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Oct 20, 2025
Former CIA analyst and bestselling author David McCloskey joins National Book Award nominee and US Marine and CIA veteran Elliot Ackerman for a conversation about their new novels, The Persian — about the shadow war between Iran and Israel — and Sheepdogs — a tour-de-force about washed up operators in a dark world. The discussion will be moderated by journalist and foreign policy commentator Eli Lake.
Drawing on their own experiences as CIA analysts and operators, McCloskey’s haunting story follows a Stockholm dentist as he becomes a reluctant Mossad asset operating in Tehran. Offering rare insights into the shadowy world of intelligence operations, McCloskey and Ackerman translate real-world espionage into literary thrillers with peerless skill.
Hear McCloskey and Ackerman — two men with years of experience in the intelligence world — in a conversation at the edge of geopolitical power and literature: examining the moral complexities faced by those who operate in the gray zones between nations, the psychological toll of double lives, and how fiction can illuminate truths about loyalty, betrayal, and redemption that official accounts cannot capture.
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