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- [00:01]
David McCloskey
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- [00:30]
Anya Cain
I'm Anya and today we're going to talk about spy stories.
- [00:33]
Kevin Greenlee
Well, over the weekend, on February 28, 2026, to be precise, United States of America and Israel jointly attacked Iran. The goal of these strikes, called Operation Epic Fury in the United States, is said to be regime change.
- [00:49]
Anya Cain
So this feels like a good time to release this particular episode because we actually interviewed an author who wrote a whole thrilling spy novel focused around Iran. Just as a note, we did this interview all the way back on October 8, 2025. Sometimes it just takes us a while to publish things.
- [01:05]
Kevin Greenlee
Anyway, the author is David McCloskey and he's terrific. He writes espionage fiction. He also co hosts the espionage podcast the Rest is Classified. And he's done some great books. His debut was Damascus Station. His latest is the Persian.
- [01:25]
Anya Cain
The Persian is all about the long standing war, once shadowy, now thrust into the light, between Iran and Israel and their respective intelligence services. It tells the story of a Jewish Persian man living in Stockholm, Sweden, a rather bored dentist named Cam. Recruited by Mossad for a dangerous spy mission, he ends up enmeshed in a stirring, increasingly complex web of lies in Tehran. It's gripping, like you're gonna stay up way too late reading this thing, but it's worth it kind of book. We loved it.
- [01:55]
Kevin Greenlee
The thing about David McCloskey is he's not just drawing from his imagination. He served as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. Like, he used to regularly brief White House officials and even write for the President's Daily Brief. David served in field stations across the Middle east, so he knows the world of espionage firsthand.
- [02:18]
Anya Cain
Anyways, this is a bit of a departure from our usually strictly true crime fare, but. But then again, spy work can sometimes involve murder and assassination and killing and violence. We talked to David about his experience at the CIA, whether or not spies are really running around doing cool action set pieces all the time and more. My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.
- [02:38]
Kevin Greenlee
And I'm Kevin Greenlee.
- [02:39]
Anya Cain
I'm an attorney and this is the murder sheet.
- [02:42]
Kevin Greenlee
We're a True crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet.
- [02:51]
Anya Cain
And this is the CIA Chaos and Clandestine Matters with David McCloskey. First of all, David, thank you so much for coming on the Murder Sheet today. We really appreciate it.
- [03:46]
David McCloskey
Hey, thanks for having me. Really thrilled to be here.
- [03:48]
Anya Cain
And we're going to be talking about your excellent thriller novel, the Persian today and some of the background that went into that. But I guess, to start off with. So can you tell us just in a nutshell about your experience with the CIA, which is sort of, I think, what in part inspired this book?
- [04:08]
David McCloskey
Yeah, absolutely. So I got into the CIA pretty young. I was an undergraduate intern when I joined CIA. I guess, you know, you think about it, it's. It makes a lot of sense, right? They try to get to people pretty early in their college careers, in part, I think, to kind of assess, but also because they want to get to you before you've made bad decisions that will make it harder to pass a polygraph or a drug test. And I got recruited when I was a sophomore. I joined the Agency that following summer as an undergrad intern, did two summers there working on Syria, and then joined full time when I graduated. So I, I literally, I mean, I joke about this a lot, but it is true. Like, when I joined the CIA, my resume prior to stepping onto the Langley campus was I had dug holes for a sprinkler system company in the Minneapolis St. Paul suburbs. And then I had worked as a cashier at Wendy's. And the next entry was Central Intelligence Agency, you know, analyst. So I did that job until 2014. I worked on Syria the whole time I was there and kind of the, you know, broader Middle east topics. I lived in Damascus for a while, traveled a lot, and worked a lot in the region. And my first novel, Damascus Station, really sprung directly out of that Syria experience because I was working on it, you know, in the kind of first, really first three, four years of the, of the Civil War and all of the books. The Persian is my fourth. They don't all deal with the Middle East. Right. The second one was very Russia focused, as was kind of the third. But they're all dealing, trying to deal realistically with espionage, with the spy business, with actual tradecraft, the actual people, the humans who work in the spy business. And this book, the Persian, even though it's Israel, Iran, it's no different. We're dealing with intelligence officers on both sides of the shadow war.
- [06:03]
Anya Cain
Absolutely. And I do want to ask you, you Know, I. What for people who may be curious, why do you think they recruited you for the CIA? Was there, was there something, I mean, like, was that always an interest of yours or if you can talk about it.
- [06:16]
David McCloskey
Yeah, no, I mean, I can, I think, you know, I was interested in the Agency to the extent that I was a, you know, 19 year old who wanted to travel and who, who was studying international relations at school. Much to my mother's horror. She was like, you'll never get a job. What is this, what is this degree that you'll have? But I wanted to learn how the world worked and I wanted to see it. And so the Agency, you know, from really the get go, was a very attractive and interesting place. I mean, obviously it's also got kind of the, you know, the sexiness of, oh, it's, what is this, you know, what is this world? Right? It's, it's secretive and we all want to know secrets that we don't have, even if they're, even if at the end of the day they're boring. We like, you know, insider knowledge. So that was the appeal for me. The appeal for them, I mean, you know, for me, I was an analyst and I think they hire, this is a gross oversimplification, but they basically hire two types of analysts. They hire analysts who have significant technical or regional expertise. You know, like someone who wrote their PhD thesis on, you know, Vladimir Putin and lived and worked in Russia for five years. You know, those kind of people. And then they hire people who are young and who don't know anything and who can be taught things. And I was in that category, you know, as for why they specifically chose me, I can only imagine it was some gross, gross error on the part of their, you know, human resources department. But luckily I snuck in the door.
- [07:55]
Anya Cain
No, you're too self deprecating. I, I do want to ask you what, what training goes into becoming, working for the CIA in general, obviously in this case being, you know, an analyst.
- [08:04]
David McCloskey
You're right. The training would be very, very different, you know, if you were a case officer. Like there's a lot of different jobs at the CIA and they'll have different training attached to them. An analyst you get, I mean, what, what back then, I'm sure it's been shortened, but I spent six months of my first year in a program called the Career Analyst Program, which basically taught you how do you think critically, how do you write analytically, how do you sift through mountains of information to tell a story and to have the appropriate facts to back up that story. How do you communicate verbally and how do you use different analytic tools or processes to sort of check the blind spots that we all have? You know, how do you reevaluate key assumptions that underlie a piece of analysis? How do you test alternative hypotheses for the information you're looking at? So it's, you know, you kind of get in the weeds pretty quickly. But it's six months of really, really effective training for how you write and think critically so that you can actually be a good analyst. When you sit down to write, know, a memo for the president on why Bashar al Assad, the, the then Syrian president is doing what he's doing, it,
- [09:26]
Kevin Greenlee
it seems like some of those skills they trained you for would also apply to your work now as a novelist, is that true?
- [09:35]
David McCloskey
Yeah, I think it is. There are, with limits, you know, I. The two types of writing are very different. It is a very different thing to sit down and write an analytic one page memo on, you know, the what, why and so what of a particular intelligence story versus writing sitting to, you know, write like a scene. Right. One of them is very dry and analytic. The other one is, you know, you're trying to fill it with a character's voice. Right. And so it's a different kind of writing. But there are a couple things that I think are similar. I mean, one is at the Agency, they spend a lot of time teaching you to be very economical with your words and to be very precise with your language. Like, that's also helpful as a novelist. It's really helpful as a novelist. Right. The last thing most readers don't enjoy reading overly, you know, sort of flowery, overwrought, repetitive language. Right. It gets, it gums a story up. So that's like one, one way that the two types of writing, I think overlap. I mean, another one is as an analyst, you are trying to understand why somebody is doing something, you know, or why a country's policy is this or that way. And as a result, you spend a lot of time trying to get in the head of the foreign leaders that you're watching. You're watching, right? You're trying to like, what makes them tick, why do they do these things? How it. Why does this system produce policy outcomes that are like this, like, why does the state define its interest this way? And as a novelist, you're trying to understand why characters do things as you discover them. You're trying to slowly, over time, learn to capture their voice by understanding how they behave in different social settings or how they behave with other characters or how they eat. Why do they do the things that they do? So there's a lot of overlap between those two things. And that the kind of trained empathy that I think the agency tries to beat into you and does beat into you over time as an analyst, turns out is pretty helpful, I think, as a novelist, as you're trying to understand the motivations of your characters, can you
- [11:57]
Kevin Greenlee
elaborate on what you mean by trained empathy?
- [12:00]
David McCloskey
So I worked on Syria, right? Syria at that time was run by the Assad family. It was an exceptionally brutal, predatory regime. And there were a lot of symptoms of that that were really hard to understand or to wrap your head around, like, why is there an, you know, archipelago of prisons all around this country where opponents of the regime have been locked up, tortured, brutalized? Why is 90% of the economic activity run by a corrupt cabal around the president? There's sort of aspects of dark aspects of this regime that you look at it from the outside. I cannot put myself in the shoes of these people to understand how they think, because most people don't go around thinking they're evil. They. They think they might do some bad things sometimes, but they're not evil. Right. So how do you put yourself in the shoes of a family like that or a person like that? I think the agency is sort of mean by the trained piece is like, it's not maybe natural for most of us to think, oh, I want to understand the types of people who are in the middle of an awful system like that and be able to communicate to others why they do what they do. Maybe it is for some people, but I think for most of us analysts, it wasn't exactly natural that you would approach those kind of regimes or people with a sense of or a desire to understand and to empathize with what they do. And I think the agency, over time, teaches you how to do that. And I think it's helpful as a novelist, because writing about spies and spy stories, there's also a lot of freaky characters in these books where you hope people are interested in them, but they're also despicable. And to write those kind of characters, you have to understand why they do the things that they do and to empathize with them, even if the outcome or the stuff that they do in the books is really awful and brutal.
- [14:06]
Kevin Greenlee
I also wanted to jump back because a moment ago you said something about writing a memo for the president. What does it feel like to write something that is going to be Read by the most powerful man in the world.
- [14:21]
David McCloskey
At first, it's really cool, and then over time, you. I guess a couple things happen. One is, like, all things. You just kind of get used to it, and then it stops being cool and you're like, oh, this means I have to stay super late tonight while 10 people edit that document. And I thought, you know, when I left this morning, I told my wife I would be home no later than six. And now I'm gonna be home at, like, midnight. And we have to cancel plans and move stuff around. And I didn't pack dinner. And the cafeteria closes at, you know, 4pm Right. So then it becomes that. And you're like, well, my whole day is ruined, despite the fact that I'll get some overtime. So that's one piece of it. The other piece of it is that you do there. There definitely were, and we call them PDBs. You know, they're memos for the President's Daily Brief. It's the book of articles that goes to the president or at least then went to the president every day and. Or six days a week, I think it was. And you definitely have articles where you feel like the sort of feedback you got reflected the fact that the reader had absorbed what you had written and understood it and had engaged with it. But that was not the norm. The norm was that the briefer would come back from briefing it and you would always get this line. The principal or the president, whoever it was, read it with interest. And you'd be like, okay, well, what did that mean? Do they. What, suggested there was interest? You know, did they grunt when they read it? Did they say something to you? You never quite figured that out. So I, you know, over time, you get, you know, 30, 40 pieces of feedback that are like, read with interest. That are like, okay, like, this had no impact. And so you kind of start to get a little bit jaded over time, even as a young person writing for the pdb. But, yeah, you know, looking back on it now, I have to step back and say it is a cool thing to have written stuff that Presidents Bush and Obama read and, you know, read with interest. Hopefully, that's cool.
- [16:30]
Anya Cain
Whatever that means.
- [16:31]
David McCloskey
Whatever that means. Exactly.
- [16:34]
Anya Cain
I did want to ask you, you talked a little bit about why people do the things they do. You know, in terms of the CIA itself, just for people who may not be so familiar. I think everyone's obviously heard of the CIA. It's pretty much, you know, in people's mindset. But what is the actual mission and goals of the CIA in terms of, you know, what it's doing out there.
- [16:54]
David McCloskey
Yeah. So a lot of misconception, I think, about what the agency actually is that's largely fed by some wonderfully entertaining, you know, film and television on, you know, spies. And the agency. I mean, basically what the agency is, is it's out trying to steal secrets so that our government has an information advantage over other governments. Right. Even allied governments. We are trying to give our policymakers insider information that the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the Germans, the French, you know, the North Koreans don't want us to have so that we can make better decisions when we are negotiating trade deals, when we are engaging with them, and sometimes in a hostile way militarily, all that kind of stuff. Right. So it's about an information advantage. Now, there are elements of the agency that do things like prosecute covert action programs. So, you know, an attempt to actually shape political or military outcomes in a foreign country, to align with U.S. interest and to do that in a deniable way, that's another element of what the agency does. But at its core, the mission is the theft of secrets to give us an information advantage. And all of the jobs inside the agency kind of break down underneath that overarching mission.
- [18:28]
Anya Cain
One thing that you talk about, some of the kind of myths about the CIA in the public sphere, you know, I think if you just were basing. If you're an alien come down from space and you just watched movies or read books about the CIA, you'd probably think that working for the CIA was incredibly dangerous, I guess.
- [18:46]
David McCloskey
Yeah.
- [18:46]
Anya Cain
How much of that is true and how much of that is myth?
- [18:51]
David McCloskey
Almost none of it is true. The. The idea or the concept of the superhero spy, which I think is the standard representation of the CIA in film and television in particular, but also in a lot of spy novels. And by the way, I should say I'm not knocking any of this entertainment like it's. It's really good fun. It contributes to the genre. I enjoy a lot of it myself. There are aspects of my novels where at times I dip into some of these tropes too. So I'm not condemning this stuff. I'm just saying that if you apply the spy in the spy genre, it's one of the. It is interesting because I get this question a lot, and I get the feeling I don't write in another genre. So I don't know if there's a similar conversation going on, but there's an almost obsession with a lot of spy readers, with understanding what's authentic and what's not. And, you know, like, if I was, you know, writing, and if you're writing sci fi novels or fantasy novels or, you know, romantasy novels, like, I just, it's actually an open question I have of, like, are other, other genres having this conversation about authenticity too? Because the spy genre seems obsessed with it. And the answer is like, almost nothing is authentic because you want to tell really interesting dramatic stories with huge geopolitical stakes. And when you're cramming all that into a book or into a TV show or into a movie, it's just, it's just not going to be. It's just not going to be authentic. So I think, you know, the, the answer to the aliens would be the superhero. Spy is not really a thing. The actual work of the agency is much more similar to investigative journalism than it is to an action flick. You know, it's much more like you have a story you're trying to tell, you have people you want to tell that story to. You have people at the agency who, like a reporter, go out and try to recruit sources who have information that we want, and then you have analysts who write that stuff up and communicate it effectively to the people who matter, you know, and that's really more of what the agency is doing. That doesn't translate as well into film and TV for obvious reasons, because if you just tried to, you know, write a script out of what I just said, people would be like, oh, my God, that sounds so boring. Like, where are the guns? You know, so it's, it's. I don't know. You know, the authenticity thing is interesting to me because I, I obviously try to write books that, that are authentic as much as possible. And yet, you know, I think in the genre, there's just, there's just not a whole lot that's, that's truly authentic.
- [21:36]
Anya Cain
Yeah, I think, I think in crime fiction there can be sometimes similar conversations about like, wait, that's a good point. Yeah, I don't like, oh, police wouldn't really be firing their guns as much, or that guy would be under investigation if this happens. Yeah, can be a little bit of that.
- [21:48]
Kevin Greenlee
But I'm curious, were you a reader of spy fiction or a viewer of spy films prior to joining the CIA?
- [21:55]
David McCloskey
I was. Yeah. I grew up on this stuff. And, you know, my dad loved it. I kind of, I got the bug from him, you know, and I think, you know, he read stuff that I think, and as a result, I did. I read stuff that I would consider more Kind of slow burn, like pure espionage. But he also was a big fan of military kind of techno thrillers. Like, I remember, you know, when the Clancy book would come out, like, that was a big day around the house because it meant that I would go with him and we'd stand in line at the bookstore, and then he'd get it, and then he would disappear for, like, you know, 80 hours while he read. While he read the book. And so those were like. Those were like, big events. It was a part of my childhood. When I joined the agency, I actually stopped reading it for a few years because. And this is. This is. Is common, I think, with a lot of, you know, whether they're analysts or case officers, it kind of doesn't matter. You get inside and then you realize, like, oh, this is not at all what this stuff is like. And there can be a sense where you're like, oh, these, like, a lot of these writers are writing stuff are kind of full of shit. Like, this isn't. This isn't what the job is like. And your day to day is so dissimilar from the protagonist of these novels or these stories that you're like, oh, I don't want to touch this. And so for a while, I didn't read it. And then I got over that. And even before I had left, I started to really dip back into it and just kind of enjoy the stories for what they were and not, in my mind, sort of hold them to this high bar of like, you gotta authentically get everything right about this world.
- [23:32]
Kevin Greenlee
Not to put you on the spot, but who are some of the writers of spy fiction you've enjoyed over the years?
- [23:39]
David McCloskey
So the one that got me. Well, there were two that got me back into it. And obviously there's a lot more that I could add to this list. But there were two in particular that got me back into reading it. And then I think, in part convinced me that there was a part of the genre that I could contribute to. So one of them was Daniel Silva. So my dad was like an avid, avid Daniel Silva reader. And whenever I would see my dad, he just wouldn't shut up about reading Daniel Silva's novels. And so finally I started doing it. And I did it at night to help me fall asleep, because I was, like, still kind of. Again, I was out of the practice of reading regularly and in particular, reading in spy fiction. And I got back and I picked up a couple silver novels because of my dad. And I just found them to be so enjoyable. In particular, the early Ones I just really love those stories and so dove back into those and then the other one. And I consider this writer who's now unfortunately since passed to be one of the kind of more formative influences on me is a guy named Jason Matthews, who wrote Red Sparrow and a trilogy of books based on those characters. And I remember reading Jason and I didn't work together at the agency. He's a 30 plus year veteran case officer. I remember reading those and thinking, oh, I know that there's stuff in here that's totally made up, but he's done a wonderful job of, of making all of this feel really real. And in particular he gets the lingo right, he gets a lot of the tradecraft right. But one thing he was really good at was like his, his character, his main character of that trilogy or one of them was an actual CIA case officer doing actual CIA case officer stuff. And the analyst did actual analyst stuff. And you're like, wait a minute, this feels like the actual CIA. And these books are really thrilling and exciting and well written. And I remember thinking, like, I want to do that. So that was a really formative kind of reading experience for me because it was the first time, you know, when you read like Silva's books are great and there's a lot of other very talented spy writers past and present, but I didn't read them and think, oh yeah, this is kind of what I'd want to be doing if I was writing on the genre. And when I read Jason's books, I was like, oh, this is very like, you know, we're sort of, we'd be dipping in the same pool here.
- [26:07]
Anya Cain
What was it like for you actually working out of CIA field stations in the Middle East? I think you mentioned living in Damascus for a time.
- [26:15]
David McCloskey
Yeah, yeah, I did. I was there actually before the Civil War and worked out of a lot of different stations in the region. Sometimes, you know, I mean, for longer periods of time than sometimes just very briefly. And you know, it was really, it was one of the best parts of my experience at the CIA because, you know, the Agency is like designed or should be designed to go out and steal secrets. And you don't do that at headquarters, you know. And so being an analyst, I mean even, you know, sort of, I wasn't a case officer, right. So I had a very different job. But being out on a station that is actively involved in that and where the day to day is like case officers having asset meetings and the theft of secrets, like, that's really thrilling. And so to Be around that and part of that and feel closer to that was really cool. And the experience in Damascus in particular was formative for me because I was there. I ended up leaving right before, like, a month before the protest movement began in March of 2011. And, you know, I really fell in love with the city. Like, can you really. You know, there are parts of the world where, you know, I kind of tie it back to what I was thinking about when I applied for the internship. Like, I want to see the world and understand how it works. And there is, you know, really no other substitute oftentimes than actually just going to the place and being part of it for a period of time and living there. And I was very fortunate to have that experience in particular in Syria.
- [27:47]
Anya Cain
It's obviously the. The level of violence that's often portrayed is.
- [27:51]
David McCloskey
Is.
- [27:51]
Anya Cain
Is not realistic. But is it more. I mean, it sounds like it would be more dangerous actually being out in the field for people working for the CIA. Was there ever, you know, was, like, in terms of security and stuff, was that, you know, in the back of your mind as you're out there?
- [28:06]
David McCloskey
Not in the places that I was. You know, I mean, there was never a point where I'm like, oh, I'm actually in some kind of physical danger here. Really, there wasn't. You know, I. I did not do a war zone tour, like in Iraq or Afghanistan, and I definitely have colleagues who would have different stories from being in those places or, you know, you serve in a place like Yemen or something like that. Right. Like, there's just a different risk profile. But no, you know, honestly, I mean, when I was in Syria, like, the. The macabre guys who were following me around, like, I actually appreciated it because I knew that if someone, like, tried to rob me, they would probably intervene. You know, so, like, you safer with, you know, with that level of surveillance on you. So, you know, I wish I had a sexier answer for this question, but I really don't. You know, I think most case officers also, like. And I hesitate to speak for them, but, you know, they would tell you, like, most of the time, this is not a dangerous job. You know, this is a job about finding people, developing people, assessing people, recruiting people. It's not. The level of personal risk, I think, is usually significantly overstated for good reason. Right. In the storytelling, in the genre, it doesn't really bear a lot of resemblance to the realities of the business.
- [29:34]
Anya Cain
Absolutely. And can you tell us a little bit about tradecraft? Obviously, that's something. And you mentioned reading Works where you're like, oh, this tradecraft's pretty spot on. How does that evolve and how does that. What was your sort of experience with that?
- [29:49]
David McCloskey
Well, again, you know, it's funny, like, as an analyst, you're not trained in it, right? It's not my job. Like, it is not my job to go out and, you know, recruit people. And so I wasn't trained in it. I have gotten by training in it by putting on my own case officer hat and trying to recruit case officers to talk to me as a novelist and, you know, building a network of sources who are willing to have these conversations with me and willing to let an analyst say, okay, well, I'm thinking about this kind of situation, like, what's in your head? Or how do I get there? Or how would it really happen? You know, so the. My kind of experience with the tradecraft has been listening and talking with a lot of these guys and girls about. About it, and it's been utterly, utterly fascinating. I like to learn new things. And, you know, I feel like I've gotten a better sense of how the Directorate of Operations, the other side of the House, works since I. Since leaving than I ever did when I was inside the CIA. You know, it's just. It's a very different. Very different job, very different world. But now, as a novelist writing with case officer protagonists, you know, I need to have a really. A pretty detailed understanding of a lot of this stuff to write the characters effectively.
- [31:13]
Kevin Greenlee
You talk about recruiting people to talk to you. What is that like? Are people willing to talk to you? Are they reluctant at first? How do you persuade them?
- [31:24]
David McCloskey
So they're almost always willing and pretty interested in doing it, in part because at this point my network is big enough where I can usually get a warm introduction. So there being, you know, if I'm looking for a new source that knows something about. Well, here's an example like that I'm working on. So my fifth book, I've got a main character who is a commo officer, which means they deal with the. You know, they deal with a lot of the COVID communications devices that deal like at a station. The combo officer is making sure that from the standpoint of the station communicating with headquarters and communicating with their assets, all is running smoothly. You know, I. I didn't know anybody well who had that role at the agency. And so I got introduced to somebody via a friend of mine who was a very senior commo officer and who's willing to talk to me because his friend, who's also my friend, Introduced us. So there's that piece of it. The other piece of this, though, is like, the vast majority of formers who have since left, I think, don't have a lot of outlets to really talk about this kind of stuff. And because I'm a safe. Like, I'm kind of a safe space in that. I'm not a journalist. I'm not trying to scoop you. I'm also a former. I was an analyst. Like, I've got to play by the rules and get my stuff cleared through the Pub Review Board. So you know that, like, you know that you're being introduced to me by someone you trust, which suggests that I have decent judgment. I've gotta, you know, I've gotta go through the process. So, like, people are more willing, as a result, I think, to just talk to me and be pretty open. And I have not found it to be a challenge. I mean, sometimes you get introduced to someone and you talk to them be like, oh, wait a minute, like, you're not. You're not actually comfortable having the conversation that I want to have, and that's fine. But nine times out of 10, you find someone who's retired and living in Omaha, Nebraska, you know, and doing something else with their life now and really excited about the chance to kind of just talk to someone who's. Who might put some of this stuff in a book, you know, that's, I think, intriguing to a lot of people.
- [33:41]
Kevin Greenlee
That makes a lot of sense. You mentioned something there in passing about the Pub Review Board. Can you elaborate on that and what the process is involving that?
- [33:53]
David McCloskey
Yeah. So the CIA has a group called the Publication Review Board, where basically you have to send everything you write to them, and then they can determine if there's anything sensitive or classified that's in there and make redactions. So I sent the books to them. I've got to send my resume. If I make updates to my resume, I've got to send it to them. If I read an op ed, I've got to send it to them. You know, if I wrote, like, something that had nothing to do with espionage in the CIA, probably wouldn't have to, you know, But I'm writing spy novels. My main characters usually work for the CIA. So I've got to send it to them. They're actually pretty easy to deal with. Like, they get back to you pretty quickly. I have usually found the edits or the redactions to be reasonable. You know, even if I'm like, okay, I think this is maybe going a little bit too Far they've never done something where they're like, you got to remove this chapter, you got to remove this plot line. Like, it's technical stuff that they think goes too far. So I've had good interactions with them. But, yeah, until the day I die, everything I write will have to go through the Langley Pub Review Board.
- [34:59]
Anya Cain
Wild. So one question I have for you. So we've talked a bit about your background. I want to talk a little bit about the Persian, your latest novel. And I guess can I throw it to you? Can you kind of just tell us a little bit about what this book is about to kind of give the readers a bit of a taste of that?
- [35:16]
David McCloskey
The Persian is obviously, is a spy novel. It is set in the kind of present day shadow war, the intelligence war between Israel and Iran. And at its center, obviously, if you're going to tell an Israel, Iran intelligence story, your centerpiece is going to be a dentist, clearly. So the dentist is, is the star of this book. His name is Kamran Isfahani. He is a Persian Jewish extraction. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden. His family's been there since the early days of the revolution. And he is extremely bored. He's sick of being a dentist. The practice isn't doing that well, and he hates the dark Stockholm winters. So he actually, he wants to go to California. He's got this California dream. And lo and behold, who shows up quite literally in his dental chair. But the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service. And there's a recruiter named Eric Glutzmann who makes Cam. You know, it's kind of. It's an offer that I think Cam both sort of can't refuse. There's some threat underneath it. And then he also kind of doesn't want to, right? And the, the offer is basically go into Iran, go back to Tehran, because Cam can go in and out, set up a dental practice there. We'll use that as a cover for surveillance and smuggling and some other nasty stuff. And after a few years, you'll get a payout and you'll have enough money to finance your California dream. So Cam does this, and pretty soon thereafter, some very specific people start to die inside Israel. And they're not just, you know, civilians. They are specific officers of the Mossad unit that recruited Cam. And so to discover sort of unravel who's behind them, Cam is asked to recruit, or told to recruit this woman, an Iranian widow named Roya, who's also a key character in the story. And I think it's not, be careful How I talk about this to not spoil anything, but it's not a spoiler to say that the operation goes totally sideways, because in the opening pages of the novel, you were told this because Cam is actually in prison. He's been in Iranian captivity for three years. And it's an interesting feature of the book is that a lot of it is written in the first person with him writing his own final confession. The Iranians have told him that essentially he's going to be killed and he's going to write it all down one more time. And so we know that it's gone. This operation's gone bad. And through the writing, we are introduced to this story and to Cam and to how he came to work for the Israelis and to what happened in this. In this operation. And Cam, we also learn, has held onto a single secret the whole time he's been in captivity. And so a lot of the book is, you know, trying to understand if Cam can keep that secret from his Iranian captors and ultimately from us, the reader.
- [38:21]
Anya Cain
It's so good. I just want to say that. So I don't want to get too much.
- [38:24]
David McCloskey
Thank you.
- [38:26]
Anya Cain
Spoil it.
- [38:28]
Kevin Greenlee
Yeah. I really enjoyed it as well. I've been reading your novels for a few years now.
- [38:33]
David McCloskey
Thank you.
- [38:34]
Kevin Greenlee
At some point, you were listed as one of the best new spy novelists to come along because of Damascus Station, your first novel, which is also. All of your books are well worth reading.
- [38:46]
Anya Cain
Yeah, definitely. And I do want to ask you, you know, in terms of. In terms of this one, was there anything specific about your own experiences with the CIA or just, you know, in general, that inspired you in terms of writing the Persian?
- [39:02]
David McCloskey
So it was a little bit less, you know, interestingly, like, there are no CIA officers in this book. I started writing it and thought there would be, and thought the centerpiece of it would be a joint operation between the CIA and Mossad. And I had experience working with Mossad at the agency and know a lot of people who did join ops with them. And so it felt like kind of a natural story to tell. But as I wrote it, I realized that just wasn't going to work. It made the storytelling feel more clunky. And as the operation in Iran became more daring and potentially violent, my colleagues who work closely with the Israelis basically said, there's no way we would work with Mossad on this. Like, we just, you know, we would let the Israelis run with it. This is not the kind of operation we would ever get involved in. And. And so I cut the American characters and so it's a bit of a long winded way of saying that, you know, there isn't a lot in here that's sort of coming out of my own experiences or even the stories of the people who I worked with at the CIA. But I've spent a lot of time getting to know people who worked at Mossad and talking with them and have basically, I mean, tried to put together a story that accurately reflects as much as I could, the way that Israel and Iran compete with each other in this sort of below the waterline covert war that we don't see day to day. It's not B2 bomber raids on Iran's nuclear program, but like, it's how two states that are sort of locked in mutual hostility engage with each other, compete with each other, and try to hurt each other on a regular basis. And so the real history and stories inside that conflict became a lot of the kind of supporting structure and the plot lines for this book.
- [40:59]
Kevin Greenlee
And I also want to talk a little bit. Of course, being a novelist is an enormous amount of work. In addition to that, you find the time to do a podcast. Can you talk about that a little bit?
- [41:13]
David McCloskey
Yeah, well, cocaine helps. You don't need as much sleep when you're coked up. No, if anyone's listening, my mom's listening. I'm not. That's not true. So I do. I co host a podcast called the Rest is Classified. My intrepid co host is a guy named Gordon Carrera, who's British, and I do hold that against him on a regular basis. The concept is basically like we're telling spy stories. And it could be from the very sort of recent past, or it could be historical stuff from, you know, 19. I think we've done stories from, you know, as far back as, like the 1920s, 1930s. And it's not, you know, we don't interview people. It's not like we bring on someone with experience and talk to them. Although we do do some of that for our club members. Like the bread and butter of it is Gordon and I having a conversation, a really detailed conversation, a structured conversation about a sort of a chapter in espionage history. And that could be the hunt for Osama bin Laden. That could be the hunt for Pablo Escobar. That could be Mossad's pager operation where they infected Hezbollah's pagers with plastic explosives and detonated them. So we, you know, we. We unpack these stories and I think try to explain to listeners. I mean, we tell the story, but sort of explain through the story like how the spy business actually works. Right. And that's been a lot of fun. We do two episodes a week. They come out on Mondays and Wednesdays. We have a club episode on Fridays for our members. And, you know, it's a tremendous amount of work. It's also fun. And there's a lot of. It's very complimentary to the writing of spy fiction because I'm immersing myself every week in actual spy stories, and then I can take bits and pieces of those occasionally and use them in the books. So that's been fun.
- [43:11]
Anya Cain
That's awesome. I think we kind of breezed through all of our questions. David, is there anything that you wanted to mention or stress or anything like that that we didn't bring up?
- [43:24]
David McCloskey
Well, I think everyone should go and buy all my books. That would be one. One thing, you know, I just selfishly, I'll throw that out there. But no, I mean, seriously, thank you for having me on. It's been a ton of fun. And, you know, if. I guess the other thing I'd add is if listeners want to know more about me, you can go to my website, davidmccloskybooks.com links to everything through there. And I do hope folks will, you know, they're interested in spy novels in addition to reading mine. If you're sort of interested in espionage, like, go check out the podcast. It's called the Rest is Classified. And, you know, it's. It's a good time. Gordon and I have a lot of fun with it, so I do hope people check it out and we'll be
- [44:02]
Anya Cain
including links to your website, books and the podcast in our show notes so people can thank you. Click on that. Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
- [44:09]
Kevin Greenlee
Thank you so much. This is a lot of fun.
- [44:11]
David McCloskey
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been a ton of fun.
- [44:15]
Kevin Greenlee
Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com. if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
- [44:35]
Anya Cain
If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet we very much appreciate any support.
- [44:59]
Kevin Greenlee
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the murder sheet and who you can find on the web@kevintg.com if you're looking to talk with
- [45:10]
Anya Cain
other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening. Thanks to David for chatting with us. We'll include links to by the Persian in our show notes as well as his other books. Listen to his podcast, the rest is classified. Also, check out his website David McCloskeybooks.com that's D A V I D M C C L O S k e y books.com if you're an H Vac
- [45:53]
David McCloskey
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