I am not Mitch Rapp

I AM VINCE FLYNN. Sorry, I’ve always wanted to do that. But really, I’m not Mitch Rapp. People keep getting us confused and it’s a little awkward. For one, Mitch is fictional. And for another, I am clearly not a CIA agent. I just do my homework.

That being said, I do have a lot of inside information about the CIA. Which goes to one of my sole motivations for writing this book. There’s a lot of talk about what the organization does but no one directly comes out and says it: the CIA’s job, in its simplest form, is to break the laws of other countries. From bribing people to killing terrorists, it isn’t pretty. But it’s what they do, in order to protect our country and our freedoms. Of course, you have to remember that other countries are doing the same things to us, every single day. It’s not a politically correct world. As I show on page 137 of Pursuit of Honor:

“It is undeniable that the Soviet Union was engaged in espionage on a colossal scale. They were recruiting agents, stealing our vital secrets, and attempting to undermine our political process by funding communist and socialists parties in this country… So while there are a lot of people in America who would love to embrace compassion and tolerance, and they have correctly labeled Joe McCarthy a bully, they do so by conveniently ignoring the fact that the Soviet Union was doing everything that Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover and J.F.K. and a whole host of political figures accused them of doing.”

I want people to realized the error overlooking this history, that what the CIA does is necessary. And by people I mean the average Joe, the guy who works down the street at Starbucks or lives in that apartment across the hall, or your aunt or what have you. “The only people I dislike more than politicians are reporters,” Rapp says on page 136. I couldn’t agree more. There’s a terrible amount of misinformation going around and I’d like to help set the record straight. We can’t simply be nice to our enemies and make the problems go away. Do you think you could reason with someone like Glen Adams or terrorists in Pursuit of Honor? They don’t play by our rules; it just isn’t going to happen.

In connection to that is another truth I think is really important to reveal – there are too many people on Capitol Hill like Glen Adams. Adams speaks in great amounts of charisma – and as Weber says, “Charismatic authority is naturally unstable” (1114). I try to show how dangerous Adams (and later, with Ogden) is through his words so the reader can clearly understand why we have such issues in our government. The great amount of hypocrisy that’s taking root there is shocking. And I don’t mean to point out more party one than another – both the Democrats and Republicans are equally responsible (recall, if you can, what political party Glen Adams belongs to. Drawing a blank? Good.). In the words of one of my characters, Dickerson, “Does it bother me that I am surrounded by people who want so badly to be liked… want so desperately to be thought of as enlightened that they are willing to tear this country apart? Yes, it does” (140). There are a lot of delusional ego maniacs out there in D.C. (as shown by those politicians who read my books and like them, not realizing they are the very people I’m incriminating!) who think we should know everything that is going on in the CIA. We simply can’t do that – it’s a risk to national security. And who really wants to know everything about what sort of methods must be used to protect our country? Do you really want to hear about how a man’s fingers were shot off so that he’d reveal information about Al-Qaeda on NBC Nightly News while you’re eating your hot dish? I don’t think so. There are some things just better not ventured into. Leo Strauss, who in other contexts would generally put me in mind of an elitist, actually drives home my point:

“They believed that the gulf separating ‘the wise’ and ‘the vulgar’ was a basic fact of human nature which could not be influenced by any progress of popular education: philosophy, or science, was essentially a privilege of ‘the few.’ They were convinced that philosophy as such was suspect to, and hated by, the majority of men. Even if they had nothing to fear with any particular political quarter, those who started from that assumption would have been driven to the conclusion that the public communication of the philosophic or scientific truth was impossible or undesirable, not only for the time being, but for all times. They must conceal their opinions from all but philosophers, either by limiting themselves to oral instruction of a carefully selected group of pupils, or by writing about he most important subject by means of ‘brief indication’” (34).

Though he’s mainly talking about philosophy here, I think this can be applied to how the CIA functions – there’s the few who know what’s going on behind closed doors, knowing that the public doesn’t want to hear the truth, (“You can’t handle the truth!” as Jack Nicholson yells in A Few Good Men). Instead of having total transparency, the CIA releases what should be known and protects Americans by keeping mum about other things.

“So Vince,” you might ask, “why the hell would you write such a revealing story about the CIA if the public shouldn’t know?” Because this is fiction. Obviously, I have a lot of inside information but I’m not revealing anything vital to the state of our national security. I’m simply showing how difficult it is for the CIA to get anything done in our country when they have to worry about being politically correct and walking on eggshells. I’ve admitted in the past that my writing is pretty unambiguous – you can easily see who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. I do that on purpose, not only to create a fast-paced easy-to-read narrative to draw readers in, but so that I clearly show the CIA’s way of working. The last thing I want to do is have my narrative look like an incrimination of their methods. So any esoteric level (as Strauss would call it) aims more towards the government than the CIA (check out chapter 50… my reference to a certain California Congresswoman might ring pretty clear for a few of you). What I do is simply mesh together fact and fiction – something my good friend Glenn (Glenn Beck that is) has, in reference to his own work, called “faction” (completely fictional books with roots in fact). It think this a pretty accurately description of what I try to do. Six months of research and 15 years spent studying Islamic Radical Fundamentalism, trying to understand the mind of the enemy went into Pursuit of Honor. All to give the average reader a better understanding of what’s going on.

This book is different from some of my earlier writing, as I wanted to emphasize the issues with the sudden changes that are coming about in America. Beck talks about this a great deal. In one of the books he’s recommended and one we read selections of, F. A. Hayak states, “If in the long run we are the makers of our fate, in the short run we are the captives of the ideas we have created” (58). I really like this quote and I think it drives home what I’ve been trying to do in my writing. I just want my readers – and other Americans – to see what sort of thinking is going on around us, to understand we must make costs in order to protect our country and that we should be more aware of what is going on in Washington. We don’t have to stay in the position we are now, afraid of hurting someone’s feelings in global politics when really the enemy could care less about how we feel. The same people who condemn torture have no right to do so when they support late-term abortions. Hypocrisy is rampant – and people like Mitch Rapp mean to put it in check. I hope my blunt, honest writing style that echoes the blunt, honest workings of Mitch Rapp urges people to think more about their government. I think my readers would agree that it does.