Speaker 4: like spy tech and the Minions. The thing that I
Speaker 4: think has been most fun on the podcast is finding
Speaker 4: stories that do have a legitimate spy story at the
Speaker 4: heart of the of whatever the tale is, but are
Speaker 4: also sort of darkly comedic at the same time. And
Speaker 4: any it seems like anytime you're dealing with like Russian
Speaker 4: espionage in Europe, you we hit that kind of like
Speaker 4: nexus of there's bizarre characters and they're doing things that
Speaker 4: are also if they succeed, potentially very damaging or lethal
Speaker 4: and awful and murderous and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: So it's this weird package that I think make makes
Speaker 4: those stories really fun for me to research and they're
Speaker 4: really I mean, they can be sad too, but it's
Speaker 4: it's it's the kind of mixture of all of that
Speaker 4: that mix them appealing.
Speaker 2: Well, I found it very disappointing in your research on
Speaker 2: the minions that you didn't include me in it. You
Speaker 2: missed that part. Yeah, I see by the gobsnaked gobs
Speaker 2: an uncaring look is what that? The look of gob
Speaker 2: snakedness on your face?
Speaker 4: I am gobsback because I have no idea where this
Speaker 4: is going.
Speaker 2: So our world, the world of di I folks and
Speaker 2: DO folks is pretty limited sometimes right, we keep bumping
Speaker 2: into each other. But after I retired, one of the
Speaker 2: first sort of job offers I got, and I won't
Speaker 2: go into detail here, but I was brought out to London.
Speaker 2: This is after I'd retired and someone tried to hire
Speaker 2: me to use my operator skills, which of course we
Speaker 2: don't really want really security guys, but to basically investigate
Speaker 2: the ft because the guy was saying that the ft
Speaker 2: is a bad actor.
Speaker 1: The Financial Times, the.
Speaker 2: Financial Times, and that what the what I was supposed
Speaker 2: to investigate them for, and the journals I was supposed
Speaker 2: to go after were the ones who were looking into
Speaker 2: Wirecard and uh In macellk right, the Austrian guy, and
Speaker 2: so I was supposed to come save them, and it
Speaker 2: was outlined to me, you know that the journalists are
Speaker 2: up to know good, they're being hired by a bad
Speaker 2: actor to wreck investments. And they went through all this
Speaker 2: and I thought, sounds like the Financial Times is onto this, right,
Speaker 2: I'm Marcelic. It's like he sounds like a bad guy.
Speaker 2: And then of course he runs off to Moscow and
Speaker 2: he hires the minions, right, right, I have a small
Speaker 2: little ten slices.
Speaker 1: But if you had done it, you could have become
Speaker 1: rich and then you would be part of the ministry.
Speaker 2: Probably I was someone tried to hire me to basically
Speaker 2: do opposition research to undermine stories that were undermining Workard.
Speaker 2: And the other part you didn't have in there, which
Speaker 2: I really love, was that it wasn't really your focus.
Speaker 2: Your focus was on the minions. But Wirecard, the German
Speaker 2: B and D was using this to pay their agents,
Speaker 2: and they're yeah, so the Russians were controlling the payment
Speaker 2: mechanism to Germany's most secret you know, their version of Knox.
Speaker 2: How they financed them and all their agents around the world.
Speaker 2: So when you're you know, when you're chief of station
Speaker 2: in Berlin and you want the Germans are like, hey,
Speaker 2: let's work together, You're like.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that Germans screwed up IRAQ WMD and
Speaker 1: then later screwed up everything else the.
Speaker 2: Next one and they lost two World Wars. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: just saying, you know.
Speaker 4: It all leads back to Berlin.
Speaker 2: It all.
Speaker 4: That's bad. That's bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a small world. It is.
Speaker 4: And that's why that that Marsalid character is like a
Speaker 4: great I mean, he's just it's like when you read
Speaker 4: it out last but he actually did, it's yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's the kind of character. If I had
Speaker 4: written that in a novel, my editor would have been like,
Speaker 4: this is ridiculous, this isn't realistic. And you know it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you seem like you've got it. Seems like you've
Speaker 2: got some decent sort of self confidence. So I don't
Speaker 2: want to deflate it.
Speaker 1: Oh, who knows where he's going with this?
Speaker 2: There goes but I got to say your German accent
Speaker 2: and your podcast and people have said it was really
Speaker 2: more Colonel Clink than no.
Speaker 4: I know, I know, because that's I loved it.
Speaker 2: It was great.
Speaker 4: I'm so bad at the accents, I can't.
Speaker 2: Yah, it was it was excellent.
Speaker 1: When Jerry does his German accent, like he speaks almost
Speaker 1: like native German, it's obnoxious, sort of like you know
Speaker 1: when people had to head the Latin accent and they
Speaker 1: go like Venezuela. He does the same kind of thing
Speaker 1: with with the German and then makes you want to
Speaker 1: punch him.
Speaker 4: You're saying, Colonel Clink, isn't isn't authentic?
Speaker 2: Sort of he was authentic. He was a German Jew.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he might be too young to You have watched
Speaker 1: Hogan's Hero.
Speaker 4: Oh I watched Hogan zero.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his father it was a conductor Klemner. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was like it was a famous, famous orchestra conductor.
Speaker 4: Well you need to improve. Yeah, the accents will, they'll
Speaker 4: come with time.
Speaker 1: More of this exciting fainter after a quick breaking.
Speaker 2: So what is your favorite conspiracy theory on CIA that
Speaker 2: it gets either get thrown at you you find yourself
Speaker 2: defending or you're wondering yourself, like you know, whiskey tango foxtrot.
Speaker 4: So the one that I get pretty frequently nowadays. It's
Speaker 4: a mixture of some of the people who bring this
Speaker 4: forward or hostile, and then others are just curious. But
Speaker 4: it is the deep state, and it's a fun one
Speaker 4: because it's kind of a it's extremely vague, and so
Speaker 4: it kind of becomes anything that the holder of this
Speaker 4: worldview wants it to become. And I I really try
Speaker 4: to understand every time what they're talking about, like what
Speaker 4: the allegation is, but it comes down to some unspecified
Speaker 4: cabal of senior CIA officials who are working with the
Speaker 4: FBI to undermine American right. Yeah, exactly, like stop you
Speaker 4: right there, This doesn't doesn't It's not gonna work like that.
Speaker 4: They hate each other. That's probably the most frequent one
Speaker 4: that I get in some way, shape or form. The
Speaker 4: other one that comes up a lot are someone will
Speaker 4: just say Hunter Biden laptop and and you know, and
Speaker 4: and the letter and all of that. That's another one
Speaker 4: that'll come up. And uh, and again it's a it's
Speaker 4: very hard to sort of usually walk the person through
Speaker 4: to like what they're what's really going on. But that's
Speaker 4: that's another one that comes up.
Speaker 1: But I'm the state thing. I often wonder like if
Speaker 1: you had time to walk people through this like, don't
Speaker 1: you want a deep state in a certain sense, you're
Speaker 1: what you're saying is you have a professional group of
Speaker 1: experts in an area who don't always agree with what
Speaker 1: the politicians tell them. So I think these people are saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: the first time President Trump was in power, all of
Speaker 1: these bureaucrats didn't just automatically agree and support everything he said. Instead,
Speaker 1: they were doing what they supposed to do. They would
Speaker 1: come and say, sir, that actually is against the law,
Speaker 1: or if you do that, China's going to retaliate. You
Speaker 1: might not want to And so yes, it probably for
Speaker 1: a president who didn't understand how power works, it probably
Speaker 1: was frustrating to him. But if you get rid of
Speaker 1: that and don't have expertise or people who actually try
Speaker 1: to tell you what really is going on, a far
Speaker 1: bigger problem for that president, it's going to then walk
Speaker 1: right into the busk.
Speaker 2: Because coming full circle, you know, with Rock w D,
Speaker 2: if we had a better deep state, they would have said, sir,
Speaker 2: we don't have absolute evidence, we don't have proof of WND. Yeah,
Speaker 2: conjecture and hypothesis. Go to war on that if you want,
Speaker 2: But you can't go saying it is. You can only
Speaker 2: say maybe.
Speaker 4: Right, because I think all of that is true. To me,
Speaker 4: that conspiracy theory is more symptomatic and just the general
Speaker 4: sort of collapse of trust in the institutions of our
Speaker 4: state and our media and our civic life. And so
Speaker 4: the CIA is like not immune to that. And so
Speaker 4: it's like, it's weird because irack WMD has in some
Speaker 4: way contributed to that, because people go back and say, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, you guys, you screwed this up, and we
Speaker 4: went to war and we spent a trillion dollars and
Speaker 4: you know, a whole bunch of people died, so we
Speaker 4: got nothing. But the solution to that would be to
Speaker 4: have a better intelligence service, not to just undermine the
Speaker 4: one that we have now even further. And don't I
Speaker 4: don't think that circle gets squared. I also just think
Speaker 4: that the immense secrecy makes it a lot harder to
Speaker 4: I mean, there is and this is not a super
Speaker 4: aha moment, but it's you know, obviously in an open
Speaker 4: society and in a democracy, there's an incredible amount of
Speaker 4: tension with that, the secrecy that the CIA needs to operate,
Speaker 4: and we're inherently distrustful of anything that happens in secret
Speaker 4: in this country.
Speaker 2: Which you say trust has collapsed, you know, sort of
Speaker 2: it's fallen out of a window like a Russian oligarch.
Speaker 2: But did it fall or was it pushed? Because I mean,
Speaker 2: you've got people at the typical, at the at the
Speaker 2: epicenter center or at the very acme of US power
Speaker 2: who are still talking about the deep state. They are
Speaker 2: the deep state, right, So it seems to me that
Speaker 2: there is isn't a conspiracy in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 2: depending on the definition to actually push the narrative that
Speaker 2: there is a deep state. But I'm not sure that
Speaker 2: it's just it's collapsed. I think that it's been monetized
Speaker 2: and there's a there's a.
Speaker 1: How long can you be in charge of it? And
Speaker 1: keep saying that it exists, Like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very trumpy in to kind of have the
Speaker 4: he taught because he does kind of talk out of
Speaker 4: both sides of his mouth on the intelligence community, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, for one of the episodes that we did
Speaker 4: on kind of in tell in Politics, and we did
Speaker 4: the Halloween massacre story as part of that. When Stan
Speaker 4: Turner did a bunch of cuts back in the late seventies,
Speaker 4: primarily in the doo and the director of Operations. And
Speaker 4: when you go back and you really read what Trump
Speaker 4: has said about the IC, you get a lot of
Speaker 4: stuff where he is like, man, you guys are the best,
Speaker 4: and I love you and I love what you're doing.
Speaker 4: And then you get a lot of other stuff that's like,
Speaker 4: at the same time, there's this deep state that exists
Speaker 4: inside the FBI and the CIA, and we need to
Speaker 4: root it out. And he'll kind of talk about both
Speaker 4: of those things in the same conversations, in the same
Speaker 4: press conferences, right And when he went out to Langley
Speaker 4: on day one of his first administration, you read the
Speaker 4: transcript of that speech, which is insane, and he says
Speaker 4: all of that stuff multiple times. It's kind of contradictory.
Speaker 4: I think he's very instinctive, and I think he realizes
Speaker 4: that at maybe some basic level, there's some capabilities and
Speaker 4: some cool shit inside the intelligence community that could be
Speaker 4: really beneficial to him, and probably some people in there
Speaker 4: that want to help him. And then at the same time,
Speaker 4: you know, you get irritating things like when Russia House
Speaker 4: and the Russia analysts are putting stuff out that says, hey,
Speaker 4: you know, we're not saying that the Russians got you elected.
Speaker 4: We're saying the Russians wanted you to win. And you know,
Speaker 4: there's no difference, there's no distinction in his mind between
Speaker 4: those things. But that, more than anything else, I think
Speaker 4: in his mind was like, oh, there's like there's like
Speaker 4: enemies or people who wish me ill inside CIA who
Speaker 4: are putting these assessments together, letting them get out, like
Speaker 4: I don't want that. And the relationship I think from
Speaker 4: there really has been rocky, hasn't it.
Speaker 2: The internal contradiction Just today that came out as you've
Speaker 2: got RFK Junior apparently yesterday said that he's asked about
Speaker 2: kem trails, right, the US government secretly putting out poisons
Speaker 2: into the air to whatever it is, to make people
Speaker 2: infertile or to kill specific nationalities. And instead of saying
Speaker 2: it's not true because he's in charge now, he said, well,
Speaker 2: my department doesn't do that, and then he can't basically
Speaker 2: said you have to talk to Pete Hegsith about that, right.
Speaker 2: He blamed darb book and said, well that's the real
Speaker 2: deep state that's doing this. Right, So they even when
Speaker 2: they're in charge, they still are like the tweed ring
Speaker 2: pointing at each other.
Speaker 1: They can't just say, yeah, the CIA killed my father,
Speaker 1: and so they get in they say, well, put out
Speaker 1: all the materials. So they put all all the material
Speaker 1: and then it's just like okay, let's move on to
Speaker 1: the next thing.
Speaker 2: Ye yeah, like yeah.
Speaker 4: The thing for me that is just kind of a
Speaker 4: basic starting point is like, we would we want the
Speaker 4: people in our country who are making the decisions to
Speaker 4: have better information about other countries than those countries do
Speaker 4: about us.
Speaker 2: And so if you.
Speaker 4: Start from that premise, which I think most people would
Speaker 4: agree with, you need an effective foreign intelligence service to
Speaker 4: do that. You need one that you could argue about
Speaker 4: what form it takes, You could argue about how the
Speaker 4: whole thing's organize. We should be collecting information on other
Speaker 4: big countries like Russia and China and Iran and North
Speaker 4: Korea that potentially wishes ill and you'd want the president
Speaker 4: to have the best possible information about what those countries
Speaker 4: are up to. And that's what the CIA does, you know.
Speaker 4: So if someone someone can't walk to that point in
Speaker 4: the conversation, it's like we're not we're not living on
Speaker 4: the same planet.
Speaker 2: So David, let me ask you about yourself. So when
Speaker 2: you supposedly left CIA. You know, of course none of it.
Speaker 2: We're all still in yes, still in the deep state,
Speaker 2: joining Operation Mockingberg to write these novels to like to
Speaker 2: influence people. Yeah, so did you enjoy your time in
Speaker 2: the agency and why'd you decide to leave? And how
Speaker 2: are you? How you how does Hollywood compare to like
Speaker 2: the intelligence community? Because we're finding Hollywood to be like,
Speaker 2: way more screwed up than we ever worked.
Speaker 4: Well, the agency was great because I got to be
Speaker 4: at briefings with guys like you and tell me how
Speaker 4: smart I was and how badly my you know, analytic
Speaker 4: judgments were needed to support this critical operation. I really
Speaker 4: enjoyed my time at the CIA, you know, as someone
Speaker 4: who joined really young and who wanted to learn how
Speaker 4: the world worked and get the opportunity to travel and see,
Speaker 4: I don't know, see the world outside of Minnesota. I
Speaker 4: really enjoyed it. And I found the problems I was
Speaker 4: working on there to be really endlessly fascinating, and it
Speaker 4: felt even though there were plenty of times where I
Speaker 4: feel like we would write things and basically you'd get
Speaker 4: the feedback of like read with interest, which generally meant
Speaker 4: they looked at the piece of paper that it was
Speaker 4: on that was a classic one, like it was read
Speaker 4: with interest, and then you'd write that up in your
Speaker 4: annual assessment. You'd be like, I wrote ten pdbs that
Speaker 4: were read with interest this year. You know, it did
Speaker 4: feel in some way, like I felt like I could
Speaker 4: connect some line from like I'm working on this topic
Speaker 4: to like, then it's getting to people who are actually
Speaker 4: making decisions, and you hope, in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 4: something you've written somewhere has made some difference in the
Speaker 4: way policy is made. And so I really loved it,
Speaker 4: And I honestly maybe kind of cheesy to say, but
Speaker 4: you know, working with a bunch of really smart people
Speaker 4: who are also dedicated to the mission of the CIA
Speaker 4: was an experience I would wouldn't trade for anything. I
Speaker 4: would say that I have a little bit more creative
Speaker 4: freedom now when I'm writing novels, so I'm not sending
Speaker 4: things through nine layers of review. And you know, there's
Speaker 4: definitely a part of me that is grateful, given how
Speaker 4: chaotic things seem in DC these days, to not be
Speaker 4: in one of those chairs at this point.
Speaker 2: But you know, I still go through the PRB.
Speaker 4: Yes, so go through everything still goes through the prbing
Speaker 4: publication review board. Yeah yeah, And I honestly have probably
Speaker 4: learned more about the actual CIA it'sself self now that
Speaker 4: I'm outside and like writing stories about it and having
Speaker 4: conversations with guys like you about you know, not the
Speaker 4: substance of this or that thing it's serious, but about
Speaker 4: like what's the job, like what's the place like all that.
Speaker 4: So I've gotten a kind of newfound appreciation for the place.
Speaker 4: And I mean, obviously it's got a lot of wards too,
Speaker 4: but I think it's a really important institution and really
Speaker 4: fascinating one, and so it's been interesting to write about
Speaker 4: it from the outside.
Speaker 1: So that leads me to perhaps our last question. We're
Speaker 1: going to keep you too long? Can you tell us
Speaker 1: about your next book? And are we in it?
Speaker 4: We got it? Figure Central Central Figures and John, Yeah,
Speaker 4: John and Jerry. I made you both analysts r and John.
Speaker 4: You're both You're a team of You're a team of
Speaker 4: analysts who get in the first pages, get a call
Speaker 4: horribly wrong and her and are you know? The rest
Speaker 4: of the story is the rest of the story is
Speaker 4: an intrepid case officer David, who really solves the problem
Speaker 4: I have I have I have enjoyed interestingly because I
Speaker 4: mean most of the protagonists of the book are case officers,
Speaker 4: because if you wrote an analyst protagonist, it would actually
Speaker 4: be very hard to make that book work. I've taken
Speaker 4: a lot of potshots at the analyst, and I think
Speaker 4: I need to start taking more at the case officers. Frankly, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's right, that's right. Yeah, it really is, it really is.
Speaker 4: So the next one, which is out here in the
Speaker 4: States in September thirtieth, is called The Persian and it
Speaker 4: is an Israel Iran story. I basically took the looked
Speaker 4: at all the different crazy things that the Israelis have
Speaker 4: done in Iran over the past fifteen plus years, and
Speaker 4: tried to imagine what it might look like if the
Speaker 4: Iranians built a similar capability, not at the same level,
Speaker 4: but built a similar capability in Israel and started to
Speaker 4: started to kill Israeli security officials and intelligence officers, and
Speaker 4: the Israelis kind of going back at them to try
Speaker 4: to figure out what's going on. So it's a war
Speaker 4: of assassinations between both the Israelis and the Iranians. And
Speaker 4: it was a very interesting book to write because of
Speaker 4: so much of the kind of israel Aron shadow Ward
Speaker 4: of bleeding out into the open while Iye was actually
Speaker 4: writing it, and another one of those stories where so
Speaker 4: many of the Israeli operations were so insane that it
Speaker 4: was oftentimes just the best scenario to sort of change
Speaker 4: a few things and basically use what the Israelis had
Speaker 4: already done as plot points because so much of the
Speaker 4: stuff was soa bonkers.
Speaker 2: You made like a satellite operated AI enabled machine guy.
Speaker 4: Right right right, or or kidnapping the head of the
Speaker 4: Goods Forces like external kind of lethal operations unit and
Speaker 4: interrogating him in Iran before dumping him back out on
Speaker 4: the street and then taking all the footage and leaking
Speaker 4: it to journalists. So, I mean, it's just like crazy stuff.
Speaker 4: I mean. The other great story, which has been well
Speaker 4: documented is when they broke into the archive where the
Speaker 4: audience had kept all of their files on the Duke program,
Speaker 4: and they basically broke into all these safes and put
Speaker 4: everything on trucks and then just drove it out of
Speaker 4: the country. So yeah, that's pretty pretty wild stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm looking forward to reading that. You can sign
Speaker 1: our books when the time comes in, we'll have you
Speaker 1: on to talk about the book itself.
Speaker 4: That'd be great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, David, thanks for meeting us. Anybody who is listening
Speaker 1: to this should definitely be listening to The rest is Classified. Again,
Speaker 1: thank you for your time. You're one of our favorite
Speaker 1: guys to read and listen to, so.
Speaker 4: Thanks thanks for having me on. Guys, I appreciate you
Speaker 4: inviting an analyst to come on this program, so.
Speaker 2: Run out of guests.
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry Osha, John Cipher,
Speaker 5: and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 3: The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 5: Mission Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable
Speaker 5: pictures for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Don'