Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the show for the very first time, a
guy who I probably should have had on the show
many times before. David McCloskey is not only a best
selling author, he's a former CIA analyst. He wrote for
the President's Daily Briefs and all kinds of interesting stuff.
And I'm holding in my hand David's most recent book.
(00:20):
It's called The Persian, and it's one of the best
espionage novels I've ever read. And I encourage you to
go buy The Persian right now. And I never ever
do this, but I'm going to have to go get
David's previous books and read them. I very very rarely
find an author whose work I like enough that I said,
I got to go back and read the older stuff.
But I'm going to do that with David stuff. So David,
(00:43):
welcome to KOWA. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hey Rush, thanks so much for having me and for
those kind of words. Thrilled to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Quick thing before before we talk about the book. Since
your expertise for quite a few years has been the
Middle East, and you, as I read on your website,
you worked you were in CIA throughout the Arab.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Spring and all that.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I'm curious what you're thinking right now, because it's kind
of a big picture question with MBS visiting Donald Trump
today and Trump's efforts broader efforts at peace in the
Middle East, not just not just Gaza and Israel, but
what's your big picture take on how likely there is
to be some quasi stable scenario in this famously unstable
(01:29):
part of the world.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I think quasi stable might be more than we could
hope for. I think we could certainly hope for better
than we've got now. I think, you know, like I
Vadim love him anything in between, and you know, it's
probably a good thing for more you know, big Arab
(01:51):
states in the region to have something approaching peace with
the Israelis. You know, that's generally good for us. So
you know, on the one hand, you've got to sort
of applaud it and say, you know, that would be
that would be good for Washington, I think, you know,
on the other hand, in particular, they talk about a
(02:12):
guy like MBS, you know, you sort of have to
look square in the face that he played a role
in the you know, the sort of murder and dismemberment
of a journalists. Right, so kind of this part of
the world is, you know, not full of a lot
of angels. And I think, you know, us having a
pretty hard nosed kind of real politique view of the
(02:34):
world would go a long way as tough as that
is sometimes for us as Americans, if.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
And sometimes it's hard to tell with Donald Trump in
the sense that he seems very hard nosed in real
politics sometimes and then other times he seems to be
easily influenced by flattery and expensive gifts. And certainly MBS
is a guy who knows how to do that if
he wants to. So we'll we'll have to see how
that plays out. All right, let's talk about the Persian.
This is just a remarkable, a remarkable story. I truly
(03:04):
loved it, and I don't want to give give spoilers.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I'll leave that to the authors.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So if you want to give like a twenty three
second overview of the plot, and I say that because
I like prime numbers, go ahead with that.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
And then I got a couple of questions for you.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
All right, well, I'll try for twenty three seconds. So basically,
this is a story as the spy novel, set in
the middle of the real present day Shadow war between
this realities and you know, sort of fo better to
put at the center event than straight obviously the partangule instead.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Of final David, can you started to interrupt? You can?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
You?
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Can you maybe get a little closer to whatever you're
speaking into because the audio quality is is a little
hard to hear you.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Yeah, okay, let me I apollo here.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I'm gonna say that.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, way better. Yeah, okay, keep going good.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
There we go, So twenty three seconds here. The Persian
it's set in the middle of the shadow war between
Israel and Iran. It is a fine novel that has
at its center a dentist, a very clever Persian Jewish
dentist named Cameron S. Fahani, who lives in Stockholm, Sweden,
(04:18):
and he hates living in Sweden. He hates the cold,
and he wants to move to California. He gets recruited
by the Israelis to go back into Iran set up
a dental practice that can be used as cover for surveillance,
for kidnapping, for assassinations, and the Israelis basically say work
for us for a time and you'll get to finance
your California dream. A bunch of people start to die
(04:41):
in Israel over the course of this book, very specific people,
and they're members of Masad, the members of the team
that recruited Cam. And so Cam is sent on essentially
an operation to penetrate that group, right to understand who's
killing these massaught officers and why, and to stop them.
That operation goes totally sideways, And it's no spoiler to
(05:03):
say that, because you know, you actually find out in
the first page of this novel that the operation is
on sideways sideways because Cam is in prison in te
Roan and he's writing. Much of the book is his confession,
and so the story of the book kind of becomes
a story to figure out how this operation went so
terribly wrong and to see if Cam can hold on to,
(05:26):
in particular, a single secret that he has been holding
back from his captors throughout his time in Prism.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
The narrative format of the book is fascinating, right, So,
so the book is essentially a guy in prison writing
the story of the previous few years to tell his
Iranian captors, Here's what happened, Here's why it happened. It's
it's very it's very very interesting way to write that story.
I also noted. I want to say this without giving
any kind of you know, spoiler, the very very end
(05:56):
of the book, where you know, Cam is talking to
such and such a person. It was interesting because you
could sort of imagine it being real and you could
sort of imagine it being a dream.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say more than that,
but I thought that was also fascinating. Now got about
a minute and a half here and we're talking with
David McCluskey.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
His his new novel is called The Persian.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And it's one of the best espionage novels.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
I've ever read.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And I really encourage you if you like you know,
John Lecaree or you like even Ludlam kind of stuff,
even though this is not a Jason Bourne kind of character.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
It's just it's a wonderful book.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Very interesting to have an American CIA dude write an
espionage novel that has very little American participation.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Can you just talk about that briefly?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Yeah, Well, I mean really no American characters in this book.
And it's not how it started. I wanted to write
a story about a joint operation between the CIA and
Massad because we we do a lot of those, And yeah,
I interacted a decent amount with a massade during my
time inside CIA when I was working on serious stuff.
And the more I wrote this joint operation, the more
(07:12):
cluttered it became. The storytelling was harder, and I felt
like it really diluted from the main show, which was
this kind of, you know, relationship between Cam and the
woman that he'll try to recruit in Iran and his
handler in the massade, a man named Eric Glitzman. And
so I threw the I sort of pulled the Americans out,
and so it was really just happenstance of the storytelling
(07:33):
and the characters that dictated that. But you're right, I
mean it's a departure for me. My past three novels
have all featured CIA characters, and this one is totally
different in that respect.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
David mccloskey's novel is The Persian. He's also the co
host of the podcast The Rest Is Classified if you
want to hear thoughts from David on an ongoing basis
and all kinds of stuff going on in the world
from the perspective of a guy who was at CIA
and advising the president and ambassadors and all kinds of people,
including you know, I don't know. Did you ever talk
(08:06):
to did you ever talk to MBS?
Speaker 4 (08:09):
No, no, but I did spend a decent amount of
time with Saudi intelligence officers and with I mean plenty
of different Arab services. Never with MBS himself, but yeah,
on the serious stuff. Lots of interaction with all kinds
of different services throughout the Arab world.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Folks, go by and read the Persian. You're going to
enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
David, thanks for joining us on the show. I look
forward to talking to you again.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Hey, thanks for having me Ross, appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Glad to do it.
Welcome to the show for the very first time, a
guy who I probably should have had on the show
many times before. David McCloskey is not only a best
selling author, he's a former CIA analyst. He wrote for
the President's Daily Briefs and all kinds of interesting stuff.
And I'm holding in my hand David's most recent book.
(00:20):
It's called The Persian, and it's one of the best
espionage novels I've ever read. And I encourage you to
go buy The Persian right now. And I never ever
do this, but I'm going to have to go get
David's previous books and read them. I very very rarely
find an author whose work I like enough that I said,
I got to go back and read the older stuff.
But I'm going to do that with David stuff. So David,
(00:43):
welcome to KOWA. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hey Rush, thanks so much for having me and for
those kind of words. Thrilled to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Quick thing before before we talk about the book. Since
your expertise for quite a few years has been the
Middle East, and you, as I read on your website,
you worked you were in CIA throughout the Arab.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Spring and all that.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I'm curious what you're thinking right now, because it's kind
of a big picture question with MBS visiting Donald Trump
today and Trump's efforts broader efforts at peace in the
Middle East, not just not just Gaza and Israel, but
what's your big picture take on how likely there is
to be some quasi stable scenario in this famously unstable
(01:29):
part of the world.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I think quasi stable might be more than we could
hope for. I think we could certainly hope for better
than we've got now. I think, you know, like I
Vadim love him anything in between, and you know, it's
probably a good thing for more you know, big Arab
(01:51):
states in the region to have something approaching peace with
the Israelis. You know, that's generally good for us. So
you know, on the one hand, you've got to sort
of applaud it and say, you know, that would be
that would be good for Washington, I think, you know,
on the other hand, in particular, they talk about a
(02:12):
guy like MBS, you know, you sort of have to
look square in the face that he played a role
in the you know, the sort of murder and dismemberment
of a journalists. Right, so kind of this part of
the world is, you know, not full of a lot
of angels. And I think, you know, us having a
pretty hard nosed kind of real politique view of the
(02:34):
world would go a long way as tough as that
is sometimes for us as Americans, if.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
And sometimes it's hard to tell with Donald Trump in
the sense that he seems very hard nosed in real
politics sometimes and then other times he seems to be
easily influenced by flattery and expensive gifts. And certainly MBS
is a guy who knows how to do that if
he wants to. So we'll we'll have to see how
that plays out. All right, let's talk about the Persian.
This is just a remarkable, a remarkable story. I truly
(03:04):
loved it, and I don't want to give give spoilers.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I'll leave that to the authors.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So if you want to give like a twenty three
second overview of the plot, and I say that because
I like prime numbers, go ahead with that.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
And then I got a couple of questions for you.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
All right, well, I'll try for twenty three seconds. So basically,
this is a story as the spy novel, set in
the middle of the real present day Shadow war between
this realities and you know, sort of fo better to
put at the center event than straight obviously the partangule instead.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Of final David, can you started to interrupt? You can?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
You?
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Can you maybe get a little closer to whatever you're
speaking into because the audio quality is is a little
hard to hear you.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
Yeah, okay, let me I apollo here.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I'm gonna say that.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, way better. Yeah, okay, keep going good.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
There we go, So twenty three seconds here. The Persian
it's set in the middle of the shadow war between
Israel and Iran. It is a fine novel that has
at its center a dentist, a very clever Persian Jewish
dentist named Cameron S. Fahani, who lives in Stockholm, Sweden,
(04:18):
and he hates living in Sweden. He hates the cold,
and he wants to move to California. He gets recruited
by the Israelis to go back into Iran set up
a dental practice that can be used as cover for surveillance,
for kidnapping, for assassinations, and the Israelis basically say work
for us for a time and you'll get to finance
your California dream. A bunch of people start to die
(04:41):
in Israel over the course of this book, very specific people,
and they're members of Masad, the members of the team
that recruited Cam. And so Cam is sent on essentially
an operation to penetrate that group, right to understand who's
killing these massaught officers and why, and to stop them.
That operation goes totally sideways, And it's no spoiler to
(05:03):
say that, because you know, you actually find out in
the first page of this novel that the operation is
on sideways sideways because Cam is in prison in te
Roan and he's writing. Much of the book is his confession,
and so the story of the book kind of becomes
a story to figure out how this operation went so
terribly wrong and to see if Cam can hold on to,
(05:26):
in particular, a single secret that he has been holding
back from his captors throughout his time in Prism.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
The narrative format of the book is fascinating, right, So,
so the book is essentially a guy in prison writing
the story of the previous few years to tell his
Iranian captors, Here's what happened, Here's why it happened. It's
it's very it's very very interesting way to write that story.
I also noted. I want to say this without giving
any kind of you know, spoiler, the very very end
(05:56):
of the book, where you know, Cam is talking to
such and such a person. It was interesting because you
could sort of imagine it being real and you could
sort of imagine it being a dream.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say more than that,
but I thought that was also fascinating. Now got about
a minute and a half here and we're talking with
David McCluskey.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
His his new novel is called The Persian.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And it's one of the best espionage novels.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
I've ever read.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And I really encourage you if you like you know,
John Lecaree or you like even Ludlam kind of stuff,
even though this is not a Jason Bourne kind of character.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
It's just it's a wonderful book.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Very interesting to have an American CIA dude write an
espionage novel that has very little American participation.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Can you just talk about that briefly?
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Yeah, Well, I mean really no American characters in this book.
And it's not how it started. I wanted to write
a story about a joint operation between the CIA and
Massad because we we do a lot of those, And yeah,
I interacted a decent amount with a massade during my
time inside CIA when I was working on serious stuff.
And the more I wrote this joint operation, the more
(07:12):
cluttered it became. The storytelling was harder, and I felt
like it really diluted from the main show, which was
this kind of, you know, relationship between Cam and the
woman that he'll try to recruit in Iran and his
handler in the massade, a man named Eric Glitzman. And
so I threw the I sort of pulled the Americans out,
and so it was really just happenstance of the storytelling
(07:33):
and the characters that dictated that. But you're right, I
mean it's a departure for me. My past three novels
have all featured CIA characters, and this one is totally
different in that respect.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
David mccloskey's novel is The Persian. He's also the co
host of the podcast The Rest Is Classified if you
want to hear thoughts from David on an ongoing basis
and all kinds of stuff going on in the world
from the perspective of a guy who was at CIA
and advising the president and ambassadors and all kinds of people,
including you know, I don't know. Did you ever talk
(08:06):
to did you ever talk to MBS?
Speaker 4 (08:09):
No, no, but I did spend a decent amount of
time with Saudi intelligence officers and with I mean plenty
of different Arab services. Never with MBS himself, but yeah,
on the serious stuff. Lots of interaction with all kinds
of different services throughout the Arab world.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Folks, go by and read the Persian. You're going to
enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
David, thanks for joining us on the show. I look
forward to talking to you again.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Hey, thanks for having me Ross, appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Glad to do it.
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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