I took various training classes after being accepted into the CIA — as you might expect. I took more when transitioning from the Directorate of Intelligence to the Directorate of Operations (DO).
As I flipped through the materials for one class sometime during the late-1980s, I noticed a single book listed on the recommended reading page. It wasn’t a tradecraft manual, country digest, or political theory.
It was Agents of Innocence (1987) by David Ignatius, the prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post, who has been covering the Middle East and the CIA for more than twenty-five years. So, the recommended reading was a fiction book written by a journalist.
As you might expect, this piqued my interest. So, I went out and purchased it.
Here is the book’s synopsis:
Into the treacherous world of shifting alliances and arcane subterfuge comes idealistic CIA man Tom Rogers. Ordered to penetrate the PLO and recruit a high-level operative, he soon learns the heavy price of innocence in a time and place that has no use for it.
I got a copy and read it. It instantly went into the top five of my “Holy crap, what a great espionage book.” I understood why it was recommended reading for my class.
The detail on how to recruit an asset. The opposing emotions of being a source for the US. The character development of CIA case officer Tom Rogers. His passion. Dedication to the mission. Tradecraft techniques. The geopolitical details of the US/Israel/PLO relationship.
I mentioned this to a colleague in my office. She said, “oh, that is based on my husband.”
“Huh?”
Then she told me his name (they used different last names), neither of which I will use here. I was still new to the DO and didn’t recognize his name. But, as luck would have it, they were hosting a dinner at their house that weekend for our office.
At the party, I asked him if he had helped Ignatius with the book. It contained so many details about the Agency.
“I didn’t talk to him until the draft was submitted.”
I said something like, “But there was so much tradecraft and storylines about the psychology, stress, and ethical dilemmas of a case officer.”
I think he just smiled. We talked some more and that was it. I met the real person behind the character in the book.
It was a learning moment, but I didn’t realize it until I decided to start writing a decade later. I used Agents of Innocence as my guidebook when I wrote my first book, Secret Wars: An Espionage Story.
When it comes to creating realistic fictional characters in all my books, I think of the time I met one in person.