What Spy Novels are Made of: Washington Post Journalist Draws from Foreign Affairs Experience

If you want to know what really goes on in the morally ambiguous world of high-stakes spycraft, you might look to the novels of David Ignatius.

Novelist is one of two hats Ignatius wears.

The other is journalist, which he’s been for more than 40 years. For 27 of those years he’s written about foreign affairs, first for The Wall Street Journal and then for The Washington Post, where he writes a twice weekly column.

He’s had a busy couple of weeks, he told the audience Tuesday at The Society of the Four Arts.

First, he got a read-on the situation in Syria traveling with the joint special operations command.

The war against ISIS is nearly won, he said, but don’t look for peace in the Middle East any time soon.

“Nothing is really over in the Middle East,” he said. That was obvious when he traveled to the border with Turkey, where Turkish forces were shelling the Americans and their allies, who include Kurds the Turks regard as a separatist threat.

Then he was off to Munich Security Conference. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russians appears to have deflated the usually cocky Russian diplomats, Ignatius said.