St Augustine author finishing sequal

Today, Rob Armstrong, who spent nearly 25 years with CBS News and nearly 32 years as a broadcast journalist, and his wife Barbara, divide their time between St Augustine and Charlottesville, Virginia; and, when he is not on the golf course, he is likely contemplating his next book — he has authored eight of them.

Armstrong says that his novel, THE OLD SPY, a tale of al-Qaeda and Real IRA terror aimed at London, has been getting stellar reviews and he is announcing a sequel, A SUMMER OF DECEPTION, which will be available soon. THE OLD SPY e-book is available from Amazon for 99 cents.

Students and faculty at Flagler College in St Augustine were introduced to Armstrong in September 1998, where he was a professor in Flagler’s Communication Department until he retired from teaching in 2011.

In his first novel, THE OLD SPY, Professor MacKenzie Roberts, a retired CIA agent, is summoned back into service following a murder in Killarney, Ireland; that turns out to be the lynchpin revealing an intricate terrorist plot with a weapon, potentially more deadly than 9-11.

In the sequel, A SUMMER OF DECEPTION, Roberts is again dragged from retirement back into CIA service. The complex plot moves from a Cold War defector, to a network of ex-KGB agents, to Iranian sleeper cells, to a Canadian company with North Korean links to cyber-terror, to a planned attack on Washington, DC.

Armstrong was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1949 and moved with his family to Denver, Colorado, in 1956. He graduated from the University of Denver with a BA in history in 1972 and attended the University of Denver, College of Law, until he joined CBS News in 1974.

Armstrong left CBS News in April 1998, after nearly a quarter century as an on-air radio and television correspondent. He spent the last decade of his career as the network’s Senior Radio Correspondent in Washington, covering Congress, the White House and national politics. His assignments with CBS took him all over Europe, the Caribbean, 39 countries in all, and to 48 states to cover some of the biggest stories of the last quarter century.

Armstrong reported on four presidential election campaigns as well as nine presidential nominating conventions. He reported the resignation of House Speaker Jim Wright, the political rise of Newt Gingrich, the tumultuous confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and the presidential runs of Gary Hart, Ross Perot and Jesse Jackson.

For nearly a decade, Armstrong anchored a weekly network radio broadcast, Capital Ideas, on which he interviewed politicians, authors, diplomats and world leaders, including Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, John McCain, Albert Gore, Bob Dole, George Mitchell, Newt Gingrich, Thomas Foley, Czech President Vaclav Havel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, PLO spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi, and authors Tom Clancy and Eudora Welty.