Spy Writing in the Real World
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2021
⏱️ 45 minutes
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Summary
Last week for the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government, David Priess moderated a virtual event called, "Spy Writing in the Real World." The event featured three authors of espionage fiction, two with previous experience working inside the U.S. intelligence community: Brad Thor, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 21 thrillers; Karen Cleveland, a former CIA analyst and New York Times bestselling author of "Need to Know" and "Keep You Close"; and award-winning author and former NSA and CIA officer Alma Katsu, who had written five novels prior to her first new spy novel, "Red Widow." They talked about the spy thriller genre, their challenges within it, their research and their experience with prepublication classification review.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.8 | The way I'm able to do what I do is to talk to current people in these worlds who are |
| 0:39.5 | willing to talk to me and then former people are willing to talk to me and then I always |
| 0:43.9 | agree to come back to them with them in your script. |
| 0:46.7 | And what's invariably happened over the years is people have said, well Brad, we told |
| 0:51.0 | you point A and we told you point C, which are not classified. |
| 0:55.8 | We don't mind that those are out there, but point B in your book has got to come out. |
| 1:00.9 | I'm like, well, you guys didn't tell me. |
| 1:02.6 | They're like, it doesn't matter. |
| 1:04.1 | What you put in point B can't be there. |
| 1:06.0 | It's got to be out. |
| 1:07.1 | And so I never want to poison my well of sources. |
| 1:10.3 | So I always remove it or adapt it to the point where they're like, okay, that's good. |
| 1:15.4 | I'm David Prius and this is the LawFair podcast April 21, 2021. |
| 1:20.9 | Last week for the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence Policy and International Security |
| 1:27.5 | at George Mason University's Char School of Policy and Government, I moderated a virtual |
| 1:33.0 | event called Spy Writing in the Real World. |
| 1:37.3 | It featured three authors of espionage fiction, two with previous experience working inside |
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