June 29, 2025 • 26 mins
More of our conversation with CIA analyst turned best-selling spy novelist David McCloskey. He and his old CIA associates, John & Jerry, look at CIA fact vs. fiction and how McCloskey brings their experiences to his stories. Also, some German stuff.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Could they be true?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
This is part two of John and Jerry's conversation with
David McCloskey, their old CIA co worker, former analyst, and
current spy novelist and the host of the podcast The
Rest Is Classified.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
So as a writer, as an author, everybody wants a
conspiracy on their plot right as they're replete with conspiracy theories.
Do you find, as do we to a certain extent,
that outside of maybe the Beltway some you know, people
who are like foreign policy walks, then it's hard to
keep fictional conspiracy theories and what the CIA and what
the intelligence community and what the US government actually is
(01:12):
and can do like the deep state. Do you find that,
you know, you feel questions from people where they're they're
not quite sure of where the line is between like
a fun fictional conspiracy and books or a movie or
you know, the way shit really works, and how do
you resolve of that.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
So I continue to be surprised, although I shouldn't be,
at just how little most people know about the way
the intelligence community or the CIA more more particularly works.
I mean, most people, even you know, very smart, well
read people, just don't have an understanding of the way
it functions. And I think almost all of the primary
(01:53):
source material for people's perceptions come from Hollywood. They come
from spy films and TV shows and and spy novels. Right,
that's the way.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
People president of the United States understands how it functions.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Just to be clear, by the way, I didn't realize
this is not actually a tangent, although it'll sound like it.
We write a the CI writes like a chapter in
this book that they put out every presidential transition about
the transition for the like the briefings and all of
that to kind of get the new potus in office.
And the chapter in the book for Trump the first administration,
(02:28):
because they haven't done the second one yet, was called
Donald J. Trump a unique challenge. That was literally that
that was literally the title of the chapter, and it
did confirm that he's not I don't think he's he's
not really a PDB reader kind of guy, let's put
it that way. That is, by the way, the reason
why I think there continues to be a tremendous demand
(02:48):
for spy related, espionage related content because people don't it's
it's sort of secretive. And if you, as a reader
or a watcher of spy content, feel as though you're
being led into a secret world, there's something interesting and
intriguing about that. And I generally try to write things
(03:09):
to be as authentic as possible, but you you sort
of get to a point in every story where something
has to happen for the demands of the story that
are not the way it actually happens, and yeah, there's
there's there's somebody the directors working for the Russians or something.
There's got to be something big and that sets the
stakes for the whole story, and that that tends to
(03:33):
break the rules of the way things actually work. And
so I think as a you know, as a writer,
I'm generally trying to create enough of a sort of
foundation in the novel that you, as the reader, are
willing to take those leaps, or maybe are just so
kind of a lulled into the world of the story
that you don't even know that at three or four
points along the way, I'm positing a scenario that you
(03:56):
know is extremely unlikely to happen, although I would say
what I'm generally also trying to do, And you talked
about conspiracy conspiracies, and I think I'm trying to create
a scenario in the novels that is highly improbable, But
in the world of the novel and the characters of
(04:16):
the novel and the rules of the novel, it's not implausible. Right,
So you read it and you'd be like, this never happens.
But if you dip into the world of the.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Book's internally consistently.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
It's internally exactly how these places work. There actually is
material out there available to you. You can listen to
this podcast, you can listen to my podcast. You can
go out there and get the memoirs of any number
of CI officers who have written actual books about the
way the place really functions and read it. It's not
that there's some dearth of material. It's that very few
(04:50):
people actually know where to look, or frankly are probably
not even maybe that interested in the reality of it.
They just they want the spy spy attainment.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
To go, then to the stories and the content. You've
now had a number of episodes with your new podcast,
which is very popular and getting quide attention and good praise.
Do you have some favorite stories? You guys have covered
Edward Snowden, You've covered the Israeli killing of nuclear scientists.
You've covered MK Ultra and tests, tests inside the CIA,
(05:23):
Klaus Fuchs and the atomic program, spies inside of Russia.
Do you have any sort of favorites or anything you'd
like to aim people towards.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Yeah, I mean, well, so I would point people toward
the Snowden series that were just dropped recently. That one
was really interesting for me because I was at the
Agency when that happened, and of course not involved in
it in any way, but had some awareness of sort
of how it had gone down, but had never spent
(05:53):
days researching it and talking about it with Gordon. So like,
getting into that story was really really interesting and confirmed
all of my preconceived biases about ed Snowden. Also, I
would say I was not. My opinion of the man
was not changed, So that was a really fun one.
The other one that I've really enjoyed doing was there
(06:14):
was a spir ring of Bulgarians who were operating in
The Minions. The Minions. Yeah, I love the Minions one
because I've got three kids and they're avid watchers of
the Despicable Me franchise and the Minions, and I had
a legitimate work reason to rewatch those movies and to
go deep into like internet research on all the various
(06:36):
like spy tech and the Minions. The thing that I
think has been most fun on the podcast is finding
stories that do have a legitimate spy story at the
heart of the of whatever the tale is, but are
also sort of darkly comedic at the same time. And
any it seems like anytime you're dealing with like Russian
espionage in Europe, you we hit that kind of like
(06:58):
nexus of there's bizarre characters and they're doing things that
are also if they succeed, potentially very damaging or lethal
and awful and murderous and all this kind of stuff.
So it's this weird package that I think make makes
those stories really fun for me to research and they're
really I mean, they can be sad too, but it's
(07:18):
it's it's the kind of mixture of all of that
that mix them appealing.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Well, I found it very disappointing in your research on
the minions that you didn't include me in it. You
missed that part. Yeah, I see by the gobsnaked gobs
an uncaring look is what that? The look of gob
snakedness on your face?
Speaker 4 (07:37):
I am gobsback because I have no idea where this
is going.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
So our world, the world of di I folks and
DO folks is pretty limited sometimes right, we keep bumping
into each other. But after I retired, one of the
first sort of job offers I got, and I won't
go into detail here, but I was brought out to London.
This is after I'd retired and someone tried to hire
me to use my operator skills, which of course we
(08:03):
don't really want really security guys, but to basically investigate
the ft because the guy was saying that the ft
is a bad actor.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
The Financial Times, the.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Financial Times, and that what the what I was supposed
to investigate them for, and the journals I was supposed
to go after were the ones who were looking into
Wirecard and uh In macellk right, the Austrian guy, and
so I was supposed to come save them, and it
was outlined to me, you know that the journalists are
up to know good, they're being hired by a bad
(08:36):
actor to wreck investments. And they went through all this
and I thought, sounds like the Financial Times is onto this, right,
I'm Marcelic. It's like he sounds like a bad guy.
And then of course he runs off to Moscow and
he hires the minions, right, right, I have a small
little ten slices.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
But if you had done it, you could have become
rich and then you would be part of the ministry.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Probably I was someone tried to hire me to basically
do opposition research to undermine stories that were undermining Workard.
And the other part you didn't have in there, which
I really love, was that it wasn't really your focus.
Your focus was on the minions. But Wirecard, the German
B and D was using this to pay their agents,
(09:20):
and they're yeah, so the Russians were controlling the payment
mechanism to Germany's most secret you know, their version of Knox.
How they financed them and all their agents around the world.
So when you're you know, when you're chief of station
in Berlin and you want the Germans are like, hey,
let's work together, You're like.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So you're saying that Germans screwed up IRAQ WMD and
then later screwed up everything else the.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Next one and they lost two World Wars. Yeah, I'm
just saying, you know.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
It all leads back to Berlin.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
It all.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
That's bad. That's bad.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, it was a small world. It is.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
And that's why that that Marsalid character is like a
great I mean, he's just it's like when you read
it out last but he actually did, it's yeah, it's insane.
I mean, it's the kind of character. If I had
written that in a novel, my editor would have been like,
this is ridiculous, this isn't realistic. And you know it's.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, you seem like you've got it. Seems like you've
got some decent sort of self confidence. So I don't
want to deflate it.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Oh, who knows where he's going with this?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
There goes but I got to say your German accent
and your podcast and people have said it was really
more Colonel Clink than no.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
I know, I know, because that's I loved it.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
It was great.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
I'm so bad at the accents, I can't.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yah, it was it was excellent.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
When Jerry does his German accent, like he speaks almost
like native German, it's obnoxious, sort of like you know
when people had to head the Latin accent and they
go like Venezuela. He does the same kind of thing
with with the German and then makes you want to
punch him.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
You're saying, Colonel Clink, isn't isn't authentic?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Sort of he was authentic. He was a German Jew.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah, he might be too young to You have watched
Hogan's Hero.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Oh I watched Hogan zero.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, his father it was a conductor Klemner. Yeah, it
was like it was a famous, famous orchestra conductor.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Well you need to improve. Yeah, the accents will, they'll
come with time.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
More of this exciting fainter after a quick breaking.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So what is your favorite conspiracy theory on CIA that
it gets either get thrown at you you find yourself
defending or you're wondering yourself, like you know, whiskey tango foxtrot.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
So the one that I get pretty frequently nowadays. It's
a mixture of some of the people who bring this
forward or hostile, and then others are just curious. But
it is the deep state, and it's a fun one
because it's kind of a it's extremely vague, and so
(11:59):
it kind of becomes anything that the holder of this
worldview wants it to become. And I I really try
to understand every time what they're talking about, like what
the allegation is, but it comes down to some unspecified
cabal of senior CIA officials who are working with the
(12:21):
FBI to undermine American right. Yeah, exactly, like stop you
right there, This doesn't doesn't It's not gonna work like that.
They hate each other. That's probably the most frequent one
that I get in some way, shape or form. The
other one that comes up a lot are someone will
just say Hunter Biden laptop and and you know, and
(12:43):
and the letter and all of that. That's another one
that'll come up. And uh, and again it's a it's
very hard to sort of usually walk the person through
to like what they're what's really going on. But that's
that's another one that comes up.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
But I'm the state thing. I often wonder like if
you had time to walk people through this like, don't
you want a deep state in a certain sense, you're
what you're saying is you have a professional group of
experts in an area who don't always agree with what
the politicians tell them. So I think these people are saying, Hey,
the first time President Trump was in power, all of
(13:16):
these bureaucrats didn't just automatically agree and support everything he said. Instead,
they were doing what they supposed to do. They would
come and say, sir, that actually is against the law,
or if you do that, China's going to retaliate. You
might not want to And so yes, it probably for
a president who didn't understand how power works, it probably
was frustrating to him. But if you get rid of
(13:38):
that and don't have expertise or people who actually try
to tell you what really is going on, a far
bigger problem for that president, it's going to then walk
right into the busk.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Because coming full circle, you know, with Rock w D,
if we had a better deep state, they would have said, sir,
we don't have absolute evidence, we don't have proof of WND. Yeah,
conjecture and hypothesis. Go to war on that if you want,
But you can't go saying it is. You can only
say maybe.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Right, because I think all of that is true. To me,
that conspiracy theory is more symptomatic and just the general
sort of collapse of trust in the institutions of our
state and our media and our civic life. And so
the CIA is like not immune to that. And so
it's like, it's weird because irack WMD has in some
(14:25):
way contributed to that, because people go back and say, oh,
you know, you guys, you screwed this up, and we
went to war and we spent a trillion dollars and
you know, a whole bunch of people died, so we
got nothing. But the solution to that would be to
have a better intelligence service, not to just undermine the
one that we have now even further. And don't I
don't think that circle gets squared. I also just think
(14:48):
that the immense secrecy makes it a lot harder to
I mean, there is and this is not a super
aha moment, but it's you know, obviously in an open
society and in a democracy, there's an incredible amount of
tension with that, the secrecy that the CIA needs to operate,
and we're inherently distrustful of anything that happens in secret
(15:09):
in this country.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Which you say trust has collapsed, you know, sort of
it's fallen out of a window like a Russian oligarch.
But did it fall or was it pushed? Because I mean,
you've got people at the typical, at the at the
epicenter center or at the very acme of US power
who are still talking about the deep state. They are
the deep state, right, So it seems to me that
(15:31):
there is isn't a conspiracy in some way, shape or form,
depending on the definition to actually push the narrative that
there is a deep state. But I'm not sure that
it's just it's collapsed. I think that it's been monetized
and there's a there's a.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
How long can you be in charge of it? And
keep saying that it exists, Like.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Yeah, it's very trumpy in to kind of have the
he taught because he does kind of talk out of
both sides of his mouth on the intelligence community, right.
I mean, for one of the episodes that we did
on kind of in tell in Politics, and we did
the Halloween massacre story as part of that. When Stan
Turner did a bunch of cuts back in the late seventies,
(16:08):
primarily in the doo and the director of Operations. And
when you go back and you really read what Trump
has said about the IC, you get a lot of
stuff where he is like, man, you guys are the best,
and I love you and I love what you're doing.
And then you get a lot of other stuff that's like,
at the same time, there's this deep state that exists
inside the FBI and the CIA, and we need to
(16:30):
root it out. And he'll kind of talk about both
of those things in the same conversations, in the same
press conferences, right And when he went out to Langley
on day one of his first administration, you read the
transcript of that speech, which is insane, and he says
all of that stuff multiple times. It's kind of contradictory.
I think he's very instinctive, and I think he realizes
(16:52):
that at maybe some basic level, there's some capabilities and
some cool shit inside the intelligence community that could be
really beneficial to him, and probably some people in there
that want to help him. And then at the same time,
you know, you get irritating things like when Russia House
and the Russia analysts are putting stuff out that says, hey,
(17:14):
you know, we're not saying that the Russians got you elected.
We're saying the Russians wanted you to win. And you know,
there's no difference, there's no distinction in his mind between
those things. But that, more than anything else, I think
in his mind was like, oh, there's like there's like
enemies or people who wish me ill inside CIA who
(17:36):
are putting these assessments together, letting them get out, like
I don't want that. And the relationship I think from
there really has been rocky, hasn't it.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
The internal contradiction Just today that came out as you've
got RFK Junior apparently yesterday said that he's asked about
kem trails, right, the US government secretly putting out poisons
into the air to whatever it is, to make people
infertile or to kill specific nationalities. And instead of saying
it's not true because he's in charge now, he said, well,
(18:08):
my department doesn't do that, and then he can't basically
said you have to talk to Pete Hegsith about that, right.
He blamed darb book and said, well that's the real
deep state that's doing this. Right, So they even when
they're in charge, they still are like the tweed ring
pointing at each other.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
They can't just say, yeah, the CIA killed my father,
and so they get in they say, well, put out
all the materials. So they put all all the material
and then it's just like okay, let's move on to
the next thing.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Ye yeah, like yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
The thing for me that is just kind of a
basic starting point is like, we would we want the
people in our country who are making the decisions to
have better information about other countries than those countries do
about us.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
And so if you.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Start from that premise, which I think most people would
agree with, you need an effective foreign intelligence service to
do that. You need one that you could argue about
what form it takes, You could argue about how the
whole thing's organize. We should be collecting information on other
big countries like Russia and China and Iran and North
Korea that potentially wishes ill and you'd want the president
(19:15):
to have the best possible information about what those countries
are up to. And that's what the CIA does, you know.
So if someone someone can't walk to that point in
the conversation, it's like we're not we're not living on
the same planet.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
So David, let me ask you about yourself. So when
you supposedly left CIA. You know, of course none of it.
We're all still in yes, still in the deep state,
joining Operation Mockingberg to write these novels to like to
influence people. Yeah, so did you enjoy your time in
the agency and why'd you decide to leave? And how
are you? How you how does Hollywood compare to like
(19:53):
the intelligence community? Because we're finding Hollywood to be like,
way more screwed up than we ever worked.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Well, the agency was great because I got to be
at briefings with guys like you and tell me how
smart I was and how badly my you know, analytic
judgments were needed to support this critical operation. I really
enjoyed my time at the CIA, you know, as someone
who joined really young and who wanted to learn how
the world worked and get the opportunity to travel and see,
(20:22):
I don't know, see the world outside of Minnesota. I
really enjoyed it. And I found the problems I was
working on there to be really endlessly fascinating, and it
felt even though there were plenty of times where I
feel like we would write things and basically you'd get
the feedback of like read with interest, which generally meant
(20:42):
they looked at the piece of paper that it was
on that was a classic one, like it was read
with interest, and then you'd write that up in your
annual assessment. You'd be like, I wrote ten pdbs that
were read with interest this year. You know, it did
feel in some way, like I felt like I could
connect some line from like I'm working on this topic
to like, then it's getting to people who are actually
(21:03):
making decisions, and you hope, in some way, shape or form,
something you've written somewhere has made some difference in the
way policy is made. And so I really loved it,
And I honestly maybe kind of cheesy to say, but
you know, working with a bunch of really smart people
who are also dedicated to the mission of the CIA
(21:24):
was an experience I would wouldn't trade for anything. I
would say that I have a little bit more creative
freedom now when I'm writing novels, so I'm not sending
things through nine layers of review. And you know, there's
definitely a part of me that is grateful, given how
chaotic things seem in DC these days, to not be
(21:44):
in one of those chairs at this point.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
But you know, I still go through the PRB.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Yes, so go through everything still goes through the prbing
publication review board. Yeah yeah, And I honestly have probably
learned more about the actual CIA it'sself self now that
I'm outside and like writing stories about it and having
conversations with guys like you about you know, not the
substance of this or that thing it's serious, but about
(22:10):
like what's the job, like what's the place like all that.
So I've gotten a kind of newfound appreciation for the place.
And I mean, obviously it's got a lot of wards too,
but I think it's a really important institution and really
fascinating one, and so it's been interesting to write about
it from the outside.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
So that leads me to perhaps our last question. We're
going to keep you too long? Can you tell us
about your next book? And are we in it?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
We got it? Figure Central Central Figures and John, Yeah,
John and Jerry. I made you both analysts r and John.
You're both You're a team of You're a team of
analysts who get in the first pages, get a call
horribly wrong and her and are you know? The rest
of the story is the rest of the story is
an intrepid case officer David, who really solves the problem
(22:57):
I have I have I have enjoyed interestingly because I
mean most of the protagonists of the book are case officers,
because if you wrote an analyst protagonist, it would actually
be very hard to make that book work. I've taken
a lot of potshots at the analyst, and I think
I need to start taking more at the case officers. Frankly, Yeah,
that's right, that's right. Yeah, it really is, it really is.
(23:18):
So the next one, which is out here in the
States in September thirtieth, is called The Persian and it
is an Israel Iran story. I basically took the looked
at all the different crazy things that the Israelis have
done in Iran over the past fifteen plus years, and
tried to imagine what it might look like if the
(23:41):
Iranians built a similar capability, not at the same level,
but built a similar capability in Israel and started to
started to kill Israeli security officials and intelligence officers, and
the Israelis kind of going back at them to try
to figure out what's going on. So it's a war
of assassinations between both the Israelis and the Iranians. And
(24:02):
it was a very interesting book to write because of
so much of the kind of israel Aron shadow Ward
of bleeding out into the open while Iye was actually
writing it, and another one of those stories where so
many of the Israeli operations were so insane that it
was oftentimes just the best scenario to sort of change
(24:22):
a few things and basically use what the Israelis had
already done as plot points because so much of the
stuff was soa bonkers.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
You made like a satellite operated AI enabled machine guy.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Right right right, or or kidnapping the head of the
Goods Forces like external kind of lethal operations unit and
interrogating him in Iran before dumping him back out on
the street and then taking all the footage and leaking
it to journalists. So, I mean, it's just like crazy stuff.
(24:54):
I mean. The other great story, which has been well
documented is when they broke into the archive where the
audience had kept all of their files on the Duke program,
and they basically broke into all these safes and put
everything on trucks and then just drove it out of
the country. So yeah, that's pretty pretty wild stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Well, I'm looking forward to reading that. You can sign
our books when the time comes in, we'll have you
on to talk about the book itself.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
That'd be great.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, David, thanks for meeting us. Anybody who is listening
to this should definitely be listening to The rest is Classified. Again,
thank you for your time. You're one of our favorite
guys to read and listen to, so.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
Thanks thanks for having me on. Guys, I appreciate you
inviting an analyst to come on this program, so.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Run out of guests.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry Osha, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
Mission Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable
pictures for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Don'
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Could they be true?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
This is part two of John and Jerry's conversation with
David McCloskey, their old CIA co worker, former analyst, and
current spy novelist and the host of the podcast The
Rest Is Classified.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
So as a writer, as an author, everybody wants a
conspiracy on their plot right as they're replete with conspiracy theories.
Do you find, as do we to a certain extent,
that outside of maybe the Beltway some you know, people
who are like foreign policy walks, then it's hard to
keep fictional conspiracy theories and what the CIA and what
the intelligence community and what the US government actually is
(01:12):
and can do like the deep state. Do you find that,
you know, you feel questions from people where they're they're
not quite sure of where the line is between like
a fun fictional conspiracy and books or a movie or
you know, the way shit really works, and how do
you resolve of that.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
So I continue to be surprised, although I shouldn't be,
at just how little most people know about the way
the intelligence community or the CIA more more particularly works.
I mean, most people, even you know, very smart, well
read people, just don't have an understanding of the way
it functions. And I think almost all of the primary
(01:53):
source material for people's perceptions come from Hollywood. They come
from spy films and TV shows and and spy novels. Right,
that's the way.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
People president of the United States understands how it functions.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Just to be clear, by the way, I didn't realize
this is not actually a tangent, although it'll sound like it.
We write a the CI writes like a chapter in
this book that they put out every presidential transition about
the transition for the like the briefings and all of
that to kind of get the new potus in office.
And the chapter in the book for Trump the first administration,
(02:28):
because they haven't done the second one yet, was called
Donald J. Trump a unique challenge. That was literally that
that was literally the title of the chapter, and it
did confirm that he's not I don't think he's he's
not really a PDB reader kind of guy, let's put
it that way. That is, by the way, the reason
why I think there continues to be a tremendous demand
(02:48):
for spy related, espionage related content because people don't it's
it's sort of secretive. And if you, as a reader
or a watcher of spy content, feel as though you're
being led into a secret world, there's something interesting and
intriguing about that. And I generally try to write things
(03:09):
to be as authentic as possible, but you you sort
of get to a point in every story where something
has to happen for the demands of the story that
are not the way it actually happens, and yeah, there's
there's there's somebody the directors working for the Russians or something.
There's got to be something big and that sets the
stakes for the whole story, and that that tends to
(03:33):
break the rules of the way things actually work. And
so I think as a you know, as a writer,
I'm generally trying to create enough of a sort of
foundation in the novel that you, as the reader, are
willing to take those leaps, or maybe are just so
kind of a lulled into the world of the story
that you don't even know that at three or four
points along the way, I'm positing a scenario that you
(03:56):
know is extremely unlikely to happen, although I would say
what I'm generally also trying to do, And you talked
about conspiracy conspiracies, and I think I'm trying to create
a scenario in the novels that is highly improbable, But
in the world of the novel and the characters of
(04:16):
the novel and the rules of the novel, it's not implausible. Right,
So you read it and you'd be like, this never happens.
But if you dip into the world of the.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Book's internally consistently.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
It's internally exactly how these places work. There actually is
material out there available to you. You can listen to
this podcast, you can listen to my podcast. You can
go out there and get the memoirs of any number
of CI officers who have written actual books about the
way the place really functions and read it. It's not
that there's some dearth of material. It's that very few
(04:50):
people actually know where to look, or frankly are probably
not even maybe that interested in the reality of it.
They just they want the spy spy attainment.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
To go, then to the stories and the content. You've
now had a number of episodes with your new podcast,
which is very popular and getting quide attention and good praise.
Do you have some favorite stories? You guys have covered
Edward Snowden, You've covered the Israeli killing of nuclear scientists.
You've covered MK Ultra and tests, tests inside the CIA,
(05:23):
Klaus Fuchs and the atomic program, spies inside of Russia.
Do you have any sort of favorites or anything you'd
like to aim people towards.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Yeah, I mean, well, so I would point people toward
the Snowden series that were just dropped recently. That one
was really interesting for me because I was at the
Agency when that happened, and of course not involved in
it in any way, but had some awareness of sort
of how it had gone down, but had never spent
(05:53):
days researching it and talking about it with Gordon. So like,
getting into that story was really really interesting and confirmed
all of my preconceived biases about ed Snowden. Also, I
would say I was not. My opinion of the man
was not changed, So that was a really fun one.
The other one that I've really enjoyed doing was there
(06:14):
was a spir ring of Bulgarians who were operating in
The Minions. The Minions. Yeah, I love the Minions one
because I've got three kids and they're avid watchers of
the Despicable Me franchise and the Minions, and I had
a legitimate work reason to rewatch those movies and to
go deep into like internet research on all the various
(06:36):
like spy tech and the Minions. The thing that I
think has been most fun on the podcast is finding
stories that do have a legitimate spy story at the
heart of the of whatever the tale is, but are
also sort of darkly comedic at the same time. And
any it seems like anytime you're dealing with like Russian
espionage in Europe, you we hit that kind of like
(06:58):
nexus of there's bizarre characters and they're doing things that
are also if they succeed, potentially very damaging or lethal
and awful and murderous and all this kind of stuff.
So it's this weird package that I think make makes
those stories really fun for me to research and they're
really I mean, they can be sad too, but it's
(07:18):
it's it's the kind of mixture of all of that
that mix them appealing.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Well, I found it very disappointing in your research on
the minions that you didn't include me in it. You
missed that part. Yeah, I see by the gobsnaked gobs
an uncaring look is what that? The look of gob
snakedness on your face?
Speaker 4 (07:37):
I am gobsback because I have no idea where this
is going.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
So our world, the world of di I folks and
DO folks is pretty limited sometimes right, we keep bumping
into each other. But after I retired, one of the
first sort of job offers I got, and I won't
go into detail here, but I was brought out to London.
This is after I'd retired and someone tried to hire
me to use my operator skills, which of course we
(08:03):
don't really want really security guys, but to basically investigate
the ft because the guy was saying that the ft
is a bad actor.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
The Financial Times, the.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Financial Times, and that what the what I was supposed
to investigate them for, and the journals I was supposed
to go after were the ones who were looking into
Wirecard and uh In macellk right, the Austrian guy, and
so I was supposed to come save them, and it
was outlined to me, you know that the journalists are
up to know good, they're being hired by a bad
(08:36):
actor to wreck investments. And they went through all this
and I thought, sounds like the Financial Times is onto this, right,
I'm Marcelic. It's like he sounds like a bad guy.
And then of course he runs off to Moscow and
he hires the minions, right, right, I have a small
little ten slices.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
But if you had done it, you could have become
rich and then you would be part of the ministry.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Probably I was someone tried to hire me to basically
do opposition research to undermine stories that were undermining Workard.
And the other part you didn't have in there, which
I really love, was that it wasn't really your focus.
Your focus was on the minions. But Wirecard, the German
B and D was using this to pay their agents,
(09:20):
and they're yeah, so the Russians were controlling the payment
mechanism to Germany's most secret you know, their version of Knox.
How they financed them and all their agents around the world.
So when you're you know, when you're chief of station
in Berlin and you want the Germans are like, hey,
let's work together, You're like.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
So you're saying that Germans screwed up IRAQ WMD and
then later screwed up everything else the.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Next one and they lost two World Wars. Yeah, I'm
just saying, you know.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
It all leads back to Berlin.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
It all.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
That's bad. That's bad.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, it was a small world. It is.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
And that's why that that Marsalid character is like a
great I mean, he's just it's like when you read
it out last but he actually did, it's yeah, it's insane.
I mean, it's the kind of character. If I had
written that in a novel, my editor would have been like,
this is ridiculous, this isn't realistic. And you know it's.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, you seem like you've got it. Seems like you've
got some decent sort of self confidence. So I don't
want to deflate it.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Oh, who knows where he's going with this?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
There goes but I got to say your German accent
and your podcast and people have said it was really
more Colonel Clink than no.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
I know, I know, because that's I loved it.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
It was great.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
I'm so bad at the accents, I can't.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yah, it was it was excellent.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
When Jerry does his German accent, like he speaks almost
like native German, it's obnoxious, sort of like you know
when people had to head the Latin accent and they
go like Venezuela. He does the same kind of thing
with with the German and then makes you want to
punch him.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
You're saying, Colonel Clink, isn't isn't authentic?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Sort of he was authentic. He was a German Jew.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Yeah, he might be too young to You have watched
Hogan's Hero.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Oh I watched Hogan zero.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, his father it was a conductor Klemner. Yeah, it
was like it was a famous, famous orchestra conductor.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Well you need to improve. Yeah, the accents will, they'll
come with time.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
More of this exciting fainter after a quick breaking.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So what is your favorite conspiracy theory on CIA that
it gets either get thrown at you you find yourself
defending or you're wondering yourself, like you know, whiskey tango foxtrot.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
So the one that I get pretty frequently nowadays. It's
a mixture of some of the people who bring this
forward or hostile, and then others are just curious. But
it is the deep state, and it's a fun one
because it's kind of a it's extremely vague, and so
(11:59):
it kind of becomes anything that the holder of this
worldview wants it to become. And I I really try
to understand every time what they're talking about, like what
the allegation is, but it comes down to some unspecified
cabal of senior CIA officials who are working with the
(12:21):
FBI to undermine American right. Yeah, exactly, like stop you
right there, This doesn't doesn't It's not gonna work like that.
They hate each other. That's probably the most frequent one
that I get in some way, shape or form. The
other one that comes up a lot are someone will
just say Hunter Biden laptop and and you know, and
(12:43):
and the letter and all of that. That's another one
that'll come up. And uh, and again it's a it's
very hard to sort of usually walk the person through
to like what they're what's really going on. But that's
that's another one that comes up.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
But I'm the state thing. I often wonder like if
you had time to walk people through this like, don't
you want a deep state in a certain sense, you're
what you're saying is you have a professional group of
experts in an area who don't always agree with what
the politicians tell them. So I think these people are saying, Hey,
the first time President Trump was in power, all of
(13:16):
these bureaucrats didn't just automatically agree and support everything he said. Instead,
they were doing what they supposed to do. They would
come and say, sir, that actually is against the law,
or if you do that, China's going to retaliate. You
might not want to And so yes, it probably for
a president who didn't understand how power works, it probably
was frustrating to him. But if you get rid of
(13:38):
that and don't have expertise or people who actually try
to tell you what really is going on, a far
bigger problem for that president, it's going to then walk
right into the busk.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Because coming full circle, you know, with Rock w D,
if we had a better deep state, they would have said, sir,
we don't have absolute evidence, we don't have proof of WND. Yeah,
conjecture and hypothesis. Go to war on that if you want,
But you can't go saying it is. You can only
say maybe.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Right, because I think all of that is true. To me,
that conspiracy theory is more symptomatic and just the general
sort of collapse of trust in the institutions of our
state and our media and our civic life. And so
the CIA is like not immune to that. And so
it's like, it's weird because irack WMD has in some
(14:25):
way contributed to that, because people go back and say, oh,
you know, you guys, you screwed this up, and we
went to war and we spent a trillion dollars and
you know, a whole bunch of people died, so we
got nothing. But the solution to that would be to
have a better intelligence service, not to just undermine the
one that we have now even further. And don't I
don't think that circle gets squared. I also just think
(14:48):
that the immense secrecy makes it a lot harder to
I mean, there is and this is not a super
aha moment, but it's you know, obviously in an open
society and in a democracy, there's an incredible amount of
tension with that, the secrecy that the CIA needs to operate,
and we're inherently distrustful of anything that happens in secret
(15:09):
in this country.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Which you say trust has collapsed, you know, sort of
it's fallen out of a window like a Russian oligarch.
But did it fall or was it pushed? Because I mean,
you've got people at the typical, at the at the
epicenter center or at the very acme of US power
who are still talking about the deep state. They are
the deep state, right, So it seems to me that
(15:31):
there is isn't a conspiracy in some way, shape or form,
depending on the definition to actually push the narrative that
there is a deep state. But I'm not sure that
it's just it's collapsed. I think that it's been monetized
and there's a there's a.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
How long can you be in charge of it? And
keep saying that it exists, Like.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Yeah, it's very trumpy in to kind of have the
he taught because he does kind of talk out of
both sides of his mouth on the intelligence community, right.
I mean, for one of the episodes that we did
on kind of in tell in Politics, and we did
the Halloween massacre story as part of that. When Stan
Turner did a bunch of cuts back in the late seventies,
(16:08):
primarily in the doo and the director of Operations. And
when you go back and you really read what Trump
has said about the IC, you get a lot of
stuff where he is like, man, you guys are the best,
and I love you and I love what you're doing.
And then you get a lot of other stuff that's like,
at the same time, there's this deep state that exists
inside the FBI and the CIA, and we need to
(16:30):
root it out. And he'll kind of talk about both
of those things in the same conversations, in the same
press conferences, right And when he went out to Langley
on day one of his first administration, you read the
transcript of that speech, which is insane, and he says
all of that stuff multiple times. It's kind of contradictory.
I think he's very instinctive, and I think he realizes
(16:52):
that at maybe some basic level, there's some capabilities and
some cool shit inside the intelligence community that could be
really beneficial to him, and probably some people in there
that want to help him. And then at the same time,
you know, you get irritating things like when Russia House
and the Russia analysts are putting stuff out that says, hey,
(17:14):
you know, we're not saying that the Russians got you elected.
We're saying the Russians wanted you to win. And you know,
there's no difference, there's no distinction in his mind between
those things. But that, more than anything else, I think
in his mind was like, oh, there's like there's like
enemies or people who wish me ill inside CIA who
(17:36):
are putting these assessments together, letting them get out, like
I don't want that. And the relationship I think from
there really has been rocky, hasn't it.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
The internal contradiction Just today that came out as you've
got RFK Junior apparently yesterday said that he's asked about
kem trails, right, the US government secretly putting out poisons
into the air to whatever it is, to make people
infertile or to kill specific nationalities. And instead of saying
it's not true because he's in charge now, he said, well,
(18:08):
my department doesn't do that, and then he can't basically
said you have to talk to Pete Hegsith about that, right.
He blamed darb book and said, well that's the real
deep state that's doing this. Right, So they even when
they're in charge, they still are like the tweed ring
pointing at each other.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
They can't just say, yeah, the CIA killed my father,
and so they get in they say, well, put out
all the materials. So they put all all the material
and then it's just like okay, let's move on to
the next thing.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Ye yeah, like yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
The thing for me that is just kind of a
basic starting point is like, we would we want the
people in our country who are making the decisions to
have better information about other countries than those countries do
about us.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
And so if you.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Start from that premise, which I think most people would
agree with, you need an effective foreign intelligence service to
do that. You need one that you could argue about
what form it takes, You could argue about how the
whole thing's organize. We should be collecting information on other
big countries like Russia and China and Iran and North
Korea that potentially wishes ill and you'd want the president
(19:15):
to have the best possible information about what those countries
are up to. And that's what the CIA does, you know.
So if someone someone can't walk to that point in
the conversation, it's like we're not we're not living on
the same planet.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
So David, let me ask you about yourself. So when
you supposedly left CIA. You know, of course none of it.
We're all still in yes, still in the deep state,
joining Operation Mockingberg to write these novels to like to
influence people. Yeah, so did you enjoy your time in
the agency and why'd you decide to leave? And how
are you? How you how does Hollywood compare to like
(19:53):
the intelligence community? Because we're finding Hollywood to be like,
way more screwed up than we ever worked.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
Well, the agency was great because I got to be
at briefings with guys like you and tell me how
smart I was and how badly my you know, analytic
judgments were needed to support this critical operation. I really
enjoyed my time at the CIA, you know, as someone
who joined really young and who wanted to learn how
the world worked and get the opportunity to travel and see,
(20:22):
I don't know, see the world outside of Minnesota. I
really enjoyed it. And I found the problems I was
working on there to be really endlessly fascinating, and it
felt even though there were plenty of times where I
feel like we would write things and basically you'd get
the feedback of like read with interest, which generally meant
(20:42):
they looked at the piece of paper that it was
on that was a classic one, like it was read
with interest, and then you'd write that up in your
annual assessment. You'd be like, I wrote ten pdbs that
were read with interest this year. You know, it did
feel in some way, like I felt like I could
connect some line from like I'm working on this topic
to like, then it's getting to people who are actually
(21:03):
making decisions, and you hope, in some way, shape or form,
something you've written somewhere has made some difference in the
way policy is made. And so I really loved it,
And I honestly maybe kind of cheesy to say, but
you know, working with a bunch of really smart people
who are also dedicated to the mission of the CIA
(21:24):
was an experience I would wouldn't trade for anything. I
would say that I have a little bit more creative
freedom now when I'm writing novels, so I'm not sending
things through nine layers of review. And you know, there's
definitely a part of me that is grateful, given how
chaotic things seem in DC these days, to not be
(21:44):
in one of those chairs at this point.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
But you know, I still go through the PRB.
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Yes, so go through everything still goes through the prbing
publication review board. Yeah yeah, And I honestly have probably
learned more about the actual CIA it'sself self now that
I'm outside and like writing stories about it and having
conversations with guys like you about you know, not the
substance of this or that thing it's serious, but about
(22:10):
like what's the job, like what's the place like all that.
So I've gotten a kind of newfound appreciation for the place.
And I mean, obviously it's got a lot of wards too,
but I think it's a really important institution and really
fascinating one, and so it's been interesting to write about
it from the outside.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
So that leads me to perhaps our last question. We're
going to keep you too long? Can you tell us
about your next book? And are we in it?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
We got it? Figure Central Central Figures and John, Yeah,
John and Jerry. I made you both analysts r and John.
You're both You're a team of You're a team of
analysts who get in the first pages, get a call
horribly wrong and her and are you know? The rest
of the story is the rest of the story is
an intrepid case officer David, who really solves the problem
(22:57):
I have I have I have enjoyed interestingly because I
mean most of the protagonists of the book are case officers,
because if you wrote an analyst protagonist, it would actually
be very hard to make that book work. I've taken
a lot of potshots at the analyst, and I think
I need to start taking more at the case officers. Frankly, Yeah,
that's right, that's right. Yeah, it really is, it really is.
(23:18):
So the next one, which is out here in the
States in September thirtieth, is called The Persian and it
is an Israel Iran story. I basically took the looked
at all the different crazy things that the Israelis have
done in Iran over the past fifteen plus years, and
tried to imagine what it might look like if the
(23:41):
Iranians built a similar capability, not at the same level,
but built a similar capability in Israel and started to
started to kill Israeli security officials and intelligence officers, and
the Israelis kind of going back at them to try
to figure out what's going on. So it's a war
of assassinations between both the Israelis and the Iranians. And
(24:02):
it was a very interesting book to write because of
so much of the kind of israel Aron shadow Ward
of bleeding out into the open while Iye was actually
writing it, and another one of those stories where so
many of the Israeli operations were so insane that it
was oftentimes just the best scenario to sort of change
(24:22):
a few things and basically use what the Israelis had
already done as plot points because so much of the
stuff was soa bonkers.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
You made like a satellite operated AI enabled machine guy.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Right right right, or or kidnapping the head of the
Goods Forces like external kind of lethal operations unit and
interrogating him in Iran before dumping him back out on
the street and then taking all the footage and leaking
it to journalists. So, I mean, it's just like crazy stuff.
(24:54):
I mean. The other great story, which has been well
documented is when they broke into the archive where the
audience had kept all of their files on the Duke program,
and they basically broke into all these safes and put
everything on trucks and then just drove it out of
the country. So yeah, that's pretty pretty wild stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Well, I'm looking forward to reading that. You can sign
our books when the time comes in, we'll have you
on to talk about the book itself.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
That'd be great.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, David, thanks for meeting us. Anybody who is listening
to this should definitely be listening to The rest is Classified. Again,
thank you for your time. You're one of our favorite
guys to read and listen to, so.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
Thanks thanks for having me on. Guys, I appreciate you
inviting an analyst to come on this program, so.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Run out of guests.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry Osha, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
Mission Implausible It's a production of honorable mention and abominable
pictures for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Don'
Hosts And Creators
Adam Davidson
John Sipher
Jerry O'Shea
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com