This week's podcast episode is a little different from our other entries.
Sadly, former NWS guest author Jason Matthews passed away last week at age 69. Jason was the author of three best-selling spy thrillers including Red Sparrow, written based on his experiences working for the CIA over 33 years.
We welcomed Jason to the NWS stage back in May 2013, where he and host Doug Stanton discussed how he came to the spy thriller genre, tricks of the CIA trade (unclassified, of course), Jason's experiences going up against Vladimir Putin's forces, and much more over a 90-minute discussion.
As Doug told us, Jason certainly kept his espionage training sharp:
"When I picked up Jason at the Park Place before the NWS event, he was standing right next to me, and I couldn’t find him anywhere in the lobby. It was like he disappeared. He had changed his hat, turned his coat inside out, and did not look at all like the person I was looking for and had had lunch with at the house earlier. 'Hi Doug,' he said, standing next to me, a big smile on his face."
There's an amazing story about how Jason and his wife helped save a Russian family from Putin's Russian Security Service that's right up there with anything Ian Fleming or John le Carré ever wrote - and it's all in this week's podcast.
