AL QAEDA HAS NOW CAPTURED DAMASCUS: 2/4: Damascus Station: A Novel, by David McCloskey. .
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2025
⏱️ 6 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.
1870 DAMASCUS
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel with David McCluskey, former CIA analyst for the Middle East, now a novelist, a thriller novelist. It's a spy novel. It's a profile of the Middle East as we live through it these last 10 years, and with no clarity, many of the instances in David's book are extremely convincing. |
| 0:26.8 | Anything can happen in Damascus. |
| 0:30.2 | Our hero is named Sam Joseph. |
| 0:33.2 | David presents him as a man from Minnesota who has a talent for gambling. |
| 0:38.2 | Probably has gambler's weaknesses. He doesn't know when to leave the table. |
| 0:42.7 | He quickly establishes himself as a man who makes a mistake as a CIA officer. |
| 0:49.1 | He falls in love with his asset. |
| 0:52.4 | David, this is such a violation of what I know to be the CIA's recommendations |
| 0:59.7 | about how you handle assets. I was charmed right away. My goodness, Sam, you don't, you don't |
| 1:05.9 | deserve to be an officer very long. What is, what do you want the readers to know about Sam's temptation and about Miriam? |
| 1:15.7 | Yeah, well, you know, you hit a lot of the high points there, John. |
| 1:19.7 | I mean, he is a, you know, he is not out of the Ivy League. |
| 1:23.8 | He is a pretty, quote unquote, normal guy when he is recruited to join the agency. He's a |
| 1:29.6 | Midwesternary. He's had a spell in Vegas. He is very good at reading people and understanding |
| 1:36.8 | their motivations. He's lived, I think, a life sort of outside of the profiles of many case officers that get recruited out of more |
| 1:46.6 | elite universities where he's been out in in the world doing things so he's a bit of a salt |
| 1:51.9 | of the earth guy um you know he makes mistakes as as you mentioned uh violates one of the cardinal |
| 1:58.3 | rules of espionage and falls into a forbidden relationship with an asset. |
| 2:05.2 | You know, as I was writing a story, I liked that about him because it felt like everybody makes big mistakes. |
| 2:11.7 | And so, you know, having a book written about one that you make isn't so bad. |
| 2:16.8 | You know, he is, I think throughout the book, |
| 2:20.5 | a good case officer in the sense that he is very good at recruiting people and running operations, |
... |
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