january 24th to 26th we'll be in california for the writers festival and feature former senior advisor to president george w. bush karl rove, former senator barbara boxer. ed stevens, historicalion barbara miller and others. then to georgia, live on book tv on c-span2. on march 10th and 11th live from the university of arizona for the tucson festival of books. and later in march the virginia festival of the book in charlottesville. ... the washington post columnist has written many novels including agents of

influence, blood money, "body of lies" and most recently, "the quantum spy". this is part of our 2018 special fiction addition of in-depth . >> host: david ignatius, what's the premise of "the quantum spy". >> guest: the us is locked in a new manhattan project race to build a piece of technology that is world changing, that is the quantum computer and our principal rival in that race is china. i told you as far as simply the facts, the "the quantum spy" is a novel that imagines characters who involve intelligencebattles , and other secrets about this world changingtechnology . principally it's the story of

my hero orest chang. an officer who is asked to penetrate the chinese intelligence service and in the process learned things about himself, things about the cia, they do not how the world works that shake him to his foundation and we also see in this novel how the chinese intelligence services , not so familiar to readers as five fiction. we all feel we've been in moscow center with carla and the russian spy world is familiar to us. the chinese not so much while the pleasure for me takes us into the world, the ministry of state security, a very secretive chinese intelligence agency that is the principal antagonist of this book or the cia. >> host: how much of it is true? >> guest: i always say in the preface to my books that they

exist in an imagined world, you can sometimes tell people if you take any book i write and think it's a recipe for how to make a cake, you're going to end up with a mud pie because you got all sorts of things thrown in. that said, i should try to do research for every one of my novels but "the quantum spy" is my 10th novel. i researched it for many months. i went to the computer laboratories for quantum computers and in one case where one has been built. i traveled to every place mentioned in the book and looked at it and thought about it, i studied the chinese intelligence service in all sorts of different ways though myanswer would be that it's a novel , the story is imaginary, the characters don't exist in real life but it is drawn from real life. it's as real as i could make it be and still feel it's a

work of fiction. >> one of the conflicts is about science and whether to be open and fair and you write that science has no flags. >> guest: it shouldn't have flags. the problem in this area i was writing about where you have these superpowerful technologies, the reason quantum technology is important is if you want a quantum computer it could shred every system of encryption ever devised. it would render all your adversaries most secret messages, documents, information, your own. so it has that real purpose in the world. >> host: when it comes to quantum computing, is it? >> guest: quantum computing is coming out as fast. in my book i describe a technology that is kind of quantum computing.

it's actually quantum annealing and i won't bore you with the details of the difference but it's not quite quantum computing but it assembles qubits. the standard computer as units that are either zero or one , on or off and the quantum computer is made up of what are called qubits. zero and one at the same time. they have this ambiguous state and that means that as you assemble these qubits, as you entangle them to use the phrase that technologists use, you begin to build a computer that goes in every direction simultaneously. it's vastly more powerful than any supercomputer ever built. a problem that would take thousands of years even for the most powerful supercomputers could be done in a fewseconds with a

quantum computer because of the power of these qubits . so whoever get that's technology is going to have an instrument that is goingto be potentially world changing. it also could change our world and a lot of other ways . discovering new materials, material science and even if it involves lots of computation, lots of simulation, these computers will be able to do it in an entirely different matter and that's why it's so but why somebody's so excited about this. people began to say maybe it's 10 years out, the most recent estimate i've heard are that it's five years out. and as i mentioned, there is a firm based in vancouver that has built a quantum on the alert that has assembled 2000 cubits to do a powerful calculation in some areas so

you talk to people who do technology, they get excited about this but nobody can give you a precise prediction of when it's coming. you asked earlier about the classification. a lot of this computer research is open. obviously our it companies, the company that changed the world, google, microsoft have proprietary limits on that there technology. they just move it out as quickly as you could but something that has so many military applications like computing , that's been going on for 20 years, an effort to take some of the most sensitive technology involved in both quantum computers and do some of that research with classification. the first way i found out a book about this was the disclosure of the nsa's black

ledger it was called and there was a big chunk of funding for quantum computing. my first thought was wow, there's something here and that was back in 2014. so there is a battle going on between scientists who want the most open world possible where we share information, ideas, where are labs and graduate students from china, russia, where wherever they come from. and others who say this is just too valuable to our country . they wouldn't have brought germans into los altos during the manhattan project, it was too dangerous. that's one of theissues . >> host: that's one of the themes in "the quantum spy" about harris chang is that his americanism isn't western . >> guest: harris chang, our hero grew up in flagstaff arizona. at one point i believe red white and blue, served in the army in iraq and was recruited into the cia.

it feels entirely american. he went to west point, it never occurred to him that his ethnic background would be subject to investigation and he finds in the course of the book thatboth for the chinese who tried to manipulate him using his ancestry and for some americans , in the intelligence community, it ends up being central to his experience, deeply upsetting for him and that's really the arc of his story is coming to realize that people see him in a way he doesn't see himself and by the end of the book, i'll let readers describe becomes "the quantum spy". >> host: has that been through in the intelligence community since before these or whenever, that somebody's nationality or their heritage

can affect how they are viewed? >> guest: i think our intelligence community has always been anchored to use the richnessof our national fabric . the people who speak languages, who have cultural skills or the soviet files have russia and the ukraine, east european backgrounds. often middle east people who speak arabic have a native fluency to their family for their experiences would go into that part of the agency of operation so it's always been a cross. the danger is when people feel they are being seen in stereo typical ways as arab american and this set of things but not that. i think this is more of a problem with gender.

women, although they were given responsible roles, they were encouraged to go out and recruit spies in the cia. they felt limited, that's another theme that weaves through this novel. a woman who felt she was in a sense robbed at of an experience she might have as an intelligence officer and ends up having a deep rage about that. >> host: with a novel like this, do you start with the conclusion and work backwards? >> you really start i think with the idea, the theme that you want to play with. i've always been interested in quantum theory and then looking for something to do, i love to go out and report and find information so i got

interested in quantum computing and i saw the chinese were our principal rivals and that interested me. it wasn't until i could see the character, until i could see harris chang at a hotel room. i started writing this book after a trip to tampa, coming back on the plane and suddenly i understood where the ball would start rolling in a hotel room in singapore so for the writer, it's the process of taking the themes, making those themes alive and the charactersunderstanding, the places those characters are going . and then to be honest, the essential thing in writing this book and every book is rewriting. the first draft in which you

have done your first kind of rough sketch and then you need to go in ruthlessly and see what works and what doesn't, the passes that are wide, the characters that are fully developed and the ones that don't work. you need people who will be honest with you and say david, you've got to go back and do it again. and principally the person for me, my recent books that's been my wife eve who is the hardest person in the world to see your husband slaving away so proud he's got the first draft of and he she takes me like a puppy and i would say i've been slaving and she would think carefully and say i just don't think it's there yet. i don't think the characters are believable so you go back and rewrite it and hopefully you get another honest evaluation. we, even the best writers are

capable of rewriting the first draft if it's not real and we need people who will tell us the things we may love in our book to do it again. so i've learned over time the value of people who will say thatto me directly . >> host: harris chang, tom bendel, denise ford, mike flanagan, some of the characters in "the quantum spy". what are those names projecting? >> those names are projecting a diverse agency, the cia is one in terms of every variable. all the women who work at the agency, i think one thing that really has changed about the cia is it's not an ivy league playground. they thought basically yale was the feeder school for the

cia. it's more diverse in that way. people from every educational background, looking for the unconventional interests and backgrounds. i think there is a blue-collar side of the cia and the white-collar side. i think the head of support in my book, an important part of the cia is not often recognized at the safehouses and on the airplanes and they send out shooters to guard the case officers, they don't do all the glamorous stuff you got to get done if you're going to conduct an intelligence operation. there the blue-collar workers and they carry themselves that way. they've got a chip on their shoulder, interested in people and one of the works i've done is try to explore those people.

>>. >> host: with those characters, they think ahead unlimited safehouses, unlimited money, unlimited resources. is that based on real life? >> i think the cia doesn't suffer for resources. comes sometimes from ideas. it suffers from us as a country in operating truly clandestinely so that people, americans are graded. there is a natural straightforwardness to the american character, i think. the cia is when american power was strongest, had the wind at its back. everybody around the world wanted to be america's friend .

an enormously powerful economy as the engine of global prosperity. i once joked that in beirut it was hard to find a person who either wasn't a cia contact or didn't want to be seen as one because that was the crown of the realm. today, we are much more reluctant to be seen as friends and it can get you killed today rather than a public fortune.where we had the wind at ourback , going into a pretty strong head wind, it's harder to find people who want to take those risks. when the us does find them they are not always as good as they should be out protecting them . or sharing with the us government so i think that i've been writing with my tent novel, the first one was published 30 years ago. over that time that i've seen

the agency i think has lost its way a little bit. it really struggles most of all with the way the world has changed. we aren't superpowerful for a while and everybody wanted to be our friend . today, we are not superpowerful, we have stronger rivals and everybody doesn't want to be our friend . >> host: what i've noticed in your books is there's never necessarily a clear-cut good guy, bad guy in it. >> guest: i think spy novels always are painted in shades of gray and moral ambiguities . that's what intelligence work is all about. our basic ambience of the spy novel. in mybooks , the operators who in a sense are most ruthless and effective, john vandal who is the chief of operations in my new book,

the quantum spy just in terms of being a rough character at the end of the book, asked the state department to do it. morally complicated and right people, operators like john bendel, i hope the reader will see as competent professionals. there are questions that you ask about corners, questions about harris chang, the hero of this book asks more and more deeply about this colleague. just the wonders if they are ruthless to the point of shattering the reason that he got into the cia in the first place. >> your first book, 1987 it came out, agents of innocence. takes place in beirut and about that book you wrote, it was obvious the only way i

could share this fact was through fiction, what were you referring to? >> guest: i had written for the wall street journal a story that was published in february 1983. more than two years, and that front-page story said that the cia, the united states had recruited the chief of intelligence of yossi or arafat and plo, at that time the leading terrorist adversary as a cia asset. you was enormously helpful to save thousands of american lives and was fascinated in 1979 by israel. which recruited him with good reason. as a terrorist. it had taken israel he lives so we're not talking about

the gray zone of intelligence, just this space that we had. a few months after i published that article on the front page, the caa officer would run this operation and had been corroborated, a direct director of the subject of a superb nonfiction book published two years ago called the good spy came to beirut, came to visit this guysstation . it happened that i had a meeting with the military at cachet and they let the embassy just after 1:00. on that day in april 1983. the biggest car bomb that anybody ever seen was loaded at the door of the embassy and i was in my hotel when i heard this earth shattering roar.

and saw the embassy just shatter. i described it as the fleshof the building just being ripped away . robert ames, this hero within the cia was leaving and had been killed along with every member of the cia station in beirut that they. they were all at lunch and happened to be where they dropped the bomb off and in the aftermath of that tragedy, the arabs who had been working with the us on the long lion case remembered this. our chief of intelligence had been in constant contact with the cia. people who'd been involved in that and knew about it needed to talk about it, needed to believe the loss of this man robert ames and because i've been working on the story for two years, i was the only

american alive, a journalist in beirut who felt they could talk to people who kept coming to me and telling me things that a journalist just doesn't here, shouldn't here. and i began to accumulate this richness of information about a story whose basic outlines i'd already written on the front page but i thought, what on earth are you going to do with this? and the answer to me then was you're going to write a novel. i had no idea. i was a journalist at that time. >> for 80 years, so i sat down, wrote a first draft and the second draft, send it off to the publisher who turned down by everyone. finally, the publisher is still my publisher, ww norton said okay, we will publish

age of innocence. on the condition that you give us a nonfiction book. they didn't really want a novel that much either the nonfiction book that they thought ignatius a journalist should write, they were willing to buy the novel so that's how ages of innocence published in 1987 was although i didn't say it at the time potentially a true story from page 1 to the end. and the people who were most involved, the plo in the cia and intelligence agency, all over the middle east knew immediately when the book came out that it was all real. so the book began to get a sort of cachet with readers who knew and then it began to be particularly read. a piece that people would say give it out to recruits and explain this is what the

business is about. i've had over the last 30 years a dozen cia officers in various places walk up to me and say i can't tell you who i am but i want to say if you want to tell my mom and dad what i did, i say read your book. it's got the basics of what an intelligence officer does. both through the story of one of the great cases that i ever read. brilliantly executed but by a real professional in the most ambiguous terrain morally. >> the plo and i really was in it. that got me started and i just never stops. i taught myself how to write a novel. all those rejection slips that i got, i began to learn the craft of writing fiction

and it's played off of my journalism ever since, over 30 years the things that interest me and i learned about have such so much more than i'd like to say as a spy novelist, to really unpack the ideas, the places, the issues. i say at the end of this book i started 30 years ago when age of innocence was published. but i had to choose whether to be a journalist and i'm glad that i didn't. and i mean that, i'm glad i didn't. >> can we draw any straight lines from your washington post national security column to your novel? >>. >> you can certainly draw a straight line in terms of the subject matter. >> my column, i've written a lot about iran in my column. in iran in 2006, 2018. after the 2006 visit, i was

fascinated by the uranian room that's becoming an issue of intent . and i thought this is the perfect setting for a novelist and i wrote a novel called the increments which kept in real life. but an imaginary iranian nuclear scientist and every one of the cia calls a virtual walking. on its website, the cia says if you have something to tell us, just do it and they get a lot of people coming in from defense and a lot of people coming in from iran that's how that novel began. it ends up describing the assault on the iranian supply chain. that is eerily like what we've learned to call, that's one where just making some

lucky guesses i ended up being trained, it was more factional than i realized at the time. that's an example where readers read my columns when i was there. what they didn't know is i was taking every piece of kind of pocket litter i can find, every map, every guidebook. every restaurant i knew and strolling them all away and bring you back home. and but fictional. the iran that would be in that time. >>. >> host: david ignatius, has anyone ever felt outed by a character in one of your books. >> people, somebody joked to me the other day, a former intelligence officer had said on the real harry pappas. he was this character in the book i just described. and i didn't fear anger.

i heard him talking about it as if it was a bit of a bragging rights. my first novel, age of innocence were about things that were so sensitive that when it was published, i just didn't know what the consequences would be. i've never done this before. i knew how raw it was, i just made a decision to write it as i can and i didn't know what people thought but initially there was shock. over the years i sometimes write that about the cia, that might be difficult to tell but i had written, made people's hair stand on end. but i never had anybody, i tried to be careful about not

taking any characters per se an outing that person keeping their identities far secret and they are at riskevery day . >> you've got a former cia director who blurred your book at the bank of fear which came out in 1995, how did you get that? >> over the years these books have been read by a lot of cia officers. my new book has blurbs from three former directors. i've been shameless in asking people, no matter who they are, tv journalists , you name it for blurbs, readers know , all these quotes on the back page from books that you buy, us writers work so hard to get and it can be embarrassing on the tour, to

not to us electronically. would you read my book, just say something nice about it. i made a rule years ago because i suffered some difficulty when i started at pretty much anybody who asked me to write a blurb for a book, if they say there's a reason to read it, i'll say yes just hoping that if somebody else started who said i had when i was a young writer, these little blurbs including former cia directors. >> host: good afternoon and welcome to book tv on c-span2 and this is the kickoff edition of our special fiction edition year of in depth. david ignatius is our guest this first month and all year long, we will be having fiction writers on the in-depth program to talk about their books. for david ignatius, the numbers are two 02748 200.

748-8201, if you live in the mountain and pacific time zone you might want to participate this afternoon, you can also participate via social media. that includes facebook, twitter, instagram and email. just remember at book tv is our handle and our email address is book tv at c-span.org. david ignatius is awashington post columnist on national security issues and the author of these 10 books . agents of innocence came out in 19 87, the bank of fear in 1995, a firing offense in 1997, the sun king came out

in 1999 and then perhaps you saw the movie body of lies is a book that came out in 2007. the increment in 2009, blood money, 2011. "the director" in 2014 and "the quantum spy" just came out in the last couple of months. davidignatius, your books have moved from beirut to iran, iraq, washington . how do you keep up with all the threats the us sees and now we are in china? >> i wanted to write about china very deliberately in terms of national security, in terms of the world and also opportunity and trends. china needs to be at the top of people's list. china has announced the first set of its president xi jinping that it plans to dominate the heights of technology by 2030 . and through 2050 and they been very specific and they task their intelligence service to go out and gather information to be brought and

deal in secret that will help reinforce that position. they're building new weapons systems . but the challenge is far less military power. so china has set a course that people worry is going to bring it to us to a collision, a military conflict and not something that's inevitable but i do think that the times for readers to get inside chinese ambitions in terms of being a world power, to get into our intelligence service. that was again part of the book but you're quite right, we do try to look at the things that make sense and see the next big threat. my last book was about how the russians were manipulating the libertarian underground, the world of

wikileaks. when that book was written, we are now in the midst of a huge molar investigation but if you go back and read the director you will find some useful guidance to where we are now. i hope that people will stay still say about the bonds fly as we get more focused in china, they will see in this book the characters, the settings that help you understand what's coming at us. that will want a lot of whati write in my books is about opening the world i'm reporting as a columnist . giving out these nuggets in a much bigger way that you can think about the issues. >> host: the cloak and dagger aspects of these books, are they true? does this stuff happen? >> guest: from my first novel it was the process of recruitment. the way in which i get someone willing to share

secrets with the united states. >> how i play on that person and the needs of the vulnerabilities. and draw that person into a secret relationship. obviously, one reason this interests me and also one reason i think i'm able to write about it is convincingly is that it's so much like being a journalist. what i do as a journalist every day is go out and talk to people. they may not want, if they want to talk to the washington post columnist but over time gain their trust and maybe they begin to tell me things i think are important for my readers. think about how to protect them so that they don't suffer for having to share that information. >> so that part of the intelligence which has

nothing to do with the shoot them up, james bond aston martin crazy technology, it's a simple part of identifying the target and thinking how you make an approach to that target. having an initial contact and slowly reeling back in. >> that potential source, that interest me. that process is essential, i guess the other thing that's in every one of my books is in some ways the suggestion the united states doesn't know enough about the parts of the world where we get so deeply involved to take the risks that we do.the theme of agencies, that's is my first novel in some ways that's all the way through this book. just don't know enough to take risks, that our country has gotten in a series of wars from the time i've been

a journalist, one after another in the middle east. by thinking, i wish they knew what the characters in my novels know about how often we are flying blind. >>. >> host: and in fact you write i believe this is from the quantum spot but you're writing about an agent who is so game for anything, a sentiment not readily heard. >> guest: the cia has gotten more risk adverse over the decades that i writing about it, this idea of the cia as a rogue elephant doing whatever it wants. but i think that ended with the investigations in the 1970s, it certainly ended with the investigations that followed the torture, the cia likes to call it harsh interrogation but that

followed 9/11. i think the cia now knows that they can be legally vulnerable. >> they often take out legal insurance to protect themselves against the possibility that they need counsel and inevitably, that makes people careful about operations. >> this is a kin to a culture that you never want to be that person says mister president, that's not such a good idea, you say yes sir. >> and so that's the culture. there is now a, let's talk to the lawyers before we sign off on the operation. lawyers are a big part of tia operations now. >> that's an interesting issue for the currentdirector . mike pompeo said several times he'd like to see the agency be more aggressive, take more risks, get secrets

from north korea or china or russia that we need to know what when you take more risks, thedanger of getting caught increases . the term of art at the cia increases and the lawyers are always going to be there to say it's not a good idea and the congressional committees which now play such an important role overseeing intelligence also , they may go along in the beginning but then the agency and its officers often see. >> the importance to the intelligence community of the church hearings of the 1970s and of 9/11. >> guest: the church hearings really set the basic limit that they, you didn't have intelligence committees doing regular oversight for those hearings.

they exposed the secrets the cia had sought the hardest to protect. the crown jewels, they were known as area they kept looking and the public was shocked by some of what they discovered. i look back and to be honest, it's amazing how little of the really nasty stuff the cia did back then was discovered. the occasional assassination plots, but you can list them all on one hand. mostly they were unsuccessful. they come up with crazy ideas but generally they were carried out. today we live in a world where also our special operations command routinely engage in targeted killing of our adversaries. before, that simply wasn't done. in a world in which it's at

least considered practically every day of the week so the established rules, the established oversight set a new framework and we now live in that and that's better for our concern . >> 9/11 for a time from an intelligence collecting agencies to essentially a covert action agency. the cia, they had a plan for what to do after the twin towers. and george tenet, if you read the histories was very clear, president bush was ready to go and that they were, they wereon the ground in afghanistan within a week . and they took down the taliban in afghanistan with a brilliant influx of americans working with their assets and with projects and others in afghanistan. they left osama bin laden's

slip away, the second secretary of defense pleaded with his colleagues to authorize greater use of force to prevent bin laden from getting into the mountains. in all matters was counting on, but he was right about that. >> but secretary rumsfeld wouldn't sign off. but the 911. made our terrorism center of the cia's mission. made increasingly use of drones. of high tech spray of taking people out. the instrument of choice was, they began running a drone program . soon these resources were targeted. executing and after 9/11, the cia was told by the president of the white house, the nation is a threat.

there is the use of biological weapons, chemical weapons. the whole population could be at risk. you need to know,you need to find out what they're going to do as the cia crossed the line . in retrospect we all feel it was the big lines across. in terms of how it was interrogated, i will go through all the details but it does shock the conscience to see what our intelligence officers did in those interrogation rooms.and i think there is nobody at the cia would like to get back into that business, nobody. and it led to such public criticism. the cia in the end depended on the public. when we see our soldiers in the ballgame, we love our

military. they also take similar risks but they don't get applause. quite the opposite. they don't like that and they like to have a base of support so that's one reason they would be so wary about that being asked. go into the interrogation business, you can't make that. that's an agency that would like to go back to its basic mission of collecting intelligence to less of the secret war, counterterrorism and all the related missions that years after 9/11 has the potential for the country in terms of the cia act that in terms of the agency or morale, its mission, that was not a good mission. >>. >> host: 10 years ago body of lies came out and a netbook you write quote, this was the real card america had in the

intelligence team. without its money, certainly not its human intelligence but it's ability to overhear almost every conversation or any conversation in the world. >> guest: the fusion of our surveillance resources, the essays, the big years in the sky, our ability to get into the fiber-optic communicationscables , every internet message and phone call. that is a weapon no other country had and obviously it's very powerful. if you look at all the way back to 9/11, in the fight against isys, americans don't tend to take much notice but the islamic state rose or swept across iraq and syria in 2014. three years later, it has

almost no territory. tens of thousands of people and that has been not much written about the best been a war in our special operations and powered by this claim that anytime you have any digital pin , there's somebody who's threatened an american, threatened, electronically is visible, it's likely that person soon will be targeted. this is been a much more ruthless and effective thing than people realize. and i think much more journalism needs to be done about how this is conducted, whatthe human costs were . there has not been enough reporting on this. >> host: julian assange,

edward snowden, how are they viewed in theintelligence community ? >> guest: i compare the cia director working in a hostile community, i think edward snowden who was under the protection of the russians is seen as someone who has turned over some of the most sensitive secrets in the way that they can be used by the russians. or china, whether that was intentional . i think there's a pretty hard-nosed view among intelligence professionals about certainly when there's been a suggestion that there might be some sort of plea bargain for edwardsnowden , my sense is people in the intelligence community have loudly said that they want to be sure this is not an easy negotiation.

that they explain precisely what he did and the simple answer is there's not a lot of sympathy for him. >> host: or the hospital. >> in every one of my novels, it's a big question. and every one of my novels there's a characternamed tom. my first novel frank kaufman , there's a station chief who was foiled against the hero in the book. he was modeled after the real-life robert innes. >> and hoffman was just an outrageous foulmouthed cranky funny guy. not a person we meet in real life and i just found the character so engaging that i can't adding him or a member

of his family, son, his cousin in every book. there's somebody. >> a lot of spy novelists have the same protagonist in every book. harry bosch and michael connelly novels, i just never wanted to do that. i like to start fresh with each book with a new set of characters.or issues that interest me, i hate when anyone does that but i did decide that i keep this continuity through hoffman in this book. although she isn'timmediately obvious , again, i hope people when i look at my work over the years will see maybe in these hoffman characters cdr of the cia's experience and changes the ways it's

seen. i'd love people to someday be able to look at this body of work and say infection, here's fairly realistic fiction, a chronicle of the life and times of our intelligence agency. what changed and what worked and what didn't. again, every book, waste one basic theme is we don't know what we're doing. >> host: the other way to interpret the hoffman legacy through your books is the cia is a little hidebound, maybe a little colloquial. >> guest: the hoffman's are always acting at themargins. they are loudmouths, showoffs . they are schemers, they are often the people who say this cia bureaucracy is ridiculous and we are going to do things through the back door because the front door is not going

to work so yes, they are iconoclasts. >> host: speaking of the bureaucracy, that's another theme in your book is the difficulty or the politics of negotiating the intelligence community bureaucracy. >> i think that's absolutely right. the bureaucracy gets thicker or more viscous in each book. so once upon a time, the first novel, frank hoffman, the station chief just ordered something and it would happen. >> across the line, you didn't care. that was through interestingly about the real-life operations in which that novel is based.>> across a lot of lines making people say the right things. >> as the legal controls, the

congressional oversight increased, so has the bureaucracy. >> you thought about the bureaucratic reorganization which may be worked even more confusingly than it was before. >> i'm not sure it's put entirely to bed. so the people spend an awful lot of time going to meetings and a lot of time writing memos, i've been in on that one. in that sense, it's sort of the opposite of what you think of in a james bond novel where he's a super cool guy in a tuxedo who goes out and shoot people. james bond would spend an awful lot of time writing memos from his file to the real world. >> what is cooperation level

between michigan five, michigan six, the cia, the cia. >> cooperation with foreign intelligence services, liaison partners as the cia likes to call them is and has been since the beginning excellent. it's really the cia's biggest asset is its really only powerful global source of information with all these technical sources. its selection and analysis, is able to shift with his partner that they couldn't get anywhere else. every day, there's some foreign intelligence service that comes to visit from langley. but especially thecia to tell information . and that tends to people you wouldn't think, russians, there's a lot more intelligence sharing about issues that people what to

say publicly. so i think that's a big asset, the fact that the us has a lot of friends around the world and they still impact the agency.they share information. in terms of internal sharing, our domestic agents, there still is an awful lot of silos out there that we have 17 different intelligence agencies. these still are analysts who are doing the analysis today. they emerge and if this is a company and they had 17 different sets of accounting, going over this potentially the same paperwork, you'd say that's not's. i don't want to spend five minutes in this. there's been an effort to remove this but everybody insists, my information, my sources, nobody can knowabout this . it's all controlled by the originators, the buzzword

that goes and even now, after more than a decade of talking about breaking down the stovepipes, they are still there. >> host: dan coats job. >> guest: dan coats job is to oversee this sprawling and one problem is that it'stoo big . the cia is too big. this is a situation where les would be more. a smaller, more genuinely clandestine intelligence service that gets the targets that really matter. i just think that it's sprawl and i'm not even including the consultants multiplied by the tens of thousands. it's vast and it feeds and

information system that nobody can digest. we generate far more information than anybody could analyze. maybe computers will be able to do the analysis for us and i hope so but over time, that's one other observation that i make. it's just too darn big. we spent plenty of money, sometimes we are just lucky that we managed to distinguish the signal that matters fromall the noise that's around .>> host: if you live in the eastern central time zones, 202748 8201. for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zone, this is the first of our 12 special fiction editions of in-depth in 2018 and we are pleased that david ignatius, columnist for the washington post and the

author of 10 best-selling brothers is our guest. we talked for an hour, now it's your turn. let's begin with david in tulsa oklahoma, you are on the air. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. in october november i had students from, a us history class who tend to talk at the university of tulsa as to survivors of the atomic bombs, hiroshima and nagasaki and it heightened the paranoia my students had as to how many countries have access to nuclear weapons and how dangerous is our world today, particularly with the dialogue that we hear constantly on twitter or on the news and i'd like to hear our guests answer to that. >> host: thank you david. >> guest: i think the danger of nuclear weapons as great

as it was when i was a boy when i would literally have air raid drills at fallout shelters and there was general national paranoia about the war. that receded at the end of the cold war. there is no question we live in a world where the danger of accidents leading to a nuclear exchange whether it's between the us and north korea which we are all thinking about now. we have these talks about nuclear war exchanged by the american president, i find it deeply disturbing. in the danger of a warbetween and india and pakistan . name your other set of nuclear arms terms. it's just dredging. one thing we hear again and again from former national security advisors is about moments when they were told,

because of mistakes that missiles were on the way and they had a couple of minutes to decide whether to launch our own missiles in retaliation. the point is this is an area where the danger of miscalculation leading to catastrophic outcomes is so large, nobody should jump or use this as an area to say that my button is bigger than your button. americans should share the view that that's not appropriate because these weapons are dangerous. >> host: in your paper on the front page is the story about how the us miscalculated north korea's ability. when you read the story given your background like that, how do you read that story? >> ..

underground, not entirely sure where i'll be underground facilities are. not understanding how rapidly the program just to say this is the ultimate hard target and i think we would all say, okay, so we want her intelligence agency to say we need to know where they are.

and in clandestine ways to get into north korea or recruit north korean agents inside their nuclear establishment. think about that as a challenge, but no question we need to know more. we are too close to conflict with north korea not to treat them as absolutely number one collection target, but need to think about what that will involve. postcode next call for david ignatius comes from richard in ventura, california. go ahead, richard. >> caller: as an enthusiastic follower of tbn reader of david ignatius' novels come i would like to know more about his father's career in the cia and what writers and juries reading in spy novels or politics because he is often on tv. if i can say so, i certainly agree with his comments about ty

berg's good spy. it's a great read and also his biography, crossing mandelbaum cave, his biography because i grew up in the middle east in the 19 to these. they were very memorable to me. poster richard, why are we living in the middle east in the 1950s? >> guest: my father worked for iran: saudi arabia. >> host: in what position? >> guest: you as the personnel manager in her home. >> guest: the first thing i need to make clear before my dad calls on the other line, my father never worked for the cia. my dad worked for the pentagon. he served in the navy in world war ii on an aircraft carrier. naval engagements in world war ii and he came to work for president kennedy in 1961 come initially assistant secretary of the army and finally was

secretary of the navy for almost two years, so he had a distinguished career in government, but it was never in the cia. postcode given his background, did not influence your life choices in war you ever recruited? >> guest: the second question first know, i was never recruited. in terms of my life choices, i grew up in the 1960s and i felt as a young man strongly that the vietnam war and was a mistake, was wrong and lead to some tough conversations between me and my dad. this is part of my growing up. while i got out of college, what

i wanted to do with a passion must be a journalist. i had been writing for my high school newspaper since i was 12, 13. i used to cover concerts and pretend -- see how is reporting for my high school newspaper, and feedback page for the temptations at the howard jeter. i had a passion for that work. my first job as reporter was for "the wall street journal" on "the wall street journal" said in a harvard. i've been a graduate student at cambridge and england in "the wall street journal" asked me to cover in pittsburgh and if there is a more unlikely person in america to cover the steelworkers i'd like to know who it was. i learned how to talk to people in that union and make them as

sources and break stories and i just love them. i fell in love with the work. in later years of my career, certainly when i covered the middle east and after 9/11, i have often gone to war zones, covered these wars as an embedded journalist. this year was in syria in july with our special forces and missed a three day fair, i didn't syria couple times in this war. off into iraq a couple dozen times. so i ended up wanting to have a window as a journalist don't want our military guys. there are times when i wonder looking back that i should've served my country in some direct way. i hope is a journalist the work that i do serves the country in its own way, but it's not the

same and i look back now and say should i have done that? it's one of the things you think about as i get older, one of the choices he made. >> host: some of the references in your book include references to radio et cetera, and are they propaganda services and are they affect you? >> guest: well, doa wouldn't describe his propaganda service. doa wants to be a source of object it may have as much as the bbc is for britain and making doa has excellent journalists now run by a colleague and friend whose journalism i respect a lot at the "philadelphia inquirer". he was more specific order

during the years of conflict in the middle east would you call it propaganda to be offended by it, but there's no question it's mission was quite specific league to push american line. postcode next call for david ignatius in ashland, virginia. thanks for holding. please go ahead with your comment. >> caller: i want to say thank you so much for the openness in this discussion. this is what people need to hear so that we can unite and bring this country back on track. i want to ask mr. ignatius, giving two names to comment on and also to comment on the importance in journalism that fact certainly do matter. i was interviewed by jonathan

whitney in 1983 comely article triggered an investigation that eventually cost resignation of speaker of the house of shame and i also read a book back then that helps me know how i was being manipulated. the book was authored by harry rucinsky, higher-level operative, side that you have is common on those. thank you again. we can get this country back on track. >> host: if you would given the references you've made, can you tell us a little bit about yourself. >> host: if i can share my name i have no fear. i think would be interesting for your listeners and i would like to bring it back to your programming so we can truly heal america in the right way. my name is hugh. the last named is traulsen. i shared background with president trump and i heard

mr. ignatius mentioned a sad irony is with us and my mother is a supermodel who posed as a poster in the national archives in washington d.c. >> host: q. traulsen, and a recognition of that name. >> guest: i don't know, but i sure like what he had to say and i share with a passion his feeling that our country has to become more united. our divisions are now our greatest national weakness. on the names that you mentioned, jonathan witt name was a great, intense investigative reporter for "the wall street journal." he was famous. we had in those days great characters who did investigative

reporting. this kind of study and the guy in the washington bureau, a mentor named jerry landauer who is a great character, some big stories in a character. the famous figure in the intelligence world and tells his history. i did not ever meet him to my knowledge so i can't comment on that. mr. traulsen mentioned my dad. my dad is 97. my mom is 92. they are both, thank goodness, in good health. i will see them later today when i go for a visit. i just mentioned because i talk about my dad career serving our government. the u.s. may be launched a guided missile destroyer this spring named after my father,

the uss paul ignatius, so when our family we talk about the man on the ship, so that is a great big warships that will be at sea for 30 years and a wonderful memorial to my dad who everybody knows by god knows. postcode areas and armenian connection in one of your books. does that reflect on your heritage? >> guest: it does. my grandfather was born in what was then the ottoman empire, and armenian town in eastern turkey. he made his way to america. he came by way of manchester, england. in my living room, and we have a piano. my grandmother, elisa brought to america for manchester, england this old manchester piano and i

open the mention saw some of the music she brought with her. that piano is played sometimes by my own daughter who is now a doctor whose name is lisa. she says that that piano with her great grandmother. my armenian background is something i'm proud of. i tried to travel to romania, and to support humanitarian causes in armenia. the miracle of our country as we are all from somewhere and we are americans first and feel comfortable with, and explore our ethnic group than in my case we are all getting to know more about the armenians come the story of their suffering and the genocide in 1915 and the whole story of the people.

postcode you're interested in hugh traulsen cover previous caller, these are sending e-mails with links to some of the information about him. we are going to move into thomas in humble, texas. you are on with author david ignatius. >> caller: how are you doing, dave. >> good. >> i believe you said if you remember his name let me know, but i was talking about the policies that reagan used against russia that spend trillions on military spending. our health care we elected the president by making america great again. one more thing, the refugees from south america. explain what happened in the 80s. thank you very much.

>> guest: so, let me take the last of those first. when you're talking about refugees, and refugees from central america at the time the cia was running a covert action program against nicaragua where refugees were involved in that. maybe even the cuban refugees with the bay of pigs invasion. all of those groups were assimilated into american life. your point about china pushing us into an arms race that's going to bankrupt america is powerful. the chinese do polls in increasing threat with the

united states, but the way in which we respond to that. the one thing that bothers me as we continue to spend massive amounts on on the traditional arsenal of weapons that we've had here. the aircraft carriers, airbases everywhere, all the traditional power which increasingly in the age of cyberwarfare is vulnerable. we are spending legacy systems and maybe not spending the money we need to do this than for the systems that will actually combat our adversaries in the future. a future where will not be waived by aircraft carriers. they'll be reached electronically so it's not going to look like any war we've seen. i share your view that we need to be a lot more smart and lucky not to.

we don't have enough money to spend under the sun. everybody wants everything. everybody wants its own version. senator mccain, someone i respect a lot sent a letter to jim mattis a couple months ago in which he basically said you need to make choices. mr. secretary, you need to make choices about what we can acquire and what we can. we need to make strategic choices because they can't afford everything. he was absolutely right. >> host: in 2011, bloodmoney came out. it's about pakistan. this is a tweet from president trump in the past couple of weeks.

the u.s. was foolishly giving pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over the past 15 years and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit. >> host: to say they've given us nothing but lies and deceits is wrong and i've seen the evidence that is wrong. i traveled with the pakistan military in the slot valley, the north of packets and which was infected by the taliban and has been with the military as they move to clear that territory. the considerable loss of pakistani life. i traveled to south was there a stand, which is where al qaeda had out and it's been a joint operations the u.s. ran with pakistani military to go after those al qaeda cells one by one by one and again, i know the pakistanis pay the price in lives lost. that said, it is also true is

president trump tweeted. ask anybody in our military who has served out their, the pakistanis have not played straight up at the united states. they've continued to maintain a relationship with the hook on the network as it's called him the most deadly groups in afghanistan directly responsible for killing americans. they keep pressuring pakistanis if you say you were fighting the same man for serious, let's go after the haqqani network and may have refused. it is usually a mistake in foreign policy to force things to extremes. that is why foreign policy by tweet. you can't really do justice to the new ones to the relationship they need to have a tax stamp. it's going to be complicated. the basic point of them being fully open with us about what they do, know they are not.

we have a the right to protest their continuing relationship with a group killing americans right now today, yes we do. somewhere between the crazy tweaked, let's throw them overboard in this current situation is good policy. pakistan will continue to be important in a minute dates. the nuclear power maintaining a dialogue with the country that has nuclear weapons and says it's prepared to use them against india is really important. you don't just walk away from that relationship. >> host: general mulley, direct or of the isi. these americans are the clowns of the world are they not my brother? they drop their bombs from the sky and when they get angry they think of friendship. they think they can make warren charm us with money. really, they bring mirth on summer day. >> guest: that's a good

argument for cutting off money. general mulley is the head of the pakistani intelligence service in my novel. that novel was well researched. readers of my column know i interviewed the head of pakistani intelligence, and general search of pop the several times, so i described this little check mark next to it. the pakistanis have driven a generation of american military by not fully sharing their relationships with some of these groups in the pakistani groups protest, understandably i guess. we're in the business of collecting information and protect ourselves.

the haqqani network, we get bible intelligence or not. it helps us and maybe it helps you to. don't tell us never to talk to them. pakistan, if you're a spy novelist, it is some of the richest terrain imaginable, cruising around they couldn't conjure up anywhere else. if you love the novels of 19th century britain, the khyber pass, a lot of that is still alive as a journalist or novelist, go see it. >> host: where did the name sophia merhige protagonists come from? >> guest: in that book as you remember, she has another name

because she's nervous about the name mark. i always had terrible trouble picking characters names. i will make list and all mass the first name with the last name. the names will change after the second draft because they hate the name so much. but there is a computer program you can get that is a name generators so you can come up with names. want to come up with a name, you have to check to make sure there is no real person that could in any way be confused with the character. but sophia marx, honestly she emerged as a characters name after i made a list of 150 other ones. >> host: am i reading too much into names or do these really create angst?

>> guest: so, you want a characters name that will be consistent with how the character behaves. i've always thought the best designer of names to characters was charles dickens, who has blacksmithing grade exit nations. the kind of imprudent, always something will turn out. wilkins micawber and dickens just kind of at a slayer for picking out names. offering your characters change in the course of writing a novel as you learn more about a character, as the character does

things on the page. the name that you initially thought was appropriate changes. the cia had of operations and my new novel, "the quantum spy," i changed it on the final drive to something entirely different than they realized the name that i had come in to certain details just didn't fit for the person had become. the fun thing about a novel is you get to control every deep tale. >> host: have you ever surprised yourself with changing a character in the character becomes good guy, bad guy, et cetera? >> guest: characters can sort of take things over that they do outrageous things, they just end up taking more space and that is

happening to me often. some of my pakistani intelligence officers ended being a lot more complicated and tedious and interest to, so they assign a smaller role in make it larger. we were talking about was money. that novel opens with something that i'm proud of as a writer because it takes readers to a place we need to go that is hard to go. it imagines what it would be like to be under a cia drone attack in the tribal areas of pakistan. i traveled to the tribal areas to see what that space will look like. the pakistani officer bumping over the mountains, but they

know that the badlands were the only people were al qaeda and their supporters. i asked them, what would happen if we had engine trouble and he said sarah, we would die. not complicated. so i was able to describe what it would feel like to hear that tom at 10,000 feet above you can see the gleam on the body of this drone and begin to run for the terror and then the loss of everybody around you who was not able to escape. that happens over and over again. i understand that drove there supposed to be more precise and targeted than any other weapon system. i guess that, but a drone is a a terrifying west bank and if i

could take readers in make you feel what it would be like to be underground and hear that in your ear, see the flashing light and panic, what would that be like. we've been doing that every day. >> host: let's hear from margaret in san antonio. >> caller: hi, thank you. this is a great addition and i'm enjoying this today. my question is, do any of you -- [inaudible] >> host: why do you ask a question? >> guest: i love reading about israel. >> host: thank you, man. >> guest: the answer is yes. in my first novel, "agents of

innocence," where there is his moral nightmare for readers at the time, where the u.s. is working with the head of palace indian intelligence, there is very sympathetic israeli intelligence characters who were struggling to learn what the americans are doing are worried about and try to figure out how to approach the americans. israelis have made appearances in other books of mine since then. i felt since there are so many good authors to really focus on this literature that comes out about it, that's one example, but there are many that it would be good to write about things that were less written about commas why haven't bought off in

their operatives are woven through a bunch of my stories. >> host: i would note that we've invited mr. silva to be on the series and we are holding out hope that he will be here in the fall. if you can't get on the phone lines and want to participate in our conversation, you can do it via social media as well at ein buch tv is our twitter handle also our instagram address and it will connect you on facebook as well. our e-mail is booktv@c-span booktv. you are on the air with david ignatius. are you with us? >> yes, yes. go ahead, where listening. >> mr. ignatius, i appreciate everything you've written. i look forward to the incredible work you have in your future. the comment i would like to make is which you mentioned earlier

about the incredible unsung hero about the war on terror. what impressed me in the book that i didn't really anticipate was that he wasn't alone. they too were serving in their country that were very harsh, very difficult and they were equally in harms way and how his wife manage the children into an educated and was able to purchase on their clothing to the sears catalog just to comment to all those who serve our country, and to be grateful to their wives and children who are there with them. james bond never had a wife or a family, that the people who serve our country do and those wives and children are there right along with their fathers. i appreciate so much the opportunity to bring this to our

community. thank you for taking our call. >> host: when you say our community, are you a member of the intelligence community? >> guest: no, not really. just this community of all of us in the country. >> host: thank you. david ignatius. >> guest: i couldn't possibly say it better than sam did. the family is of our foreign services officers exposed to danger don't get recognition. sometimes they don't fully know what their spouses are doing because it is a secret. robert and his wife, ivonne was a very courageous person coming deeply shattered by the loss of her house then. i think back to my mentioned

earlier in the show on the day that robert ames was killed when the car bomb hit the american embassy in beirut, i was walked to the front door about a half-hour and i stayed in touch ever since with the woman who was the secretary who walk me down the. her name is rebecca. i won't give her last name, but the trauma that people serving overs a were not in the military, don't get the applause at the ballgames, but the things that they look through them and the risks that they and their family had taken is really worth remembering. the next time you see a foreign service officer, give them a hug. that's my basic feeling is everything that goes for families, too. >> host: on the flipside,

robert hanssen, walter james. how for so long could they get away with what they were doing? just in reading your books, mr. ignatius, i felt paranoid. >> host: the first answer is the russians are good at what they do. they cover their tracks. their tradecraft is good. hansen went to great links to conceal their activities. the people whose names they ask those risk their lives to the united states. these were consequential things that they did in real betrayals. we had been lucky, historically, that the number of people who'd

been recruited from our intelligence service has been smaller than what a lot of other countries. britain is just riddled. it turns out the head of their anti-soviet operations was working for the russians. we've had more cases than i know coming back to our original theme of the quantum spy, the number of chinese recruitments of their versions and their moles inside the intelligence community, direct to life cases going on this year is to make investigations underway about their activity. the chinese have gotten much more aggressive going after u.s. personnel. so you know, those cases are real. they haunt the cia. when i first starting out as a

journalist, getting interested in writing about intelligence, one of the people i took to lunch repeatedly in the late 1970s was james jesus angleton, the legendary head of cia counterintelligence who retired, but was still fascinated to the point of obsession with all these russian cases. he was convinced the russians were literally behind every tree and i think one reason he was so paranoid about manipulation in russian activities was he had befriended ken philby, in a sixth officer who was in washington, their liaison, and a lunch to dinner at an angleton told him everything he knew and suddenly angleton had realized they shared the secrets to somebody who was a stone cold

traitor and never was the same after that. host joe and the for young james angleton came out last year and booktv covered it. if you go to booktv.or come our website, you can type in james angleton the book and you can watch it online there. this is an e-mail from ken. ken says i offer you this title or a future novel, ever let a pessimist is that he will call it. but he also asks, has the world surprised you in any large way and ken is writing from cat hill, new york. >> guest: well, i like the reluctant pessimist. my greatest failing i think as a journalist is i am often an optimist. i look for the reasons why something will work. certainly writing about the middle east.

i first began covering the middle east in 1980, david pessimism paid. maybe i should be the reluctant pessimist after all these years. forgive me. was the second half of this? >> has the world for giving you? >> i was surprised and pleased by the unraveling of the soviet union. i was surprised and deeply troubled by the inability of the u.s. military power to create stability in iraq after the u.s. invasion in 2003 and by the continuing difficulty in using our military power to achieve political ends and i think i think the real lesson there.

i have been surprised to be honest at the way in which our country politically is fraying in fragmenting. we are so much more divided and angry as the country now than i ever imagined with a possible. there is so much smaller ground on which reasonable people can stand and discuss things and agree on facts and agree on what policies make sense. that surprises me and worries me. i think it's our biggest problem is a country. but also people in the other democratic, start with the white house, are making the problem worse. every time something is feeling in our national life, seems like there's a desire to rip this cowpoke bin. that surprises me and worries me. >> host: tell me if i'm being

general here, but throughout your novels, mr. decius, the president and the white house are relative peripheral to what you're writing about. i'll leave it there. just go the briefest e-mails in which someone will make reference to the president received a president i think is so easy to write and stereotypes about the white house have a situation and it just takes away from the granularity of the real-life. you could write a different novel about the national security adviser or the nsc person who's in the middle of that and try to write that as realistically as possible. not the world of house of cards, somewhat stereotypical world, but something closer to the way it really happened, and may be

in the future i'll write a novel like that. but i feel like as soon as i got the president involved in the world of cliché, it's very hard to write a president is either a scripture of the actual president -- just never want to do that. >> host: chat in the garden pond tweets into you, which of your books have been made into movies? >> guest: the only book that is then made into a movie so far is body of lies and that was made into a movie starring leonardo dicaprio where scott was director. mark strong played chief of intelligence. russell crowe played leonardo dicaprio's office. i think it's wonderful so hbo shows that often enough.

i've had other deals that i thought were going to lead to movies. tom cruise wanted to play a character in my novel, firing offense and happily paid a lot of money for what looks like a project there were three drafts of a screenplay that are britain and never produce. there were other things bumping along. i would love to see a project with the british television network to do my novel, the increment, about iran, secret operations based in britain as a cable tv series. we will see if that comes to fruition. it takes a long time for these hollywood things to happen. >> host: what is the process like either for the one that did get made or "body of lies" are

the others didn't get made. >> guest: i'll talk about the one that did get made. that's the easiest to describe. i had been doing some writing for a director on another project for a movie about a journalist in iraq who falls in love. a woman journalist also months with an iraqi man. i knew the director. when i finished a draft, "body of lies," again like all of my books, pretty realistic, drawn from the real against al qaeda command they tried to get people inside, i finished a draft inmate agent sent to to the development person and that person called me from the sundance film festival and said

i've been up all night. i'm supposed to be seeing movies at the festival and i've been reading your book, you know it's great, we love it. very quickly the deal was made. it happened hollywood was in one of those moments where because there was an expect his screenwriters strike, every studio was scrambling to line up the stars. so they manage to line up leonardo dicaprio to do this. once you have a famous act air, you don't need anything else. but then there's the question of getting the script that could be shot there is one prominent screenwriter who worked on it in one unaccredited screenwriter, very well known, but his name is not on it, who wrote a new draft

that was superb i think. the second screenwriter would often shared dialogue, share questions, so i ended up being involved in the construction of the dialogue, not as a screenwriter. when they got down to filming it, of course i wanted to be on the site. i went to morocco, took one of my daughters with me to morocco, which she got to meet leonardo dicaprio. talk to leonardo dicaprio still on his girlfriend came over and said it's time to go. my daughter still remembers that. took another daughter to see a shooting here in the washington d.c. area. i have three daughters. all three of my daughters went for the premiere in new york. that was a cool family moment. novelists need to accept that so

often people say what did you think about the movie? i like about better. people flutter authors by saying that. in this case, i loved the movie, genuinely. the people have to ask that that the book you've written has to be reimagined by somebody else. there's life on the page, but it has to become something different, reimagined as a screen director to have a life. something to letter late to almost transcribe something from one medium into another. it doesn't work. it has to be done different. some of the things i loved in body of lies on in the movie. they didn't work. so i think you just have to give it up and accept that's the way it is.

if that doesn't happen, it's not reimagined not in a good. >> host: what does it mean to be option? just go to the option is they pay you a small amount of money to make the movie. a typical option deal they pay you a whole lot more. when people go around saying they option my book. it's great. you quickly learn the chance it's going to get made into a movie are slim to none, so you'll been on slim. the amount of money you will initially take in an option deal is usually pretty small. sometimes on rare occasions they will buy the property outright. not an option to make it, they will buy it outbreak. if there is a bidding war, saying authors to favor words barb bidding war, if there's a bidding war and the price goes

up, but ideally if you have two studios come into directors, two actors who want to make it, then you begin to pay off your kids school tuition. so that is lucrative. >> host: david ignatius' book "body of lies" has been made into a movie. we will show you that trailer and will also show you some of his favorite authors and his influence. >> a lot simpler to put to an end. [inaudible]

>> at hoffman as the guy on the ground and not me. [inaudible] >> this is a part of friendship that matters. >> you do know we are at war. [inaudible] >> how you got to do it stress me. -- trust me. >> it's 3:00 in the morning. >> saving civilization, honey.

♪ >> host: well, every month for the past 20 years, one of the nations author has joined us on our "in depth" program for fascinating three-hour conversation about their work. for 2018, "in depth" is changing course. we've invited 12 fiction authors onto our side. authors of historical fiction, national security thrillers, science writers, social commentators like colson and brad "forbes," brad meltzer, geraldine brooks and many others. their books have been read to millions around the country and around the world. so, if you are a reader, plan to

join us for "in depth" on booktv. it's an interactive program the first sunday of every month and lets you call in and talk directly to your favorite authors. this not -- ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ >> host: david ignatius, your character in "the quantum spy" is reading the palliser novels any list that is one of your erased. what is that? >> guest: the palliser novels are a series as the novels by anthony trollope that recount the story of the family. the family becomes finally did duke of omnium at the end of this series. the reason that i love the books and the character urged to read the book says they are probably the best political novels that

i've ever read. they take over the long stretch of time in 18th century england. ambitious people, charming people, scheming people making their way through london. that's not all that different from the london that we know of. we see the rise and fall of their fortunes. one of my favorite characters in the novels is actually not a member of the family. his name is phineas fanned and he's an irish reform politician, a charmer, hands-on, keeps falling in love with the wrong within. these are books i signed up in 18th century novels to which i'm basically addicted are just a wonderful guide for storytellers like me who want to

learn how to unpack characters in the story, but also incredible guide to life if you want to understand what good behavior is, what bad behavior is, relationships between men and women are really like, complexity of how we behave in the world, mistakes we make. there is nothing quite like these books. any reader or watcher of booktv who doesn't know the novels should just give it a try. >> host: what are we saying about them? >> guest: trollop is recognized for his practices. you would get up every morning to write for two plus hours. he would read a certain number of words in opposite. he worked at a post office. the inventor of the famous red letterboxes we see all over

britain had saddam, so he had this life is a bureaucrat in another life as a novelist. she thought to go fox hunting. it all the pleasures of the country. he was fascinated by and mentioned earlier, men and women in almost every novel a theme of someone being jilted, and the joke is the theme of one of his novels and he regarded that as the most outrageous thing where somebody had led off typically a beautiful young woman was let on to believe that so-and-so is going to marry her and then choose jilted. it sounds corny. not for everybody, but it's what

i love. >> host: what is it like to read a sex scene for one of your novels. are you comfortable doing that? >> guest: what i learned about writing about sex is less is more. that it is the subtle at the vocations of mood contact. it is what surrounds sex that is more interesting to read, also less embarrassing to write. i think in my earlier book i was trying to be more commercial and probably violated the rule i just sat for us. my most recent novel, "the

quantum spy," and there's very little sex. i hope there is a richness of origination of men and women. one of the things i've learned to do as a writer is right women characters in a way that is believable and i'm always happy when lyndon pay i love the character. in my first novel, there is a scene with two women in a restaurant talking about sex and talking about men in the world of beirut which they live. many women have said to me that scene is their favorite in the book and that is actually how women talk about sex. one of the many small challenges of being a novelist. >> host: 748-8200. plus we will cycle through our

social media averages if you want to participate with novelist and "washington post" columnist, david ignatius. i want to read a description of one of your books. this came out in 1991. am i saying this correctly? this was, i don't think you wrote this, but i just want to see what you think about this. this is the description in the book jacket. made restless by the tightening restrictions of cia leak, agent alan taylor oversteps moral and legal bounds of a top-secret mission to destabilize the soviet union. his new recruit, the beautiful anna barnes who struggles later to receive the people education then he signed up for in the trademark world of shifting international and domestic pressure is coming loyalties and secret agendas.

.. >> guest: english, the uzbeks, the armenians, all along that periphery. and i also wanted to think about, write about the experience of a woman case officer, because i had been told that the big problem for women in actually doing operations was that when a woman befriends a man from another culture, says let's go take a walk or come,

let's have a drink together and, you know, begins thes process that leads to recruitment, men often just see that in sexual terms. they think this woman's coming on to me, this is about sex, and it puts women in a very delicate, dangerous position. i interviewed a number of women who had been senior operations officers and began to think about that. so i created this character, anna barnes, who embodies all those dilemmas. and she and alan taylor who is thinking about this play that try to begin to rip at the fabric of the soviet union get involved more and more deeply in what turns out to be a hideously complicated set of problems. here again i was working from real life. the people i went to see -- i

think a man at the end of the book who was an use beck who, after the war ended, he'd been recruited by the germans, but was in a vp camp and was picked up by the cia and had an incredible, fabled career. thinking about uzbekistan, thinking about that whole part of the world, incredibly generous in sharing his insights with me. he's passed away now. imagine -- and i traveled to uzbekistan, traveled to all these places. the pleasure of learning a piece of history. i don't think in nonfiction to this day that this history's really been adequately written, but it's there. it's just waiting more somebody to do the research. and, you know -- >> host: what do you think of that description of your book though? >> guest: i think it's, i think it's, i think it's great. it's kind of corny.

it sounds like book jacket copy. but, you know, if it got people to pick up the book, buy the book, read the book, great. the -- in this marketplace the question of how you draw a reader into engagement with your book is not so easy. i mean, a lot of people are brand name buyers of fiction. i like michael connolly. i know that if i buy a michael connolly novel, it's going to be, you know, the basics, the thing that he knows how to do. he's going to have harry bo to sh or the lincoln lawyer character, and it's got a new woman detective, and there are procedurals. he's going to get all the procedure right. i mean, i've never -- this is of the lapd, but i feel like i know it intimately from all those books. so i'm going to buy michael connolly's next book. i hope somebody who likes realistic novels about the cia, has read ten of my books so when

my next one comes out the person will say, ah, i know david ignatius, i'll give that a shot. you build up some brand equity, and you need to be careful not to write a dreadful book because you'll blow that. i think it's harder to break into that world from outside. i know many former intelligence officers who dream, you know, when i get out, i'm going to be a spy novelist. and there are enough examples of people who were intelligence officers starting with graham greene, charles mccurry, jasen mathews, a wonderful new american novelist, who served as intelligence officers and then, you know, found a way to write good commercial books. but for each one that succeeded, i bet you there's a dozen who tried. i've read some of their books, and they just weren't good novels. people had all the same richness of experience, but they didn't have the ability to translate into something that actually makes you want to stay up late. that's what i always think about

when i write a book, what is it that makes you stay up? you know you need to go to bed, you read a chapter, what's the thing that's hooking you? and then try to recreate that for the reader. >> host: you also list graham greene's the quiet american as one of your favorite books. >> guest: i think graham greene, who was a british intelligence officer, is probably my favorite 20th century novelist in general. also my favorite spy novelist. his novels are so good, to call them spy novels implies they're genre books, and they're much more complicated than that. "the quiet american," written in vietnam in the 1950s, anticipates almost everything that ends up being so poisonous and difficult for the united states when we really go to war there in the '60s, the misplaced idealism, the kind of fatuous belief we could alter

the society. there's a character who is the narrater, a journalist, is kind of obsessively thinking about -- [inaudible] in the american embassy, some kind of attache and is forever spouting off about some theorist of the cold war named york harding who's going to, has found the third wave or going to use the third way, we're going to defeat the communists. it's just the perfect and really terrifying introduction to our nightmare in vietnam a decade later. >> host: well, let's hear from barbara in oak bluffs, massachusetts. barbara, you've been very patient. you're on with author david ignatius. >> caller: great privilege. i am a very interesting person. i'm 70 years old, and my father was in the oss in london in world war ii. and as many americans know, the army developed the iq test with the army recruits and, apparently, my father, joseph go

to uld, scored very high. they put him in london in the osss, and that was the precursor to the cia. oss standing for office of strategic services. so my father, joseph gould, welcomed under bill donovan and arthur goldberger who became the supreme court justice, and he did this incredibly creative thing. he recruited german expate rat communists -- expatriot communists who had fled hitler into london, and my father was able to find them through a bookstore owner -- books, books -- and he recruited them into something that became the tool mission. they were germans, remember, so they spoke german, so he put them in planes and gave them the first walkie-talkies and air dropped them into germany, and they radioed information back. i'm 70, my brother's 69, and my brother jonathan has become a historian of these tool missions

of what my father did. and i called in because when david was talking about his father, part of the greatest generation and now we're in our 70s, we're the boomer generation, here we have this two generation relationship to this history. then my brother wrote an article about this for the unclassified cia journal. so it would be great for people to know that there's a journal of unclassified stories. his name is jonathan gould, as i said, a couple years ago. and he's also written a treatment, a movie treatment and a miniseries about this trying to get it produced, so it was really great to hear about david's trials and tribulations with doing that. but then the other part of me that's so interesting is i'm the widow of ron plesser who was a colleague who david knew socially in washington, and he wrote part of the privacy act and the foia, the freedom of information act. so i, my brother and i are this intersection between secrecy and the intelligence community on

the one hand and then freedom of information on the other hand. and now here we are in this christopher steele thing, and in this age of information, and so i would love to hear david talk about, you know, the balance between these two things. and just as an idea, i would love to see the pentagon and the cia create an office of creative history or some kind of place where writers like my brother and historians could go and present their information and get, i don't know, you know, like a seal of approval or something saying, yes, this is valid, this is not. something like that. i know you understand what i'm saying. and lastly, i just want david to talk about the new crop of journalists that are coming up out of this russiagate thing that he's on television with all the time and how great they're doing, these 30 and 40-year-old journalists and just talk about, you know, becoming a patron to them or a mentor to them. >> host: barbara, thank you. >> caller: all right. >> host: this afternoon.

>> guest: so, first, i just have to say, barbara, it's wonderful to talk with you via television. your late husband, ron, as you know, i really loved ron plesser, and i miss him, as i'm sure you did. he was a wonderful man. so many rich things in what you said, the story of your dad and his adventures in the oss sound extraordinary. your brother's right to try and pitch something to hollywood, because it sounds like a natural. i wish him good luck with that, and i'll look and see if i can find the unclassified summary of this operation that you described. just on a couple of the points you made, the new journalists who are for "the washington post," new york times, other news organizations doing aggressive coverage of the russia meddling story and this

unusual unprecedented presidency, it's just fantastic to watch them work. this is a period where we really have to be aggressive, but we can't make mistakes. president news media makes big mistakes -- if the news media makes big mistakes, it makes us very vulnerable to attack. so i love seeing the aggressiveness and the professionalism of these kids. michael schmitt from "the new york times," to take not my paper, but another one, just broke a couple days ago a fantastic story about the pressure on attorney general sessions not to recuse himself really broke some new ground in this story. you know, he's just a young, hard working, smart person. the great thing is the more, you know, wonderful examples of

journalism that we're generating, more movies like "the post" which is out now that people see, the more smart people come into our business. we were just, you know, really in contraction. journalism was fading, and i can remember wondering whether it really made a difference in the world a few years ago. i don't wonder that anymore. every day when i get up, i know value of what my colleagues and i are doing. so i think that's great. just a final thought about how to use this expertise, the things that we know from our families, from our lives, my friends at harvard -- i occasionally teach at the harvard kennedy school -- like to talk about applied history and almost as a discipline of applied history like we have applied mathematics, applied different disciplines. applied history is a good one where you look at the lessons,

the experience that people had during the cold war, during any period in our history, and you think how do we apply that to what we're living with now and make better decisions? i love that. in a future life, i'd love to be an applied historian. >> host: well, two of the people you listed as being influenced by, ben bradlee and katherine graham, what'd you think of "the post" movie? >> guest: i thought it was wonderful, it's a hymn to my newspaper and my profession, so of course i love it. i thought what was unforgettable about the movie was the portrayal of mrs. graham. i am lucky enough to have joined the post in 1986, to have known mrs. graham well, to have interacted with her often. i can hear her voice, you know, when i would say something particularly stupid, she would say, david, you know, how could you. she was just, she was so funny,

she was so mischievous. meryl streep, it's uncanny how she captures the little quirks, the way she carried herself, her voice. it's just, it's a brilliant portrayal. and it captures the moment in which she became a great, a great owner, great publisher when she, you know, business side said as they had to, this could cost you your business. and ben bradlee, my boss, my friend said -- as he had to -- you've got to publish. and mrs. g., as i always called her, had a tough decision to make, and on that decision is built our fantastic success as a newspaper and also as a company. so i love -- people want to see the real characters who lie behind that, it's wonderful. there's an hbo documentary about

ben bradlee which premiered about a mornghts six weeks ago. it's -- a month, six weeks ago. it's narrated by ben, ben voiced his autobiography. and it's -- check that out if you want to see. ben bradlee shaped my career. i'm a godfather of ben's youngest son. ben was absolutely central to my life and growth. ben kept trying to hire me at "the washington post," and i kept saying no in the early 1980s, and ben finally said, jeez, i've done more to raise your salary than you have. [laughter] every time the post would make an offer, i'd go back to "the wall street journal" and say they just offered me this, and i'd get a little more money. but, you know, these were -- what a blessing to to have liven the period when the real ben bradlee and the real katherine graham stalked the earth, roamed our newsroom. unforgettable. >> host: i think you dedicate or

thank don graham jr., i think -- [inaudible] >> guest: to don, each of my books i've thanked don. don was katherine graham's son. don was our publisher. don literally knew the names not just of every reporter and editor, but every press operator, every person who delivered the paper. i i mean, don was an owner the likes of which we'd never seen. he'd been raised to run the post, believed in it, and he did the most courageous thing for which he doesn't get enough public credit. so i just want to say don saw that his family and structure of "the washington post," the publicly-traded company, just was not sufficient to keep the post healthy enough to do the great journalism that it needed to. and so he took this thing that he loved as much as anything in his life, "the washington post",

and he found a buyer who would be able to run it at the level of investment energy that it needed, and that's jeff bezos, the founder of amazon, who purchased "the washington post" on his own with his own fortune who's been a fantastic owner for us, who gave us money and confidence and knew this new era of "the washington post" is under jeff's leadership. but it was don who, you know, did, in a sense, the most unselfish thing of knowing that he had to sell the paper, give up this thing that he loved, that his mother had built to keep it healthy, to keep it alive. great thing. >> host: evelyn, clearwater, florida. please go ahead with your question or comment for david ignatius. >> caller: after i'm listening to all these brilliantly outstanding people, i thought i wonder if i should even open my mouth. [laughter] however, i will.

[laughter] first of all, i want to thank c-span for existing. i'm 88 years old, and every weekend i turn on c-span from early friday until sunday night. i have something to watch. and the facility which i live, which is a senior facility, has told me that if i give them a collection of books, they will order some special books because i read weird books. weird books meaning books unlike the mystery books that everybody is reading, nora roberts, etc., etc. i read weird books. i want david mccullough, david ignatius. those are weird books. so i'm getting together a collection of weird books.

but my original question was there are two things that i wanted to say. number one, i wrote a book nothing like david ignatius, and it didn't become a bestseller. it was living beyond our sell by date. and the reason i wrote that is because everybody is in a rush to retire, and the truth is that we do live beyond our sell by date because there really is not a lot for older people to do. unless they've done something if you become a well known writer or an artist or have some particular skill, you really are no longer needed. there's nothing for you at this particular point. you are just there. and it was interesting to me because i didn't realize -- i read one of your books and enjoyed it very much,

mr. ignatius, but many years ago my husband who was not a reader got on the train, we were living in new york, and he got on the train to white plains, and he struck up a conversation, and this man said he had just written a book, "the spy that came in from cold." and my husband said, that's a strange title. and he said to my husband, yeah, my name is david cornwall, and he gave him his phone number and said why don't you call me, and we can get together. and my husband was a very, as you can see, he wasn't a great intellectual. and he had never heard of the book and never heard of the man. when he came home and told me, i got all excited. i probably would have screwed up the conversation because i probably would have been so excited, i wouldn't have known what to say to him. but my husband just didn't pay much attention and never really followed through. david cornwall, alias john he

carry -- lecary, and my husband never got in touch with him, and i continue to read his books. i do like spy books. i like your books. i know you don't think he was much of a writer, but i'm curious as to what sort of writer you thought he was, what your opinion was of him. >> host: evelyn, thank you for calling in, and thank you for watching booktv every weekend. it's 48 hours of books, television for serious to readers. david ignatius, your opinion of john lecarre. >> guest: i think he is a wonderful novelist. some of my favorite certainly spy novels are his books, the smiley novels. i think he went through a period over the last 15 is years maybe -- 15 years maybe in which i didn't enjoy his novels as much. i thought they were a little one-dimensional, the american characters in particular just seemed like, you know, the face

of evil and just not all that interestingly drawn. i just reviewed his latest book, "a legacy of spies," which i loved. which is a kind of tour of his characters from the spy who came in from the cold, alex lemas, other characters from that, peter is the central character in this book, and i recommend that highly to people. just want to say one thing about what evelyn said which i found quite moving. the role that c-span plays in giving people a way to talk about intellectual subjects, the a way to talk about -- now happily novels with the beginning of this new show -- is so wonderful. it's part of the texture of american life that i've always, i've known brian lamb since he first started c-span, and i think it's just such a gift. the idea of you being in

retirement wherever you are and having a weekend that you know you can look forward to where people will talking and think, that's great. i always think about when i retire, the only thing that cheers me is all the books i haven't read yet, all the books that are still there to be read. so anyway, i'll think about evelyn and all other people who are in wherever they do their reading are watching c-span. >> host: this e-mail from brad: i remember hearing some time ago that mr. ignatius was co-writing an opera about machiavelli. would he comment on that experience and tell us what the status of that opera is. >> guest: i'm happy to answer that question. i did write for an opera called the new prince which is about machiavelli set in florence in 1512 but then set in the future on the 500th anniversary of the

publication of the prince. and this opera, the music is written by mohamed feruz, a wonderfully gifted young american composer. it had its world premiere in amsterdam with the dutch national opera in march of last year, and i'm happy to say that your humble lo bretist got to take two curtain calls to a standing audience at the opera house in amsterdamment so -- amsterdam. so that was, you know, for me as a writer just kind of, you know, reach goal. i don't know much about opera, but i have read machiavelli. i loved working on this. of all the pieces of writing i've done, weirdly, this is one of the things i'm proudest of. i hope, i'd love to be able to tell viewers that this is going to be shown in america, that some opera company is -- i hope

that'll happen but not yet. >> host: well, one of the key scenes in the quantum spy takes place in a theater in amsterdam. the theater is richly described. is there a relationship? >> guest: that theater in which this takes place, which is an unpronounce bl dutch word, is, in fact, the theater where my opera premiered. i still remember, i had not heard to to the opera. i was terrified it was going to be a flop, of course. and i i remember sitting there holding my wife's hand and practically crushing the bones in her hand because i was so nervous to see this. but, yes, the opera house has an important fictional role in "the quantum spy." >> host: has there been a lead woman protagonist in your books named eve yet? >> guest: i would never dare name a character after, after my

wife, eve. i do let my, some of my characters wear, you know, suits, jackets, things that she, i've bought her at various, you know, design houses. but they never look as good on the character as they do on eve. >> host: gene is in hillsborough, north carolina, and, gene, you're on booktv with david ignatius. >> caller: hi, david. i was curious if you had an idea of who might be the most likely successful person as far as -- or company as far as quantum computing? university or maybe start-up or a big computer company like ibm or maybe a government contractor like lockheed? what's your feeling as far as where that's going to end up going? >> guest: so as you may know, there are different companies that are pursuing different

pathways to building a quantum computer. companies are -- the problem of building a quantum computer is creating an environment in which the cue bits, these, you know, particle bits that are 0 and 1 at the same time don't de-cohere. in other words, they last long enough to do some actual computing. that ends up being the biggest technical challenge, and there are different pathways to do that, to delaying de-coherence. the ones i studied most carefully are microsoft's. microsoft introduced me to its key team members, physicist michael friedman at uc-santa barbara, and others. their idea is to, in effect, braid the q-bits in a kind of nanowire, in a material so that they're more stable, they can be

shielded better from the things that lead to de-coherence, heat, any kind of energy that interferes. there's a different approach that the university of maryland and some big companies have chosen called the single ion pathway. i've been to see that at the university of maryland. that's fascinating. they're able to entangle, to gather together more q-bits than some other approaches. every major company in the i.t. space and every major university is involved in one consortium or another. yale has a big program like the university of maryland. the technical puzzles are so interesting. one reason that i've become more hopeful that they'll actually succeed in building a quantum computer is just there's so much brain power now in the united states, in china, around the world devoted to solving problems that you've got, nuts you've got to crack to build one of these computers. but the simple answer to your

question is there are many different pathways. almost every big company is involved in some way. >> host: peter, lewiston, maine, e-mail: work with habits; how, long, when, how long a stretch? [laughter] >> guest: so there are two, really three phases of writing a novel for me. the first is research. i'm now researching my next novel, my 11th novel. so i'll do that, oh, a couple times a week i'll be going off to interview somebody to gather information for the book. ..

it is like a baby that wants to be born. it finds nourishment it needs. and so other than time to accommodate that. >> host: finally it took me a while to understand, process of editing. is this ready, is it there? and people say it needs more work great needs help. and i think you need to leave enough time as a writer to do that regarding to write not just the second draft but the third, in my recent novel even the fourth draft. it is a series of phases and i steal time from other processes of life. i hope it is my calm, is not too obvious to them that i must be working on a novel because the columns are all ãit does

crowd out other things. >> host: he did not write a book from 1999 until 2007. we do not publish a book in that time. you've been kind of on a stent. >> guest: i moved to paris in 2000 to become editor of the international herald tribune. it was a good job i always wanted to run a newspaper. he was a chance to run one. in this city, we were overlooking when next to the eiffel tower. i thought david, you would be an idiot if you, you have this incredible adventure with your family. my children were in school then. if you were a judge, spending all of your free time writing a novel, just give it up for a little while. and so i did. and we had a ball in paris but that we moved back in 2004 and

was time to start again furiously when next caller is steve from holbrook new york. now you can go ahead and talk. >> caller: hello david. yes, hats off i was just skimming by and i was reading a chapter by the subject. would you do me a favor and pick up one of your books which have a read it would be best to enjoy the rest of them? >> host: actually have mac in dallas that email the same question. where to start? >> guest: parents never alleges they were their favorite child is because they love everyone. that said, if you want to get to know my work, the right place to start is with my first

novel. it was published in 1987 like every first novel, i think, it pours everything the author knows about life into the book. it is a book i am part of. it is about the torments in the middle east, there is not a word i would change in terms of where we have ended up living through every year since 1987. i would start there. i am proud of all the books. i think a firing offense about a journalist that gets tangled in ci operations is a book i am proud of. i think body of lies, which was made into a movie, people still read and enjoy. i think the increments that in iran, is a book that takes it to a place that he almost certainly have never been. those would be some favorites but the author would not be unhappy if you read every one of them! >> host: you reveal the spies,

treachery, the whatever early on in your book. or do you save that for page 400? >> it depends. i think over time i've learned that leaders by novels like the fun of the book turning cartwheels in the last hundred pages and giving a triple back within the last 20 or 30 pages. and say need to satisfy that. there needs to be some surprises where the reader thanks he or she knows what's ahead. needs not quite know what is ahead. i think that is important. i do try to think about the plot points carefully before i start. it always ends up being complicated or more complicated and different than that. but i am a believer that books like the ones i write are meant to be entertaining.

we are not writing ãyou know this is not, i hope my books are good but this is not great literature. these are spy novels. they are written to entertain so that i know with the pleasure of a spy novel is. it is you know that funny mind game. you just did not see it coming. and so you want, as i said earlier, it is the thing that makes you step the extra 15 minutes. i want to make sure i don't forget that. 22 high-minded about this or that and remember that i am in the entertainment business. >> host: he also said that if you read one of your books, you think you are making your case you end up with a mud pie. you said earlier, you have all the ingredients 2.haven't you? >> i have assembled ingredients that are coherent, plausible. that does not mean that they are right. been brother, my beloved boss used to say that although we had a responsibility to read

about intelligence matters if they affected our readers, we did not necessarily need to write about the wiring diagram details. and the wiring diagram is not typically in my novels. usually it's because i've no idea what the diagram is. there are secrets to people. if you try to find out you couldn't. but the details that are there are plausible. i think you try to combine them the way my books does, you'll end up with a hodgepodge. hopefully on the page it does not seem that way. so -- >> host: now we have roy from pennsylvania. i read -- what is it about the romance of a spy story that continues to fascinate readers

and writers? >> guest: i think, the things in tim's account of the cia, which i do not, it is not the definitive history certainly. that lead to disasters are typically the covert actions. really. united states seeks to many great another country. as i said earlier, the ability of multicolor were intelligence operations to alter in a country in a way that works in the long run, not a lot of evidence. i think that is the lesson of tim's book. it is about covert action. i think a better account of that same theme is evan thomas is book -- which is richly reported in character detail, it is just unforgettable. the people who made that understandable but misconceived

effort to manipulate other countries. why does it continue to be interesting? the people are interesting. the people who like to read military history know what makes them good officer or commander or noncommissioned officer.certain qualities that are just unforgettable when you read the account of world war ii in europe and i was saying to earlier when i read -- i come across like with my dad story spacing with intelligence worker dilemmas that people face, the way they operate, the condition in which they operate, the fear that is just a constant part of their lives as they do their work. it interests me.

i liked it established between my work as a journalist, columnist where and so this is terrible, some declaratory judgment we should think about. at the end of the novel i don't have to do that. i just described this world and you get to make up your mind who you think they are. you paint a bigger canvas. so again, i think that is one of the reasons you come back to it. you are not making sort of, declaratory judgment, thumbs-up or thumbs down. you are just describing. >> host: according from washington. please go ahead. >> caller: hello mr. david ignatius. can you hear me? >> guest: yes, sir. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. just a brief background. i am a 77-year-old retired marine, retired lawyer.

i led an infantry unit but it was probably not relevant to my questions. you mentioned earlier some political matters that triggered my interest and i understand you write a column twice a week in the post. i've not read the post for quite some time. i am probably going to start reading it again, and read your columns because i'm very impressed with your addition and intelligence. but getting to the point, maybe you have some comments on why mrs. clinton did not win last year. and to preface or to add to that, i did not vote for her, i did not vote for donald trump. i agree with your

characterization that the current polarization is country is almost unbelievable. i characterize myself as a radical moderate that liens a little bit right but certainly not completely so to the alt-right. >> host: we will hear from mr. david ignatius and we appreciate you calling in and watching. >> guest: i am with gordon, i am the angry central or radical moderate. that is what i feel. why didn't mrs. clinton win? i would say, beginning of the answer is that she did not, obvious, she was not able to present a program of where she would take the country that was compelling enough to overcome the obvious weaknesses that

donald trump as an alternative. she could not do that. she had a lot of negatives to begin with. a lot of people did not like hillary clinton. she never was able to build sufficiently to give people confidence that she would be a good leader for our country. give enough people that confidence. i will just say one more thing. i think the strategy that the clinton campaign adopted was to basically let donald trump demonstrate through his statements, through his behavior that he was unsuitable to be president. he did not temperamentally have the right qualities to be a good leader for our country. and they thought that over time, he would basically reveal that people would make a rational judgment and decide that he was not the right person. i think he did reveal that unsuitability during the campaign. we've seen in the last year,

his behavior and in my judgment a lot more of that unsuitability. and the problems of his temperament. i think that was before the time of the election. i do, we will get through this. institutions to make america strong are pretty there but i do worry that the cynicism of the -- the citizens of the united states will have to make good judgments. there is nothing that we have learned about his temperament since he took office that we did not basically know on election day. i think people do not pay sufficient attention to it. they were too angry about things worth for whatever reason, so i think that is the bottom line is we have to be good citizens. we have to be informed, let's put the time in to keep our country strong and stable in

the future. if we don't, if we are just angry at each other, our troubles will only get worse. >> host: from the sun kings that came out in 1999, the authors noted washington itself has become so outlandishly unreal that any disclaimer about a novel set in the nations capital should be redundant. [laughter] >> guest: so, yeah. that was 1999. it was, the time of the clinton impeachment and that kind of crazy -- we had periods of craziness. none of like you know, this gets wider and wider in the country gets crazier and crazier. i mentioned my father earlier. i know he is watching so i recall one of his analogies from politics. he talks about a spinning top. any think about the top spinning on a countertop.

you can give a top a real knock. but if it is spinning fast if it comes back to its spinning point pretty quickly. but if it is not spinning as fast as it should and you give it a knock, it wobbles more and more and eventually falls over. my dad is right. america's light a spinning top -- america is like a spinning top. he needs to spin faster, be more integrative. otherwise, when we get a knock, it would seem more viable. >> host: email from mark. i was wondering what david thinks of michael flynn and what character he would make in a novel. >> guest: would be a fascinating character in this sense. michael flynn was head of dia but that was not the apex of

his career. i first met michael flynn either in afghanistan or iraq. probably afghanistan. michael flynn as an intelligence officer, and as one of the people who drove the fusion of intelligence, it turned the raids against al qaeda in iraq and the leadership was really an innovator. they found a way to you know, hit a target, extract intelligence. in that 24 hour cycle, analyze the intelligence of cell phones, the computers, flash drives. and then know where to strike the next time. and then again, more intelligence, and michael flynn was at the center of that. an outstanding officer.

i remember being in afghanistan, his comments about good ideas, but what to do and be more effective. one thing i noticed my whole career is that people who spend their lives in supersecret parts of the government and michael flynn was a military officer, typically in one of the supersecret task force operations that don't even disclose their names or locations. when people come out of the supersecret environment often cannot have good judgment about what to say and not to say. i mentioned james angleton. when he came out of the cia he could not stop talking. that is a true thing with a lot of these people. i think general flynn, as much as people should respect what he did in the military career, he needs more open roles and

running the dia was not a success. as he became a political figure and all we need to do is look at what he pleaded guilty to. in this recent special counsel. i think there is a deeper point about, the secret parts of our government. cia, nsa, these military units. they need to be ventilated more. people need more exposure so that they will make better judgments in them when they come out, they will have more success. >> host: we have a few minutes left with our guest, david ignatius. this is david in pennsylvania. you are on the air. >> caller: i am so glad i got in! i very much appreciate what you just said about general flynn,

mr. david ignatius. i have been involved with israel my entire adult life. i've used, on many occasions, a quote - which i believe is from you. which i saw in a documentary to the effect that anti-semitism is the elevator music of the arab world. am i right in attributing that to you? and if so do you still believe it? >> you know, it sounds like something that i have said in the past and not sure exactly where. it is a fact that anti-semitism has been to common, too easily accepted, to unchallenged in the arab world for as long as i have been traveling there. i hope that that is changing in countries like the uae and saudi arabia. we used to hear people say things that will make you make your hair grow. that that is beginning to change. i do think that the problem in so many of these countries is

that people did not speak out and challenge what was strident anti-israel rhetoric but they did sometimes merge on, it is not israel it is the jews we are to blame. people needed to call that out. you can have views about israel's actions, i have written critically about this but it is not the same as this sort of uniform, unceasing criticism. so i can't give you a citation for having said that but i'm not disagreeing that it is true that there is an elevator music constancy to the rhetoric that always bothered me. >> host: we talk about professional, nonofficial and integrative covers. for the cia agents. what are we talking about? >> official cover is you are the political officer at the us embassy and harare or cairo.

>> host: are you presumed to be cia or you are cia? >> guest: you are a cia officer. often declared is the term. the cia station chief, and whatever city it is. paris, london, cairo, will go to the head of the security service and declare who the officers are inducted they will be the one to conduct the official liaison of the travel. they will sit down and talk. nonofficial cover is someone traveling for x, y, z and he has a home office in buffalo and branch office and dubai and you have got you know, business cards and the back of the says he works for x, y, z company but he is actually an intelligence officer under

nonofficial cover. those people are often described as nocs. >> host: and often people whose cover jobs have been carefully prepared so that -- let's say someone is an officer and it is integrated cover where the person is doing real work and you try to scratch that. if they got suspicious she would find out that there is backup all the way down. these cover issues are interesting that the really interesting issues today, in the era of digital footprints. every move we make is being recorded by a camera somewhere. every time we cross national frontier, our biometrics, often the prints are, there are

additional retina scans taken. how do you move people secretly across borders? in a war where the real identity, i don't know what it says on passport, is known to transport as competent. that is an interesting puzzle. and it is one of the things i am researching for the future. i can guess at some of the answers but i think that is this question. the digital exhaust as people in the intelligence world sometimes say. how you backing up. how you deal with a world where others are capturing the digital exhaust. it is a real life 2018 spine problem.>> host: in the past 30 years your books have moved into the cyber world very extensively. >> guest: i decided to books

about every theme of the spine novel, penetration, going on the list was zeros and ones. it was going digital. that is where espionage and intelligence live now and it was time for me to realize that in recognize it so and the director two novels ago, i went to the hackers convention in las vegas. i just hung around with hackers and watch them talk about how you break into servers and how you, i will never forget walking into this convention and there was a big screen scrolling. it has gotten real-time, the names, usernames and passwords of every account being hacked of everybody in real-time. it is stunning. so my new novel i'm working on, i think that this is where the spy business lives now. if you want to write spy novels, that are about the real

world that people are operating in this we have to go. >> host: we have chuck from carbondale illinois. >> caller: hi. i have a simple question. it goes like this. what is the question between the rush of today and the china today, the federal government and is there a favorite between the two how they -- i will hang up the phone now and listen to your answer. >> host: thank you for that. >> guest: is a great question. we know from historical reading and from spy novels, about the meticulous tradecraft that the russians have used. the intelligence has been the mother of russian operations going back to the czar time. we would write about fake news and meddling and manipulation.

russians were buying up newspapers. newspaper reporters you know again and that time in the early soviet services. understand how they operate. they are meticulous, they stage their operations with great care. the chinese were always thought to have a kind of more distanced approach.it was often said chinese would not try to plant the mall in the top of the adversary service. as they so brilliantly did. they would gather a thousand grains of sand. that was afraid they would often use. and from those thousand grains of sand they would put together a mosaic which show the picture of the adversary. it has not been true once. the chinese now are very aggressive.as i said earlier in the show, there are a series of cases in which the chinese have sought to recruit people in the intelligence community, not necessarily chinese

ancestry for the targets that really will pay off. and every indication they will do that even more aggressively. i think looking at china, understanding how they operate, understanding how they play the influence game as they become a richer country. they're in a position to shape the political events in countries that matter to them. australia has just issued a fascinating report on the counter intelligence threat posed by china. the threat that the chinese to manipulate strain politics and society that something not you can keep your eye on. >> host: for the past three hours, david ignatius has inaugurated our 2018 action addition of "in depth". we appreciate your time. >> guest: thank you. >> host: his books, first published in 1987, agents of innocence. hero in 1991, the bank of fear

in 1995, a firing offense 1997, the sun king and 99 and body of lies 2007. then blood money 2011, the director in 2014 and his most recent, the quantum spy. next month on "in depth". national book award winner and pulitzer prize winner -- will be our guest. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. and is brought to you today your cable or satellite provider.

>> here is a look at some of the upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. january 24-26 we will be in california for the rancho mirage writers festival. what will feature former senior advisor to the president george w. bush karl rove. former senator barbara boxer. a columnist brett stevens, historian margaret mcmillan and others. then we go to georgia for the savanna book festival on february 17. that will be live on booktv on c-span2. on march 10 and 11, will be live from the university of arizona for the tucson festival of books. later in march it is the virginia festival of the book in charlottesville.for more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals, and to its previous festival coverage, click the book fairs tab on our website. booktv.org. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible] >> there are events that the council, we do out of duty. there are events that we do interest and there are events that the atlantic council, we do out of friendship and long years of bonding. this is all three of those. that is where the duty also grows. i have