Counterterrorism magazine published my Q&A with David McCloskey,
former CIA Analyst and author of the CIA thriller, The Seventh Floor.
You can read the interview
via the pages above and below, or the text below:
The IACSP Q&A With David McCloskey, Former CIA
Analyst
and Author of the CIA Thriller “The Seventh Floor.”
By Paul Davis
David McClosky, the author of
three fine CIA spy thrillers, “The Seventh Floor,” “Moscow X,” and “Damascus
Station,” 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.
McCloskey 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.
During his time at McKinsey, he advised national security aerospace and
transportation clients on strategic and operational issues.
David McCloskey holds a M.A.
from the Johns Hopkins School for Advance International Studies, where he
specialized in energy policy and the Middle East.
David McCloskey lives in
Texas with his wife and children.
He was interviewed by Paul
Davis.
IACSP: I've read all three of your thrillers and I've
enjoyed them. Have you always wanted to write novels, or did you get the notion
while serving as a CIA analyst?
McCloskey: 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.
IACSP:
Former CIA directors General David Petraeus and Leon Panetta, as well as
Washington Times columnist and former CIA Chief of Middle East Operations,
Daniel N. Hoffman, have all praised your first spy thriller “Damascus Station”
for being a realistic portrayal of CIA overseas operations. Was “Damacus
Station” based on your personal experiences there?
McCloskey: No, it was not based on any of my personal
experiences, but it was based on two things I wanted to do, neither of which
had anything to do with me. One of them was how do I tell a story about the
Syrian Civil War that's authentic to that conflict in that period of time, 2011
to 2013, which is when I was covering it day in day out. How do I weave in real
dynamics, real war, real events, maybe sometimes even real people, and write
something that people will read and come away knowing something about Syria and
become more interested in Syria.? The second bit was how do I deal authentically
with the CIA as much as possible in the scope and span of a spy novel? That part for me was not about my experiences,
but as I'm writing characters who are CIA case officers or CIA chief of
station, how do I render those people accurately and authentically to the kind
of people that I knew and worked with when I was inside? And can I say
something realistic, or true rather, about not just the operations or the
tradecraft of CIA, which are I think fascinating, but also the kind of moral ethics
and sort of the code of the place. For me, those two things were guiding lights
as I wrote.
IACSP: How do you write a realistic CIA novel without
giving away too much classified information. I know you have the review board,
but is it difficult to write about the CIA without touching on your tradecraft and
the stuff that you shouldn't be talking about?
McCloskey: I found that it's not that challenging to write what
I hope is a really interesting and authentic spy thriller and brush up against
anything that's really sensitive. I don't think it's that difficult to do, and I
believe a lot of the information that's really sensitive is more technical in
nature and has no place in a spy novel. In most cases, the really sensitive
stuff that I might consider including would just gum up the story. My priority
is always to have a great story that has readers turning the page. I send
everything to the CIA’s Publication Review Board.
IACSP: How would you
describe your CIA characters Artemis Aphrodite Proctor and Sam Joseph?
McCloskey:
Artemis Aphrodite Procter is a mildly deranged CIA case officer with a
foul mouth, zero patience, a deeply ingrained code of honor and personal
loyalty, and a bit of a drinking problem. In “The Seventh Floor,” she is
wrestling with what she owes CIA, having given it her career, and, arguably,
her life, before being cast aside. Must she remain loyal to a place that does
not love her back? What’s clear, though, is her unwavering loyalty to her
friends. She has many in this novel, and quite a few enemies, too, but first
among equals is her old friend from Damascus, Sam Joseph, a stellar case
officer whose career fell off the rails after he made a terrible mistake. Sam
is a Minnesota boy, a talented reader of people and assessor of risk who’s
also, perhaps like Procter, impulsive and prone to thinking with parts of his
body that are not his brain.
IACSP:
Is Sam
Joseph autobiographical or is he based on someone you knew?
McCloskey: I hope he is
not autobiographical in any way. I certainly didn’t intend him to be. What I
was thinking was about case officers I knew, and the different traits they had,
different ticks, their life experiences and how they dressed. I started building
characters that way, not from one person, but from a composite. Other characters
have, like Proctor, probably based off of one person I knew.
IACSP: What years did you serve in the
CIA and why did you become a CIA analyst?
McCloskey: 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.
IACSP: Why did you leave the CIA?
McCloskey: 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.
IACSP: I read that you often prepared
the president’s daily brief, and you often briefed White House and other senior
government officials, and you testified before Congress. What were your briefings mostly
about?
McCloskey: Mostly about Syria, both from a political and
security perspective, and also occasionally, a counterterrorism perspective too.
IACSP: I read in your bio that you worked in the CIA’s
Counterterrorism Center. What was the CTC’s mission and what did you do there?
McCloskey: The CTC runs operations
to penetrate and potentially target terrorist groups around the world. The CTC writes
the analysis on those groups for policymakers in DC. I was doing an analytic
role in CTC, focused on the jihad in Syria and Iraq.
IACSP: What do you think of novels, TV and movies about the
CIA? I hate when CIA officers are called agents.
McCloskey: I was going to say that. It shows that someone
didn’t do their homework. I don't really have any actual pet peeves because I
approach any CIA story with the presumption that it's just entertainment, and it's
not targeted at me as a former officer. They are targeted at a population of
people that want a good spy story and the authenticity part of it is just not
paramount. But I will say that the thing that I think is almost always wrong is
that the spies, the intelligence officers, are always portrayed as superheroes.
IACSP: The intelligence officers in most fiction stories
tend to act like special operators rather case officers. Has Hollywood called
about your novels?
McCloskey: We sold the rights to “Damascus Station,” which is development
as a TV series, and “Moscow X” is also in development. But Hollywood being
Hollywood, I'm not holding my breath. We sold it to people I trust, and we'll
see where it goes.
IACSP: Are you working on a fourth CIA novel?
McCloskey: The fourth book will be out in September. It is an Israel
and Iran story called “The Persian.”
IACSP: You spent a good part of your life in Syria. Are you
following the situation in Syria today?
McCloskey: I have been trying to follow it. I mean it's there's
a lot going on. It's obviously immensely complicated, and you know I'm not a
Syria analyst day-to-day anymore, so put that caveat in there. As a former
Syria hand, I'm cautiously optimistic about the transition and the current
government. I think Syrians now have an opportunity to build something for
themselves, which they've not had for much of their recent history.
IACSP: Is it a case of one bad guy taking over from another bad
guy?
McCloskey: I don't think that's the right way to look at it. I
mean I think the level of power industrialized outside sort of oppression had
become, how immiseration the country had become under Assad’s rule, how
predatory his regime was. I don't think Jeffersonian democracy is in the cards
for Syria, but I think it is quite possible and maybe even likely that the new
regime with Ahmed al-Sharaa ends up being a better deal for the Syrian people
than Bashar al-Assad was.
IACSP: In your view who is the biggest threat to the United
States?
McCloskey: That's a big question. We’re a probably a threat to ourselves
right now. I think we are deeply polarized. I think we're losing faith in
really important institutions that form the backbone of much of our political
system and the way of governance and life. We're increasingly sort of atomized
and sold as a society. So, I think we probably our own worst enemy.
IACSP: I had an editor that I once went back and forth with
on email and he said that out current time is the most contentious time in our
history. Really? More contentious than the Civil War? Who do you think is the
greatest external threat to the United States?
McCloskey: I would probably say China, which is our closest
strategic competitor and the country that has a system of government that I
think is sort of potentially in opposition with our own. And China has a
perspective on its role in Asia that is at odds with our role in Asia.
IACSP: Thank you for your service and I look forward to
reading your next CIA spy thriller.
