12 Questions for a Writer: Douglas Waller
Douglas C. Waller is an author, lecturer, and former correspondent for Time and Newsweek Magazines. I've been reading him since 1994. You should get started if you're behind.
1. Who are you, what have you written, and why?
In almost two decades as a Washington journalist, I covered the Pentagon, Congress, the State Department, the White House and the CIA. From 1994 to 2007, I served in TIME Magazine’s Washington Bureau, first as a correspondent and then as a senior correspondent. At TIME, I covered foreign affairs extensively as a diplomatic correspondent, traveling throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East as well as in the Persian Gulf region. I came to TIME in 1994 from Newsweek, where I reported on major military conflicts from the Gulf War to Somalia to Haiti. Before joining Newsweek in 1988, I served as a legislative assistant on the staffs of Senator William Proxmire and then-Representative Edward J. Markey. The Determined Spy is my seventh book on the military or intelligence. For my historical biographies I’ve gravitated toward charismatic yet controversial figures. World War II spy chief Wild Bill Donovan, the subject of one of my biographies, was certainly that kind of figure. People either loved or hated him. Frank Wisner, my latest biographic subject, was that as well. Few were neutral on him. I find as a biographer, that these kinds of subjects are more interesting—and challenging—to tackle.
2. Writing is a solitary pursuit, perhaps even more in an effort that takes as much research as “The Determined Spy.” You have a long resume as a journalist and writer. What is it that compels you to write?
I enjoy diving deeply into a subject. I find writing historical biographies to be fascinating work. You have to accomplish two missions with a historical biography. You must study intensely the person who’s your biographical subject. And you have to research intensely the history of the times in which your biographical subject lived. I like that kind of twin challenge. It is a solitary pursuit. Some people don’t enjoy that. But I do.
3. Tell us about the process you undertook to write “The Determined Spy.”
I write books the way my high school English teacher taught me to write essays—only on a much larger scale. I started The Determined Spy project with what historians call secondary research. I read hundreds of books and articles on Wisner, his times and the people who interacted with him, to see what others had written. I make notes on 3”-by-5” notecards on what I read—just like in high school—and for this project I collected about 15,000 notecards.
Then I dove into the primary research. I worked on this book during the Covid epidemic, which presented a particular challenge. Many libraries and archives shut down, so in a number of cases, I had to get archivist to send me documents from their stacks. I also collected some 50,000 pages of documents from the Internet, in the online archives kept by the CIA, FBI, State Department and Pentagon. Wisner’s family also cooperated. I spent about 50 hours interviewing Wisner’s three sons, who also provided me hundreds of pages of documents from the family’s collection.
After the research I drafted an outline—just like my English teacher taught me—only in this case my outline numbered 310 pages. Finally, I began writing the book, which proceeded fairly quickly because of the detailed outline I wrote. I could crank out about 1,200 words a day.
4. What did you learn in writing this specific book and what surprised you?
I was just a child when the Cold War unfolded in the 1950s, the son of a Naval officer, too young to realize what was happening in the world beyond a vague sense that Russia was this evil nation. Writing The Determined Spy immersed me in the turbulent world of the 1950s and the existential threat the Soviet Union was considered by the top levels of the American government. I was surprised by the lengths Wisner and other senior U.S. officials went to fight the Russians in the shadows. It was fascinating for me to go back to the roll-out of the first Cold War with Joseph Stalin—particularly as I now watch the roll-out of the second Cold War with Vladimir Putin.
5. I read “The Commandos” and “Wild Bill Donovan” when they came out and I spent most of twenty-seven years as a Marine in USSOCOM. This was not my first time reading about Frank Wisner. I find him compelling for both his successes and his flaws, but what it was about him that spoke to you?
Frank Wisner was such a complicated man. It would have been fascinating to be around him. I would have liked to have been a journalist covering Wisner in Washington during the 1950s. Wisner liked reporters. He regularly interacted with them. Her didn’t leak secrets to the press. And Wisner never wanted to see his name in the newspapers. But he did try to manipulate the press and shape stories reporters were writing about U.S. national security to serve the interests of the CIA. Wisner thought saying “no comment” to a reporter was dumb; in effect you were confirming the story the reporter was writing. Far better to talk to the media, he thought.
6. I feel like Frank Wisner represents a time when people from America’s top socioeconomic class served the nation. Maybe that was because they had the income to allow it, maybe it was a societal expectation, maybe it was just the culture that came from an existential war, but it seems like many of our wealthiest citizens are now focused on extracting from the nation more than serving it. Your thoughts?
Wisner did come from the country’s upper class as did many of his colleagues in the CIA’s clandestine service. You can trace this back to William Donovan and the OSS. Donovan recruited the country’s best and brightest for his World War II spy service. And he looked for men and women from the nation’s best families. That was one of the reasons news columnists joked that OSS stood for “Oh So Social.” But Donovan also looked for “a PhD who could win a bar fight,” so it was said of him. Wisner, who came from a well-off Mississippi family, had the same leadership trait as Donovan. He looked for the nation’s upper crust who could be taught the dark arts.
7. What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
I get this question sometimes when I speak to students in writing classes. They ask what they should study to be an author. My answer to them is everything. Obviously, they need to take English and creative writing classes; study the voices of other authors to develop your voice, I tell them. History, political science and foreign language classes are important. But also important are science and math courses. I wrote a book about a U.S. Navy submarine. One of the scenes in the book describes the crew practicing firing torpedoes at a simulated enemy sub. To reach a “firing solution” for the torpedo to hit the target requires the crew to use geometry and trigonometry—two subjects that went into one of my ears and out the other in high school. I had to have the sub’s executive officer give me a crash course in the two math subjects so I could describe in layman’s language the submariners’ complex procedure for engaging an underwater target.
8. What is your favorite book and why?
I have favorite authors rather than favorite books. One of them is Evan Thomas, who was my boss at Newsweek and has written many superb nonfiction books—among them The Very Best Men on the CIA. Another favorite is Rick Atkinson, whose World War II series is unrivaled for research and writing. I also admire James Bamford, who wrote the groundbreaking The Puzzle Palace about the super-secret National Security Agency.
9. It’s not a secret that The Determined Spy spends time on Wisner’s mental illness. The tolerance for that vulnerability for a CIA officer seemed to spring from the chumminess of the OSS and the same country club culture that also made service to the nation a real career option for the uber-wealthy. How should those of us in careers that turn on security clearances and vulnerabilities view Wisner now and what should we take from how they treated him?
The CIA in Wisner’s day had an enlightened and pragmatic attitude toward its officers who developed mental illness, viewing it as a battle casualty. The agency early on formed a psychiatric unit, which, among other things, monitored mental health problems among CIA officers. If the agency couldn’t treat an officer in-house, it had private mental health facilities it could send its officers to, which had been vetted so the CIA could be sure that whatever an officer told medical personnel would not leave the facility. After the treatment ended, the agency tried to return the officer to his old job. In Wisner’s case, after treatment he did not return to the high-pressure job of clandestine service chief. Instead, a less demanding place was found for him as chief of the CIA’s London station.
10. What do you want people to take away from this book?
My hope is that readers will come away from The Determined Spy with a good sense of the life and times of one of America’s early cold warriors. I hope people will find this a compelling and entertaining story.
11. What are you working on now?
I don’t have another project in the works. I’ll be spending all of 2025 promoting The Determined Spy. I’ve never been the kind of author who could hatch a new biography while marketing a current book. I guess I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.
12. What have I not asked that I should have?
I’m sometimes asked how does today’s CIA compare with the agency in Donovan’s day or in Wisner’s day? My answer is simple: today’s CIA is far better. Donovan’s and Wisner’s organizations were still in the learning phase—there was a lot of trial by error. Today’s CIA along with the rest of the U.S. intelligence community, which includes 17 other intelligence agencies in different parts of the government, is far more seasoned and proficient with a worldwide reach. This community covers the globe with satellites in the sky, agents on the ground, and liaison relationships with friendly foreign spy services. The U.S. government spends more than $1.5 billion a week collecting intelligence. It’s one of the capabilities that defines America as a superpower.
The Determined Spy is as fascinating as Waller’s previous works. You can buy it here.