Speaker 1: Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and
death spy stories and the amazing devices and operations that
made them possible. Now let's get started.
Speaker 2: Welcome back everybody. Today, we have a great guest, Barry
Broman B ro O M A N. He's the author
of a book called risk Taker, Spy Maker Tales of
a CIA Case Officer. That's right, we have ourselves a spy.
So he's going to be telling us this story about
his book again, a great book called risk Taker, Spy
Maker Tales of a CIA Case Officer. So let's learn
a little bit more about Bear because he's got a
lot of it. He's got a pretty intriguing background. Was
a teenage photographer I lost it, I had it and
I lost it, folks, teenage photographer for the Associated Press
and Southeast Asia, and a Marine Corps infantry officer in
combat and v not before spending a quarter century as
a headhunter with dozens of recruits for the clandestine Service
and operations around the world. Mister Browman received a BA
in political science in nineteen sixty seven, followed by an
m in Southeast Asian study. So there's no one really
better to tell us what was going on in Southeast
Asia in those days. Maybe can even give us some
insight on what's going on today. But before we get started,
make sure to share a subscribe hit that like button.
You know, we like it and it's not wasting any
more time.
Speaker 3: Opening with the show, Berry Browman, Welcome, sir, good to
be here at Carlos.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for doing this. And I forgot
to mention before the show, thank you very much for
your service as well. All right, so let's do this first.
I always get curious what motivated individuals to join the
Three Letter Agency. I always remember, I don't know how
young you were at that time, but I remember the
show I Spy and Mission Impossible with Peter Graves. Those
were those any influences.
Speaker 3: At all on you? R? None at all, not at all.
Those are Those are pure fiction and a little bit
funny in times, but nothing connected to the real world. Now.
In my case, I was in graduate school studying for
my MA at the University of Washington in sixty seven.
I'd already been commissioned in the Marine Corps, but the
Marine Corps and their wisdom, decided to let me go
for a masters. I speak Thai, and while I was
in grad school, an elderly professor of mine, old old
China Hand, asked if I was interested in the CIA,
and I had frankly, I wasn't. I was actually planning
to stay with the Associated Press and go to Tokyo.
But this guy said I should talk to the CIA.
There's a recruiter in the Northwest at that time, so
he set it up and I met the guy and
he said, look, you're the guy we're looking for. You've
got Asian experience any more. You got to you get
your master's degree, You've got language, and you've got people's skills.
And I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm
a lieutenant in the Marine Corps. I'm going to War
Okay next year. And the guy said, take my card.
Handing me his card, he said, if you live, call
this number six months before you get out of the
Marine Corps. So I survived Vietnam, even though I extended
my tour there, and I came out. I was a
made captain in the Corps. I was a company commander
at Camp Pendleton in seventy one, and I remembered this
guy and as a whim, I had six months to go.
I called the number. Didn't expect it, didn't expect to
talk to anybody that knew me. And the guy came on.
He said, wait, let me get your file. So he
comes back. He said, okay, tell me what's happening. I said,
I'm getting out of the corps in six months and
you said to call. He said, are you still interested?
I said, I am, but only to be an OPS officer.
I don't want to be an analyst in Washington. He said, okay,
meet me at the Coronado Hotel in San Diego Thursday
at six o'clock. We'll have a drink. I met him
and he signed me up. And so fifteen days after
I got out of the Marine Corps, I was in
the CIA for the next twenty five years.
Speaker 2: Wow, well you enjoyed it, obviously I did.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed every minute. Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know what you can tell us on this.
I know most of the stuff I usually don't get
very much and a former officers, But what was it like?
What can you share about What was it like the
first six months to a year being in the CIA.
I mean, it was it difficult training, It was a
lot of physicality, was it a lot of intellectual what
was going on?
Speaker 3: Anything you can share, Okay, Now, it's kind of like
joining a fraternity. I was in a fraternity in college.
And when you join the Clandestine Service of the CIA,
and I think it's pretty much the same now, although
there have been a number of changes. You belong to
an area division, So in my case, I went to
East Asia Division, and that is your home base for
pretty much your career. When you get into senior ranks,
then you can pretty much go anywhere, but for a
long time you're home based in your division. And they
give you a couple of temporary assignments ninety days each
one in the DdO, the Directorate of Operations at that time,
and these are your spies. And then you get thirty
six now ninety days with the DDI, the Director of
intelligen and these are the analysts. And in my case,
I was lucky enough to be on the Cambodia desk
of both, and so I saw the raw reporting coming
in from the field, and then I saw how that
reporting was massaged and turned into fixed, final finished intelligence
by the DDI. And then when you're through with these
two interim assignments, and this is part of the career
training program of CIA, the CT program, and this is
kind of the a track for career people. Then you
decide you want to go d d O. DDI in
my case was always DdO. I had very good people.
I was working with them, in touch with some of
them today, including my main mentor it'll be ninety seven
in July. Dan Arnold was his name. Dan was wounded
in the Marine Corps and forty four in the Pacific,
worn strong. And so I went DdO. And when you
do that, the next thing is the Basic Ops course.
This is training, intense training to learn to be an
intelligence recruiter and handler of agents and producing intelligence, running agents,
recruiting agents. And this takes place at our training facility,
which we call the Farm. And it was the best
training I ever had. And that includes basic officer training
in the Marine Corps, which I thought was the best.
It was more interesting, more fun, and less hazardous. At CIA.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me, I guess I got blittney of questions
before we move on to your book in a second here,
But who did you report to? I guess out there
you can you even mention that.
Speaker 3: Well in the field. In the field, we have stations. Okay,
stations are run by the chief of station as a
deputy chief of station, and depending on the size, we
have one man's stations in some little countries that most
people never heard of, and we have huge stations and
places where we're having wars like Vietnam and Iraq and
you name it. But in my career, I was twice
chief of station, once deputy chief of station, and twice
a branch chief, and then once I ran a clandestine
covert action paramilitary program with my own staff.
Speaker 2: A curiosity. Again, I don't know how much you can share.
But when you were doing the intelligence training and the
office tream recruitment training, do they teach you folks body
language things, to be able to read people at all,
anything like that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of hands on. To be a
successful case officer, you need to be a bit of
a salesman. You've got to be able to get the
person's trust when you're recruiting them because very often their
life is in your hands. And there's an old MI
six office or I worked with on a successful hard
target operation. I traveled with this guy for a couple
of weeks tracking a target that the Brits had been
after for twenty years, and I learned more. I learned
a lot at the farm, but I learned more practical
stuff sitting at at the feet of this superior British
case officer. And the theme that I've taken up many
times with my own junior officers was to convince them
that we are in the business of making dreams come true.
Everybody has a dream, whether you're a KGB officer, or
you're a past over professor, or you know you've got
an your dreams for yourself, your family, your future. You
need to find that dream and very often the CIA
can make that dream come true, whether it means coming
to the States with your family after serving in place,
maybe in Moscow or other places. And we have a
lot of opportunities available to these people, and it's a
matter of learning what they want and being able to
convince them to make the big step.
Speaker 2: Fascinating stuff, fascinating Did you work? Did you working with
the I six?
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it immensely. Now I had been a schoolboy
in England for four years when my father, an Air
Force officer, was the Engineer Office Engineering officer for RAF
menstin on the English channel. So I had four years
at a boys prep school in England which trained me
and learned it met me playing cricket. I got into
the Seattle Cricket Club in the Bangkok Royal Bangkok Sports
Club ticket team years later. So I think that is
one of the reasons I was tapped to go out
on this joint operation with I six because I had
this British background and the operation went well. It's in
my book. I won't tell you what happened. It's kind
of a weird situation. Make a good movie someday, but
I really enjoyed working with I six in particularly with
that officer.
Speaker 2: That's always the tough part about when we bring authors
on is we don't want to give everything away, right
And the book again folks called risk Taker, Spy Maker
Tales of a CA Case Officer written by Barry Michael Broman.
Bro m Am, I guess my last question before we
start hitting into the book and what motivated you to
write it and tell us about the story a little bit,
is I'm curiosity. Today's where we get direct deposit? I
always wondered I never asked for some reason, I always
forget to ask case officers. But how did you guys
get your money? Did you get like a check mail
to you or do they have direct deposit? Fifty years ago,
we didn't know about her.
Speaker 3: Okay. Most of our case officers in the field are undercover.
In my case, I was under State Department cover, so
I got to check every month from the State Department.
Speaker 2: But it went somewhere like your primary residence or.
Speaker 3: Went to my bank, went directly to my bank. And
then when when we're that's just sort of you know, housekeeping,
that's how it's done. But when we're running operations, of course,
I have another bank account that belongs to the agency,
and all of the money that goes to paying agents
salaries and travel and entertainment that comes out of your
ops fund.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you have a certain balance you get to
play with or do you have to actually mark on
everything you've been spending? So if you take somebody.
Speaker 3: Account for every penny, okay. And having said that, it's
quite generous. In the agency, we had free, free accommodations,
sometimes vehicles. Staff covered lots of entertaining travel. So it
can be a very useful career.
Speaker 2: I can see why. Twenty five years.
Speaker 3: All right, So tell us about what motivated you write
this book in this particular story. Well, this book is
a memoir, Okay, this basically covers my life a number
of people. I'm a storyteller, Okay, I've got a lot
of stories. I've got hundreds of jokes. I even mentioned
a Russian joke. A gru Russian military intelligence colonel told
me a great story, and that's in my book. So
it's a collection of stories. In fact, I'm working on
a sequel to the memoir. It should be out next
year after my novel comes out later this fall, and
it basically tells the Barry Broman story, starting as a
kid in school in England and then ap photographer at
eighteen in Bangkok, and then a Marine Infantry officer in
Vietnam in sixty nine, and then quarter of a century
with the agency running, mostly running and recruiting agents recruited
over forty and then the last twenty five years, I've
had a career in still dealing with Asia, but consulting
doing this and that. I've done a dozen books, mostly
photo books. Nine documentary films I did in Burma and Thailand.
And so that's about all of those things. The people
I met along the way. That's basically that story.
Speaker 2: So what was going on in Cambodia when they decided
to send you over there?
Speaker 3: Well, my first posting in the agency, well, i'll go
back to ap Ape sixty two sixty three. I was
based as a Bangkok stringer. I wasn't staff, I was
locally hired and I was paid when employed, and so
that was Bangkok. But I had an assignment to Cambodia
in sixty three and the correspondent who was supposed to
do the writing for the story didn't make it out
of Saigon in time. So I got my first byline
writing the story out of Cambodia when the President of
China liushout Si came down to Cambodia and I covered
that for AP So that was my baptism. That Ten
years later to the day, on one May seventy three,
I was back in Cambodia with the CIA under State
Department covered and I was there until Cambodia fell in
seventy five, which time I made it out barely. Actually,
I was on the last fixed wing plane before the
choppers came in. I took out some people, took out
some documents, and so then I followed Cambodia from Bangkok
for about five years, and then ultimately in the eighties,
I was in Paris and I worked at Cambodia Target.
This is at a time when we were working with
the resistance against the Vietnamese who had occupied Cambodia in
seventy nine, and so we were with there were actually
two different groups, the Royalists and the Nationalists were allied
against the Vietnamese, and I was tapped to run that
program in nineteen ninety one with three of our Asian allies,
and we had about thirty thousand men under arms that
we supported, and we won. In ninety one, the Vietnamese
agreed to ceasefire and the UN came in and supervised
free and fair elections in Cambodia, which resulted in a
win for our Royalist faction, and ultimately I felt justified
spending all those years on the Cambodia Target.
Speaker 2: Anything in Cambodia that stood out for you, any kind
of recruitment, anything at all that you were like, this
is a this is all worth it, or this.
Speaker 3: Is well, it's scary. But I've been in the Marines
in Vietnam and been shot at and missed, and the
physical danger didn't wear me too much, although we were
taken up to two hundred rockets a day and at
the end and we've been surrounded for a year, and
we had the Marine Corps had a plan to come
and get us, and ultimately they did and we got out.
We didn't lose anybody, but it was it was an
intense time because of the fighting and death and destruction
all around. I handled some of the senior reporting assets
a Bank of Penn station, and that was interesting. I
had a chief of station who was a patrician from
South Carolina and a marvelous fellows spoke fluent French, educated
in France, and his motto was give them their intelligence
with their coffee. And Panom Penn was twelve hours ahead
of Washington, d C. So nine in the morning in
Washington was nine at night in Panom Penn, and a
lot of my meetings were safe house meetings in the evening,
and in a normal environment I would have written the
stuff up and sent it out the next morning, but
the boss said to get their coffee, with their intelligence,
with their coffee, so I would dash into the station,
write it up and then go to the chief of
stations home, which was nearby, and he would read it
invariably chop on it, very few changes made. Then I'd
take it back to the embassy and send it out
so that they would get it fresh with their coffee.
Speaker 2: Now, if I remember correctly, you were also a chief
of station twice or something.
Speaker 3: I was chief twice, once at one of our domestic
stations in the US, and later my final posting, I
was chief of station in Rangoon, Burma, which was another
interesting place because there the target was opium heroin and
we ran some very successful operations in this case with
the Burmese. But earlier I was back in Thailand running
operations with the Thaie against heroin traffickers. My first operation
with one of my Thai sources yielded five hundred and
fifty one kilos of heroin and the second olf was
three hundred kilos and a good a good bust for
DEA in Bangkok would be twenty kilos. So that was
a that was a go go time for Asian operations
in counter narcotics.
Speaker 2: That's huge. How long was that operation?
Speaker 3: Well, that was just one bust. Okay, we in this
case we're working with the royal type police and in
cooperation in liaison, as we say. And so I had
a very good old personal friend, senior police officer who
outdid himself and his cooperation with the US.
Speaker 2: I was it working with time police. Did you notice
some differences between them and the US or how they
handled things anything?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's a lot different. But one thing, most
of the type police, I'm just going to say this
for the record, a corrupt. Okay. They don't get much pay.
They have to augment their pay some times it can
be serious. In the case of my friend, he had
independent wealth. He was always he's always been known as
the most honest cop in Thai police history.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Of course, no money changed hands. This is a government
to government thing. But he risked his life for us
several times. Now I have to say that's working with
the Tay police, and I enjoyed every minute of that.
I spent more time on the Cambodia project as we
called it, working with the Thai army. And in that case,
here we've got I'm dealing with four major generals. One
of them went to vm I, Virginia Military Institute. One
of them went to Sandhurst. The British Military Academy. One
of them was a finance major from the US, and
the worth guy went to the time military Academy. But
he was very, very unusual in that his father was
a member of the Central Committee of the Thai Communist Party.
In fact, he was fighting against his dad then he was.
And all four of those generals I worked with retired
as four star generals. And the guy I mentioned he retired,
see he'd been He retired as chief of the Army,
but later became Prime Minister and really a fantastic guy.
So I was really lucky in working with some of
the best people at that time.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, how was the How was the Cambodian military or
police ever engage with them at all?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the Cambodians were smaller, they had less training.
It was. It was very tough. And so again I
was lucky to to work with some good guys in
the resistance. One of them had been a fighter pilot
and suddenly he finds himself as chief of staff of
the army. He had about ten twelve thousand people under
his command. Was an excellent guy. I dealt with him
in French. I spoke French with the Khmer and tie
with the tie. But he went into the attack one
day and had a heart attack and I was in
Bangkok when it happened, and I was notified by one
of his cardinals up on the border, and they evacuated
him to Thailand and he woke up in a Thai
hospital and three days later discharged himself and went back
to the front. Okay, and he lived. He survived the war,
became a governor in Cambodi. After the war. He helped
me on a couple of my civilian projects as a
consultant for the Orient Express. Another great guy. So I
built with.
Speaker 2: Some good people, really tough people. Man. I know there's
a mention about your favorite agents. It's something about that
he demanded a silence that would be life threatening.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In my book, I have a story about the
guy I call my favorite agent. Everybody's got Every case
officer has a favorite agent. This is a guy who's
a European and I met him through a State Department
officer who bumped into him at luncheon. He said, I
met the strangest guy last night at this cocktail party.
You got to meet him because he's too good to
be true. I mean if he's telling the truth about
what he's been doing. You got to meet him and
he's and the guy had an Asia connection. So through
the State guy, I meet this fellow and right away
this is bullshit. This guy cannot be telling the truth.
But he was a pleasant guy and an older guy,
and I respected him even though I didn't believe it.
So we had lunch and he brought photos and Jesus Christ,
it was unbelievable. The people he knew, I won't say,
I can't say who they were, but they were really
of interest to the CIA. So now I considered him
a this is a target, This is a guy we
really need to work with. So after a number of
meetings and this and that, I had approval to pitch
him to try to recruit him. And he smiled. When
I pitched him, he smiled and he said okay. He said,
I was hoping you were CIA, okay, because you know,
you say your state and I'm not really interested in
helping the State Department. And I said, well, you know
this is You've got these interesting connections around the world,
and I can see you know where it would be
very useful for you to be working for us secretly
and of course you know we we pay well. And
he said, okay, well I can work for you. Don't
worry about the money. You you pay me what it's worth. Okay.
You give me an assignment and then you decide what
it's worth. Now that's I've never seen that before. Money said,
but I do have one condition. And I said to myself,
I knew it. I knew it too good to be true.
I said, Okay, what's the condition? He said, I I
will only accept assignments that are life threatening. Okay. If
if my life isn't, send somebody else, okay. And so
I said, well, maybe maybe we can do that. So
my my very first I would call it a trial mission. Uh.
Mission took place in Asia where we could use a
guy with his particular skill set in a life threatening
situation which he almost got caught. He almost got would
have been shot on the spot, but he didn't. He survived.
And then I sent him on another mission, and in
another part of the world. And he went in with
a fairly narrow set of instructions which he accomplished and more,
much much more. And he came back. And first of all,
he was late coming back. We thought he had been killed.
It was in a war situation that he survived, and
I said, well, why were you so he said, I
loved it. I loved him minute those little guys, I
love him. And so that was the second mission, and
then another mission. He came to me and he said, look,
I know a guy who can get me in with
this group and it's a group of terrorists. And I said, okay,
well let me check with headquarters because this is outside
my area of knowledge. So I went back to the
headquarters and they came back and said, well, you know,
we'd love we'd love to have a guy go where
he says he could go, but we cannot support this
because we've never had a guy come back alive. So
I went, I went to my agent. I said, you know,
they'd like you to go, but they won't because it's
too dangerous. And he said, okay, I'm going. Okay, i'll
take I'll pay my way and if I live, and
you pay me what you think is worth. And he
lived and ultimately I turned him over. You know, my
tour was up, and I turned him over to another
officer and I never gave it a thought. You know,
his life goes on, years go by. I'm in Washington.
It's a ninety three. Maybe I'm chief of the Tiberma
branch at East Asia phone rings And a guy says,
are you mister so and so? And he uses my
work name and I said, it's me. He's on a
secure line, but it's me. He said, well you must
you must know so and so, and he uses this
guy's pseudonym. And I said, yes, you recruited him, right,
I said, I did. Is he still alive. Not only
is he still alive, we're giving him a medal and
he want and he's in Washington and he wants you
to be at the presentation. And then we took him
out to a big dinner. They brought him into the
building black and I went up in the director's private elevator.
That medal ceremony, A medal I never heard of.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: It took him back because he can't keep it. I
kept in touch with him until he passed away. He
was the best.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that's that's saying something. We have a
CIA case officer who doesn't even know about the medal either.
Speaker 3: It's not in the list of awards that you know.
I can get her other off. It's a special award.
Speaker 2: That's intense. You know, I've only heard that type of
a personality in a couple situations. Obviously, I'm a forensic
psych so I've heard psychopaths, but I don't want to
give him that label. But I've heard special forces tend
to do that a lot. They tend to wish the
Delta Force guys, I really love getting in the middle
of things. They're a little different than some of the
other special Forces guys against for the thrill.
Speaker 3: He lived for the three and he was married. After
he retired. He had a girlfriend for years and when
I sent him on his first mission, I knew about
this girl and I said, look, if you if you
get killed, you want me to tell her? No, bury
me where I fall. That's what he said. And then
when when he got his medal, he was married and
I said, toward the end, I know he knew he
was dying, and we were talking and I said, now
do you want me to when you pass, you want
me to tell her? He said, no, no, she has
no need to know.
Speaker 2: And he died.
Speaker 3: And to this day this woman doesn't know what she had.
Speaker 2: Oh man, would you consider him because there are difference
between brave and fearless. Somebody just doesn't have any fear,
but somebody was brave at the same way. Would you
think about him, Well, I mean he lived on the edge.
Speaker 3: You know, he had a very successful career apart from
being oh yeah, internationally known. There is a guy that
wants to do a film about it. Wanted to not now,
but I wanted to do a film about him, not
knowing he worked for the CIA. Wow, he liked living
on the edge, and he talked himself. You know, he
was He'd been arrested in various places and he always
got out. He always got out. He escaped from this
group that I was initially dubious about him, evering had
kind of he escaped from them, the only person ever
ever escaped.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. That's fun again, folks. The book Tales of
a CIA Case Officer, risk Taker, Spymaker by Barry Michael
Broman b R. O. M A. D. Let me ask
you this, Barry, as we get ready starting to wrap
it up a little bit, I want to ask you
some stuff. I guess a bunch of questions I want
to tie up in my head that I have in
regards to we talked way ago about body language, but
did you notice a lot. Was it a big problem
culturally initially going into Cambodia and trying to recruit because
you have to understand the culture of the individuals. You
have to understand possibly the role religion plays, the role
of their in the family that they play, it was
patriarchal society and so forth. Was that initially a challenge
at all? Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely. One of the strengths of the agency, as
I said, is you're an area specialist. You know, you
spend your career in my day in that area. So
then in my case, I had a master's, I knew
a lot about Thai culture history, et cetera, et cetera.
Same with Cambodia. They have some shared history. But you
definitely a language helps a lot. Most of my Cambodian
recruitments were in French, which was actually the official language
of the government at that time. But you definitely have
to appreciate their culture history and you have to know
their individual situation, aspiration, the dreams and all that. And
then you have to I don't say you have to
like the people, but you have to make them like you,
or at least trust you with their life. And so
now that's why I after two weeks in Bangkok in
nineteen sixty two, I said I'm going to be at
Asia hand in college. My freshman year of college, I
was going to be a South America especially forget that
I'm an Indo China guy. And after I retired from government,
I spent years making films, doing books, doing work in
Southeast Asia. And that's that's my area. That's what I like.
Speaker 2: I've talked to other case officers before, and we've sometimes
they've share this. Sometimes I've asked them myself after I
learned really about this, was there any money you recruited
that you thought, oh crap, this isn't going to work out,
or oh man, this guy's in really danger or girl
was in real danger. Any moments like that at all
for you that you could share.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, recruiting agents for the CIA is not
like batting for the Pittsburgh Pirates. You know, I have
three one hundred percentage doesn't cut it, Okay, you don't.
You don't want to be turned down because if you're caught,
or let's say the person you pitch turns you into
the local intelligence service, you're gone. You know, you're out
of country in twenty four hours persona non grada. So
you've got to be fairly confident that that they're not
going to turn you down. The worst case would be
getting thrown out. But so I'm forty one for forty one. Okay,
Oh wow, I look at it, and probably probably the
best agent that I will have ever recruited. I've recruited
after I retired, and I sort of gave them to
the agency and that case is still running.
Speaker 2: Oh Jesus, we won't ask much about that one. Was
there any I didn't.
Speaker 3: Lose any I didn't lose any agents, No, nobody. Nobody
was arrested, and so I'm happy.
Speaker 2: Okay, that kills them. My next question, I thought I
was going to get through. Then a couple of other
case officers I think they had one time with one
of their agents was in a really hairy situation and
they were really getting work. Is you developed relationships with
some of them, You actually do care about them, you
want to protect them as well? Right?
Speaker 3: Well? Absolutely. Now. One of my one of my cases
was in Cambodia and at the end, you know, things
were falling apart. We knew the war was over. Congress
had cut off financial support. So Cambodia was screwed. And
the people in it that did support us, they were screwed.
And a lot of these people died. And one of
my agents was a senior military officer. In our last meeting,
he pulled out a gun and I thought, this is
this is not going to end well.
Speaker 2: And he said.
Speaker 3: I got on on aircraft about three days later and
he said, this is my side arm. I want you
to have it. I don't want the kamer rouge to
have it. I want you to take this gun and
remember me from this weapon. And he didn't leave. He
didn't surrender, but he was killed.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: We offered him a ride out and he didn't take it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this next question, you have to be careful. I
guess make sure your wife's not around in case depending
on your answer. But did you ever get into any
honeypot situations?
Speaker 3: No? This is that's a term coined by John Lecare. Okay,
in fact, a man who I defeated at darts in
panom Pen in nineteen seventy four when he was researching
the Honorable Schoolboy, and I found him a charming fellow
and not much of a dart player. But when you're
when you're an Eaton graduate, you don't play darts. Okay,
oh honeypot no, we don't do that, okay, agency, that's
not one of.
Speaker 2: Our If you were a target, oh.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no, no, I was, but we
don't know. We don't do that to others. They do
it to us, and the Russians have been successful over
the years in dangling uh women. But no, it was
never there.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I knew a marine general who had been the naval
in Moscow years ago, and he was a bachelor, and
he told me that every week they say is they
threw women at me? And I caught everyone. There was
no threat, There's no there was. He wasn't breaking any laws,
he wasn't being unfaithful to his wife. He was a bachelor,
and finally the Russians gave up.
Speaker 2: I guess it's safe to say you were in a
Romeo spy either, as they call him.
Speaker 3: The real story is a lot different than Hollywood story.
Speaker 2: That's my last question, at least the last direction to
go a little bit is I was curious with CIA
officers watch if they watch anything at all, because I
know there's movies like Taking Born Identity, which kind of
insinuates the three letter agents.
Speaker 3: So I don't speak for the guys. You know, we
appreciate good stories. I mean the Hunt for Red October,
not espionage, but it's a great story. And in fact,
I was reading the book when I was a young
officer and I got on an aircraft four US Navy
captains in uniform and there were all sub mariners, and
I held the book up to one of my I said, Skipper,
you read this book. He said, Son, that's so goddamn
true it scares me.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: We appreciate good books, you know, The Born Identity nothing,
no bearing on reality, but it's a good tale. And
then we appreciate that. And then there's just Joe, you know,
the whole James Bond stuff that was kind of written
as a spoof, initially by a good intelligence off in Fleming,
Royal Navy World War two intelligence officer. But there's no
bearing on reality. We don't Those guys don't exist.
Speaker 2: I've been blessed enough to interview Nigel West. You probably
heard of super nice guy. But I guess it's the
first question, first time I've ever asked anybody is the
first TME I ever thought about it, So I guess
you'll be the first AI case officer, I asked, But
I have talked about BOND to everybody else. You know. No, No,
it's nothing, nothing in roll real the interesting thing. I
actually two comments I want to ask you. One, do
you think it actually helps the spots? Because he was so.
Speaker 4: Outrageous, so exaggerated of a figure that people would look
at somebody else who's just average and think he's never
going to be a spy. Do you think it actually
affected how people perceive spies in other countries especially.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think it's entertaining. Of course, then
these shows are good. They got good looking girls I
would have chosen. I would have chosen Kissy Suzuki one
of the girls. If they were going to throw any
better at me, that would have been somebody I would
would have caught. Maybe maybe, but no, it's just kind
of good fun. But there is danger, and there's more
danger now than there was in my day. You know,
if you're an embassy officer at many places around the world,
you're a target, either a target for recruitment or a
target for assassination. So this isn't something anybody should get into.
Speaker 2: Lately, it's changed a lot, so what I've heard, a
lot of case officers are much more easily compromised than
they used to be, from what I've been hearing. And
that's a tough business out there, and technology has made
it even harder for you folks as well. Yeah for
ci con easy in one way and harder than another.
I guess my last question maybe my last one, but
I spy. I'll bring it back to that for a second,
because I did get case officers who thought that was
probably the closest one to being realistic, just because of
the way they interacted with people all the time. A
tennis player and all that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's no way. Now. This guy, Robert
Coult played the star and then he was what we
would call a knock n oc non official cover. And
we don't do that, Okay, we don't have tennis stars.
We don't have celebrities going up doing doing the dangerous work.
That was an entertaining show. I watched it as a kid.
It had no bearing on my going into the CIA.
I enjoyed it. It was well written, It had no
hope of ever being close to anything true. A real knock,
and I've handled knocks in the field are good. They're
good agent handlers. They're not recruiters. But because they're not
in the embassy, they're not known or suspected of being
c I A. And therefore it's it's safer to let
a sensitive agent be handled by a knock than an
inside officer. That's what knox are really for. And I've
I've had some very good ones worked for me, and
they're they're little gray people. They look that way that
you don't know. They could be a businessman, they could
be we've new guy under hippie cover, okay and uh,
And they're good people, but you don't hear much about him,
and that's good.
Speaker 2: That's interesting, I know, speaking to other guys and drug
cartels and DEA guys, it's always interesting sometimes people picture
drug cardtail members all being the same, rough guys with guns,
and a lot of times I got the account that
comes in you couldn't tell anything, but he's making millions
of dollars with a cartel. Did you have any preconceived
ideas going into the CIA? Did you think, now I'll
know who shot JFK. Now I'll know who.
Speaker 3: Did this or anything like that when you when you
get it of the know. My main ambition was to
serve in Asia and if I if I hadn't gone
with agency, I would have gone back to Associated Press
and been a a newsman. And in some ways they're
the same, you know, we're both looking for information. The
CIA we get to pay for it. The newsmen have
to get it for free. But same with the State Department.
They don't pay for information, but we pay for secrets.
And that's the difference. But no, I think that Asia
was the motivation once I got into the business and
started working with these men and women of the CIA,
outstanding people, you know, they're really interesting people. And one
guy I was having a martini lunch in Bangkok with
this guy. We called him the Bear, great guy, great linguist.
He was in Cambodia, Vietnamese was Khmer linguist, tie linguist.
Great Guy. The Bear lifted his glass and he said,
you know, Broman, they baid us to live here. That
tells it all.
Speaker 2: I guess we'll wrap up with this again, folks. The
book is called risk Taker Spymaker Tales of a CIA Case
Officer by Barry Broman. The last question, Barry, what is
the book coming up in the fall? He got something cooking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is my first novel, Carlos. It's based it's
loosely based on a true story. Takes place in Paris
in the eighties when I was in Paris, so I
have kind of area familiarization. It's got a backstory that
deals with Cambodia, and so that's more more or less,
you know, true. But the actual case itself is serendipitous,
and these things happen this way. This thing is the
way I like to look at it. I view it
as a love story that has an espionage association, and
it's chasing a Soviet diplomat. And hopefully it'll be the
first of a series.
Speaker 2: Excellent. I can't wait. Whatan to bring it back for
that one too.
Speaker 3: It's called The Spy from Place Sansul Peace in Paris.
Speaker 2: I'm not eve gonna bother with my friends. Fascinating stuff again, folks.
One more time. The book called risk Taker Spy Maker
Tales of a CIA Case Officer Barry Broman. I highly
recommend it. Fascinating reed. Thank you so much Berry for
being here.
Speaker 3: Carlos, thank you very much for having me I hope
to talk to you again someday.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thank you everyone for listening. Make sure to share, subscribe,
hit that like button. Stay safe,