Inverview by Steve Lepper of The Military Thriller Book Group on Facebook
1. You’ve had a remarkable career, at what point did you think you wanted to write thrillers?
I've been wanting to write a thriller since before I entered on duty with the CIA in 1980. I recall an Agency interviewer asked me in 1979 about my longterm plans, and I remarked that I'd like to write a novel. Thinking that I meant a nonfiction tell-all book and despising leakers, he snorted and said, "That's all we need is another damned writer." I reassured him it would be fiction.
I continued to want to write a thriller but never seemed to find the time, even after I retired from the CIA. Finally, I asked Washington Post editorialist and expert spy novelist, David Ignatius, how he found the time to write his novels with his busy schedule. He replied, "Jim if you really want to do this, you'll find the time." And he was right.
2. Your bio tells me that you should be a character in a thriller novel as much as an author of thriller novels. Why fiction and not a factual account of your career?
​
Most of what I did in my career is still highly classified, and therefore a factual account would be riddled with so much black ink by the CIA Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) that the book would be unreadable. Moreover, I seldom enjoy reading memoirs, which are all-too-frequently a lot of patting oneself on the back, and personally I feel uncomfortable doing that. So, instead I decided to write spy thrillers, good portions of which are thinly-disguised fictional accounts of some operations I did and include characterizations of some of my good CIA friends who are the true heroes in our national saga.
I still have a lifetime commitment, which I signed upon entry on duty, to submit my manuscripts to the PCRB for clearance, even though they are fiction, because they focus on the CIA, and they have an absolute right to redact anything they consider classified. The PCRB took a year to clear "Living Lies" and then demanded five redactions, none of which were really classified in my honest opinion. But the redactions only amounted to a few words (or word), and none affected the story line. So, rather than mount a time-consuming appeal after already taking a year, I made the requested redactions. Then, I submitted "In the Twinkling of an Eye" and the clearance process took only a month with no requests for redactions. Indeed, they requested a copy for the CIA library. So, perhaps not being argumentative gained me some points. Hopefully that goodwill will extend to novel #3, which I will submit to the PCRB next spring.
3. Tell us a little about your debut thriller “Living Lies”.
​
"Living Lies" is the closest novel to that portion of my real CIA career of counterproliferation, which was my primary focus for more than half my 25 years as a CIA operations officer. I enjoyed all of my ops, but counterproliferation ops are truly psychologically righteous: to deter, deny and disrupt proliferation and use of weapons of mass destruction which can kill hundreds of thousands of people.
​
"Living Lies" begins as the U.S. is eagerly pursuing negotiations with Iran regarding their nuclear weapons program. A well-placed source in the Iranian delegation provides seemingly critical intelligence on their positions after he volunteers to a gullible CIA officer. The Iranian source, however, is a double agent controlled by a sociopathic general in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. A more talented CIA officer, Lane Andrews, recruits a legitimate source. His source discovers the stark truth in Iran and reports back at great risk to himself. Lane struggles in vain to convince the CIA that there is a double agent influencing the negotiations, but the U.S. and Iran strike a deal. The CIA Director, a narcissistic billionaire, is delighted that Iran has caved into the U.S. demands. Except it secretly hasn't. Lane must find a way to do the right thing and prevent largescale death and destruction in a world where trustworthiness is nonexistent.
​
4. Your follow-up “In the Twinkling of an Eye” covers different territory than Book #1. Tell us about “Twinkling” and why did you not follow the popular one protagonist route?
​
A young Ukrainian boy loses his father, a fireman, and his left eye to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, but he escapes alive and becomes a top-notch genetics engineer at Moscow State University. There, he is seduced into joining a well-funded new genetics institute where he hopes to develop a genetic solution (better than CRISPR) to cure his twelve-year old daughter's leukemia that is a result of her damaged genes that she inherited from his radiation exposure and that of his deceased wife, who died of thyroid cancer following Chernobyl. But soon he learns that the Institute is actually run by the Russian FSB and is developing advanced genetic bioweapons for assassination and terror.
​
Parallel to this story, a young North Korean girl escapes to South Korea via a North Korean attack tunnel beneath the DMZ. Her father, the North Korean military mining engineer, who designed the tunnel, dies during the attempt. She is adopted by a Korean-American US military officer and grows up to be an FBI agent, who secretly recruits the Ukrainian scientist.
In the course of their work, the FBI agent equips the scientist with a new glass eye that enables him to record and transmit his intelligence to her daily through one of his daughter's dolls that has advanced artificial intelligence. In so doing, she overcomes the two biggest obstacles that spies traditionally face: safely communicating with their case officer and transmitting critical information. Together, the scientist and the FBI agent must prevent Russia and North Korea from using the bioweapons for assassination and mass murder of regime opponents.
​
I have included a few characters from "Living Lies" in "Twinkling," but the books can be read independently. I call them the Guild Series because of some common themes: prioritization of source protection, the value of human sources, focus on recruitment techniques, the courage of dedicated intelligence officers.
​
5. Can you give us any hints about book #3?
​
In "The Traitor's Tale," a highly decorated CIA officer, Ambrose Knight, is suspected of espionage and treated as a pariah by many colleagues and friends. After several months of purgatory and abandoned by most of his friends, he's exonerated when another case officer's treachery is revealed. Embittered by the accusations and Agency racial discrimination due to his African-American ethnicity, Knight actually volunteers to the Russian intelligence service…and so begins a double life.
​
A senior female FBI agent, nicknamed "The Red Queen" for her imperious behavior, who heads the CIA's Counterespionage Group, claims that Knight is in fact a spy and has been all along, his exoneration notwithstanding. She's relentless in her sociopathic pursuit, clashes bitterly with Knight's few allies and has her own dark secrets to conceal.
Joining the hunt is Brian Bannock (from “Living Lies”), now head of CIA Counterintelligence, who has suspected for several years that CIA has harbored serious Russian penetrations. Staring at him across the human chessboard is his archenemy, FSB Major General Dmitri Grishin (ret.), who is desperate to protect vital Kremlin interests and a highly placed mole in the U.S. government.
​
In the end, readers discover the deadly twist that deception and treachery have created inside of the CIA and where the players’ true loyalties lay. Bannock has to use all of his guile to flush out the spy who corrodes from within.
​
6. As someone who has recruited actual ‘spies’, when you read a thriller written by an author without your experience, do you roll your eyes and mumble “..that’s not how it’s done” when they get the details wrong or do you remember it’s fiction and move along?
​
I do think that authors of spy fiction, who are not themselves operations officers, usually lack the telling detail and feeling of recruiting and running spies. I'm willing to discount that issue if the story is compelling nonetheless, and the tradecraft errors are not too egregious. I try to make my stories as realistic as possible and my only bow to entertainment is to compress the timescale of some operations, lest the reader fall asleep. In reality, ops can plod along for a long time at a snail's pace, but then take off like a rocket at a frightening pace. A covert asset of mine used to remind me that good cooking takes time. So do ops.
​
7. What authors influenced you?
​
In spite of not being an intel officer, David Ignatius, is among the best writers in this genre. Others are James Grady, whose "Six Days of the Condor" influenced me to join the CIA, Mick Herron and his "Slow Horses" series, and naturally the best of all, John Le Carre, whose "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is the gold standard. I also have recently enjoyed David McCloskey's "Damascus Station" and Alma Katsu's "Red Widow." Both are brilliant CIA analysts with a distinct taste for ops. A great encourager was my deceased friend and CIA colleague, Jason Matthews, whose "Red Sparrow" trilogy is masterful. If my novels even approach any of these espionage authors in quality and suspense, I'd be content.
​
8. What other espionage authors/novels really get the details right?
​
I'd say all of the ones I just named do it right, with some occasional minor bows to entertainment rather than reality. There's always a bit of a tradeoff.
​
9. When not writing, you are?
​
I train intelligence officers and FBI Special Agents in classified courses on the art of human recruitment and offer unclassified insider threat seminars to corporations and academia. I also am a frequent guest speaker on podcasts related to intelligence,