AL QAEDA HAS NOW CAPTURED DAMASCUS: 3/4: Damascus Station: A Novel, by David McCloskey. .
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2025
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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.
1900 DAMASCUS
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel with David McCloskey. His novel, Damascus Station, a work of fiction, a work of fiction about Syria in the early part of the second decade of the 21st century, a state that is completely collapsed now, a failed state. |
| 0:26.0 | And yet, David takes us inside Syria, inside Damascus, and shows us what the CIA comes up against |
| 0:34.0 | dealing with state security, Macabarad. And the FSB shows up. That's right. The reawaken KGB shows up. |
| 0:42.5 | Other players include the Muslim brothers who have their own operation over the years and then |
| 0:47.4 | eventually the jihadists will show up. There's a great deal of tradecraft in David's book. |
| 0:52.5 | And I recommend especially talking about it because David has passed his book to General David Petraeus, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, along with his other titles. |
| 1:04.1 | And Leon Panetta, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, along with his other titles. |
| 1:09.4 | They have read and approved. |
| 1:11.7 | And David also makes note in a post note that the CIA read his book very carefully several |
| 1:18.8 | times, many more times, the publication review board. |
| 1:22.0 | And it's approved what David has identified as tradecraft. |
| 1:26.6 | So, David, I want to have some fun because we're not going to |
| 1:28.8 | give the story away. We've indicated there's a hero and a heroine and a good bad guy, and we know |
| 1:34.9 | who the villains are. What is an SDR, David? What do we learn from that right away at the |
| 1:41.6 | opening scenes in Paris? Sure. And SDR is the acronym for a surveillance |
| 1:49.0 | detection route. It is one of the primary tools in the in the toolbox of any CIA case |
| 1:55.9 | officer. It's also in most spy novels something that makes, you know, it doesn't make very many appearances |
| 2:01.7 | in most modern spy thrillers. |
| 2:04.1 | It is essentially the act of clotting very carefully a route stops a series of moves on the street |
| 2:15.8 | of a city as you are going to meet with an asset, whereby |
| 2:20.3 | the combination of all of those different moves allow you to understand if you are being watched |
| 2:26.8 | by the security services, typically of the state in which you find yourself. And so in my book, |
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