Brad Meltzer’s Inner Circle

Appeared in JPS Magazine – March 2011 Edition

Must Read: Brad researched his newest thriller, The Inner Circle, while working with the Department of Homeland Security . He also had the help of a former President of the United States.

JIM: We were just talking about Decoded, and I have to tell you the DB Cooper episode was fantastic, if I could read your mind I’d guess that even you feel that you found the real DB Cooper even though he had passed away.  How is that show working for you and what was your favorite episode?

BRAD: You actually know me better than you even think.  That was actually my wife’s favorite episode.  What happened was, a couple of years ago, I came out with a book called “The Book of Fate.” And one of the heads of the History Channel, who read the novel — it had freemasons in it, and the secret codes that Thomas Jefferson used when he was President — said, ‘I want to do a show based on the Book of Fate.’   They came to me and said, ‘Give us your ten best mysteries and we’ll give you a team to solve them.’  So every week on the History Channel — Thursday nights at 10pm/9 Central — we get to solve a different mystery.

One of them, like you said, is we did DP Cooper.  I actually loved that episode, and the great part is that the brother, who was on the show, who said that his brother is DB Cooper, has been e-mailing me now since that show aired finding new things that he’s even more convinced than ever. So it is just amazing — you feel you’re putting a little bit of a new piece of quilt on that quilt that is American history. That (episode) was my wife’s favorite.

My favorite episode I’ll tell you though?  I still love the John Wilkes Booth one.  We did one a couple of years ago. When you write thrillers — I write mysteries and thrillers for a living– you get a lot of crazy mail ,right?  One of the pieces of e-mail that I got through our website was from a guy who said, ‘I’m a lawyer who’s representing John Wilkes Booth family’, and this was not crazy mail. He said to me, ‘And we have a reason to believe that it may not be John Wilkes Booth that is buried in that coffin. Do you want to hear our story?’  You better believe I want to hear that story.  I found out that there was a point in time where Americans paid real money to see a mummified version of John Wilkes Booth. You say the word John Wilkes Booth and the word mummy in the same sentence and I am listening.

We actually checked to see if John Wilkes Booth actually died or not — twelve days after he shot Abraham Lincoln. And I rolled my eyes just as I’m sure many people are going ‘Oh c’mon, that’s silly, that’s crazy.’ But we got one of John Wilkes Booth’s relatives on the air and you see this 90-year-old sweet as can be woman look at the camera and say, ‘When I was little my family told me that we had a secret in our family, and I was related to John Wilkes Booth, and that he escaped, and that we could never tell anyone.’  He never died. Man, anyone who watches that episode has a brand new take on it. That one just blew me away.

JIM: I have to tell you there are a lot of people, and I’ve been a journalist now for 30 or more years, that I’ve said ‘Wow I’d really like to do that guy’s job.’ Well you’re fast rising as the guy. Even your comic book writing, I’m a big Marvel fan. But I want to ask you about your being all over the news about being recruited by the CIA.
Was it because they wanted to know how to go about attacking our country?  What was this all about?

BRAD: It’s pretty incredible. This is actually what led to the new novel.  I got a call a couple of years ago from someone from the Department of Homeland Security and they asked me to come and brainstorm different ways that terrorists could attack the United States. And my first thought was, Jim, if they’re calling me then we have bigger problems than anybody thinks, right? (laughs)

But I was honored to be part of what they called the Red Cell program.  The Red Cell program brings together out-of-the-box thinkers — people who think of things differently.  They put us together — they put me with a secret service agent and a chemist, and we’d have to brainstorm. They would give us something to attack, and I would come up with my crazy idea. The chemist would come up with his. The secret service guy would say, ‘No, this is a better way in.‘ We’d destroy a major city in the matter of an hour.  It is not one of those days where you go home excited. You go home terrified because you see how easy it is to kill us.

What I was struck by when I was doing Red Cell was that I was amazed that they were calling people like myself — just regular ordinary people. Yeah, maybe my novels have the secret tunnels below the White House, and there are great little details like that in there — and so maybe they saw that and realized I do my homework. But I’m just a regular person, and I started looking  through history to see where does that idea start.

And it started, Jim, with a man named George Washington. He had his own spy ring — a secret spy ring.  He said, ‘Don’t give me military guys, give me regular ordinary people because no one will look twice at them.’ This spy ring is not in the history books because they kept their secrets and took them to the grave… and nobody knew about them.

So I said to the guys at Homeland Security, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if in my new novel — it’s a mystery, it’s a thriller, it’s fictional — but wouldn’t it be great that if you find in the Inner Circle — you find out that George Washington’s spy ring still exists to this very day.  And the guy I was talking to said, ‘What makes you think it doesn’t, Brad.’  And that’s where the little hairs go up on the back of your neck and I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he said, ‘Listen, it’s one of George Washington’s greatest success stories. Why would he ever disband it?’ That’s when I said I got the plot for my new novel.

That’s what the Inner Circle as a book is. It’s a thriller, where a young archivist in the national archives, finds out that George Washintgton’s secret spy ring still exists to this very day,  He doesn’t know who runs them or who they are working for, but the greatest secret of the Presidency is about to be revealed and that’s where the book opens.

JIM: The Inner Circle, it just came out.

BRAD: Yes, it just came out. We’re really excited.  What I did was I asked the guys I worked with to help me design this spy ring today.  So we can make it realistic.  Even though it’s fiction and it’s a thriller I love getting the details right.  I found this amazing story, that Ronald Reagan, during his last moments in the White House, wrote a secret note that said, ‘Don’t let the turkeys get you down’. He slipped it into the oval office desk; and he left that note for incoming President George H.W. Bush.  So when he left office — left a secret note for Clinton, — who left one for George W. Bush –  who left one for President Obama. It’s the greatest private tradition of the modern Presidency.

I happened to get a letter a couple of years ago from former President Bush Sr., the Dad, who said to me, ‘I like your novels Brad. Would you mind signing a copy for me.’ I said, ‘You’re the former President of the United States?  I’ll send you a free copy.  I’ll send you some comic books too.’ And I sent them, and he helped me with some research for one of the novels. So this time I went back to him and said, ‘Sir, I’m working on a new novel. It’s called The Inner Circle. Could you help me? This is what I want to know.’ I said, ‘You know those secret letters you guys wrote to each other as President?  Could I move George Washington’s spy ring? Could that be the way you could tell each other that that it is still around?’  And I wait for my response.  My e-mail lights up and an email pops in, and it says, ‘He wants you to have this.’ I check the attachment and what President Bush sends me is the secret letter that he left for Bill Clinton, never before seen by anyone.

JIM: Oh c’mon! You’re the luckiest guy on the planet.

BRAD: Trust me, that’s how I felt that day. The funny part was, Jim, the first thing I thought was, ‘Oh My Gosh, he sent me a secret code, right?’  I thought for sure that’s what he did. So I checked to see. I did what we do on Decoded.  I checked to see if there were Freemason codes in there. I checked to see if there were Thomas Jefferson’s old code.  I checked to see if every third word letter of each word spelled out, ‘I hate you Bill.’ I mean anything. And there was no code in there, but it was an amazing letter.
What I loved is, it really helped inform how my President should act, and who he is as a person. And those details are exactly what I put into The Inner Circle as a novel.

JIM:  I’ve sat with that President and many people in the know tell me he knows ‘where all the bodies are’ if you don’t mind that expression. So what an influence for your novels for you to have the chance to be talking with him.
OK, your style of writing.  You seem to have a to-the-point style — almost like an old detective novel.  Maybe a Hemingway, ex-cop, comic-book-writer blend or something.  You purposely don’t get into the big flowery descriptions.  Why not?

BRAD: Y’know, it’s just what I like to read and how I communicate.  I’m just not a person who says the building is filled with an ancient old brick … from … I don’t care about that. Tell me what’s happening.  I’m just a straight-to-the-point guy.  What I like and I appreciate: Get to the point, tell me the story, show me the secret.

I was researching the National Archives — a couple of days ago — and they handed me a sheet of paper and they said, ‘Guess who wrote this?’ It was just a white sheet of paper with a pencil  drawing of what looked like a map, and I said, ‘I don’t know, who wrote it?’ And they said, ‘I’ll give you a hint. It’s an escape route.’ I said, ‘I have no idea.’ And they said it was John Wilkes Booth.

It was one of the things they found in his hotel room. They have these amazing documents in the National Archives.  I asked how they store it all, and they said the issue is not about space, it’s about temperature.  That’s the big cost factor. So what they have are underground caves, all across the country.  I was like, ‘You’re telling me you have secret underground caves all across the country?  I want to see those caves. Let’s go!’

When you read the last 100 pages of The Inner Circle — and you see those underground caves — what you see is real. As I describe the cave — it’s real.  I dressed up the archives room because it was in transition at the moment, but it’s real. And what you see in the very back of the cave is real too.  I love those details. To me, there’s nothing more scary than a story that can really happen.  So to your question — I just love getting to those details.  I think people want to see that more than some silly flowery description that’s just going to bog you down.  I’d rather you get to the point.