AL QAEDA HAS NOW CAPTURED DAMASCUS: 1/4: Damascus Station: A Novel, by David McCloskey. .
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2025
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
CIA case officer Sam Joseph is dispatched to Paris to recruit Syrian Palace official Mariam Haddad. The two fall into a forbidden relationship, which supercharges Haddad’s recruitment and creates unspeakable danger when they enter Damascus to find the man responsible for the disappearance of an American spy.
But the cat and mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime, bringing the pair under the all-seeing eyes of Assad’s spy catcher, Ali Hassan, and his brother Rustum, the head of the feared Republican Guard. Set against the backdrop of a Syria pulsing with fear and rebellion, Damascus Station is a gripping thriller that offers a textured portrayal of espionage, love, loyalty, and betrayal in one of the most difficult CIA assignments on the planet.
1860 DAMASCUS
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World with John Batchel. Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:12.1 | This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel. I welcome David McCloskey, the author of a work of fiction, a novel, Damascus Station. It is a story of intrigue involving state security in the United States, state security in the Middle East, especially Syrian state security, Mukbarat. However, this is based upon historical events that in these last years have become |
| 0:41.3 | more and more tragic. So we begin with David's presentation of the conditions where he puts |
| 0:49.2 | his characters in and asks them to solve puzzles that are still unavailable to all of us in the |
| 0:57.7 | tragedy of the darkness visible of Syria. Millions have fled. Hundreds of thousands may be dead. |
| 1:07.6 | Assad remains at the palace in Damascus. This is a story of what was possible early in the turmoil, early in the collapse of Syrian sovereignty. |
| 1:19.0 | David, congratulations and a very good evening to you. Your hero, protagonist, Sam Joseph, is a CIA officer, a covert officer. |
| 1:29.2 | He is plunged into the conditions in Syria. |
| 1:32.0 | He knows this very well. |
| 1:33.2 | He's a veteran. |
| 1:34.4 | So let us introduce what Sam knows he's up against when he arrives in Damascus at the CIA operations in Damascus. |
| 1:45.3 | Bashar al-Assad, what is he as your novel opens |
| 1:48.4 | and what is his ambition, his contest as your novel opens? |
| 1:53.7 | Good day to you, David. |
| 1:55.7 | John, thank you so much for having me. |
| 1:57.3 | Great to be here talking with everyone and you about the mastic station um you know the the book starts in page one it says it's the early years of the |
| 2:07.2 | syrian uprising um which is really when i looked at this as an analyst at the at the CIA and you know |
| 2:15.4 | it's a work of fiction there's not a year on, but this is really looking at the world of Syria, the CIA, the Middle East, from about 2011 to 2013, which is when, you know, we had the beginnings of a protest movement in Syria. We had the initial spark of kind of insurgency. We had the |
| 2:36.7 | beginnings of state crackdown and eventually sort of full-on counterinsurgency against this |
| 2:42.3 | opposition. And the main players that I introduced into this book are on the one hand, the CIA, |
| 2:50.0 | keen to understand what's going on inside the palace, |
| 2:52.5 | how Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, is thinking about the unrest, what he plans to do |
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