‘The Night Agent’: Is It a True Story And Does the Night Action Program Really Exist?
Right now, it seems you’ve never more than two days away from the launch of a gritty spy series. In the last month alone we’ve seen Black Doves, The Agency, The Last Day Of The Jackal, Slow Horses season 4 – and that’s just off the top of our heads.
Well, better make room for more espionage, as Netflix's The Night Agent (not to be confused with Tom Hiddleston’s long-awaited comeback of The Night Manager) has just arrived on our screens.
The series is based on Matthew Quirk’s 2019 novel of the same name, featuring an agent called Peter Sutherland (played by Gabriel Basso) who is part of a mysterious department housed in the basement of the White House called The Night Action program, on call 24/7 for undercover investigations into US officials. But how much of The Night Agent is true, and is there really a Night Action department under the Prez’s house?
Fictional, but inspired by a real-life contact
The short answer is that no, The Night Agent is not a true story. However! While the plot and characters are entirely fictional, author Matthew Quirk says it was inspired by a real-life contact who worked in national security.
Speaking with Therealbookspy.com he said: “The plot was inspired by a friend of mine in DC who worked an overnight shift at the FBI. He didn’t talk much about his job back then, but from what I was able to pick up, he was part of a night watch, charged with staying on top of any breaking crises and if need be waking up the director. That idea really stuck with me: a young guy sitting by a phone all night every night, waiting for his moment. What happens when the phone rings, and he’s suddenly dropped into the middle of an emergency, face-to-face with the most powerful people in Washington?”
So, is there an actual Night Action department in the FBI? Obviously, Homeland Security would be highly unlikely to reveal that kind of information, as it would negate the covert nature of operations. But, from Quirk’s research, it doesn’t seem like such a stretch.
“For research, I talked to my friend and his job actually turned out to be quite a bit more interesting and hush-hush than I had suspected, one of the several factors which led me to place the novel's action in the White House Situation Room," he went on to say. "I also talked to FBI and CIA people about what happens on these night watches and in the Situation Room during a crisis, and how a counterintelligence scenario like the one in the book would play out.”
It’s not a yes, but then it’s not a no. We just can’t ever really know for sure – and that’s probably just the way the FBI like it.
The Night Agent season 2 streams on Netflix from January 23.
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