This is CBSI in the world, I'm John Batcha 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 lived through it these last ten years, and with no clarity,

many of the instances in David's book are extremely convincing, anything can happen in

Damascus. Our hero is named Sam Joseph. David presents him as a man from Minnesota who

has a talent for gambling, probably has a gambler's weaknesses, doesn't know when to leave

the table. He quickly establishes himself as a man who makes a mistake as a CIA officer.

He falls in love with his asset. David, this is such a violation of what I know to be the

CIA's recommendations about how you handle assets. I was charmed right away. My goodness,

Sam, you don't deserve to be an officer very long. What do you want the readers to know

about Sam's temptation and about Miriam? Yeah, well, you know, you hit a lot of the high

points there, John. I mean, he is a, you know, he is not out of the Ivy League, he is a

pretty, quote, unquote, normal guy when he is recruited to join the agency. He's in Midwestern

areas, had a spell in Vegas. He is very good at reading people and understanding their

motivations. He's lived, I think, a life sort of outside of the profiles of many case officers

that get recruited out of Morally universities where he's been out in the world doing things.

So he's a bit of a salt of the earth guy. You know, he makes mistakes, as you mentioned,

violates one of the cardinal rules of espionage and falls into a forbidden relationship with

an asset. You know, as I was writing a story, I liked that about him because it felt like

everybody makes big mistakes. And so, you know, you know, having a book written about one

that you make isn't so bad. You know, he is, I think, throughout the book, a good case officer

in the sense that he is very good at recruiting people and running operations, but a bad one

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