Reg Brown Character Analysis in Talking to Strangers

Reg Brown was a counterintelligence analyst who worked on the Latin American desk of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and began to suspect that his DIA colleague, Ana Belen Montes, was working as a Cuban informant. Brown assembled a report in the late 1980s attesting to senior Cuban officials’ involvement in international drug smuggling. Just days before the report was scheduled to be published, every official named in the report issued a public denial of their involvement, which proved to Brown that an informant had leaked the information. Brown began to suspect that Montes was the informant after discovering that it was Montes who had arranged the February 23 meeting between Admiral Eugene Carroll and Cuban officials the day before the Cuban Airforce shot down the Hermanos al Rescate planes.

Reg Brown Character Timeline in Talking to Strangers

The timeline below shows where the character Reg Brown appears in Talking to Strangers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

A counterintelligence analyst named Reg Brown shares Gladwell’s suspicions. When the incident took place, Brown worked on the Latin American desk... (full context)

Brown’s investigations suggested that it was most likely one of his DIA colleagues—a Cuban expert named... (full context)

In 1994, two Cuban intelligence officers who defected confirmed Brown’s suspicion that there was a high-ranking informant inside American intelligence. In his report to Carmichael,... (full context)

After Carmichael corroborated Montes’s information, he was convinced that Reg Brown’s concerns were unfounded. The investigation faded into obscurity until 2001, when it finally came to... (full context)