Welcome to Pushback. I'm Erin Mate.

Joining me is David McCloskey.

He is a former CIA analyst who covered Syria for six years from 2008 to 2014, wrote memos to the

President's Daily Brief, lived and worked in field stations throughout the Middle East, and briefed senior

White House officials, members of Congress, and Arab royalty. He draws on his experience with Syria

for his new book, Damascus Station, a spy thriller set during the 10-year Syrian War.

Dave McCloskey, thank you for joining me. Hey, thanks, Aaron. Great to be here.

Your book comes with some high praise from people like General David Petraeus, the former

head of the CIA, who calls Damascus Station, quote, the best spy novel I have ever read.

If we can start just by, let me ask you to lay out the plot of your book and how you came to write it.

Yeah, not a sure thing.

So, you know, the book, as is probably fairly apparent as a spy novel.

It's set in really, so the first page says the early years of the Syrian war, but it's really kind of a mash-up

in some ways of what 2011 to 2013 was like. So really the first two years of the conflict.

It follows a CIA case officer named Sam and his Syrian recruit, Mariam, who break one of the,

you know, cardinal rules of espionage and fall into a forbidden relationship. They go into

Damascus to hunt down the killer of another CIA officer. And, you know, in that process, really kind of come face to

face with a lot of the tension and the conflict and the passion, their own relationship,

as well as come face to face with a very dark secret at the heart of the fictionalized Syrian

regime in my book. Yeah, it's a book about espionage. It's a spy novel

after all. But it's also about love. And I think ultimately, or I hope, it's a book about what

it means to be human in the middle of a very inhuman conflict. And I wrote the book, you know, I left the CNA as you mentioned in 2014. And, you know,

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