Our author interview today is with James Bruno author of Tribe. James Bruno is a former insider and censored by the U.S. government. Tribe resonates with authenticity rarely seen in the political thriller genre. Before we get to his interview, here is a brief description of his book: The White House makes a secret peace with the Taliban which enables complete U.S. troop withdrawal. Secured with a huge Central Asian oil deal, it virtually guarantees the re-election of a President, and the backers will garner enormous wealth. CIA officer Harry Brennan’s moral conscience compels him to get in the way of this plot. In doing so, he faces political enemies at home more dangerous than the terrorists who have kidnapped his daughter. But the resulting tension between his career and commitment to the truth compels Harry to balk and unilaterally take on the powerful men and women behind the pay-for-play scheme. Harry finds himself running for his life from jihadists in Afghanistan and Predator drones in Yemen, a target of his own CIA…
Interview with James Bruno
Q: Thanks for agreeing to this interview. Tribe, your third bestselling political thriller, explores the ongoing saga of Afghanistan and the ruthlessness that arises out of marrying politics and business, but is it a good spy story or a bit of geopolitical debate that gets one’s juices going?
A: It’s both. One reviewer said, “If it were a movie, it would most likely be found in the drama/thriller category, rather than the action section. There’s action all right, but it is not straight through with a high body count as with some in the thriller genre. It’s more of a political intrigue novel, and one that reveals some of the underhanded, backroom, sleazy, and too often, politics and dealings that go on in our government and government organizations.” As for espionage, let me just say that, during the government security review I am required to submit to, the CIA and FBI compelled redactions and changes. They felt I’d gotten too close to the bone in my descriptions of spy tradecraft.
Q: Harry Brennan, your protagonist, is somewhat of a thorn in the CIA’s side. In reality, would someone like Harry really be tolerated – or do you think it is his friendship with his astute and savvy colleague,Vince, that is the only reason he hasn’t been assigned to a dead-end job in Human Resources?
A: Bureaucracies are notorious for not tolerating the free agent or independent-minded actor. It’s hard to say if a guy like Harry, who is far from being a Hollywood-style swashbuckling rebel, would be tolerated by the CIA higher-ups. Usually, when a case officer fundamentally disagrees with policies and management, s/he opts for retirement or resignation as promotion prospects dry up. One interesting real life case is that of an ex-CIA officer who goes by the pseudonym, “Ishmael Jones.” A deep cover officer tasked with collecting intel on weapons of mass destruction, he quit the CIA in order to work toward reforming it. Unlike me, a diplomat, Jones failed to clear his book with his agency and is now engaged in a lawsuit with it.
Q: Harry puzzled us at times. In general, his speech and behavior bordered on Neanderthal, or at the very least, governed by testosterone. Then, he’d go and surprise us with a literary reference, correct a senior officer on an historical point or flash a level of thoughtful eloquence that belies the former perception. Is this down to editorial oversight, a one-man mission to make us believe that the male of the species is capable of complexity or a bit of your own personality leaching through the narrative?
A: It is often said that most fiction is semi-autobiographical. Harry is an educated man of working class origins. He’s what sociologists term a “straddler” — i.e., he straddles two worlds: the high-flying stratum of smarty-pants government players and the wrong-side-of-the-tracks Irish-Catholic factory-worker world he grew up in. I try to develop this in his backstory. My own family origins were as poor farmers; one of my grandmothers was illiterate; my father didn’t complete high school. I grew up in a heavily blue collar area. I worked for years as a construction laborer. But I got myself an Ivy League education and into the prestigious U.S. Foreign Service. Harry and I have some things in common.
Q: In Tribe, you offer an insight into the convolutions of managing intelligence “assets”. In reality how easy/difficult is it to “turn” someone and what works best: money or coercion?
A: I base my depictions of spy tradecraft on two things: information I’ve gleaned from intelligence officers I’ve known over many years, and meticulous research. Money is the principal “turning” factor. Spies get the vast bulk of their stolen secrets by paying people under the table.
Q: You’re quite critical, to put it mildly, of the CIA and it would appear that there is plenty to reproach: smothering bureaucracy, small-minded managers wielding too much power and too much dissembling. This could be largely shrugged off as par-for-the-course for a huge organization – but how much of this is the real CIA? The cynic in us says it’s all part ploy to down play their efficiency and part fictional plot to make the CIA sound more interesting than it actually is.
A: Actually, there is no ulterior motive on my part. Having worked in the belly of the beast (i.e., government – in diplomacy) for two-and-a-half decades, I know intimately how that sector functions and doesn’t function. And the CIA’s bureaucracy can be no less stultifying, incompetent and petty as that of my old employer, the State Dept. This cover-your-ass, steal-the-thunder, low-Peter Principle level, backstabbing side of government is rarely shown in popular fiction. John LeCarre is good at putting it front and center:
“What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They’re not! They’re just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives.” — Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
Q: Tell us one thing about you that no-one else knows…it doesn’t necessarily have to be something terrible or saintly – just truthful.
A: I do all of my own plumbing and I love romantic comedies.
Q: You’re given the option of being a desk jockey in a cushy big office with a nice view, or a footsoldier on the ground in some godforsaken place with lousy digs, questionable sanitation and bullets flying — which would you choose?
A: At my current age, I’ll take the former. As a young man, I sought out the latter – and paid the consequences: seized and detained twice at gunpoint, shot at in the air, trekked through minefields, amebic dysentery, etc.
Q: What was the weirdest moment in your diplomatic career and how has it influenced your writing?
A: Gosh. I’ve had so many…spearheading an effort to stifle a coup d’etat in Cambodia; being seized and detained at gunpoint by the bloody Khmer Rouge; getting assistance to the Afghan mujahidin; having my boss get killed in a suspicious plane crash along with the President of Pakistan; having nine military colleagues die in a helicopter accident and participating in the send-off ceremony of their coffins; reading in almost real-time transcripts of conversations between the first Pres. Bush and Gorbachev, Thatcher and Kohl as communism collapsed in Eastern Europe; working in a Secret Service protective detail for Pres. Clinton; attending meetings at the White House; being surveilled and harassed by Cuban agents; serving at Guantanamo. I could go on and on. These experiences lend authenticity to my writing that the competition lacks.
Q: What is is your next project?
A: I’m winding up a spy thriller set in Cuba, called Havana Queen. My service in Cuba and at GTMO spurred me to write it. It’s due out in 2012. As with all my books, it will undergo government security review, which delays publication by about half-a-year. I’ve had a blast writing it!
Figure 4 A Diplomat on the Cocktail Circuit
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