Welcome to Sharp Talk, the regular podcast of E Sharp Magazine. Go to eSharp.U for free access to all the

podcast to date. This is Paul Adamson. I'm in conversation with David Ignatius. David is a

prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post covering the Middle East and the

CIA for nearly three decades. He's also an acclaimed and very successful novelist. So before we talk

about politics, David, which is supposed to be the main theme of this podcast, I'd like to ask you

first of all, how did you become a novelist alongside your journalistic career? I became a novelist

really because there was no other way to tell the detail and depth

of a story that I'd reported for the Wall Street Journal when I was there, Middle East correspondent,

which was the story of how the CIA had recruited Yasser Arafat's chief of intelligence

as an American asset and run it for 10 years.

I was in the American embassy just before the bomb went off that killed the man who'd run this operation.

And in the aftermath of that, all of his Arab agents and their grief needed to talk to somebody who knew about this.

And I'd been researching

it for several years so they sought me out and I had nothing to do with this incredible information

other than try to write a novel so that's how I got started the book is called agents of

innocence and I'm happy to say people still read it that's amazing and I think I write in

saying you've written out ten novels, is that correct?

And your most recent one, the latest one is the Quantum Spy, available at all good bookshops

and online shopping platforms, as they say.

Right, switching gear now, David, if you may, too, to politics.

And since you're obviously a seasoned DC observer and been around the block more than once,

try to help us people outside the DC bubble to understand what's happening in the White House basically.

...