Ex-CIA Officer: America Has a 20% Chance of Splitting Apart - James Telfer
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You see it with the judiciary now. I think you see it with Congress. They should be the moderators, right? They should be. But if you don't feel or think a certain way, you get beaten out of your own party. They'll move you out. You'll see it with the gerrymandering, you know, trying to tweak everything to stack the deck. You'll see a weaponization, certain things that used to be understood as principle. There used to be debate. There used to be filibuster. There used to be all of these things that were standard to make sure that there was a balance of power. As those kind of get stripped away, you move closer and closer to division.
Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is James Telfer. He's ex-CIA, but he's now an author. And the title of the book is The National Divorce, A Story of a Fractured Superpower. Before we get into this great book, though, James, and thank you for coming on the show, tell us about you, your background, and what motivated you to write this book.
Yeah, I think maybe in a way, the story of how I wrote this is more of a story than the actual book itself. I spent nearly 25 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, very forward-leaning after 9-11, joined an office that kind of put me on the front lines, spent an amazing career in the CIA, worked with amazing people, did amazing things. But all of that kind of comes to an end when you look at retirement. And talking to some of my peers and friends that had retired, some would say the biggest thing is, it's like a lot of other jobs out there, whether you're in law enforcement or in the military, There could be, you know, a loss, you know, a loss of identity when one retires. It's very difficult for people, especially for the first few months going into retirement.
So I knew I had to kind of pick up something to get my mind off of things. And what I had done is I sat down, I knew I had about six months of time off. This was about October timeframe. You remember the last government shutdown? I had some time and I thought to myself, you know, this would be a perfect escape is to sit down and actually do some writing. I'm used to doing a lot of writing at work. So writing had never been anything that was on my radar because, you know, you spend all day writing. The last thing you want to do when you come home is sit down and do some more writing.
Who is James Telfer and what motivated him to write *The National Divorce*?
I started with an idea that I would write some of the nonfiction stories from work, things that I thought I could get through my publication review board, things that weren't sensitive, things that I could tell my kids later. But I'll say that, you know, I had this other story kind of ruminating in my head for previous years. You know, I, I'm a, I'm a fan of, I'm a fan of politics kind of watching, watching the show. And I'm, I'm, you know, I remember there being a segment on Bill Maher. I can go into Bill Maher. He's one of my dad's favorite shows. So this is something we kind of bond over. We talk about what was on Maher over the weekend. It's appointment television for him. We had watched a segment several years ago where he commented on Marjorie Taylor Greene's tweet about the national divorce, how it's impossible, never happened.
And that sparked my imagination. I started thinking of, well, what if it did happen? What would it look like? What stories would be told? How would we have to get there from here? So I started thinking about this when I travel. I travel a lot. I do a lot of driving. I do a lot of flying. And so I would think about different stories, how it would impact the regular people, who would be the politicians, who would be the influencers in this. And I started just writing down little notes here and there. And so I had this abstract for a story that I didn't really intend to write straight out of retirement. But as I started writing the nonfiction chapters, I felt as though I wasn't really doing the escape that I was looking for, you know, getting away from work for a little bit.
So I started to write this book and I pretty much had everything written down.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:30
2
Who is James Telfer and what motivated him to write *The National Divorce*?
2:30–10:09
3
How did a Bill Maher segment spark the idea for a fictional national split?
10:09–23:55
4
What does the novel’s dystopian future (2034‑2035) look like and why did he choose that timeline?
23:55–27:41
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci
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