David McCloskey: A Spy’s Journey to Storytelling
David McCloskey didn’t start his career with dreams of becoming a novelist. Instead, he spent years at the heart of U.S. intelligence, briefing presidents, analyzing geopolitics, and navigating the shadows of Middle Eastern conflict. Yet, somewhere between the sterile walls of Langley and the war-torn streets of Syria, seeds of a storyteller were planted—seeds that would only bear fruit long after he left the CIA.
Now the author of Damascus Station, Moscow X, and The Seventh Floor, McCloskey’s journey from spy to novelist is as riveting as his fiction. As he told Stan Berteloot in the Back in America podcast, it wasn’t just a career change—it was a reckoning with history, identity, and the stories we tell to make sense of the world.
The Making of a Spy
Long before he was crafting fictional plots, McCloskey was piecing together real-world puzzles. After earning his M.A. from Johns Hopkins, he joined the CIA, working across the Middle East during the Arab Spring. “We were trying to collect real secrets about Iranian capabilities,” he said, recounting the high stakes of his work. “But also, you know, what the Iranians intend to do.”
McCloskey’s role often placed him in the thick of international crises. “At the same time as CIA is trying to collect information…we are also trying to deal with a world that is inherently unpredictable,” he explained. The unpredictability wasn’t just about geopolitics; it was personal. Living abroad, he began to see America differently.
“I think those experiences help you understand that there are other people in the world who have their own histories, their own cultures, their own perspectives,” McCloskey reflected. A stint in France during college had already introduced him to this reality. “It doesn’t mean that you always draw a sense of equivalency, moral or otherwise, with those systems, but it does arm you just to understand and empathize.”
Yet empathy alone didn’t insulate him from the emotional toll of his work, particularly as Syria descended into chaos. “Watching a country collapse, knowing the human cost, and understanding the limits of what we could do—it was devastating,” he admitted.
The Breaking Point
By the time McCloskey left the CIA, he carried more than classified knowledge; he took the weight of what he’d seen. Transitioning to McKinsey & Company provided a reprieve, but his time advising aerospace and national security clients wasn’t enough to resolve the questions swirling in his mind.
“Writing helped me process what I’d experienced,” he said. What started as a private journal slowly took on a life of its own. “I just started to write about my account at the CIA. Syria was my account, so I started to write about what I had experienced living in Syria and working on it.”
Those early drafts were raw and personal, not meant for anyone else’s eyes. But over time, McCloskey began to wonder: Could this writing be more than a therapeutic exercise? Could it become something others might want to read?
The Leap to Fiction
In 2019, during a six-month sabbatical, McCloskey decided to take the scattered pieces of his journal and turn them into a novel. “I decided, look, my project is going to be that I’m going to take this 100,000 words of stuff and I’m going to turn it into a book,” he shared. That book became Damascus Station, a spy thriller steeped in the moral ambiguities of war and intelligence work.
But transforming raw reflections into a polished narrative wasn’t simple. McCloskey had to learn the art of writing fiction—balancing technical accuracy with accessibility. “Most of the time when I’m writing, the first drafts are very heavy on the detail, acronyms, inside baseball kind of stuff,” he admitted. Over time, he stripped away the unnecessary layers, focusing instead on character and story.
The result was a novel that felt both authentic and deeply human. “It’s not the kind of writing you do at the CIA or McKinsey,” McCloskey said. “But I found that I enjoyed dealing with these topics through the lens of people, not just as geopolitical abstractions.”
The Seventh Floor: A Spy’s View of America
If Damascus Station was McCloskey’s way of processing his past, The Seventh Floor marked his attempt to explore America’s present. The novel revolves around a mole hunt at CIA headquarters, but its thematic undercurrents run deeper, critiquing America’s political polarization and institutional fragility.
One character, Rem Zomov, encapsulates this critique. “He also criticized—or he said—that we are witnessing the self-destruction from within American society,” McCloskey explained. While he acknowledged some truth in Zomov’s perspective, McCloskey stopped short of endorsing it. “I purposely made his character a bit provocative…but he overstates the cracks and fissures in American society.”
For McCloskey, the novel wasn’t just about Russia’s maneuvers or CIA tradecraft—it was about holding up a mirror to America itself. “I want the CIA to feel very real,” he said. “I want readers to come out of this with a better understanding of CIA—good, bad, and ugly.”
The Role of the Storyteller
As he reflected on his transition from intelligence to fiction, McCloskey emphasized the power of storytelling in making complex topics accessible. “You’re trying to invite someone into this world and make it easy enough for them to dive in,” he said. At the same time, he wants his work to remain grounded in authenticity. “You’re always balancing between accessibility and realism.”
He maintains a balance even in his upcoming novel, which delves into the shadow war between Israel and Iran. Though McCloskey has never been to Iran, he’s collaborated with individuals who’ve lived there to ensure the story rings true. “You find people willing to play a role,” he explained. “That’s how you render this stuff authentically.”
What America Means
Despite the critiques embedded in his novels, McCloskey remains hopeful about the country he served and now writes about. Asked what America means to him, he said: “It’s an idea that we are not bound by ethnicity, race, where we came from, where our parents came from. We can build a really safe, dynamic, free, open society.”
Still, he recognizes the challenges ahead. “I’m cautiously optimistic that the guardrails of this republic will continue to hold,” he said, reflecting on the state of American democracy.
From Shadows to Stories
David McCloskey’s journey from CIA analyst to novelist is as layered and intricate as his plots. His work invites readers to step into a world few will ever see firsthand, offering a thrilling escape and a deeper understanding of the human and geopolitical stakes.
“I want readers to lose sleep,” he said with a smile. “I want their families to be angry with them because they’ve been ignored while reading for several days.”
For McCloskey, storytelling isn’t just a career—it’s a way to bridge the gap between the world as it is and the world we hope to understand.