January 19, 2025 • 39 mins
“Indochina Hand; Tales of a CIA Case Officer” by Barry Broman features a compilation stories about situations encountered during a 25 year career with the agency. He can attest to the fact that sometimes truth IS stranger than fiction. Barry was first approached by the CIA while in graduate school. The recruiter said Barry was precisely the “kind of guy we are looking for”. However, when Barry informed him that he was commissioned in the Marine Corps and was headed to Vietnam. The recruiter handed him a business card and said “Here’s my card. If you live, call this number six months before you get out of the Corps.” Barry eventually did call that number and it was fifteen days between the Marine Corps and the CIA. We begin with some stories from his time serving in Vietnam. He describes the role of the “Combined Action Marines” who interacted with local militias. He also shares the story of how one of his friends almost lost his life do a drunk South Vietnamese soldier just days before he was scheduled to return home. One of the more compelling stories involved John Gunthner Dean, the Ambassador to Cambodia. Barry, Dean and some others were the last to get out of the country just ahead of the Khmer Rouge. The fate of those left behind still weighs heavy on Barry. Indochina was one of his favorite postings. Barry recruited 41 agents during his career and shares the delicate line one walks while performing those actions. If the recruitment fails, the CIA agent may only be ejected from the country. But the existing foreign assets exposed by the failure were likely to lose their lives. Contrary to popular belief, Barry says that many of the foreign agents were not in it for the money. It was usually the American traitors that were primarily motivated by greed.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
We all owe them, but very few of us know them.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
They are the men and women of.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Our military and first responder communities.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And these are their stories.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
American Warrior Radio is on the air. Hello, ladies and gentlemen,
Welcome to American Warrior Radio. This is your host, Ben
Vueler GARCIA. American Warrior Radio broadcast from the Silencer Central
Studios are the nation's largest suppressor dealer. They are all
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(00:40):
painfree as possible. Call them today at eight six six
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the process started, or you can also visit Slencercentral dot com.
Be sure to check Silencercentral dot com to confirm if
owning a silencer is legal in your state. They say
sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Today's guests can attest
(01:00):
that fact. During a twenty five year career as a
CIA case officer, Barry Broman served on three continents. He
was chief of station, once a deputy chief of station,
and actually ran a large paramilitary program project in Asia.
As you can imagine, he found himself in some very
unique situations. His latest book, Into China hand Tales of
a CIA case officer shares sixty two of these unique
(01:22):
stories from his time serving with the Marine Corps in
Vietnam to his time with the CIA. Barry Broman, Welcome
back to American Warrior Radio. Berry, I'd like to just
sort of touch on. I really enjoyed the book and
part of the reason I enjoyed it is of those
sixty two chapters, some are actually very short, you know,
just a couple of pages or so, so it's.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
An easy read.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I went back and looked at our past interview that
we had a couple of years ago, probably, and I'll
never forget one of the lines you talked. So you
were serving with the Marines in Vietnam, and you know,
you were approached about a certain agency that has three
letters in its name, and you said, well, and I'm
paraphrasing here, you can do a better job and turning
(02:05):
the story. But he said, I'm serving in Vietnam, and
the guy basically said, here's my card, call me if
you live.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
That's right. I was approached by the agency while I
was in grad school at University of Washington in nineteen
sixty eight. I was already commissioned in the Marine Corps.
But the Marines let me stay for masters in Southeast
Asian studies, and one are my profs suggests that I
(02:32):
talked to the CIA. They had a recruiter coming. I said,
I'd be happy to do that. I met the fellow
and I told him I was getting a master's. I
spoke Tai. I'd been in Southeast Asia as an Associated
press photographer in Bangkok in sixty two, and the guy said,
(02:54):
you know, you're the kind of guy we're looking for.
And I said, wait a minute. I'm going to war.
I'm in the Marine Corps and I'm going to go
on active duty pretty soon. And the guy took out
his card and he handed it to me and he said,
here's my card. If you live, call this number six
months before you get out of the corps. And so
(03:14):
I survived Vietnam. I was a company commander at Camp
Pendleton in nineteen seventy and early seventy one, and I
called the number, not expecting that he would remember me
or even be there. He said, let me get your file.
He came back. He said meet me at the Coronado
Hotel in San Diego Thursday at seven o'clock, which I did,
(03:38):
and he signed me up. I had fifteen days between
the Marine Corps and the CIA. That's kind of how
I got into the agency.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Most of stories in your latest book Bury deal with
your time at CIA, but there are a couple in
there from your time in Vietnam, and there was two
in particular that jumped out of me, and one is
you describe the role of the Combined Action Marines And
I was not at all familiar with this program. Could
you describe it to our listeners please.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
The Marine Corps had a very effective program wherein they
would put a squad of Marines into a village in
a semi pacified area, and that squad would interact with
the local popular forces or sort of militia, younger guys
(04:29):
or older guys, and the Marine squad would kind of
pump up their combat abilities and they would go on
patrols together. The program was very successful, very low cost,
but it did cost about over five hundred Marine Corps
lives during the time that the program operated. And I
(04:53):
got involved when I was after I got out of
the bush, I was seven months on the line of
the fifth Marines, and then I spent the rest of
my tour as a civil affairs officer, and we dealt
often with these small marine units operating in and around
(05:13):
the Danang area in the South Vietnam, and they are
just a bunch of great guys, and it's a program
that other people should have picked up on. I think
that the Marine Corps did exactly what they should have.
I'm talking about the army getting involved in something like this.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Well, it was there ever a concern of yours that
you might be working with a young man that you're
training to shoot a rifle in the morning and at
night he's out there planting, you know, booby trapped for you,
or you know, to trap to hurt you.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Well, of course this is it was difficult. Some of
these units actually had Vietcong infiltrate in them. A good
friend of mine participated. He was badly wounded just before
the Ted Defense have broke out in early sixty eight
(06:10):
when his little CAP unit, not far from Way City
was overrun by the NBA, and they just happened to
be saved by Hotel Company, second Battalion, fifth Marines heading
toward Way City to reinforce and they stopped this CAP
unit being overrun. And the later they found out that
(06:31):
there was actually a VC infiltrator in that unit, but
he did not survive the battle.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Okay, I'll tell you one of the other stories that
really struck me. You had a friend and you say
in the book that you know, as far as the
Vietnam War, the combat law, if you will, there were
the two most dangerous times for someone was when they
first got into into country and then just is there
(06:59):
as they're shore, you know, when they only got a
week or a few days before at the end to
the end of their thirteen month tour.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And you shared a story that.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Ironic's not the right word, but it would have been
more tragic than usual, and that involved a meeting or
a meal I guess you guys had in Danang. The
guy's name was Mike Cardallas.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, this is when I was in civil affairs. Mike
was one of my buddies from University of Washington here
at the kneesp enlisted and then commissioned in the Marine Corps,
and he was serving with the seventh Marines and his
tour was just about up. He came up to Danang
to fly home. He contacted me, and so I decided
(07:49):
to invite him into the Nang towns. For at dinner,
Vietnamese dinner with my good friend, Lieutenant Jim Jones, who
was fluent in Vietnamese. So we took my came to
town to a very nice little restaurant. Proceeded just to
be with the only foreigners or non Vietnamese in the restaurant.
(08:09):
The table next to us had a bunch of older
Vietnamese fellows who spoke French. I don't speak much Vietnamese,
but my French was good, and I was chatting with them,
and suddenly, out of nowhere, drunken Arvian Special Force, the
sergeant I came up to us very disrespectfully. He took
(08:30):
out a forty five pistol was waving it at us
because we were in a Vietnamese restaurant and we weren't Vietnamese,
and Jonesy was trying to talk him down, and one
of the old gentlemen at the next table, I got
up and went out, and while this guy was waving
(08:50):
the gun around, an ar Special Forces officer came in
with a swagger stick, hit the sergeant and the gun
arm dropped, the weapon, beat him about the head and shoulders,
and then other South Vietnamese soldiers came in and dragged
the miscreant out. The lieutenant apologized and and Mike Dalis,
(09:15):
who was getting on the plane the next morning to
go home, really was sweating that.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Well, Beer, I can tell you the worst part about
that is, you know, it's bad enough to be that
close and get shot, much less by someone who obstensively
was supposed to be one of our allies over there.
And that's what struck me about the story. Barry would
come back. I'd like to get into some of your
stories about your time with a CIA. Just a great book, folks.
I recommend you looking up into China hand at Tales
(09:42):
of a CIA Case Officer. We'll be right back. Welcome
(10:12):
back to American Warrior Radio Laser and gentlemen, this is
your host, Ben Viler Garcia. We're talking with Barry Browman.
Barry had at least thirty years of service to our country,
first with the United States Marine Corpy tod see combat
in Vietnam, and then twenty five years as a CIA
case officer. Berry. As I mentioned, we had you on
the show before, and I went back and I listened
to the podcast for our last conversation and correct me
(10:33):
if I'm wrong, sir. But as I recall, you recruited
forty one agents during your career, and last time we talked,
you put it in baseball terms so I could understand,
and you said, you know, when it comes to that
particularly hard target recruitments, you can't go you know, thirty
five and six, you got to go forty one to
oh because missing a recruitment like that has some bad
(10:57):
rapifications potentially.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, you don't want to bat five hundred as a
CIA case officer because the first time someone says no,
and he's an official in the country you're serving, and
he reports you, you can expect to be kicked out
of the country or PNNG persona non grata within forty
eight hours. So you don't want to You don't want
(11:22):
to go in hoping the guy is going to say yes.
You want to be very very sure that he or
she will agreed to serve as a clandestine service recruit.
Is there a threshold after which, you know, if you're
a case officer someone and you get burned three, four, five,
six times, somebody back at Langley says, you know, maybe
(11:44):
you're in the wrong line of work. Yeah, that normally
comes to the case officer's attention after one or two failures.
I knew a guy I was TDY in his country
in Europe, and I asked his wife dinner how she
enjoyed it, and she said, well, I love it here,
(12:08):
but I just hope we get to finish our tour.
And I would say, and I said, well, why would
that be? And it turned out her husband was p
and g at every one of his assignments is kicked out,
and the country we're in, he was kicked out of
that one and he did not last long in the
clandestine service after that. And this was mostly during the
(12:30):
Cold War. Berry, was it gentler back then, where the
worst you could expect would be to get kicked out
of the country, not I used the air quotes not disappeared. Well,
of course, that's why we were mostly under diplomatic cover,
because we had diplomatic community. If we were if we
were caught, the good news is we were just kicked out.
(12:53):
The bad news is the agent that we were handling
or it could have been interrupted. Especially in a hard
target case, hard target being communists, those guys were generally shot.
So you know, there was some very serious ramifications.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
In all your interaction Barry. One of the things I
learned from from both your books. You know, you, I
think a civilian like me or other folks out there,
would assume that, you know, these folks are all doing
it for the money. But that's not necessarily true.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Is it. No, absolutely not. But I'm looking back at
some of the Soviet cases that we had. I was
only involved directly in one, but I know a number
of stories, and these guys, well, rarely we're doing it
for the money. Very often it was because they hated
the system. These are people that had had relatives, fathers,
(13:44):
uncles killed by the KGB. It's the Americans that were
that were motivated mainly by money, Americans that were recruited
by the KGB or other foreign services. You know.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
One of the quotes I'll never forget are the lines
in your book was well, this wasn't you in this case,
but as one of one of your colleagues had been
working some well you call him Boris in the book,
had been working for a long time. They finally got
to a point where where Boris says, I'm KGB, but
you probably already know that, and your colleague replied, well,
(14:20):
I'm a CIA officer and I think you knew that too,
And the Russian replied, I didn't, but i'd hoped you were.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, that was really a great case. And he came
towards the end of the Cold War, and he was
a KGB officer that was being pursued by a very
hard charging young CIA officer in an Asian station, and
they had established this drinking relationship late at night, and
(14:51):
finally the Russian he'd said, you know, i'm KGBAN, then
the boots that I'm CIA, and and the Russian said, well,
I'm glad that to know that, because I don't want
to be wasting my time with the State Department officer.
I want to work for the CIA. And he did,
and he was successfully polygraphed, which was very rare. He
(15:14):
provided the incredible intelligence at a time when we had
very very few active KGB officers because Aldrich Ames, the
American spy, had given up the names of a number
of officers inside and they were all killed. There's other
instances you relate in your book where you know, I
(15:36):
think of the CIA, and I think of you know,
just stacks of cash. But there was one case where
you ended up having to your flying out with one
of your agents, I guess, and he was back in
coach class and the only seat available for you was
in first class. So you spent the extra twenty six
dollars to get up in first class, and they gave
(15:58):
you a hard time about that on your spencer seat,
I mean twenty six dollars. Well, rules or rules ben
And in that case, I was handling a double agent.
He was being run by a communist country. We were
in Western Europe when this went down, and the idea
(16:20):
was our agent had to make a meeting with his
handlers in another country, and I met him. I passed
him a documentation that what was false it had been
prepared for these people to receive believing it was accurate.
(16:41):
And so what I had to do was I had
to get on the same plane with the agent, because
if he was caught with those documents, it would have
been bad and he would have been blown as the
CIA agent. I, on the other hand, had diplomatic community,
and so I carried the documents. But I had to
(17:01):
be on the plane only to find out that there
were no seats available except in first class. Not a problem.
I got a first class ticket. I got to the
meeting site. Everything went well. And when I went back
to my station and I pilled up my expense account,
I said, you know I had to I had to
(17:23):
fly first class. It was a twenty minute flight, ben
and that's why it was only a twenty six dollars
difference between coach and first class. And so I went
to the deputy. I was reporting to the deputy Chief
of station, and I said I had to do it,
and he said, of course you had to do it,
no problem, will we'll submit it. And it was submitted
(17:46):
and it was rejected and I laughed. I said, look,
I ate twenty six dollars worth of caviar in that
twenty minute flight, and up you had. I had a
and he said, absolutely not. He fought it. He went
to the bean counters in Hetland Langley and ultimately I
(18:06):
didn't have to pay the twenty six Wow. Well, okay,
so listen, when we were traveling overseas, we flew business
and you know that's across the Pacific. You know that's
that's a big improvement.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Sure, I tell you, Barry, when we come back, I
want to talk about some more of your adventures. And
I'll tell you one thing that well, I don't know
if this is act or not, but one thing I
learned may be accurate, maybe not. Berry that the qualification
for good case officers the ability to hold their liquor.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's your host, Ben Bueler Garcia. We're
talking with Barry Browman. Check out his book. It's called
(18:40):
Indo China hand Tales of a CIA Case Officer. You
can also go to Raintree Publishing dot com. We'll talk
more about some of Barye's other books when we come back.
Stick around. Welcome back to American Warrior Radio. Laser Gentlemen.
(19:14):
There's your host, Ben buler Garcia. We're coming to you
from the Silencer Central Studios. Adding a silence will make
shootings safer, more enjoyable, and improve your accuracy. Begin the
process by visiting Silencercentral dot com to see if only
a silencer is legal in your state. They can then
walk you through the permitting process and ship right here
front door. Call Silencer Central today at eight sixty six
six ' four zero three two seven zero, or visit
(19:36):
Silencercentral dot com. We're talking with Barry Browman. Berry had
a twenty five year career as a case officer in
the CIA, he experienced a lot of interesting, intriguing things. Verry.
One of the chapters that broke my heart, you describe
your interaction with John gunthn Or Dean, who at the
time was the American Ambassador to Cambodia. As I understand it, Barry,
(20:00):
of all the places you work, Cambodi was probably your
favorite country to be posted in.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well, I have to say it was my most interesting tour,
and it was my very first tour as a CIA
case officer, and it came during the Cambodian War and
it ended. I was there seventy three to seventy five
in Panompen, and this was a country that went down
in flames. The Kamara Rouge took power, killed over two
(20:26):
million people. And I was on the last fixed wing
clean out in seventy five. And the people I met,
people I handled, people I recruited, the people I worked
with stand out as the best of the bunch in
my entire career.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
We had an Air America pilot on several months ago,
Neil Graham Hansen, and he described a similar situation where
he's he's got an airplane. He is on a runway
outside of Panompen and pretty much the word is coming
down that there rouge is coming in, and you know
it's just time to bug out. And you know, he
grabbed up as many people as he could and he's leaving.
(21:03):
But the the fellow who was working the airport, if
you will, you know, he Neil said come, you know,
come with me, and the guy says, I can't. My
wife's you know, back back in the city. I've got
to stay with her. And he just described he says,
you know that he had tears coming down his dusty face,
and both of them knew that pretty much that it
was his life was about to come to an end.
(21:24):
And nonetheless, you know, Neil had to get his folks out.
And I get the impression your experience of the ambassador
experience was similar and you actually had you flew to
I guess it was a Bangkok, right.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I flew from phenomen Penda Bangkok, took some people out
and took some documents out. But I should mention that
one of the assets that I had who we offered
ride out. He was a senior military officer and in
our last meeting, uh and I offered him and his
family ride out and he said, no, I can't do that,
(22:01):
and then he took his pistol out and he handed
me the pistol and said, I'll be dead in seventy
two hours, but I don't want them to get my
side arms, so I want you to have this as
a souvenir. And I took that weapon out with me.
Wow do you still have it? I do? Wow. You
talked about this.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
You all had some petty cash again boys, yeah, and
their money, and so you had a I used the
air was again a party, but it was almost more
of awake, where you and your team were just mourning,
you know, the loss of Cambodia and what was going
to happen to those people, many of whom you knew.
(22:42):
And you describe a situation after the liquor had flown liberally.
You describe a situation where there was a reporter there
as part of the group, and the ambassador pretty much
spoke his mind and tell us about the reporters react
and then the ambassador's eventual response, because I thought that
(23:02):
was extremely powerful.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, okay, this happened in Bangkok. We all flew out.
Those of us that flew out flew to Bangkok. Some
came overland, some by air.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
And we we we rallied together in Bangkok and the
this is not just the station, but the all embassy officers.
And we took what was left of our community fund
for a little px in panom Pen and we chartered
(23:37):
the boat, the Oriental Queen from the Oriental Hotel, and
we had we spent all of our money and drank
it up on the boat. And we're telling uh parwell stories.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And one of the people was John gunther D and
our ambassador who flew out with the American flag on
the marine choppers that took them out and were set around.
We're all drunk, and with us was a Matt Franjola,
who had been the Associated Press Bureau chief. He got
out and we was talking to Dean, and Dean was talking.
(24:12):
He was very, very better over Henry Kissinger's poor leadership,
failing the Cambodian people, cutting off all money to Cambodia,
and went on and on, and Matt, a working reporter, said,
mister Ambassador, I'm not going to I won't be writing
this story up. Okay. I appreciate your telling us all
(24:35):
of these inside things, but I won't write it up.
And Dean looked at him and said, right for every word, Matt,
write every word, and Matt did, and Dean did not
get his next assignment. Kissinger canceled this next ambassadorship, but
later Dean came back and served as with distinction in
(24:57):
Beirut and in Copenhagen, in Delhi where it was known
as John gunga Dein, and in Bangkok where I served
with them. So Dean was one of the best of
the career professional ambassadors that I ever served with.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Now, then I bet it's one dumb question every show,
and then I'm hearing from your stories. And those were
different times. I suppose I know they were. But you
know that your your book is replete with stories for
it that involved alcohol and apparently some of the some
of the case agents, that was a tool they used
very effectively, even though some of the other agents frowned
(25:34):
upon it.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Well, I don't know quite you're talking about here, Ben,
but I will I recall a story where two of
our officers, the China Hands, were at a dinner, a
private dinner with a couple of very senior Chinese, uh
red Chinese officials, back before we had normalized relations with China.
(25:58):
And it was a private room in a private Chinese
restaurant where everybody was drunk.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
And.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
That the Chinese really and Russians drink hard, and they
drink for oblivion, and it's very difficult to keep up
if you're an American. We would sometimes drink milk before
going out to drink with them to coat the stomach.
But in this case, both CIA officers got drunk to
(26:27):
the point where one of them went to the bathroom
and passed out in the bathroom and no one missed him.
The other CIA officer, to saying goodbye to the Chinese,
vomited on them as they were leaving the restaurant, and
the officer in the bathroom woke up at three am
(26:47):
and alerted the the night guard that he was locked
in and the he survived, but no one ever I
would not have known the story except from one of
the other guests at the dinner, because neither of the
CIA officers ever mentioned it. Er I got to share
(27:08):
a story real quick before we take the next break.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I was part of a trade mission to Beijing in
the nineties, and of course our first stop from the
airport was to the US embassy, where we are briefed,
and I'll never forget the guy told us a number
one assume that your your hotel room is bugged. But
then he also warned us that the Chinese really liked
their liquor, and I camera was called. But they serve
these little things in little cups, not quite as big
(27:32):
as a shot glass. But I mean this stuff was
one hundred and something proof. I'm going to take the
paint off the walls mouth Tika. And the advice they
gave us was, of course, you know, to maintain relations,
you got to you got to have the first drink,
but there'll be more coming. So you know, develop a
slight tremble in your hand, or you try and sit
next to a plotted plant somewhere where you can just,
you know, discreetly dump this stuff in the in the plant.
(27:55):
I'll tell you our secret weapon on those meetings was
we did have a marine with us, and boy, this
guy could handle his liquors. So he definitely he definitely
saved our bacon a couple of times. Barry, we come back,
I want to talk about the other chapter in your book,
or one of them called Tarryron Hostage. We've had a
number of people on the show that we're involved with
(28:17):
that situation there and so that that really really struck me. Folks,
take a look at his books called Into China Hand
Tales of a CIA Case Officer. I think you're really
going to enjoy it. Don't forget to share these important
messages with their friends and associates. You can find over
six hundred podcasts at American Warrior Radio dot com. The
most recent episodes are also on your favorite platform if
(28:37):
that's iHeart or Pandora or Spotify. We try to be
everwhere because we really really want to share these messages. Also,
you can visit Barry's personal address Raintree Publishing dot com
to check out some.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Of these other works. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Welcome back to American Warrior Radio. Ladies and gentlemen. This
is Ben buler GERCI. We're having a great chat with
Barry Browman. Berry serve twenty five years and the CIA
as a case officer. Barry, this is your second real
experience book. How difficult is it to get these things
approved as a former CIA case officer? Is it a
(29:32):
long process or how does that work?
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Okay, everything I write that has to do with intelligence,
fiction or nonfiction has to be approved by the Publication
Review Board in Langley. The first book is more of
a memoir. The second book is a series of stories.
I submitted sixty four two were asked. They asked me
just to drop them, which I did. But nonfiction is
(29:59):
a lot more difficult fiction. I've written two novels dealing
with my experiences and those got was approved in a
couple of weeks because I didn't have to worry about
facts and most of the book was fiction.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
And what give us the titles of those two novels.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Okay, The first one is called The Spy from Plas Sinsupice,
So this was when I was in Paris in the
eighties and it dealt with the hard target recruitment. The
second book came out a few months ago. It's called
The Spy from Suke Road that took place in Thailand
(30:42):
and Cambodia in nineteen nineteen ninety one. And the third
book I'm about to start and that will be taking
place in burmat in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Excellent, and again folks can find all that at Raincree
Publishing dot com. Berry I've had we had two Delta
Force operators on the show who were involved with the
tragic and ill fated Operation Eagle Claw, which was the
mission to rescue our hostages are being held in Tehran,
and also Jonamandez and her husband Tony, who I go
(31:18):
by the nickname the CIA's Masters of Disguise, and Tony
people might recognize he was involved in what you call
the Canadian Caper to get our folks out of the
Canadian embassy at the time, which has then later made
into the movie Argo, and you kind of were on
the edges of that as well.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Well. I was not involved at all with the situation
in Tehran, although I had two friends who were in
the embassy and were taken. One was a State Department
officer and one was a CIA officer. And the CIA
officer was a tough guy. He was a paramilitary guy
(31:57):
I served with in Southeast Asia. He was he was Jewish,
which made it particularly difficult for him, and he had
the presence of mind to take a secret writing chief
of paper with him into confinement, and so he wrote
secret writing messages back and someone in Washington was smart
(32:19):
enough to test them for secret writing, and he provided
intelligence from inside by secret writing. And the only one
I can I can share with you. He wrote one
message saying to Potus votus President of the United States,
and the message was exercised the military option, and the
(32:41):
President tried to do that, but then we had the
problem in the desert and the mission failed. Wow, that's
some pretty powerful stuff you also, And you know, I've
had I kind of chuckled because I've had a number
of folks on whose stories were made into motion pictures,
and I'll never forget. I was asking one, UH soldier
and army guy. I said, well, you know, how accurate
(33:02):
was the movie?
Speaker 1 (33:04):
And he kind of smiled a little bit and says, well,
we weren't Afghanistan, but that's where he was going to
leave it. And you know in your book you talk
about in Argo There's which is a great movie. I
enjoyed it, but they really left out a key part
of what actually happened, and that involved Kenneth Taylor, the
Canadian ambassador, and all the stuff that he did to help.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
In fact, I think President.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Reagan ended up getting him an award after this was
all concluded.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
That was a sad story because when this was happening,
I was at headquarters and a good friend of mine
was a senior Canadian diplomat. We'd served together in Southeast
Asia and he had a dinner party. I was a
guest that he took me aside and said, you know
that there's some Americans that are being protected by the
(33:54):
Canadian embassy And I said, gee, I didn't know that
and I didn't and he said, yeah, I just want
you to know that, you know, we're taking care of them.
So the next morning I went at headquarters up to
the Tehran and Task Force. There was a huge crowd
(34:14):
of people and I said I need to talk to
the boss and then he said I would do Who
are you? I said, I'm from the East Asia Division.
He said, well, we don't have time. I said, well,
there's a couple of Americans being shielded by the Canadians.
Are you aware? And he said okay, come in, come
in coom in And so then I'm talking to the boss.
He said, yes, yes, they're there. We're sending a team
(34:36):
up to Ottawa tomorrow to get the documentation and we're
going to get them out. So please don't mention this
the money one and I didn't. But in the film,
it's very sad that the Canadian ambassador and the mission
don't get the credit they should have. They should have
been given. And in fact that the premiere of the film,
(34:56):
the Canadian ambassador was not invited. So I think that
was a was a big mistake. But at the same time,
when that became public, the Canadian Embassy in Washington, d C.
Is opposite a large office building. Someone hung a huge
(35:17):
sign outside saying thank you Canada for saving those people.
And the Canadians did it, and and the CIA participated
in that, and they did a good job. Do you know,
Barry or.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Can you share with her any assets on the Operation
Eagle colamission itself? I understanding you did have some folks,
believe it or not, on the ground in t Iran,
or at least one guy that I'm wore of.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, yeah, I know that guy. I was in the
language or refresher with him, and he was a he
was posing as an Iranian, he spoke Farsi. He was
on the ground and he was involved, and we would
(36:02):
have been involved in moving the people from the mission
to the rendezvous pickup site for the choppers coming in,
but they never came in, and he was able to
expiltrate himself and lived well. I tell you I had.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Like I said, I've talked to at least one of
the Delta Intelligence guys who was involved with the planning
of that mission, and I got to say, as an
ignorant civilian, if they had been able to pull that off,
given the environment and all the moving parts, it would
have been miraculous. It would have been something that would
have gone down in the history books. Barry, it's been
a real joy talking with you today. Again, I encourage
(36:40):
folks to get your book into China hand Tales of
a CIA Case Officer, And just.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
To tease you, folks, there's some other stories he tells in.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
The book that we weren't able to tell here in
America and where to read it because it's a family show.
But I think you'll enjoy it, things that are both
tragic and sometimes just like we said, you know, the
truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Berry.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
What can we expect coming down the road from you next, Well,
I'm going to start I'm going to Hawaii in a
few weeks and I'm going to start working on the
third novel. That will be The Spy from Golden Valley,
which is where I lived in Rangoon. So that'll be
coming up next, and then I'm gonna probably do a
(37:22):
photo book from my wars from Vietnam, Cambodia and Burma. Okay,
And do you ever get the craving to go back
and visit some of these places? Or I mean, do
you when you travel and say, hey, I'd like to
go back to Vietnam or Cambodia.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Is there an office at the.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
At Langley that says, no beer, We're not gonna let
you do that.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
You know too much? Well, if I was an active service,
they could certainly stop me, but in retirement they don't.
They don't stop me. I've been to China, I've been
to Russia, been to Vietnam, been to North Vietnam. I've
been to back to Cambodia. I did a book on Cambodia.
I've been back to Burma fifteen or twenty times since
(38:02):
I retired. So my movements are quite easy to do
in retirement, but an active service I would be constrained.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
And also guessing you probably can't find a first class
upgrade for twenty six bucks anymore.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Not anymore. Most days are gone.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Those days are definitely gone. Do you and your former
colleagues ever have reunions and get together and chat someplace or.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Well, my infantry company, H Company, second Battalian fifth, the
range we have and will get together as we had
one in Seattle a few months ago, and it's great.
It's great for the troops. As far as the agency. Yeah,
I keep in touch with some of the guys and
ladies from the old days and we get together and
(38:50):
sometimes we gather in Paris or in Bangkok, or in
London or have fun.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
All right, well, Berry, thanks for spending your time with
our listeners today. I really appreciate you sharing your stories
with us.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Why pleasure event you take care? Likewise, you too, sir.
Don't forget.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
The name of the book is called Indo China hand
Tales of a CIA Case Officer. You can find various
others works at his website. It's rain Tree r A
I N T R E E Publishing dot com. Until
next time, ladies and gentlemen, all policies and procedures are
to remain in place.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
If you've been listening.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
To American Warrior Radio
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Archived episodes may be found at Americanwarriorradio dot com or
your favorite podcast platform.
We all owe them, but very few of us know them.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
They are the men and women of.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Our military and first responder communities.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
And these are their stories.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
American Warrior Radio is on the air. Hello, ladies and gentlemen,
Welcome to American Warrior Radio. This is your host, Ben
Vueler GARCIA. American Warrior Radio broadcast from the Silencer Central
Studios are the nation's largest suppressor dealer. They are all
ready to make your silencer buying journey as simple and
(00:40):
painfree as possible. Call them today at eight six six
six ' four zero three two seven zero to get
the process started, or you can also visit Slencercentral dot com.
Be sure to check Silencercentral dot com to confirm if
owning a silencer is legal in your state. They say
sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Today's guests can attest
(01:00):
that fact. During a twenty five year career as a
CIA case officer, Barry Broman served on three continents. He
was chief of station, once a deputy chief of station,
and actually ran a large paramilitary program project in Asia.
As you can imagine, he found himself in some very
unique situations. His latest book, Into China hand Tales of
a CIA case officer shares sixty two of these unique
(01:22):
stories from his time serving with the Marine Corps in
Vietnam to his time with the CIA. Barry Broman, Welcome
back to American Warrior Radio. Berry, I'd like to just
sort of touch on. I really enjoyed the book and
part of the reason I enjoyed it is of those
sixty two chapters, some are actually very short, you know,
just a couple of pages or so, so it's.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
An easy read.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I went back and looked at our past interview that
we had a couple of years ago, probably, and I'll
never forget one of the lines you talked. So you
were serving with the Marines in Vietnam, and you know,
you were approached about a certain agency that has three
letters in its name, and you said, well, and I'm
paraphrasing here, you can do a better job and turning
(02:05):
the story. But he said, I'm serving in Vietnam, and
the guy basically said, here's my card, call me if
you live.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
That's right. I was approached by the agency while I
was in grad school at University of Washington in nineteen
sixty eight. I was already commissioned in the Marine Corps.
But the Marines let me stay for masters in Southeast
Asian studies, and one are my profs suggests that I
(02:32):
talked to the CIA. They had a recruiter coming. I said,
I'd be happy to do that. I met the fellow
and I told him I was getting a master's. I
spoke Tai. I'd been in Southeast Asia as an Associated
press photographer in Bangkok in sixty two, and the guy said,
(02:54):
you know, you're the kind of guy we're looking for.
And I said, wait a minute. I'm going to war.
I'm in the Marine Corps and I'm going to go
on active duty pretty soon. And the guy took out
his card and he handed it to me and he said,
here's my card. If you live, call this number six
months before you get out of the corps. And so
(03:14):
I survived Vietnam. I was a company commander at Camp
Pendleton in nineteen seventy and early seventy one, and I
called the number, not expecting that he would remember me
or even be there. He said, let me get your file.
He came back. He said meet me at the Coronado
Hotel in San Diego Thursday at seven o'clock, which I did,
(03:38):
and he signed me up. I had fifteen days between
the Marine Corps and the CIA. That's kind of how
I got into the agency.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Most of stories in your latest book Bury deal with
your time at CIA, but there are a couple in
there from your time in Vietnam, and there was two
in particular that jumped out of me, and one is
you describe the role of the Combined Action Marines And
I was not at all familiar with this program. Could
you describe it to our listeners please.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
The Marine Corps had a very effective program wherein they
would put a squad of Marines into a village in
a semi pacified area, and that squad would interact with
the local popular forces or sort of militia, younger guys
(04:29):
or older guys, and the Marine squad would kind of
pump up their combat abilities and they would go on
patrols together. The program was very successful, very low cost,
but it did cost about over five hundred Marine Corps
lives during the time that the program operated. And I
(04:53):
got involved when I was after I got out of
the bush, I was seven months on the line of
the fifth Marines, and then I spent the rest of
my tour as a civil affairs officer, and we dealt
often with these small marine units operating in and around
(05:13):
the Danang area in the South Vietnam, and they are
just a bunch of great guys, and it's a program
that other people should have picked up on. I think
that the Marine Corps did exactly what they should have.
I'm talking about the army getting involved in something like this.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Well, it was there ever a concern of yours that
you might be working with a young man that you're
training to shoot a rifle in the morning and at
night he's out there planting, you know, booby trapped for you,
or you know, to trap to hurt you.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Well, of course this is it was difficult. Some of
these units actually had Vietcong infiltrate in them. A good
friend of mine participated. He was badly wounded just before
the Ted Defense have broke out in early sixty eight
(06:10):
when his little CAP unit, not far from Way City
was overrun by the NBA, and they just happened to
be saved by Hotel Company, second Battalion, fifth Marines heading
toward Way City to reinforce and they stopped this CAP
unit being overrun. And the later they found out that
(06:31):
there was actually a VC infiltrator in that unit, but
he did not survive the battle.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Okay, I'll tell you one of the other stories that
really struck me. You had a friend and you say
in the book that you know, as far as the
Vietnam War, the combat law, if you will, there were
the two most dangerous times for someone was when they
first got into into country and then just is there
(06:59):
as they're shore, you know, when they only got a
week or a few days before at the end to
the end of their thirteen month tour.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
And you shared a story that.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Ironic's not the right word, but it would have been
more tragic than usual, and that involved a meeting or
a meal I guess you guys had in Danang. The
guy's name was Mike Cardallas.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, this is when I was in civil affairs. Mike
was one of my buddies from University of Washington here
at the kneesp enlisted and then commissioned in the Marine Corps,
and he was serving with the seventh Marines and his
tour was just about up. He came up to Danang
to fly home. He contacted me, and so I decided
(07:49):
to invite him into the Nang towns. For at dinner,
Vietnamese dinner with my good friend, Lieutenant Jim Jones, who
was fluent in Vietnamese. So we took my came to
town to a very nice little restaurant. Proceeded just to
be with the only foreigners or non Vietnamese in the restaurant.
(08:09):
The table next to us had a bunch of older
Vietnamese fellows who spoke French. I don't speak much Vietnamese,
but my French was good, and I was chatting with them,
and suddenly, out of nowhere, drunken Arvian Special Force, the
sergeant I came up to us very disrespectfully. He took
(08:30):
out a forty five pistol was waving it at us
because we were in a Vietnamese restaurant and we weren't Vietnamese,
and Jonesy was trying to talk him down, and one
of the old gentlemen at the next table, I got
up and went out, and while this guy was waving
(08:50):
the gun around, an ar Special Forces officer came in
with a swagger stick, hit the sergeant and the gun
arm dropped, the weapon, beat him about the head and shoulders,
and then other South Vietnamese soldiers came in and dragged
the miscreant out. The lieutenant apologized and and Mike Dalis,
(09:15):
who was getting on the plane the next morning to
go home, really was sweating that.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Well, Beer, I can tell you the worst part about
that is, you know, it's bad enough to be that
close and get shot, much less by someone who obstensively
was supposed to be one of our allies over there.
And that's what struck me about the story. Barry would
come back. I'd like to get into some of your
stories about your time with a CIA. Just a great book, folks.
I recommend you looking up into China hand at Tales
(09:42):
of a CIA Case Officer. We'll be right back. Welcome
(10:12):
back to American Warrior Radio Laser and gentlemen, this is
your host, Ben Viler Garcia. We're talking with Barry Browman.
Barry had at least thirty years of service to our country,
first with the United States Marine Corpy tod see combat
in Vietnam, and then twenty five years as a CIA
case officer. Berry. As I mentioned, we had you on
the show before, and I went back and I listened
to the podcast for our last conversation and correct me
(10:33):
if I'm wrong, sir. But as I recall, you recruited
forty one agents during your career, and last time we talked,
you put it in baseball terms so I could understand,
and you said, you know, when it comes to that
particularly hard target recruitments, you can't go you know, thirty
five and six, you got to go forty one to
oh because missing a recruitment like that has some bad
(10:57):
rapifications potentially.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, you don't want to bat five hundred as a
CIA case officer because the first time someone says no,
and he's an official in the country you're serving, and
he reports you, you can expect to be kicked out
of the country or PNNG persona non grata within forty
eight hours. So you don't want to You don't want
(11:22):
to go in hoping the guy is going to say yes.
You want to be very very sure that he or
she will agreed to serve as a clandestine service recruit.
Is there a threshold after which, you know, if you're
a case officer someone and you get burned three, four, five,
six times, somebody back at Langley says, you know, maybe
(11:44):
you're in the wrong line of work. Yeah, that normally
comes to the case officer's attention after one or two failures.
I knew a guy I was TDY in his country
in Europe, and I asked his wife dinner how she
enjoyed it, and she said, well, I love it here,
(12:08):
but I just hope we get to finish our tour.
And I would say, and I said, well, why would
that be? And it turned out her husband was p
and g at every one of his assignments is kicked out,
and the country we're in, he was kicked out of
that one and he did not last long in the
clandestine service after that. And this was mostly during the
(12:30):
Cold War. Berry, was it gentler back then, where the
worst you could expect would be to get kicked out
of the country, not I used the air quotes not disappeared. Well,
of course, that's why we were mostly under diplomatic cover,
because we had diplomatic community. If we were if we
were caught, the good news is we were just kicked out.
(12:53):
The bad news is the agent that we were handling
or it could have been interrupted. Especially in a hard
target case, hard target being communists, those guys were generally shot.
So you know, there was some very serious ramifications.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
In all your interaction Barry. One of the things I
learned from from both your books. You know, you, I
think a civilian like me or other folks out there,
would assume that, you know, these folks are all doing
it for the money. But that's not necessarily true.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Is it. No, absolutely not. But I'm looking back at
some of the Soviet cases that we had. I was
only involved directly in one, but I know a number
of stories, and these guys, well, rarely we're doing it
for the money. Very often it was because they hated
the system. These are people that had had relatives, fathers,
(13:44):
uncles killed by the KGB. It's the Americans that were
that were motivated mainly by money, Americans that were recruited
by the KGB or other foreign services. You know.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
One of the quotes I'll never forget are the lines
in your book was well, this wasn't you in this case,
but as one of one of your colleagues had been
working some well you call him Boris in the book,
had been working for a long time. They finally got
to a point where where Boris says, I'm KGB, but
you probably already know that, and your colleague replied, well,
(14:20):
I'm a CIA officer and I think you knew that too,
And the Russian replied, I didn't, but i'd hoped you were.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, that was really a great case. And he came
towards the end of the Cold War, and he was
a KGB officer that was being pursued by a very
hard charging young CIA officer in an Asian station, and
they had established this drinking relationship late at night, and
(14:51):
finally the Russian he'd said, you know, i'm KGBAN, then
the boots that I'm CIA, and and the Russian said, well,
I'm glad that to know that, because I don't want
to be wasting my time with the State Department officer.
I want to work for the CIA. And he did,
and he was successfully polygraphed, which was very rare. He
(15:14):
provided the incredible intelligence at a time when we had
very very few active KGB officers because Aldrich Ames, the
American spy, had given up the names of a number
of officers inside and they were all killed. There's other
instances you relate in your book where you know, I
(15:36):
think of the CIA, and I think of you know,
just stacks of cash. But there was one case where
you ended up having to your flying out with one
of your agents, I guess, and he was back in
coach class and the only seat available for you was
in first class. So you spent the extra twenty six
dollars to get up in first class, and they gave
(15:58):
you a hard time about that on your spencer seat,
I mean twenty six dollars. Well, rules or rules ben
And in that case, I was handling a double agent.
He was being run by a communist country. We were
in Western Europe when this went down, and the idea
(16:20):
was our agent had to make a meeting with his
handlers in another country, and I met him. I passed
him a documentation that what was false it had been
prepared for these people to receive believing it was accurate.
(16:41):
And so what I had to do was I had
to get on the same plane with the agent, because
if he was caught with those documents, it would have
been bad and he would have been blown as the
CIA agent. I, on the other hand, had diplomatic community,
and so I carried the documents. But I had to
(17:01):
be on the plane only to find out that there
were no seats available except in first class. Not a problem.
I got a first class ticket. I got to the
meeting site. Everything went well. And when I went back
to my station and I pilled up my expense account,
I said, you know I had to I had to
(17:23):
fly first class. It was a twenty minute flight, ben
and that's why it was only a twenty six dollars
difference between coach and first class. And so I went
to the deputy. I was reporting to the deputy Chief
of station, and I said I had to do it,
and he said, of course you had to do it,
no problem, will we'll submit it. And it was submitted
(17:46):
and it was rejected and I laughed. I said, look,
I ate twenty six dollars worth of caviar in that
twenty minute flight, and up you had. I had a
and he said, absolutely not. He fought it. He went
to the bean counters in Hetland Langley and ultimately I
(18:06):
didn't have to pay the twenty six Wow. Well, okay,
so listen, when we were traveling overseas, we flew business
and you know that's across the Pacific. You know that's
that's a big improvement.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Sure, I tell you, Barry, when we come back, I
want to talk about some more of your adventures. And
I'll tell you one thing that well, I don't know
if this is act or not, but one thing I
learned may be accurate, maybe not. Berry that the qualification
for good case officers the ability to hold their liquor.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's your host, Ben Bueler Garcia. We're
talking with Barry Browman. Check out his book. It's called
(18:40):
Indo China hand Tales of a CIA Case Officer. You
can also go to Raintree Publishing dot com. We'll talk
more about some of Barye's other books when we come back.
Stick around. Welcome back to American Warrior Radio. Laser Gentlemen.
(19:14):
There's your host, Ben buler Garcia. We're coming to you
from the Silencer Central Studios. Adding a silence will make
shootings safer, more enjoyable, and improve your accuracy. Begin the
process by visiting Silencercentral dot com to see if only
a silencer is legal in your state. They can then
walk you through the permitting process and ship right here
front door. Call Silencer Central today at eight sixty six
six ' four zero three two seven zero, or visit
(19:36):
Silencercentral dot com. We're talking with Barry Browman. Berry had
a twenty five year career as a case officer in
the CIA, he experienced a lot of interesting, intriguing things. Verry.
One of the chapters that broke my heart, you describe
your interaction with John gunthn Or Dean, who at the
time was the American Ambassador to Cambodia. As I understand it, Barry,
(20:00):
of all the places you work, Cambodi was probably your
favorite country to be posted in.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well, I have to say it was my most interesting tour,
and it was my very first tour as a CIA
case officer, and it came during the Cambodian War and
it ended. I was there seventy three to seventy five
in Panompen, and this was a country that went down
in flames. The Kamara Rouge took power, killed over two
(20:26):
million people. And I was on the last fixed wing
clean out in seventy five. And the people I met,
people I handled, people I recruited, the people I worked
with stand out as the best of the bunch in
my entire career.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
We had an Air America pilot on several months ago,
Neil Graham Hansen, and he described a similar situation where
he's he's got an airplane. He is on a runway
outside of Panompen and pretty much the word is coming
down that there rouge is coming in, and you know
it's just time to bug out. And you know, he
grabbed up as many people as he could and he's leaving.
(21:03):
But the the fellow who was working the airport, if
you will, you know, he Neil said come, you know,
come with me, and the guy says, I can't. My
wife's you know, back back in the city. I've got
to stay with her. And he just described he says,
you know that he had tears coming down his dusty face,
and both of them knew that pretty much that it
was his life was about to come to an end.
(21:24):
And nonetheless, you know, Neil had to get his folks out.
And I get the impression your experience of the ambassador
experience was similar and you actually had you flew to
I guess it was a Bangkok, right.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I flew from phenomen Penda Bangkok, took some people out
and took some documents out. But I should mention that
one of the assets that I had who we offered
ride out. He was a senior military officer and in
our last meeting, uh and I offered him and his
family ride out and he said, no, I can't do that,
(22:01):
and then he took his pistol out and he handed
me the pistol and said, I'll be dead in seventy
two hours, but I don't want them to get my
side arms, so I want you to have this as
a souvenir. And I took that weapon out with me.
Wow do you still have it? I do? Wow. You
talked about this.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
You all had some petty cash again boys, yeah, and
their money, and so you had a I used the
air was again a party, but it was almost more
of awake, where you and your team were just mourning,
you know, the loss of Cambodia and what was going
to happen to those people, many of whom you knew.
(22:42):
And you describe a situation after the liquor had flown liberally.
You describe a situation where there was a reporter there
as part of the group, and the ambassador pretty much
spoke his mind and tell us about the reporters react
and then the ambassador's eventual response, because I thought that
(23:02):
was extremely powerful.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, okay, this happened in Bangkok. We all flew out.
Those of us that flew out flew to Bangkok. Some
came overland, some by air.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
And we we we rallied together in Bangkok and the
this is not just the station, but the all embassy officers.
And we took what was left of our community fund
for a little px in panom Pen and we chartered
(23:37):
the boat, the Oriental Queen from the Oriental Hotel, and
we had we spent all of our money and drank
it up on the boat. And we're telling uh parwell stories.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And one of the people was John gunther D and
our ambassador who flew out with the American flag on
the marine choppers that took them out and were set around.
We're all drunk, and with us was a Matt Franjola,
who had been the Associated Press Bureau chief. He got
out and we was talking to Dean, and Dean was talking.
(24:12):
He was very, very better over Henry Kissinger's poor leadership,
failing the Cambodian people, cutting off all money to Cambodia,
and went on and on, and Matt, a working reporter, said,
mister Ambassador, I'm not going to I won't be writing
this story up. Okay. I appreciate your telling us all
(24:35):
of these inside things, but I won't write it up.
And Dean looked at him and said, right for every word, Matt,
write every word, and Matt did, and Dean did not
get his next assignment. Kissinger canceled this next ambassadorship, but
later Dean came back and served as with distinction in
(24:57):
Beirut and in Copenhagen, in Delhi where it was known
as John gunga Dein, and in Bangkok where I served
with them. So Dean was one of the best of
the career professional ambassadors that I ever served with.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Now, then I bet it's one dumb question every show,
and then I'm hearing from your stories. And those were
different times. I suppose I know they were. But you
know that your your book is replete with stories for
it that involved alcohol and apparently some of the some
of the case agents, that was a tool they used
very effectively, even though some of the other agents frowned
(25:34):
upon it.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Well, I don't know quite you're talking about here, Ben,
but I will I recall a story where two of
our officers, the China Hands, were at a dinner, a
private dinner with a couple of very senior Chinese, uh
red Chinese officials, back before we had normalized relations with China.
(25:58):
And it was a private room in a private Chinese
restaurant where everybody was drunk.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
And.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
That the Chinese really and Russians drink hard, and they
drink for oblivion, and it's very difficult to keep up
if you're an American. We would sometimes drink milk before
going out to drink with them to coat the stomach.
But in this case, both CIA officers got drunk to
(26:27):
the point where one of them went to the bathroom
and passed out in the bathroom and no one missed him.
The other CIA officer, to saying goodbye to the Chinese,
vomited on them as they were leaving the restaurant, and
the officer in the bathroom woke up at three am
(26:47):
and alerted the the night guard that he was locked
in and the he survived, but no one ever I
would not have known the story except from one of
the other guests at the dinner, because neither of the
CIA officers ever mentioned it. Er I got to share
(27:08):
a story real quick before we take the next break.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I was part of a trade mission to Beijing in
the nineties, and of course our first stop from the
airport was to the US embassy, where we are briefed,
and I'll never forget the guy told us a number
one assume that your your hotel room is bugged. But
then he also warned us that the Chinese really liked
their liquor, and I camera was called. But they serve
these little things in little cups, not quite as big
(27:32):
as a shot glass. But I mean this stuff was
one hundred and something proof. I'm going to take the
paint off the walls mouth Tika. And the advice they
gave us was, of course, you know, to maintain relations,
you got to you got to have the first drink,
but there'll be more coming. So you know, develop a
slight tremble in your hand, or you try and sit
next to a plotted plant somewhere where you can just,
you know, discreetly dump this stuff in the in the plant.
(27:55):
I'll tell you our secret weapon on those meetings was
we did have a marine with us, and boy, this
guy could handle his liquors. So he definitely he definitely
saved our bacon a couple of times. Barry, we come back,
I want to talk about the other chapter in your book,
or one of them called Tarryron Hostage. We've had a
number of people on the show that we're involved with
(28:17):
that situation there and so that that really really struck me. Folks,
take a look at his books called Into China Hand
Tales of a CIA Case Officer. I think you're really
going to enjoy it. Don't forget to share these important
messages with their friends and associates. You can find over
six hundred podcasts at American Warrior Radio dot com. The
most recent episodes are also on your favorite platform if
(28:37):
that's iHeart or Pandora or Spotify. We try to be
everwhere because we really really want to share these messages. Also,
you can visit Barry's personal address Raintree Publishing dot com
to check out some.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Of these other works. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Welcome back to American Warrior Radio. Ladies and gentlemen. This
is Ben buler GERCI. We're having a great chat with
Barry Browman. Berry serve twenty five years and the CIA
as a case officer. Barry, this is your second real
experience book. How difficult is it to get these things
approved as a former CIA case officer? Is it a
(29:32):
long process or how does that work?
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Okay, everything I write that has to do with intelligence,
fiction or nonfiction has to be approved by the Publication
Review Board in Langley. The first book is more of
a memoir. The second book is a series of stories.
I submitted sixty four two were asked. They asked me
just to drop them, which I did. But nonfiction is
(29:59):
a lot more difficult fiction. I've written two novels dealing
with my experiences and those got was approved in a
couple of weeks because I didn't have to worry about
facts and most of the book was fiction.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
And what give us the titles of those two novels.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Okay, The first one is called The Spy from Plas Sinsupice,
So this was when I was in Paris in the
eighties and it dealt with the hard target recruitment. The
second book came out a few months ago. It's called
The Spy from Suke Road that took place in Thailand
(30:42):
and Cambodia in nineteen nineteen ninety one. And the third
book I'm about to start and that will be taking
place in burmat in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Excellent, and again folks can find all that at Raincree
Publishing dot com. Berry I've had we had two Delta
Force operators on the show who were involved with the
tragic and ill fated Operation Eagle Claw, which was the
mission to rescue our hostages are being held in Tehran,
and also Jonamandez and her husband Tony, who I go
(31:18):
by the nickname the CIA's Masters of Disguise, and Tony
people might recognize he was involved in what you call
the Canadian Caper to get our folks out of the
Canadian embassy at the time, which has then later made
into the movie Argo, and you kind of were on
the edges of that as well.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Well. I was not involved at all with the situation
in Tehran, although I had two friends who were in
the embassy and were taken. One was a State Department
officer and one was a CIA officer. And the CIA
officer was a tough guy. He was a paramilitary guy
(31:57):
I served with in Southeast Asia. He was he was Jewish,
which made it particularly difficult for him, and he had
the presence of mind to take a secret writing chief
of paper with him into confinement, and so he wrote
secret writing messages back and someone in Washington was smart
(32:19):
enough to test them for secret writing, and he provided
intelligence from inside by secret writing. And the only one
I can I can share with you. He wrote one
message saying to Potus votus President of the United States,
and the message was exercised the military option, and the
(32:41):
President tried to do that, but then we had the
problem in the desert and the mission failed. Wow, that's
some pretty powerful stuff you also, And you know, I've
had I kind of chuckled because I've had a number
of folks on whose stories were made into motion pictures,
and I'll never forget. I was asking one, UH soldier
and army guy. I said, well, you know, how accurate
(33:02):
was the movie?
Speaker 1 (33:04):
And he kind of smiled a little bit and says, well,
we weren't Afghanistan, but that's where he was going to
leave it. And you know in your book you talk
about in Argo There's which is a great movie. I
enjoyed it, but they really left out a key part
of what actually happened, and that involved Kenneth Taylor, the
Canadian ambassador, and all the stuff that he did to help.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
In fact, I think President.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Reagan ended up getting him an award after this was
all concluded.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
That was a sad story because when this was happening,
I was at headquarters and a good friend of mine
was a senior Canadian diplomat. We'd served together in Southeast
Asia and he had a dinner party. I was a
guest that he took me aside and said, you know
that there's some Americans that are being protected by the
(33:54):
Canadian embassy And I said, gee, I didn't know that
and I didn't and he said, yeah, I just want
you to know that, you know, we're taking care of them.
So the next morning I went at headquarters up to
the Tehran and Task Force. There was a huge crowd
(34:14):
of people and I said I need to talk to
the boss and then he said I would do Who
are you? I said, I'm from the East Asia Division.
He said, well, we don't have time. I said, well,
there's a couple of Americans being shielded by the Canadians.
Are you aware? And he said okay, come in, come
in coom in And so then I'm talking to the boss.
He said, yes, yes, they're there. We're sending a team
(34:36):
up to Ottawa tomorrow to get the documentation and we're
going to get them out. So please don't mention this
the money one and I didn't. But in the film,
it's very sad that the Canadian ambassador and the mission
don't get the credit they should have. They should have
been given. And in fact that the premiere of the film,
(34:56):
the Canadian ambassador was not invited. So I think that
was a was a big mistake. But at the same time,
when that became public, the Canadian Embassy in Washington, d C.
Is opposite a large office building. Someone hung a huge
(35:17):
sign outside saying thank you Canada for saving those people.
And the Canadians did it, and and the CIA participated
in that, and they did a good job. Do you know,
Barry or.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Can you share with her any assets on the Operation
Eagle colamission itself? I understanding you did have some folks,
believe it or not, on the ground in t Iran,
or at least one guy that I'm wore of.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, yeah, I know that guy. I was in the
language or refresher with him, and he was a he
was posing as an Iranian, he spoke Farsi. He was
on the ground and he was involved, and we would
(36:02):
have been involved in moving the people from the mission
to the rendezvous pickup site for the choppers coming in,
but they never came in, and he was able to
expiltrate himself and lived well. I tell you I had.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Like I said, I've talked to at least one of
the Delta Intelligence guys who was involved with the planning
of that mission, and I got to say, as an
ignorant civilian, if they had been able to pull that off,
given the environment and all the moving parts, it would
have been miraculous. It would have been something that would
have gone down in the history books. Barry, it's been
a real joy talking with you today. Again, I encourage
(36:40):
folks to get your book into China hand Tales of
a CIA Case Officer, And just.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
To tease you, folks, there's some other stories he tells in.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
The book that we weren't able to tell here in
America and where to read it because it's a family show.
But I think you'll enjoy it, things that are both
tragic and sometimes just like we said, you know, the
truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Berry.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
What can we expect coming down the road from you next, Well,
I'm going to start I'm going to Hawaii in a
few weeks and I'm going to start working on the
third novel. That will be The Spy from Golden Valley,
which is where I lived in Rangoon. So that'll be
coming up next, and then I'm gonna probably do a
(37:22):
photo book from my wars from Vietnam, Cambodia and Burma. Okay,
And do you ever get the craving to go back
and visit some of these places? Or I mean, do
you when you travel and say, hey, I'd like to
go back to Vietnam or Cambodia.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Is there an office at the.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
At Langley that says, no beer, We're not gonna let
you do that.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
You know too much? Well, if I was an active service,
they could certainly stop me, but in retirement they don't.
They don't stop me. I've been to China, I've been
to Russia, been to Vietnam, been to North Vietnam. I've
been to back to Cambodia. I did a book on Cambodia.
I've been back to Burma fifteen or twenty times since
(38:02):
I retired. So my movements are quite easy to do
in retirement, but an active service I would be constrained.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
And also guessing you probably can't find a first class
upgrade for twenty six bucks anymore.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Not anymore. Most days are gone.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Those days are definitely gone. Do you and your former
colleagues ever have reunions and get together and chat someplace or.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Well, my infantry company, H Company, second Battalian fifth, the
range we have and will get together as we had
one in Seattle a few months ago, and it's great.
It's great for the troops. As far as the agency. Yeah,
I keep in touch with some of the guys and
ladies from the old days and we get together and
(38:50):
sometimes we gather in Paris or in Bangkok, or in
London or have fun.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
All right, well, Berry, thanks for spending your time with
our listeners today. I really appreciate you sharing your stories
with us.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Why pleasure event you take care? Likewise, you too, sir.
Don't forget.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
The name of the book is called Indo China hand
Tales of a CIA Case Officer. You can find various
others works at his website. It's rain Tree r A
I N T R E E Publishing dot com. Until
next time, ladies and gentlemen, all policies and procedures are
to remain in place.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
If you've been listening.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
To American Warrior Radio
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Archived episodes may be found at Americanwarriorradio dot com or
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