A young counter-intelligence agent who has just defected from Rangoon talks to The Irrawaddy about his previous life and work

The moment he entered the room, the skinny, undernourished-looking young man came quickly to the point. “I have seen your photo in our office,” he announced. This was not to be taken lightly, and I laughed uneasily as I motioned him to take a seat, because it was not a casual remark about any celebrity status I had acquired. The man was from Burma’s feared military intelligence agency.

He was a former counter-intelligence agent, and presumably knew I had once been arrested and roughly interrogated in Rangoon’s infamous Insein Prison during the 1988 pro-democracy uprising.  But this time, I would be asking the questions. There would be no unlocking of a cell door, no punches or beatings but an amicable conversation with a former spy.

Kyaw Myint Myo, aka Myo Myint, had just defected, and I saw him at a secret location. The 33-year-old described his deep-seated frustration working at the newly-created Military Affairs Security, formerly Office of the Chief of Military Intelligence under the control of then prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt, which was dismantled after he was ousted in an October 2004 purge.

The agent displayed a store of insider knowledge about the workings of the current agency, gathered since he started work for the counter-intelligence department’s special unit 1 in 1993. He told The Irrawaddy that he reported directly to a Lt-Col Ne Lin, his boss. His previous commanders were Col Khin Aung and Col San Pwint, both now in prison serving long sentences because of the 2004 purge.

The spy, who now suffers from gout and heart disease, told me how Burma’s intelligence service is having to struggle to reach the sinister standards set by  Khin Nyunt. I wasn’t unhappy to hear that.

The MAS is led by Lt-Gen Myint Swe, a prot?g? of junta supremo Snr-Gen Than Shwe. Myint Swe has little background in intelligence work—Burma’s former heads of intelligence were trained by the CIA, KGB or Mossad, but Myint Swe had no such training.

So far, Myint Swe’s department has been unable to catch any culprits involved in a series of bombings in Burma since mid-2005.  Kyaw Myint Myo said that a major failing of the new intelligence service has been its recruitment of inexperienced officials with no idea how an intelligence structure works.

I nodded my agreement. Recent information released by the regime shows that the intelligence-gathering network is in disarray. For instance in May, the regime announced that Shwe Sai, former vice-chairman of the Karen National Union and ex-head of the KNU’s 6th Brigade, held secret meetings in Mae Sot, Thailand, with exiled dissidents and discussed the dispatch of bombers to Burma. But Shwe Sai died three years ago.

Indeed, it’s good news, perhaps, that Burma’s intelligence agency now faces a credibility problem and is relying on inexperienced informants and spies. The long lists of terrorists and bombers published in state-run papers are more like a joke, and descriptions of wanted “terrorists” are bizarre. Most of them wear gold and diamond jewelry, according to the wanted-list descriptions intended to lead to their capture.

One list of wanted men says Thet Tun, of the Mae Sot-based Democratic Party for a New Society, “usually wears diamond earrings and a gold watch.”  It’s unclear whether he is thus adorned while planting bombs for the students’ army based along the Thai-Burmese border, which The New Light of Myanmar claims is his specialty. One young woman suspect, Moe Moe Aye, “usually wears a jade ring on her left middle finger.” Indeed, there are endless amusing descriptions of “terrorists.”

The irony is that suspects were announced only hours after the first of the Rangoon bombings. Obviously, the regime’s MAS has lost clout and only now may be trying to catch up.

New recruits, according to Kyaw Myint Myo, have received intensive training. But it takes time to build and effectively run an intelligence network like the OCMI. 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. As he explained, he and other agents were told to “lose our shadows,” and to treat those they had to track as “objects.”

“My face is just regular, and I can be anyone and just disappear in the crowd,” he added. Now, after lengthy debriefing sessions carried out by insurgents to whom he defected, he faces an uncertain future.

Kyaw Myint Myo told me that  MAS’s counter-intelligence department now had a plan to launch a “data thief project,” in which operatives would steal data from opposition groups both in Burma and outside. The Irrawaddy was on the project’s list, he said.

I didn’t need any more convincing that he had seen my photo before our meeting.