#Syria: #Assad: 4/4: Damascus Station: A Novel, by David McCloskey. .
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
@Batchelorshow
Damascus 1898
#Syria: #Assad: 4/4: Damascus Station: A Novel, by David McCloskey. .
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.
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| 1:03.8 | This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Bachel. |
| 1:11.2 | With David McCloskey, his work of fiction, a novel, is a thriller. CIA thriller you could |
| 1:17.7 | say, but it's a thriller of modern Syria, unfinished business. Damascus Station, praised by |
| 1:24.7 | David Patrest, praised by Leon Panetta. But then again, they were in office during this period |
| 1:30.7 | where there was nothing to be done with the scale of tragedy. There is horror in your book, |
| 1:36.5 | David, and you mean it to be there because what I know of reporting about Syria these many years, |
| 1:41.5 | the Syrian regime, the Mukbaharat or whatever drives them are monsters. And the abuse of human |
| 1:50.5 | beings is infamous. And you make it very clear that there are no limits. Again and again, you come |
| 1:58.6 | up against villains worrying about losing their soul or I've lost my soul. The despair is here. |
| 2:06.4 | So your lessons learned, David, having pulled the American, the virtue of American gambler through all of this, |
| 2:13.2 | does it touch a character to spend so much of his energy going up against monsters? |
| 2:20.0 | Did you think about Sam in his relationship towards Syria? It made me feel now and again reading the book |
| 2:28.7 | soiled as if why am I here? What am I doing? This is this is deviltry and I'm in Hades. |
| 2:38.1 | Well, I think, you know, the book was really born out of |
| 2:44.5 | some emotional processing that I was doing when I left the agency about what I had seen |
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