New Jim Thomspn Book

[Flashermac]

Thompson has done very well for a man who died over 40 years ago - sad that it took a Malaysian truck driver so long to come forward and finally put the mystery to rest. Unless, of course, the CIA *paid* him to put the mystery to rest .....

If a truck driver got him, why was there no evidence on the road surface? Also, JT was last seen nowhere near any major road. The road accident story does not hold water.

 

Where Thompson was last seen ... some road.

 

 

 

Human bones in the nearby jungle in 1985. Oddly, no one has DNA tested them.

[dave32]

"Toward the end, aged 61, Thompson felt the hopes of his generation had been dashed, the old Asia he loved was fast becoming too Westernized, and the most passionate love affair of his life, with the wife of an American diplomat, had ended. Like other expatriates, he could never go home again, and yet sensed that he would never become truly Thai."

 

Book arrived a couple weeks ago, going to read this weekend. Interesting - made the front page of Yahoo today.

 

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Link

 

"New, darker portrait of legendary American

By DENIS D. GRAY | Associated Press – 10 hrs ago

 

BANGKOK (AP) — Forty-five years after vanishing into a jungle without a trace, "Silk King" Jim Thompson remains a daily presence in Thailand: shoppers crowd his elegant stores and the American expatriate's antique-rich residence is one of the capital's top tourist attractions.

 

Credited with the revival of a now booming silk industry, Thompson attained legendary status, enhanced by a bon vivant lifestyle at a time when Thailand was still truly exotic -- and by his mysterious death. But little has been known about Thompson's intensely political, darker side -- his freelance backing of Asia's insurgencies, clashes with Washington's Cold War warriors and his connections to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which to this day reportedly refuses to release his complete file.

 

It's the cloak and dagger stuff, rather than the glitz and glamor, that's the focus of a recent book "The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War" by Joshua Kurlantzick, an author on Asian affairs with the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

 

The book provides no new clues about Thompson's vacation walk into a Malaysian jungle in 1967 from which he never returned. Numerous theories, which still continue to pop up from time to time, range from having been eaten by a tiger to abduction by U.S. intelligence agents.

 

But Kurlantzick says he uncovered a trove of other information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, departments of Defense and State and other U.S. government agencies through the Freedom of Information Act as well as unclassified material available, but mostly untapped, in the National Archives.

 

From this, emerges a portrait of Thompson as a U.S Army officer in the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, who stood ardently behind America's immediate post-World War II policy of championing democracy and ridding the world of colonialism. He believed Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist who should be supported, and almost worshipped Pridi Banomyong, Thailand's pro-democracy statesman.

 

But Washington executed an about-turn and began to back assorted Asian strongmen and the French in colonial Indochina — "a scurvy race" he called them — on grounds that it was fighting the greater menace of Communism. Thompson became disillusioned and angry.

 

He was devastated when Pridi was ousted in a coup followed by the killings of many of his followers and a succession of thuggish leaders from the military, which remains a powerful force in Thai politics to this day.

"I wanted to use Jim to broaden the story to Thailand's relations with the United States, and to explore this whole generation of those who had come out of the OSS in World War II and then were pushed out by the Cold War," Kurlantzick said in an interview.

 

Scion of a wealthy East Coast establishment family, educated at Princeton University, James H. W. Thompson dabbled in architecture and partied in New York before volunteering for the army. A wartime marriage to a beautiful debutante ended in divorce. Serving with distinction in North Africa and Europe, he was about to parachute into Thailand with an OSS team when the war ended.

 

In Thailand, Thompson became deeply involved with Lao, Cambodian and Vietnamese insurgents who used the country as a base in fighting the French, helping to supply weapons and serving as a go-between, often acting without approval from headquarters. Although discharged in 1946, Kurlantzick says Thompson continued to "serve as a de facto intelligence officer," useful to all sides until the radical shift in U.S. policy when he and other colleagues in the OSS found themselves on the "wrong side."

"Jim was an idealist, a romantic, an anti-imperialist and there was no more idealistic time than just after the war," the book quotes a one-time U.S. diplomat, Rolland Bushier, as saying.

 

America's secret entry into the war in Laos in the early 1960s finally destroyed his vision of "an America that used its power to build democracy in the region, that could distinguish between local grievances and global communism, and that inspired Asians as a liberator, not as a new colonizer."

 

Like a number of like-minded Americans at the time, Thompson was investigated by the FBI for suspected "un-American activities," and "although Thompson once had been extremely valuable to U.S. intelligence, the agency finally put out a 'burn notice,' on him, warning all employees to stay away from him," the book notes.

 

By this time, he had started The Thai Silk Company, reviving a largely moribund industry, helping thousands of poor villagers in the process and introducing Thai silk to the world. Dinners at his traditional Thai home, filled with antiques he had collected, became a must-do for visiting celebrities, diplomats, spies and journalists, many of whom described them, and Thompson's personality, as unforgettable.

 

A number of those who knew him personally have recalled a more optimistic, upbeat individual than portrayed in the book, and almost certainly it isn't his politics which is now remembered by most.

 

"Jim may have disappeared decades ago but he remains alive today through the legacy of his great silk products, the help his company still gives poor rural folk and through the preservation of Thailand's rich artistic heritage," says William J. Klausner, president of The James H. W. Thompson Foundation, which serves as caretaker of his residence-museum and promotes Thai culture.

 

Kurlantzick says Thompson was a "multifaceted, generous and foresighted man, but he was in some ways too idealistic, bordering on the naive and it became his downfall in many ways."

 

Toward the end, aged 61, Thompson felt the hopes of his generation had been dashed, the old Asia he loved was fast becoming too Westernized, and the most passionate love affair of his life, with the wife of an American diplomat, had ended. Like other expatriates, he could never go home again, and yet sensed that he would never become truly Thai.

 

Perhaps, the book suggests, the real tragedy befell Thompson before his disappearance.

[Flashermac]

There was a Seri Lao underground, just as there was a Seri Thai underground against the Japanese. FDR was determined that the French should not be allowed to reclaim their Indo-China colony, but FDR snuffed it and DeGaulle put enough pressure on Truman to make him agree to it. Pridi Phanomyong most definitely turned over thousands US-provided small arms weapons to the Seri Lao to fight the French. But remember that at the time HCM had not admitted he was a die hard Marxist. He passed himself off as a democrat, rather as Castro would later.

 

If China had not falen to Mao, who knows what might have happened in SE Asia, probably something much nicer than did.

 

Pridi is one of my heroes too, even though he had his faults.

 

p.s. Jim Thompson would be appalled at what Bangkok has become. I certainly am, and I came here almost 30 years after he did.

[Julian2]

Unfortunately the world ignores things like pre-Mao China, pre-Lenin Russia and pre-Castro Cuba and then gets indignant at the outcome.

[BrownFox77]

"Toward the end, aged 61, Thompson felt the hopes of his generation had been dashed, the old Asia he loved was fast becoming too Westernized, and the most passionate love affair of his life, with the wife of an American diplomat, had ended. Like other expatriates, he could never go home again, and yet sensed that he would never become truly Thai."

 

Book arrived a couple weeks ago, going to read this weekend. Interesting - made the front page of Yahoo today.

 

 

 

Glad you got the book, I really enjoyed it and learned quite a bit. One of the amazing things brought out was the (secret) "Laotian War" and America's huge involvment: I knew nothing about it and absolutely no one I've mentioned it to knew anything about it either, although we dropped more tonnage there than during all of WWII... (also know what some of those old "Thai war movies" I'd seen on Thai TV were about now).

[Flashermac]

Unfortunately the world ignores things like pre-Mao China, pre-Lenin Russia and pre-Castro Cuba and then gets indignant at the outcome.

 

 

Pre-Lenin Russia had a democratic socialist government headed by Alexander Kerensky. That is the one the communists overthrew, not the Tsar.

 

So you would consider Mao's Cultural Revolution an improvement on the war lords? Castro's dictatorship an improvement over Batista's? How many people fled Batista's Cuba anyway?

[Julian2]

The fact that Communism not only came about but that large numbers of people were attracted to it reflects on what was already happening.

The fact that it invariably became totalitarian dictatorships which purged most of the original supporters is irrelevant.

Err... didn't Batista kill most dissidents before the could get away.

[dave32]

Glad you got the book, I really enjoyed it and learned quite a bit.

 

Appreciate the heads-up and recommendation you posted. I wasn't even aware of the book. This is what I like to read (critical historical analysis from reputable source, though I like wikipedia too ). Will write some quick thoughts when finished.

[ThaiHome]

...The fact that it invariably became totalitarian dictatorships which purged most of the original supporters is irrelevant.

 

Irrelevant? Not to the millions upon millions that were killed by those totalitarian dictatorships. What is the count? 85 to 100 million?

 

As Steven Rosefielde says in Red Holocaust: while it is fashionable to mitigate the Red Holocaust by observing that capitalism killed millions of colonials in the twentieth century, primarily through man-made famines, no inventory of such felonious negligent homicides comes close to the Red Holocaust total.

 

You sound just like the person Rosefield is describing.

Mass killings under Communist regimes

 

Note, you can get the Kindle book on Amazon for 12 bucks. I bought but haven't read it yet.

TH

[Julian2]

Thanks for the heads up on the kindle.

I'm not sure where I supported the red holocaust... just trying to discuss the causes of ideologies like Communism.

As the right say, attack first and think later eh?

 

I thought you were fleeing the country ahead of the coming Thaksin inspired farang holocaust?