A Novel New Look at the Culture of the CIA
BOOK REVIEW: The Seventh Floor
By David McCloskey/W.W. Norton & Company
Reviewed by: Joseph Augustyn
The Reviewer — Joseph Augustyn is a 28-year veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, and once served as Deputy Division Chief of East Asia, and Chief of Staff for the Deputy Director for Operations. He is also a Cipher Brief expert.
REVIEW — Culture is important to all organizations – especially those involved with intelligence gathering and analysis. For example, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established in late 2002, critics of its establishment questioned how 22 different agencies could be brought together to work effectively and fulfill the mission it was assigned. Many thought it would take decades to become a truly functional department, and some would argue the jury is still out on how well it has done. In large part, the difficulty of blending and merging agencies was because each brought to DHS its own unique culture, some of which were so entrenched and deep-rooted that they were incestuous, and even defined how they functioned day-to-day. For an outsider, it is difficult to understand and appreciate these cultures unless you live and work within them. When it comes to agencies within the Intelligence Community like the CIA, it is even more difficult, or as many would argue, almost impossible.
The strength of The Seventh Floor, by former CIA analyst David McCloskey, is how the author brings the unique CIA culture to life. This is McCloskey’s third novel. His first two, Damascus Stationand Moscow X, won him high acclaim, vaulting him into the ranks as one of today’s best spy novelists. The Seventh Floor will no doubt add to his reputation. The strength of his new book is not because it is a “page turner” in the traditional sense, but rather because it describes and illuminates the CIA culture in a way that could only be depicted by a true insider. The underlying plot, in itself, is not atypical as spy novels go. The story focuses on a search for a mole at the highest level of the CIA (the “Seventh Floor” is where Agency leadership works at Langley.) The book is about how a pugnacious, disgruntled and jilted former senior CIA case officer named Artemis Aphrodite Proctor tries to unearth the mole.
McCloskey portrays Proctor, a veteran of successful tours in Syria and Afghanistan, in a cliched way… experienced, colorful, adventurous and perpetually irreverent. He describes how, over her lengthy CIA career, Proctor developed and nurtured close and special relationships with colleagues who sometimes disappointed her, yet for whom she remained unshakably loyal. Among them were the Deputy Director for Operations Deborah Sweet and CIA Director Finn Gosford who Proctor knew from her early days at the Agency and now resents, believing their ascendancy to the seventh floor was a result of political machinations and not merit. As part of her inner circle was also one who would not only disappoint her, but eventually betray her and the Agency she loved, the reader is left wondering if the traitor could actually be Sweet herself.
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The Seventh Floor opens with a description of a botched operation in Singapore, where a Russian CIA asset is murdered and Sam Joseph, one of Proctor’s personal favorites who was sent to meet the Russian, goes missing and rendered to Moscow. There he is imprisoned and tortured for months in a FSB jail. Proctor, who managed the operation from “Russia House” (the Agency’s nickname for the part of the bureaucracy that runs operations in Russia) takes full responsibility, but is, nonetheless, unceremoniously and unfairly fired by her long-standing rival Sweet. Despite now being an Agency outsider, Proctor is driven to discover, by any means possible, how and why the Singapore operation failed. In so doing, she quickly concludes there is a mole at the highest levels in CIA and believes the prime suspects are all among a small group of very close and trusted colleagues. When Sam Joseph is released by the Russians in a spy swap, he tracks down Proctor at a gator farm in Florida where she was working, and the two begin a painstaking and soul-wrenching search for the traitor.
McCloskey takes the reader on a rollicking jaunt as he describes how Proctor and Joseph bend the rules, stretch the limits of official and legal protocols, and use everything in their operational toolbox to bring the Agency traitor to justice. Joseph, for example, who is still employed at CIA, is tasked by Proctor with securing and surreptitiously bringing out of CIA Headquarters the classified documents and materials necessary for Proctor to make her case. Since she is maneuvering in an ex-officio manner throughout, the book is peppered with scenes of clandestine meetings between Proctor and Joseph in places throughout Northern Virginia, Florida, Paris and even Las Vegas. In these meetings, we learn more about Proctor’s colorful personal and professional life, including her near-death experiences in Afghanistan.
Concurrent with all of this, McCloskey cleverly juxtaposes Proctor’s mole hunt with what is going on in Moscow, which is determined to protect at all costs its prized and highly placed CIA penetration. Seen through the eyes of Rem Zhomov, an experienced, dedicated, but personally and professionally tired SVR officer, the spy versus spy game comes to life. McCloskey points to similarities between the SVR and CIA, highlighting how both struggle with infighting, personal jealousies within their ranks, and indecision when it comes to protecting or, in Proctor’s case, outing a dangerously placed mole. Just as Zhomov will do whatever it takes to keep his asset safe and productive, Proctor will do her best to ensure the mole is unearthed and brought to justice.
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As Proctor’s investigation progresses and comes closer to identifying the traitor, so do Zhomov and Moscow’s efforts accelerate to eliminate the threat of their asset’s exposure. In the most exciting scene on the book, McCloskey describes how Moscow resorts to using two Russian illegals living in Texas to plan and carry-out what turns out to be an unsuccessful but close assassination attempt on Proctor, who was secluded in her small and unassuming trailer in Kissimmee, Florida. His description of the outcome is vivid and graphic, effectively reminding the reader that the spy business can be a dangerous one.
Through perseverance and clever counterintelligence work, Proctor eventually unearths her spy. I won’t spoil the ending but what transpires after she briefs CIA management about her findings and convinces them that only she could have solved the puzzle, McCloskey leaves the reader wondering just how and why the seventh floor reaction was what it was. To McCloskey, loyalties apparently win the day.
McCloskey is an excellent writer. While he was a CIA analyst by training, he is convincing with his profound and grounded understanding of the culture that IS the CIA Directorate of Operations. He successfully takes the reader into the minds of his characters and has clearly mastered the terminology of tradecraft. In addition, McCloskey captures what can only be described as an esprit de corps based on loyalty that permeates the halls of Langley. On reflection, this reviewer wondered whether The Seventh Floor is actually a positive or negative exposition on the CIA culture and its cast of dedicated, intensely devoted, and patriotic denizens. Regardless, McCloskey has written a highly entertaining and engrossing book that will surely satisfy the palate of those looking for a vicarious fictitious escape into the exciting and unpredictable world of espionage.
The Seventh Floor earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
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