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The Spy Who Came in with the Cold

By Saneitha Nagani

I am not a spy fiction writer Le Carre and the story I am going to tell you is not The Spy Who

Came in from the Cold. Mine is not a spy novel but it is a drama that talks about a spy in real life.

Mine is about The Spy Who Came in With the cold.

In my school days I have read a fairy tale about a hare who managed to escape from death by being

quick witted. He was able to get himself out of a situation of being eaten by the lion by his quick

thinking. The story goes like this. The lion, king of the jungle, was getting old and he found himself

harder and harder each day to hunt and get a decent meal. He then came up with ideas that if, as a

king, he could summon the animals to come to his lair he could easily find an excuse to eat them. No

more need for hunting.

The first of the animals that was unfortunate to draw the shortest straw was the bison. He went to

the lions den and the lion asked him to smell his breath. The bison, like most in the civil service, put

his life on the line and gave the lion his frank and fearless opinion. He said to the lion, Your breathsmells really bad Sir. The lion showed the bison that he was offended by that remark and ate him

up.

The next unfortunate animal was the monkey. Unlike the bison the monkey more or less was like a

Corporate Public Relations consultant. He took a sniff of the lions breath and tried his spin, What

a sweet breath you have my Lord? The lion said the monkey was being dishonest with him and ate

him up as well.

It was now the hares turn to front up with the lion. The hare may look timid but because hares have

no other means of defending themselves from imminent danger they have to rely on their wits and

they are always cautious. As he approached the lions den he noticed that there were only footprints

going into the den and none whatsoever seems to have come out. Like before the lions asked the

hare to sniff his breath. He did as he was told but there was no response from him positive or

negative.

The hare then said to the lion, Let me have another sniff. He did it again and then looking confused

he gave no response. After a while he said to the lion, Sire it must have been the cold that my nose

is blocked and I cannot smell a thing. Let me recover from this cold and Ill be back again soon. Then

he left the lions den alive and leaving a confused and irritated lion behind.

Just as the hare in my story is living by his wits, our former military intelligence officer turned a high

ranking diplomat at the Burmese Embassy in Washington, must have a cold too. Since his defection

in March 2005 he has not make us wiser with any reasonable disclosure let alone providing us with

information that could be useful. The worst thing is that he has not enlightened us with his role at

the embassy since he joined in 1999. It is us, the Open society that should be saying his despicable

conduct is an act of betrayal and not the military regimes thrash The New Light of Myanmar

describing his defection as such.

Apart from dobbing in some of his colleagues who had carried out the extra-judicial killings of some

villagers on the Christie Island allegedly at the direct orders from the Senior General Than Shwehow

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and where he fit in with all those human rights abuses committed by mostly military intelligence.

The common knowledge is that political prisoners were being detained in prisons all over Burma

but it was mostly at the hands of the military intelligence that prisoners were tortured and some

even to death. He has not given us what his role was when he was the commander of the military

intelligence unit he commanded. He is a former Major, a commanding position and not a lower

ranking spy operative at all.

In some of the remarks he made, he said that there were some in the democratic movement who

came to him to collaborate with the regime. So far, no names were given and nothing of that

allegation resurfaces again. At the Burmese Embassy he was a Minister Counsellor, ranking highest

after the ambassador but most of the day-to-day running of the missions must be on his shoulders.

Unlike the same ranking embassy official who defected from the same Burmese Embassy in

Washington he had 80,000 US dollars in his hand as contingency when he left. So far not a word of

explanation has been given as to why he has that money and to spend that money on what purpose.

How convenient it would be for such a high-ranking official from the military intelligence to be able

to infiltrate into the democratic movement and exile community in the United States without raising

any alarm? Isnt that part of the tradecraft? I have seen many lives in Burma destroyed by such

betrayal of trust from those who succeeded in infiltrating movement and causes.

As Richard Decon mentioned in his book, The Chinese Secret Service that, Sun Tzu was so adamant

about the absolute necessity of espionage always being successful that he insisted on designating

the ordinary spy as the surviving spy. The implication was clear: any spy who did not survive did

not deserve to be a spy. I have no doubt that the work of our spy who came in with the cold is not

over there in the United States, it has yet to begun. He has been trained there and it should be easily

a stomping ground or familiar territory for him. He also must know that the intelligence community

in the US can by pass the INS (Immigration and Naturalisation Services), if needed be, to determine

his immigration status.

For him to gain the trust (which indeed is a very rare commodity in that line of work) of the US

Administration or the exile community living there, he must come clean with the veil of secrecy

which he cloaks over him just like the hare has to get his nose unblocked and clean. In Burmese

Foreign Service one does not get an assignment as important as the one in Washington unless one

has a very good, (I must emphasised again) very good connection within the military regime. Sun Tzu

said, Who can determine where one ends and the other begins? For our Spy who came in with the

cold he should be able to determine for himself where to begin, the end will be taken care of. END