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Great question. I had heard the phrase, “you have to kill your darlings,” in reference to writers’ having to alter or diminish their characters in the editing process. Well, I really came to understand it when someone suggested I make my main male character, Sergei, “a player.” I quickly said, “He would never cheat on his wife…” And when I said that, I realized I was a writer and had connected with my chracters.
Another challenge comes when an editor suggests you reduce the back story on one of your characters (e.g., 30 pages of text) to two or three sentences. I had to do that with at least three characters, and it was both, initiallly disheartening, and then in fact very difficult to do.

I think that question has to remain a bit of a secret, but, suffice to say, that I drew significantly on my own background, but without referring to any specific cases I worked on.
The Agency’s Publications Review Board (PRB) has to review anything written and published by CIA officers, no matter how long retired. It is a necessary but annoying process primarily because, at least for me, the process took so long. Langley had my manuscript for 13 months and then came back with two corrections.

The novels I read—and TV espionage stories I view—tend to veer away from reality and fact. Collecting intelligence is like being an archeologist looking for the big find. You go bit by bit, shard by shard, and then, if lucky, find the whole tomb. What I am saying is that espionage stories do not really flow at the pace required to make a novel or TV/movie production of enough interest to hold an audience. It’s invariably a slow process.
When I see/read surveillance scenes and watch some of the contact processes set ups (telephones et al) used by the characters, I am almost always critical that they are not thorough or protective enough, not clandestine enough.