# Barry Eisler

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Barry Eisler," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/barry-eisler/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*Former CIA officer turned bestselling novelist, and a recurring guest of John Kiriakou's, who describes him as one of the very few former intelligence officers to have succeeded at storytelling outside the secret world as thoroughly as he did inside it.*

- **Former career:** CIA officer, [Directorate of Operations](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/directorate-of-operations)
- **Left the government:** 2003, to write full time
- **Series:** John Rain; Ben Treven; Livia Lone, a Seattle detective
- **Kiriakou's assessment:** *"The writing is sublime"*

**Barry Eisler** is a former CIA officer and novelist, and a guest on Kiriakou's [Dead Drop](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dead-drop-podcast) podcast.[1]

Kiriakou's framing is that Eisler is hardly the first former intelligence officer to give up storytelling as a spy in favour of storytelling as a pure storyteller, but that very few have succeeded as he has. Eisler left the government in 2003 to write full time, and has since produced three successful series rather than three successful books, the John Rain novels that established him, then the Ben Treven series, and most recently a series about a Seattle detective named Livia Lone. What Kiriakou identifies as the trick of it is the weaving of a collection of good characters into one compelling story, and his verdict on the prose is that *"the writing is sublime"*.[2][3][4]

Kiriakou also uses Eisler to make a general point about why the transition is so common. There is, he argues, *"simply a literary quality to espionage. It's all that gray matter navigating all that gray territory"*, and a spy writes constantly, because writing is part of the job. He says he cannot accurately count the words he typed over the years that were purely him doing his job, so that when the spying stops it seems natural to put the stories and the accumulated skill to some productive and possibly lucrative use.[4][5]

## See also

- [Dead Drop (podcast)](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dead-drop-podcast)
- [John le Carré](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-le-carre)
- [Joe Weisberg](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/joe-weisberg)
- [Kiriakou's writing process](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-writing-process)
- [The Directorate of Operations](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/directorate-of-operations)

## Sources

1. S1E11 Have Human Spies Become Obsolete? (2026-01-19), at 0:00. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/695ad02c18c941d6d66b194c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-19-dead-drop-s1e11-have-human-spies-become-obsolete/
2. S1E11 Have Human Spies Become Obsolete? (2026-01-19), at 0:34. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/695ad02c18c941d6d66b194c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-19-dead-drop-s1e11-have-human-spies-become-obsolete/
3. S1E11 Have Human Spies Become Obsolete? (2026-01-19), at 1:07. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/695ad02c18c941d6d66b194c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-19-dead-drop-s1e11-have-human-spies-become-obsolete/
4. S1E11 Have Human Spies Become Obsolete? (2026-01-19), at 1:37. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/695ad02c18c941d6d66b194c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-19-dead-drop-s1e11-have-human-spies-become-obsolete/
5. S1E11 Have Human Spies Become Obsolete? (2026-01-19), at 2:12. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/695ad02c18c941d6d66b194c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-19-dead-drop-s1e11-have-human-spies-become-obsolete/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/barry-eisler/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt