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Burma’s military leaders previously depended heavily on the regime’s secret police units to intimidate the civilian population and monitor people’s movements, as well as watching dissidents at home and abroad, foreign missions, and its own government officials and cabinet ministers.

 

In fact, power and authority now reside with special branch officers working for the ministry of home affairs. This is the plan of Than Shwe and his deputy, Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye, who thought Khin Nyunt’s intelligence agency was acting as “a state within a state”.

 

Khin Nyunt sent his men to infiltrate each ministry to collect inside information and data.  His department kept files on ministers, senior officials and his rivals. It is widely believed that information collected on some cabinet ministers and other officials by Khin Nyunt’s intelligence service included their involvement in sex scandals and corruption.

 

Khin Nyunt’s former rivals, Lt-Gen Tun Kyi, Lt- Gen Kyaw Ba and Lt-Gen Myint Aung, all powerful ministers and battle-hardened generals, were fired in 1997. His department released video footage of these ministers’ “extra activities” in their offices, where they apparently had day-beds for flings with mistresses, including models and actresses. The footage and sound bites gathered by the department were quite clear.

 

Kyaw Myint Myo told me that he was assigned to infiltrate the offices of some powerful government ministers. This included the office of Myint Aung, former minister for agriculture and irrigation. “I was just a clerk,” he said, and the assignment, which included installing a small camera in Myint Aung’s office, was given to him by Col San Pwint. “We have files on ministers, officials and businessmen,” he boasted.

 

The spy’s disguise was so effective that a number of members of the political opposition would be embarrassed to admit they had provided assistance to him, allowing him to stay in their offices at times. On learning that Kyaw Myint Myo had talked to The Irrawaddy, revealing that he was a spy, one prominent opposition member said the man acted like an “idiot.”

 

Kyaw Myint Myo told The Irrawaddy he had once been assigned to Myawaddy, on the Thai border, to monitor Karen and other dissidents and their activities in Thailand. As usual, he did not attract attention. I thought the spy really must have played the idiot to avoid detection.