On March 16th, 2026, the ISCAP released this document from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This is an article about the life, service, and disappearance of Jim Thompson. The ISCAP decided to declassify some portions and affirm the classification of other portions of this originally Secret document.
Thompson was a former OSS agent and founder of the Thai Silk Company who disappeared while visiting friends in Malaysia, which launched the largest manhunt in Southeast Asian history. After the war, Thompson was the Chief of Station for the Central Intelligence Group in Bangkok where he developed friendships with many Indochinese leaders and earned a reputation as an able and aggressive intelligence officer. In his retirement, Thompson returned to Bangkok and was hoping to make a clean break from his past in intelligence. However, his reputation did not allow him to live a normal life. The CIA constantly sought him out no matter how many times he rebuffed them, agents believed that he was their case officer, creating a huge security risk as Thompson did not feel obligated to stay quiet on what others told him, and even foreign officers believed Thompson was a spy, and the more he refused it the more his reputation grew. Eventually, his well-known Viet Minh sympathies created more distance between himself and the agency, and Bangkok Station lost interest in him. Until he disappeared in Malaysia, and his sister was murdered causing speculation of foul play. Thompson’s disappearance remains a mystery to this day.