11/18/25 Barry Eisler on the CIA, Venezuela and Using Novels to Wake People Up

Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews

Scott Horton

News, Politics

4.8 • 989 Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scott interviews novelist Barry Eisler about his background at the CIA, how he woke up to the realities of the American empire, the insanity of Washington even considering a war with Venezuela, how he writes his novels and more. Discussed on the show: The Heart of the Matter - Eisler’s Substack Endings: The Good, the Bad, and the Insanely Great Barry Eisler is a novelist and Substack writer. He formerly worked for the CIA but grew disillusioned and left to work as a lawyer and write thriller novels. Check out his books and story at his website BarryEisler.com Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott’s work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott’s other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott’s books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/ https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest, reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country?
0:11.0	Because the babies are making it.
0:13.0	We're dealing with Hitler Revisited.
0:15.0	This is the Scott Horton Show, Libertarian Foreign Policy, mostly.
0:21.7	When the president doesn't, that means that it is not only...
0:24.5	We're going to take out seven countries in five years.
0:27.1	They don't know what the fuck they're doing.
0:29.3	Negotiate now.
0:31.4	End this war.
0:33.5	And now, here's your host, Scott Horton.
0:39.4	All right, you guys.
0:41.6	Welcome to show and introducing Barry Isler.
0:44.0	He is a former CIA officer, which is very suspicious.
0:48.3	Also, he's a novelist and an analyst and current events observer and writer on Substack, The Heart of the Matter is the name of his substack here. Welcome to show, Barry. How you doing? I'm good, Scott. Thanks for having me on. It's very nice to chat with you. Yeah, yeah, good to have you here. So, first of all, I'm pretty sure this is the first time you've been on the show that we met one time a long time ago.
1:12.8	Tell me about your career in the CIA and why anyone in the audience should trust you at all
1:19.3	rather than simply considering you an enemy because, you know what they say?
1:24.1	Once you're in the mob, you're always in the mob.
1:26.3	I get that.
1:26.9	Once you're in the agency, you're always in the agency. I get that all the time at book signings. Inevitably, someone will come up to me and say, you know, you never left because you can't really leave. That's not how it works. And my response to that is, how do you know how it really works? Yeah. And do you think? doesn't really work. There's some guy in the basement at Langley who's written these 19 novels,
1:47.6	four short stories and a bunch of screenplays.
1:50.0	None of them produced yet in fairness, but still.
1:53.2	But yeah, why should anybody trust me?
	...

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