Last Wednesday, Washington Post foreign affairs correspondent David Ignatius spoke to Institute CEO Walter Isaacson in our DC headquarters about his latest book, Bloodmoney: A Novel of Espionage. The reporter’s real-life experiences traveling throughout Pakistani tribal areas inspired the novel. Pakistan is a “landscape of espionage,” Ignatius said, “a gray area of games being played” among American secret operatives and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agents—who are our “friend and foe.” Of course, this rich territory for fiction has also contributed to Ignatius’s understanding of the region as a journalist: “We’ve been living out that story in real life, too, in this crazy relationship between the ISI and the CIA, Pakistan and the United States.”
Watch the full video of Isaacson’s conversation with Ignatius:
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