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- [00:00]
Sponsor/Announcer
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- [00:17]
Mary Louise Kelley
Hi, it's Mary Louise. A quick word before today's episode 2025 is almost over. And at NPR and our local stations, we are excited to begin a new year. This year was tough, the loss of federal funding for public media attack on the free press. Despite it all, we are not shying away from our jobs, not shying away from exercising the critical right to editorial independence guaranteed by the First Amendment. With your support at npr, we will continue our work without fear or favor, and we will continue to bring you episodes of this show that keep you updated on the biggest national security news of the week with our team of veteran reporters and guests who know the NATSAC world firsthand. If you're already an NPR supporter, thank you. We want you to know how important your support is right now. If you're not a supporter, you can become one right now, before the end of the year. @plus.NPR.org Sign up to unlock a bunch of perks, things like bonus episodes and more from across NPR's podcasts. Plus, you get to feel good about supporting public media while you listen. End the year on a high note. Invest in a public service that matters to you. Visit plus.NPR.org today. Thank you. Here's the show.
- [01:36]
Andrew Limbong
I need a dude who's running away from another guy with a gun or is chasing another dude with a gun.
- [01:43]
Mary Louise Kelley
Is there anything more delicious than the prospect of a cold winter's night, a roaring fire, and on your lap, a good spy novel to crack open. Okay, maybe you could add a tumbler of scotch to this picture, or peppermint tea? I'll go with a nibble of good Swiss chocolate. Pick your poison, Mary. I'm Mary Louise Kelley. This is Sources and Methods from npr. So, as you know, every Thursday on this podcast, I sit down with NPR reporters on the national security beat. But we are off for the new year holiday. We'll be back with our regular Thursday episodes very soon, in fact, on January 8th. Instead, today, a little present for you in the form of espionage fiction. In a moment, my colleagues, both from the national security team and from our books desk, are going to weigh in with recommendations. First, though, who better to chat about spy fiction than someone who writes it? And boy, has Daniel Silva written it. 28 novels and counting, most of them featuring the unforgettable protagonist, Israeli spy Gabriel Allan. When we called Silva the other day and asked him to name his all time fave spy writers, Silva went old school, starting with John Lecurre.
- [02:59]
Daniel Silva
You know, the Spy who Came in from the Cold is arguably the greatest spy novel ever written. I would say that. And I think it holds up and it's just an amazing piece of work. And then I guess it's really not necessarily thought of as a pure spy thriller or espionage book, but the Quiet American has elements of espionage to it and it's just one of my absolute favorite novels.
- [03:27]
Mary Louise Kelley
Graham Greene. So you're arguing that, I mean, these are the greats. Graham Green, John Le Carre, you believe that they hold up despite the fact that. I suppose that the type of spying that their protagonists and their protagonist adversaries are carrying out would be impossible to do today with all of the technological changes.
- [03:46]
Daniel Silva
Well, I have to tell you, if you were to be allowed into SIS headquarters in London, I mean, they're in the business of human intelligence. They're incredible agent runners. You know, there's a great sort of axiom in intelligence that, you know, an electronic intercept is. Might be able to tell you what's going to happen tomorrow or happen today, but you know, human sources help you sort of look over the horizon and tell you what's going to happen, you know, weeks and months from now. And I do think that human intelligence is often overlooked. The Israelis are good at it, but the Mi6 is, you know, widely considered SIS to be the best in the business when it comes to recruiting and running human spies. And they should not be overlooked.
- [04:34]
Mary Louise Kelley
You said if I were to be allowed into SIS, MI6 headquarters.
- [04:39]
Daniel Silva
Have you been inside MI6?
- [04:40]
Mary Louise Kelley
No, I got kicked off the curb.
- [04:43]
Daniel Silva
No, I never even bothered to ask. Never bothered to ask. I'm dying to go in there to see. I've written scenes in there. I've found a description of what the Chief's office is like there. The Director General's. I've referred to it as the finest office in spydom. I mean, it's. Apparently he's got a view that's unbelievable of the river.
- [05:06]
Mary Louise Kelley
I mean, I don't think you would find many people who would argue with you that Le Carre, Graham Greene, that these are the greats. Why is it possible to put your finger on what makes them so good that all these years later, with many, many entrants into the field of writing espion fiction, why they're still so good?
- [05:28]
Daniel Silva
Because they're both great writers and it's often overlooked element, I think, in much of modern fiction. Yes, there are some really beautiful writers out there that write genre fiction, but those guys are incredible writers. I mean, unparalleled in many respects. I mean, Graham Green always said that he wasn't a very good writer. I would beg to differ. I think I love his prosecution.
- [05:53]
Mary Louise Kelley
Do you read your contemporaries who write books in this genre or close to it? Or is there too close to the bone, like too competitive?
- [06:04]
Daniel Silva
You know what, I guess that people might find this strange, but I read very little genre fiction. And if you were to be in my office where I am right now, you just see rows and rows and rows of literary fiction. And I've always said that I'm sort of a literary novelist posing as a thriller writer. If I had had my druthers, I would have been a literary novelist. I count Anne Tyler as one of my influences and Muriel Spark as one of my influences. I'm a sort of a different kettle of fish, as they say. So I truly don't read much genre fiction.
- [06:43]
Mary Louise Kelley
One other thing I wanted to ask Daniel Silva, which is how much does he think it matters for spy fiction to mirror. After all, John Le Carre's George Smiley is fighting the Russians because Le Carre was writing during the Cold war. Whereas after 911 there were years and years of novels where the baddies were Al Qaeda. Now the Russians seem to be back in vogue. So how closely does spy fiction need to hew to real life to be good?
- [07:09]
Daniel Silva
You know, for better or worse, the series that I've written for the last 25 years, featuring Gabriel Lahn, you know, he's a. The way I describe him now, he used to be a intelligence officer whose cover job was that he was an art restorer. Now he's an art restorer who used to be an intelligence officer. Sort of a subtle but not unimportant difference. But this.
- [07:31]
Mary Louise Kelley
He's also, if I may interject, he's also an assassin who in his spare time, he wasn't just an intelligence officer. He ran Mossad, the Israeli Spanish.
- [07:40]
Sponsor/Announcer
Yes, he was.
- [07:41]
Daniel Silva
He did retire out as the director. And he started his career, for better or worse, as a. As an assassin. But, you know, the series has by and large sort of chronicled the first, you know, quarter century of this new insane millennium that we find ourselves in. And it started with the failure of the Camp David peace accords, and it goes through the war on terror years, the. The rise of Russia. I think I was ahead of the curb on that, if you look at my body of work when it comes to Russia.
- [08:14]
Mary Louise Kelley
Daniel Silva, author of 28 novels. The most recent is An Inside Job. In a moment, we'll ask a couple of my NPR colleagues that same question I just put to do the OGs of spy fiction. Hold up. That's when we return with sources and methods.
- [08:35]
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- [09:58]
Mary Louise Kelley
We're back with this special episode of Sources and Methods, where for a holiday change of pace, we are considering the world of SBI espionage through espionage fiction. Andrew Limbong covers books and publishing for NPR's culture desk. This is your debut on the pod. Welcome.
- [10:15]
Andrew Limbong
Hey, what's up? I told my editor I think this is the funniest NPR podcast for me to be on. What's going on?
- [10:21]
Mary Louise Kelley
Well, I hope you have come to play because Greg Myrey is no stranger to this podcast or to the world of spies. He's back. Greg, good to see you.
- [10:29]
Greg Myre
Hey, good to be here.
- [10:30]
Mary Louise Kelley
John Le Carre verdict He died five years ago, December 2020. Is the spy who Came in from the Cold. Daniel Silva just argued. Great spy novel ever.
- [10:39]
Greg Myre
What do you think Greg is or close to it. And La Carre's work, I think stands up to the test of time because it was really great literature that just happened to be about spying. And literally, even though he died five years ago, just last month, I came across a new Le Carre story, at least new to me. I was interviewing a British lawyer and author, Philippe Sands, who both in his legal work and his writing, is involved with genocide cases, crimes against humanity, fun stuff like that. But in real life, he was a neighbor of John Le Carre, and they became friends. And in all of his novels, or most of them, Le Carre has an odious lawyer. He hated lawyers, so there's always this terrible, terrible lawyer there. And so when he would finish a draft, he would come next door to Philippe Sand's house, knock on the door, holding this big manuscript, and said, please read this and focus as always on the horrible lawyer and make sure I got him right.
- [11:44]
Mary Louise Kelley
Equally accurate and as odious as possible.
- [11:47]
Greg Myre
Exactly. And Philippe Sands would go through it and say, yep, got it right. Yep, yep. This checks, this tracks, and then take it back to John Le Carre.
- [11:55]
Mary Louise Kelley
What a great story.
- [11:57]
Greg Myre
Wow.
- [11:57]
Mary Louise Kelley
Andrew, what do you think? Where are you on this?
- [11:59]
Andrew Limbong
It's interesting. I just want to know. Shout out to Daniel Silva, little bit of a snobbish attitude towards his contemporaries, right? We gotta say he was like, oh, I don't. I don't read genre fiction. I read lyric fiction. And I always find that such a fascinating split. Because, Greg, what you said, you called like, like, already, like a really writer, really kind of writer. Right. He's. He's doing literary stuff, but within the genre conventions of spy thrillers. And I think, yes, he's great, and yes, he's an og, but by definition of being an og, he doesn't have the burden of being in the shadow of Le Carre, you know what I mean? Like, the people writing now have to live up to the people that came before them. And he just doesn't have that baggage if we're thinking about, you know, who's on the Mount Rushmore. So obviously he stands the test of time. But I think it's an interesting and slightly unfair to pit him against the folks working right now.
- [12:52]
Mary Louise Kelley
Yeah, fair, fair, fair, fair, fair, fair. I mean, I think the whole. It's interesting, the whole genre distinction that gets drawn. It suggests that most spy thrillers are poorly written. And even if it's true that most spy thrillers are poorly written, I mean.
- [13:05]
Andrew Limbong
Most books are poorly written, just like, mathematically, you know.
- [13:08]
Mary Louise Kelley
Yeah, Greg.
- [13:09]
Andrew Limbong
Yeah.
- [13:09]
Greg Myre
And so I looked this up just in preparation for this, to see if any spy novelist had ever won the Nobel Prize for literature. And the answer is really? No, there's nobody that is distinctly a spy novelist. Graham Greene, who wrote both spy novels and non spy novels, was shortlisted and always considered to be a candidate but never won. And nobody else really fit the bill.
- [13:36]
Mary Louise Kelley
Nobel judges, this is your prompt. Let's correct that in the years to come. Andrew, since you're throwing a little shade on people for being, as you put it, maybe a little snobbish or judgmental, are you reading a lot of spy thrillers being written today?
- [13:53]
Andrew Limbong
I'm fine to throw that kind of shade because I speak from that experience. I was big on reading spy thrillers when I was a teenager, and then by the time I got to college, I fell into, you know, literary fiction, right? And that became my bread and butter. I was reading, you know, the kind of books that, you know, Silva probably has on his shelves when he was talking there. And then it wasn't until fairly recently I had. I had a kid, I was a new parent, and I was on parental leave that I fell into the. Back into the spy thriller genre because these literary books, you know, God love them, they're. They're somewhat arduous, somewhat dumb to get there.
- [14:26]
Mary Louise Kelley
You can be a slog, you know.
- [14:28]
Andrew Limbong
When you're running on two hours of sleep. And I was like, I want to read something, you know, that has an actual plot to it. I need a dude who's running away from another guy with a gun or is chasing another dude with a gun. I need, you know, some propulsive elements to it. And that's actually. I started reading the Terminal List by Jack Carr, which is like, right up that alley. And I found it fascinating and engrossing. And, you know, I don't know if it'll be up for a Nobel, but I think it was there for me when I needed it.
- [14:55]
Mary Louise Kelley
Greg Myre, who's your go to?
- [14:58]
Greg Myre
David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist. Better known maybe to some people in that format, but he's written about a dozen or so spy novels, and I'm a little bit picky about them. My sweet spot really needs two criteria. One, it just has to be fun to read. I have to enjoy it. I'm not going to slog through it. But second, since it is related to stuff I cover in my work at npr, I want stuff that tends to be covering current events and maybe telling me stuff that I don't know and I find better than anybody else I've come across. David Ignatius does this on a regular basis and often about really technical stuff.
- [15:38]
Mary Louise Kelley
Because he's a journalist working probably many of the same sources you're working.
- [15:42]
Greg Myre
Absolutely. And he said this, you know, it's stuff that he can't necessarily quote in his columns or the other work that he does. You know, the most recent one was called Phantom Orbit. It came out last year and it was about satellites. Figuring he's thinking ahead. The next war is being fought in space and how do you damage or manipulate satellites in a lot of it, and I'm not spoiling anything here, but just is about how to use microwaves or lasers to insert malware in satellites so that they don't work. Something I was not aware of or hadn't thought of. I don't know if it's being done. Does seem like people are trying to do that. And in fact, the war in Ukraine is very much a satellite war. We talk a lot about Ukraine and its drones. Those drones are working off Starlink, Elon Musk's satellites. And if you can disrupt that network of satellites, that would really change big, big parts of the war. I don't know if, for example, the Russians are trying to do that, if they have the capability but aren't doing it. I find his work often plays into things that are actually happening in the present.
- [16:54]
Mary Louise Kelley
Or as you note, it can anticipate things that are actually happening. One of my. I also like David Ignatius, both as a columnist and as a novelist. And he had a book called the Increment about Iranian nuclear scientists that came out in 2009. It was a year before the whole story broke about stuxnet, the malicious computer worm that had been sent to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program. In real life, this whole book must have been done two years before that. He was clearly working sources and walking up to the edges of what was known and what people were telling himself. I learned a lot from reading it. And then when the story broke, I was like, there you go, the screenplay's already written.
- [17:36]
Andrew Limbong
You know, it's interesting to hear what you guys who are like of this world lean towards. And I wonder, you know, just cause I'm a normie, you know, I'll speak for the normies outside of this space. How important is it for you guys that a book is correct, that it feels true, that it gets all the like nitty gritty details of spycraft right.
- [17:56]
Greg Myre
To me, it's hugely important. I mean, in fact, that's really why I'm reading it sometimes. I'm hoping to learn about a topic. I'll give you even an example. Andrew, David Ignatius and I were actually at a dinner a couple Years ago with somebody who is in the high tech business, high tech weapon business. And at one point, David Ignatius asked our host about satellites and lasers and way they could be destroyed. And the host was very dismissive. And I saw David Ignatius, this guy who's seen it all twice, been around the block any number of times, looking very surprised and shocked. It just really struck me and I was wondering, in fact, a little later it's like, why would he be so shocked? I'll bet he's halfway through a novel having to do with satellites. Sure enough, a year or so later, Phantom Orbit about satellites does come out. And he referred to our host in his acknowledgment section. So I don't know if he got further details or information. But yeah, we were having very. A real world discussion about what could happen which might appear in one of his columns, but could also very well appear in one of his novels.
- [19:10]
Mary Louise Kelley
David Ignatius, if you were listening, and I'm sure you are, I think you owe us a commission. After this episode, we'll tell you where to send the check. I will answer that question, Andrew. I also really sweat the details. When I'm reading a book and it's about a CIA officer out and about in the world. If the writer calls that person an agent, a CIA agent, I immediately roll my ey and just start questioning everything else they're writing because that's not the way the CIA uses that word. The CIA for the agency. And an agent would be the person they're trying to recruit, an asset, an international foreign source who they want to feed information to the US they would call themselves an officer out in the field. So there's things like that and I will insert here. I have tried my hand at spy fiction after having covered the spy beat for many years. And I totally sweat little details about which window the character could possibly have been looking out of. I remember when I first started writing spy fiction, I was on a reporting trip. I was in Pakistan. I was in Rawalpindi, the twin city of Islamabad, at the headquarters of Inter Services Intelligence, the isi, Pakistan's spy agency. And I was interviewing generals about Pakistan's support for the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan. And they were denying any close links. And we were going back and forth and then they, they all lit up cigarettes and started blowing smoke rings. And then a peacock walked past the window and I just thought, yeah, I got it. This is never going to make it into my report today for All Things Considered. But I got to do something with it. And that became the seeds of my first novel. So there you go. We're going to take a break. When we come back, a few more recommendations from our book and national security experts here on sources and methods.
- [21:08]
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- [22:40]
Mary Louise Kelley
Welcome back. Greg Myrey Andrew Limbong I want to throw another name into the mix. This is another we were talking about contemporary writers writing spy thrillers today. David McCloskey, this is a CIA analyst turned spy novelist, if that name sounds familiar. We had his latest book on this podcast a few months pack. It's titled the Persian. And I was going back through. I actually want to play a little chunk of that conversation because it's relevant to this discussion we're having about details in his fiction. And I was asking him how he thinks as someone who has a lot of expertise earned on the job and in real life, how he thinks about what to include in his fiction. And I asked about granular details that he includes about drones being piloted remotely by Mossad from Tel Aviv.
- [23:33]
David McCloskey
Yeah, you know, it's something that I kind of I send every draft through the what we call our publication review board. And you know, I'm oftentimes frankly a little bit surprised at what can get through. But in this case, you know, I think there's so much that's actually in particular on that type of. You know, on this kind of drones or, frankly, these types of intelligence operations that Mossad conducts. It's like the Israelis and the Iranians have already written the bones of an insane spy novel. And frankly, at times, I was tempted to tone it down so my editor wouldn't think I was making anything up. That's too crazy.
- [24:06]
Mary Louise Kelley
Were there any calls that went the other way, A detail you thought was completely innocuous, that the CIA review board was like, delete, delete, delete.
- [24:16]
David McCloskey
Yeah. So they deleted a reference to an instant messaging program used at the CIA.
- [24:25]
Mary Louise Kelley
Hang on. Are you allowed to tell us this? If they told you, you couldn't publish it?
- [24:30]
David McCloskey
I'm not gonna give you the name of the program. It wasn't that the CIA uses an instant messaging capability. It was the specific name of the vendor. Right. That provides that. And they deleted that, presumably because the contract is classified or some such. But then they left in, of course, relatively granular detail on how to construct an improvised explosive device. So it's oftentimes hard for this novelist to know exactly what will be redacted.
- [24:58]
Mary Louise Kelley
There we go, Greg. That's like the danger of knowing too much. You can be too well sourced as you're trying to write science fiction.
- [25:05]
Greg Myre
Yeah, absolutely. What's interesting to me is, so he was a CIA analyst. So he spent most of his time at CIA headquarters and outside D.C. for years and was working on Syria before the civil war began in 2011. And then during the first few years.
- [25:20]
Mary Louise Kelley
Of that war, you know, McCloskey, have you been there?
- [25:23]
Greg Myre
I've spoken to him as well. Yeah. And he said, in fact, I spoke to him after the fall of Bashar al Assad a year ago to talk to him about Syria, and he said he had visited Syria and countries in the region. So that was a place he did know about and could put in things he'd seen. But since then, he's written spy novels about Russia and Iran, and he's never been to those places. Those are hard places to go to if you're publicly acknowledged as former CIA. So he said, I've just talked to a lot of people who've been there. I've read a lot, and he's able to come up with the deals. That's.
- [26:01]
Mary Louise Kelley
Is that.
- [26:01]
Andrew Limbong
Am I naive for hearing that, like a former CIA analyst writing a book, runs it through a review board, feeling that that might be a red flag as. As a reader outside of this world, be like, oh, am I Going to, you know, am I going to get a via sort of view?
- [26:18]
Mary Louise Kelley
Well, I mean, they're required. They don't have a choice about it. If you have served and had a security clearance, you got to get this stuff approved. But I'm amazed, as I noted in that interview, some of the stuff that gets through it is amazing.
- [26:31]
Greg Myre
And in the past couple decades, I really think since 9 11, you've heard a lot more publicly from former intelligence officials at the CIA or other agencies as well, both fiction and nonfiction. And everything is supposed to go through the Publications Review board, whether it's a novel, whether it's an op ed, whether it's a nonfiction book. And it does. But I've asked directly, what about when you're going live on TV to talk about a current event? And they say, oh, they just have to trust us in that case. So if you do something big that's going to be in print. Yeah, it's got to be reviewed. Otherwise, hopefully, they'll trust you if you're on live tv.
- [27:12]
Mary Louise Kelley
I taught a class at Georgetown University reporting on national security. And one of my students was CIA, current CIA official. And all of her assignments on the most innocuous seeming things like, didn't remotely even touch anything sensitive to my mind. But all of her assignments, she had to go through the Publications Reborn before it could be submitted to me, even if it wasn't ever gonna be public or read by anyone but me. And so we worked out a system where she would show me the timestamped email that she'd submitted it to the CIA on time, and then like a week or two later, I would get it.
- [27:51]
Andrew Limbong
I was gonna say it' used to hand in assignments lately.
- [27:53]
Mary Louise Kelley
Damn.
- [27:54]
Greg Myre
Sorry.
- [27:55]
Andrew Limbong
Got you.
- [27:55]
Mary Louise Kelley
Exactly. Andrew, throw another name or two in the pot here. What else do you like in this?
- [28:00]
Andrew Limbong
Okay, I think I remember I'm a pretty good sleeper. But I remember growing up, and the one book that kept me up reading was the Bourne Identity, like a Robert Ludlam book. And I remember being so enraptured by the world and the. I guess we can call it like, competency porn. Like, he was just really good at laying out.
- [28:21]
Mary Louise Kelley
All right.
- [28:21]
Andrew Limbong
This dude is doing XYZ really well. I felt so, like, moved by the momentum and the violence and the speed of the book. It was just, like, a really thrilling read.
- [28:32]
Greg Myre
You know, I'm still gonna go back to Graham Greene and some of the work he did. And also note that whether it's Graham Green or John Le carre or David McCluskey, these are people who had a background in it, who worked in the intelligence community. So a lot of the spy novels and the best spy novels tend to come from people did work. John Le Carre I think spent like 16 years in British intelligence. Graham Greene I think was much briefer, like during World War II, for a brief period. And then the others maybe tend to be journalists who cover this topic or lawyers who get involved in cases with these topics. But it's almost like you have to have some little real world connection.
- [29:16]
Mary Louise Kelley
Actually.
- [29:16]
Andrew Limbong
Do we know, did Ian Fleming ever do time?
- [29:19]
Mary Louise Kelley
Was he ever Ian Fleming of James Bond fame? Of course I know he was military intelligence, naval intelligence. I don't know if he was MI6. MI6 listeners write and tell us what we need to know.
- [29:31]
Andrew Limbong
If you're a legend.
- [29:33]
Mary Louise Kelley
Speaking of which, I just want to acknowledge we're having a pretty Anglocentric conversation. We're talking about a lot of Brits, a lot of Americans, goes without saying that there is great fiction about spies and everything else being written all over the world in many languages. So this is a shout out to people listening. If there are books you would recommend add to this mix, write us, tell us about it both because I want to read the books and maybe we'll have the chance to update this list on a future episode. So yes, send us your recs please. We're at sourcesandmethodspr.org, all one word, sourcesandmethodspr.org and I'm gonna send us out by injecting one more name. Cause we also haven't talked about any female writers of spy novels and there's some good ones. This brings us back to Brits, but let me inject Stella Remington. Andrew, have you read her stuff?
- [30:26]
Daniel Silva
No, I haven't.
- [30:27]
Mary Louise Kelley
She speaking to Greg's point about that people who actually have real life experience tend to write more compelling fictional accounts. Often, not always. She, Stella Remington was the head of MI5. So Britain's domestic security service, MI6 is foreign facing. She was the first female head of MI5. She just died this year and after she retired from government service, she became a pretty prolific writer of spy novels. And she had this great fun MI5 officer, this feisty heroine, Liz Carlisle, who would trot around London and other places more far flung and had some great stories. So there you go. Andrew Limbaugh. Greg Myron, thank you very much for joining us. The inaugural spy fiction episode of Sources and Methods.
- [31:21]
Andrew Limbong
Thanks for having me.
- [31:22]
Greg Myre
My pleasure.
- [31:24]
Mary Louise Kelley
And if you want to make a note of any of the books we covered here. There is a transcript of every Episode available at npr.org if you're hearing this on a platform like Apple Podcasts or Spotify, transcripts are generated there too. You can find them on each episode page. A reminder that we we are off the rest of the week for New Year's. We wish you a very happy 2026. We'll be back with our regular episode on Thursday, January 8th. And one more thank you, the last one this year, for supporting our work if you did so in 2025. I'm Mary Louise Kelley. Thanks for listening to sources and methods from.
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