I read and enjoyed David McCloskey’s three CIA spy thrillers, The Seventh Floor, Moscow X, and Damascus Station, I reviewed his novels for the Washington Times.
David McCloskey is
a former CIA analyst. 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.
His latest spy
thriller, The Persian (published by Norton), is a departure from
his first three thrillers, as it is not about the CIA. The Persian is about
Israeli intelligence operations in Iran.
As his publisher Norton noted, Kamran Esfahani is a Persian Jew living out a dreary existence in
Stockholm when the Mossad recruits him and directs him to his native Tehran
under the cover of opening a dental practice.
“From there he
skillfully spies for the Mossad, trying to earn enough money to enjoy a more
exciting and glamorous life on other shores. But when Kam is assigned to an operation
involving an Iranian widow seeking to avenge the death of her husband at the
hands of the Mossad, his dreams unravel and he finds himself in too deep,
ultimately landing himself in prison under the watchful eye of a sadistic
officer he knows only as the “General.” After enduring three years of torture
and interrogation in captivity, Kam is ordered to write his final confession –
but there is one secret he’s desperate to keep, one that might redeem him for
his past lies and misdeeds.”
In addition to
being a bestselling author, McCloskey is the co-host of the popular podcast “The Rest is Classified,”
telling real-life stories from the world of spies and espionage. He offers an
authoritative perspective on the hidden dimensions of power and intelligence
services across the globe,” Norton added.
McCloskey spoke to
NPR about the novel.
“I
think the guts of the shadow war, not necessarily the kind of overt military
conflict, are really at the heart of this story. And I really did try to take
actual chapters from this conflict between Tel Aviv and Tehran and embed them,
you know, in kind of a fictionalized way into the book. So for example, a few
years ago, the Israelis assassinated the head of Iran's nuclear program using a
remote-operated robotic machine gun. And that, in effect, is the sequence that
opens this novel, "The Persian," although, of course, you know, the
characters and some of the places have been changed. So this is a case much
like Russia, where the actual news, the actual conflict, provides so much
fodder for spy novelists kind of seeking to dig around in this terrain.”
The Persian is an interesting
and suspenseful spy thriller.
I interviewed David McCloskey for Counterterrorism magazine back in June.
I asked him what years did he serve in the CIA and why did he
become a CIA analyst?
“I was in the CIA from 2006 to 2014. I got into it by accident.
The guy who ran the Middle East analytic shop at the CIA came to my undergrad
college and gave a talk to my International Relations 101 class about the CIA.
I thought this was really cool, and it was probably not more complicated than
that. It sounded like a really interesting job, and I've always been fascinated
with the world and how it works. The CIA felt like a pathway to understand it.
I was 20 and I was applying for an undergrad internship, and all my friends
were going home for the summer to mow lawns or something like that. I get to go
work at the CIA. That’s pretty cool. I never thought I would get in, but here I
am.”
Why did you leave the CIA?
“I wanted to try something else. It wasn’t like I didn’t like this job anymore. I think I have this sense of wanderlust, and I wanted to see what else is out there and it was no more complicated than that. Let me put it this way, I was definitely at a point with what was going on Syria where I wanted to do something else, because that conflict was going horribly and it was very grim. But I was for the most part, a really happy trooper, and I look back on that time, look back on that job, with credible affection for the people I was working with, and overall, for the organization itself.”
Have you
always wanted to write novels, or did you get the notion while serving as a CIA
analyst?
“The answer is actually neither. I grew up reading extensively and reading a lot of spy thrillers. My dad's a big fan of spy thrillers and that kind of genre in general, so I grew up reading it. I never thought that I would write it, never really imagined it as a possibility. When I was at the CIA, it's kind of the same answer. I did not think that I would end up writing spy novels. When I left, I started to write something really for me, kind of reflecting on my time at Langley and the war in Syria, which accounts for most of my time in the CIA. It wasn't a novel or even a draft about anything, but it was a journal, I found I liked the process of sitting down to write it. It helped make sense of the world, how I felt about it, and I would get into a flow of 6, 7, 8 hours, and the time flies by. It happened sort of organically, one step at a time.”
You can read my
Q&A with David McCloskey via the link below:
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