The Spy From Sukhumvit Road
From the author of “The Spy From Place Saint-Sulpice,” the second book in the Rick Blayne trilogy
The Boeing 747 was flying at 37,000 feet as the sun was going down. It made a gentle turn to the right that drew Rick’s attention. Here’s the Da Nang turn thought Richard Blayne who looked down on the South China Sea as the aircraft approached Da Nang a major coastal city in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It was a city he knew well.
In 1969 Rick was a second lieutenant in the US Marine Corps and became a frequent visitor to the Stone Elephant officers club in Da Nang. Initially he served as a platoon commander in the 5th Marines and then was invited to work on the CIA’s Phoenix Program fighting the Viet Cong infrastructure while still in the Marine Corps. But today he was just overflying Vietnam bound for Bangkok, Thailand, a city he loved almost as much as his home town, Seattle, Washington.
In a few minutes Rick was looking down on the rugged mountains that separated Vietnam from Laos. We should be close to An Hoa, Rick thought. An Hoa was his old combat base when he was a “grunt.” As the plane flew across northeastern Thailand, Rick thought of his new assignment helping the Cambodian resistance against the Vietnamese-installed puppet regime in Phnom Penh. Rick was in the US embassy in Phnom Penh in 1975 when the embassy was evacuated one step ahead of the victorious Khmer Rouge communists
Barry Broman
Born in 1943, Mr. Broman is the son of a career US Air Force officer who was a glider pilot in the Second World War. He attended a boy’s prep school in England 1954-58 when his father was assigned to RAF Manston air base on the English Channel. He received an academic scholarship to the University of Illinois in 1961 but gave up the scholarship a year later to accompany his father to Thailand who was assigned as a civil engineer advisor to the Royal Thai Air Force.
In Bangkok in 1962, Mr. Broman worked as a photographer for the Associated Press in Thailand, South Vietnam, and Cambodia. A year later he attended the University of Washington where he received a BA in Political Science in 1967 and an MA in Southeast Asian Studies in 1968. While in college he enrolled in the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps and was commissioned in the reserve of the United States Marine Corps in 1967.
Mr. Broman went on active duty in 1968 and in 1969 served as an infantry officer in Vietnam with the 5th Marine regiment in combat. He also served as a Civil Affairs officer in Vietnam and extended his tour to serve as a liaison officer in Thailand. In 1970 Mr. Broman was assigned as Press Officer at Camp Pendleton, California. When he was promoted to captain he was given command of Company H, 7th Marine Regiment.
When his military commitment ended in 1971 Mr. Broman joined the Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency where he served for 25 years on three continents. He was twice chief of station, one deputy chief of station, and once ran a large paramilitary project in Asia. He received numerous decorations and citations while on government service He retired in 1996.
That year he formed Raintree and for the next quarter century was involved in business projects in Asia, published more than sixteen books including two memoirs, “Risk Taker, Spy Maker: Tales of a CIA Case Officer” and “Indochina Hand” and a novel “The Spy From Place Saint-Sulpice. He produced nine documentary films including “Burma: A Human Tragedy” which was narrated by Angelica Huston. He is married with two sons and resides in Kirkland, Washington.
Barry Broman worked as a photographer for the Associated Press in Southeast Asia as a teenager. After graduating from the University of Washington with a BA in Political Science and an MA in Southeast Asian Studies he served as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. In 1971 he joined the Clandestine Service of the CIA and served as an operations officer around the world for a quarter of a century. He was a “head hunter” with dozens of recruitments, mostly in Southeast Asia. After he retired from government service he formed a consulting company, wrote seventeen books including two memoirs and two novels, and produced nine documentary films. He lives with his wife BJ in Kirkland, Washington.
Barry Michael Broman
The Spy From Place Saint-Sulpice
CIA intelligence officer Rick Blayne must use all his skills and charm-to achieve his mission of infiltrating émigré Cambodian factions in the center of international intrigue, Paris.
Richard “Rick” Blayne has a mission. One of the CIA’s top expert on Cambodia, who escaped the country’s fall to the Khmer Rouge and has monitored the ensuing genocide from Thailand ever since, he has been sent to Paris to further the CIA’s plan to infiltrate the Cambodian resistance to the Hanoi-controlled puppet government in Phnom Penh. Arriving in the middle of a Parisian summer, Rick feels out of place and uncertain if he can handle the assignment. Vying factions seek to form a guerrilla force. As he establishes contact with old Cambodian friends in both the factions vying to control the resistance, he is drawn into an operation to recruit a Russian diplomat serving in Paris. With the help of a Thai fashion designer serving as an access agent, Rick, under the guidance of Sasha a seasoned CIA Soviet “head hunter” and deputy chief of Paris station-moves the operation forward at a time of great upheaval and change for the Soviet Union.
Risk Taker, Spy Maker
Joining the CIA after fighting in Vietnam as a Marine, Barry Broman’s first posting was war-torn Cambodia. He was present at the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, escaping just before the Khmer Rouge took power. During his career, he was twice chief of station, once a deputy chief of station, and he supervised an international paramilitary project in support of the Cambodian resistance to Vietnamese invaders. He was actively involved in several assignments in counter-narcotics operations in Southeast Asia including a major bust that yielded 551 kilograms of high-grade heroin from a major drug trafficker. His favorite agent against a variety of hard targets was a fellow whose only demand was that his assignments be “life threatening.” (He survived them all.)
As amazing as the characters Broman has met are the places he’s been, with visits to little- known and rarely seen places like the Naga Hills on the India-Burma border, the world- famous but off-limits jade and ruby mines of Burma, and the isolated Banda Islands of Indonesia, the home of nutmeg.
Broman’s engaging tone is complemented by photographs taken throughout his career, many of them his own, made using the skills he learned as a teenager working for the Associated Press in Southeast Asia-including Marines in action in Vietnam, the ravages of war in Cambodia, and opium buyers forcing growers to sell in Burma.
Indochina Hand
Barry Broman joined the CIA in 1971 straight out of the Marine Corps, choosing a career in intelligence largely because he wanted to spend his working life in Southeast Asia. Over the next thirty years, he had the privilege of working with brave men and women who were prepared to put their lives on the line in support of the free world during the Cold War, and he enjoyed the life of adventure he had been seeking since childhood.
This book brings together tales from his career as a CIA case officer during the Cold War, giving fascinating insights into handling double agents, working in denied areas, assessing and recruiting Soviet targets, flying with Air America, acting to discredit Soviet agents with Moscow, and what happened when a case officer set a “scavenger hunt” around Bangkok for fellow spies-and at least one active target.
A selection of stories told in engaging style proving that often the truth is more unbelievable than fiction.
The Spy from Sukhumvit Road
Cambodia: The Land and Its People
Cambodia: The Land and It's People
BURMA: A HUMAN TRAGEDY
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