Exclusive interview with author Barry Eisler and a review of his novel about domestic spying and the Internet
Rating: 3 Stars
“I’d been playing around with a novel based on a top-secret government surveillance program for quite a few years when the Snowden revelations shocked the world in the summer of 2013,” says The God’s Eye View author Barry Eisler. “The programs Snowden revealed were appalling, yes, but what would be the even worse ones, the ones that would leak later, if at all?”
This thriller may scare you. A government agency’s powerful director is collecting information on every person in America, innocent or guilty. The ABC series Scandal has explored a similar world of domestic surveillance. Modern spies and revelations of how much you may be being spied upon right now is described in 18 pages of notes at the back of the book. While the plot is speculative, the details, what the government does in the name of security, are quite real.
NSA director Theodore Anders wants to collect every phone call, email, and keystroke tapped on the Internet. He believes unlimited surveillance is the only way to keep America safe. Evelyn Gallagher wants to keep her job so she can afford the private school for her deaf son Dash. She manages the NSA’s camera network and facial recognition program. She notices a project code-name God’s Eye, that seems related to the mysterious deaths of journalists and whistle-blowers. How safe is a country where she may lose her life for knowing too much?
Barry Eisler worked for three years as a spy with the CIA Directorate of Operations. “One of the things they taught me at the CIA…that sometimes it pays to cover up the commission of a serious crime by confessing to a lesser one,” says Eisler. “Informed by the abuses of the J. Edgar Hoover years, the history of COINTELPRO (the government program which spied on anti-Vietnam war activists and civil rights leades, among others), the allegations of NSA whistleblower Russ Tice, and most of all by Snowden’s revelations themselves, became the foundation for The God’s Eye View, with an all-seeing surveillance state. I thought, Hmmm, powerful actors doing terrible things for reasons they believe are good…my kind of villainy”
Eisler says that The Intercept, the online news outlet that features heavily in his story, was a great source for his research, both for their reporting on the NSA and the underlying documents they provided. He also follows Bart Gellman’s reporting, whose notorious presentation at Purdue University in 2015 freaked out administrators when they found out it included leaked top secret documents. Eisler says staying on top of whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s revelations is a challenge, and led to him creating a list of recommended books, films, and articles on his website. “What’s sadly unsurprising is the way real-world events have continued to catch up to my fiction since I turned in the manuscript,” says Eisler. “An extremely suspicious suicide of a reporter and activist at Istanbul Airport. Police monitoring members of parliament in the UK. The secret service digging up dirt to discredit a congressman. The NSA’s top lawyer talking about how a terror attack would be helpful for government anti-encryption efforts. The car hack assassination sequence being proven more and more credible. And, how the NSA’s XKeyscore vacuums up countless people’s emails, browsing histories, passwords, and other private communications.”
Eisler has written many novels. His bestselling thrillers have won the Barry Award and the Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of the Year, and have been translated into many languages.
Reportedly, fans of Eisler’s book include members of the National Security Council. “The name of the novel itself getting support from Admiral Michael Rogers, the head of the NSA,” says Eisler. “He wants to create a much broader picture, increase the ability to visualize, and, most of all, engage with private companies in opening the aperture. God’s Eye, indeed.”
Eisler is currently writing a book about a female sex crimes investigator.
Eisler lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He blogs about torture, civil liberties, and the rule of law. He was born in New Jersey.
The God’s Eye View by Barry Eisler (Author). Hardcover: 374 pages, Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (February 2, 2016) Language: English, ISBN: 9781503951518 $24.95
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