S15 I REVIEW

The secrets of McAvoy, myftiend the CLA spy

os and Burma during tumultuous periods in the 1950sto the 1970s made me suspect that his designation as a former "diplomat'' might be somewhatmisleading. He waved such notions aside. SubsequentlyI hired him as a highly infoimed columnist for, successively, Business Tokvo and Asia lnc,magazinesi edited in Tokyo, New York and Hong Kong. All the while he rejected the notion that his government work had been for anvthing other than the StateD'epartment. But asthe Bible warns. secrets often don't stav that way forever. At long-last a book, Legacy Of Ashes:The History Of The CIA bv Tim Weinei (Penguin/AllenLane 2007) - reviewed by me on these pages on Oct 1,6 gives us some idea of what McAvoy and others like him were up to in Asia back in the L950sto the !970s. A couple of the book's most riveting passages involve McAvov: The author had finally mhnaged to get him to break mv friend's omerta-like code 6f silence. McAvov first reached Asia in 1945 as a young marine hitting an embattled beachheadat Okinawa. After an immediate post-war stint as a newspaperreporter, he joined the CIA, which returned him to Japan. At the time, the CIA Tokyo station had been talking to Nobosuke Kishi, formei wartime Cabinet minister who had been recentlv released from suspicion 6f involvement in war crimes.He had re-entered politics and soughtbehind-the-scenes US support for his comeback. McAvoy was charged with beins- Kishi's primirv. low-profile contait. Thu; was born in 1955, says au-

Bv ANrHony Peur Senior Writer Nothing is secret that shalt not be made manifest. - From the New Testament (Luke 8:17) ASKED to describewhat the U S C e n tra l In t el l i gence Agency did, former director George Tenet once responded: "We stealsecrets."This was honest enough but only part of an answer. At least until last year, when Washington, in tlie wake of 60 years of the CIA's excesses and often soaring incompetence, curbed its operational arm and downgraded the CIA director's post, the agency also created secrets. And, of course,they also did their best - often not brilliantly - to keep them. Clyde McAvoy, ffiy ex-spyfriend and former co[league - editorial colleague, I hastento add - was good at all of this. I can testifv that. especiallyin the busiriessof keeping his mouth shut, he was very good indeed. When I met him in Tokvo in the late 1980s he was iocal boss of Continental Airlines and Air Micronesia. Continental had once had some distant connections with Air America, a SoutheastAsian airline run covertly by the CIA. This and McAvoy's resume listing long stints in US embassies Jain pan, Thailand,Indonesia,La-

CASHLINE:Nobosuke Kishi received massive clandestine US subsidies.

PHOTO: LOLAMAYMCAVOY

SECRET LIFE:ln the business keeping mouthshut,CIA of his spy ClydeMcAvoywas verygood. thor Weiner, "one of the stronger relationships the CIA ever cultivated with a foreign political leader". The US then faced big problems in this region. In the 1950s, China was firmlv in an alliancewith the Soviet Union hostile to the United States.The Korean War had ended i n a n g ry , h e a v i l y armed stalemate.As Washington saw things, Japan,despite its large Japanese communist party and other anti-American elements, had to be turned into a reiiable Asia-Pacific ally as quickly as possible. McAvoy becamethe principal conluit for madsive clandestinesubsidiesfor Kishi as he went about unifving Japan'sconseryatives uirder the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) banner. In less than 15 months - November 1955 - th e J a p a n e s ew a s elected prime minister. A \"y vote on the emerging US-Japansecurity treaty was about to take place. From an agent in the socialist party, McAvoy got wind of communist plans to cause a riot in the Diet, thus wrecking the process.Warned by the American, the prime minister quietly ordered his party members not to take-the Diet's regular mid-morning tea break but to rush to the chamber while the opposition was absentand voi'e the Bill into law. American monev flowed to the LDP "for at least 15 years under four American presidents", savsWeiner. "It helped consolihate one-party rule in Japan for the rest of the Cold War." Other key Asian countries were also at risk from communist subversion.McAvoy was reassigned Thaito land (1957-59)and then Indonesia:From L961,he was chargedwith penetratingthe Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the government of presidentSukarno,a leader seenby Washingtonto be increasingly under communist influence. , This time, McAvoy could claim a quite remarkable coup all his own: putting an eventual Indonesian foreign minister, Adam Malik, 5n the agencypayroll. "I recruited and ran Malik," the spy, by then retired in Honolulu (where he still

OURMAN:AdamMalik,who becameIndonesian foreign minister,wason CIA payroll. resides),revealed to Weiner in a telephone interview in 2005. In Jakarta, McAvov had found himself in the midst of one of S outh-east A si a' s most dramatic,and still hiehly controversial, political-militarv convulsions. ihe crisishad been building _lorlg before McAvoy reachedIndonesia.In 1958. the CIA had launchedan ultimately failed operation designed to overthrow Sukarno by establishingin Sumatra and Sulawesi a breakaway administration by disaffectedgenerals. Inflaniing nationalist passions, this egregious interferencein Indonesian affairs helped the PKI to acquire 3.5 million nominal members,making it the larges,tcommunist party outside China and the Soviet llnion. Mal i k, then 48, and a former Marxist, had served as Indonesianambassador to Moscow and trade minister. But a falling-out with Sukarno had made him ripe for recruitment by McAvoy. As Weirier tells it. "the CIA worked to consolidate a shadow cabinet, a troika composed of Adam Malik,

THE STRAITSTIMES SATURDAY, OCTOBER2T2OO7

central Java's ruling sultan [Hamengku Buwono IX], and an armv maior-general named Suhdrto". Th"eplotters told US ambassador Marshall Green that thev proposed to rid Indonesii of communism through a new political movemenf. Precise details of what happened in Indonesia from about Sept30, 1965, are still debated.'Butmost observers appear to agreethat pro-PKI elementsin the militarv that day attempted a coup whose centrepiecewas the assassination of most senior armv generals. Six were slaughl tered, but the killine squads missed Suharto, thd armv's No. 3, who managedto seize commano. The PKI took flieht. McAvov once told me"that. in order to keep an appointment with a Piil menitier, he visited partv headquarters and fourid th-eUuitairig abandoned, the offices in disarrav. In a hint that he mieht well have been the kindof diplomat who stole secrets, he saidthat he had been able to wander through the building reading files. PKI leaders were rounded up and executed. Over the next few weeks, untold numbers of Indonesians died. In 2001, in an e-mailto me that responded my reto quest for his comment on these events, McAvoy questioned stories of whblesale massacre: "Evidenceof mass killines was never found bv office"rs various embassie"s of who fanned out in Central Java." Ambassador Green appearsto disagree. told He the US SenateForeign Relations Committee in 1967 that "perhaps close to ,5qO,000" people were killed. McAvoy's next assignment was in Laos in 1968-L971 at the height of C IA -d i re c te d c o v e rl attempts to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. North Vietnam's supply corridor to its troops in South Vietnam. But bv then America was preparin! to withdraw from its anti-communist crusade in Asia. After launching rapprochement with ehinb, president Richard Nixon's administration called on the CIA to focus on other priorities. For McAvov - bv 1971, station chief in Rang6on (today's Yangon,then capital of Burma. now known as Mvanr-nar) ihe priority target "suddeniv becime heroiil. then b e g i n n i n g to fl o o d ' i n to North America from the opi-

um-growing hills of the Burma-Laos-Thailand Golden Triangle. A certain Lo Hsine-han. an ethnic Sino-Shaneileriild chief, was then running the region's biggest narcotics business. went to the TrianI gle in search of him. Unknown to me, McAvov in Burma also had the man in his sights. My article, The Sinister Warlord Behind Asia's Drug Traffic, appearedin Readert Digest earlv inL973. Weeks lat-er, headlines throughout the region announcedLo's capture on the Burma-Thailand border bv Thailand's Border Patrol Police. A Burmese diplomat in Washington creilited the magazinearticle with setting in motion a train of events that causedthe Burmese armv to chase Lo into Thailand, where the Thais caught him. But years latei I learned what had been happening behind the scenes a CIA success storv and one of manv not reported bv authorWeiner iir his polemical anti-agencybook. Agents answerinsto "dioloma"t" McAvov h"admahaged to plant a number of small radio transmitters in the wooden saddles of the mules Lo and his cadreshabituallv used for transport in the roirgh territory. Guided by beefs, an anti-Lo task force in smoke-filledrooms stretching from Rangoon and Bangkok to Washiri'ston closelv tiacked all his m6vements. Informed of the operation, the Burmese government sent six hastilv assembled battalions huritine for Lo. Interceptedon the-Burmeseside oI the Thai border, manv of Lo's irregulars either surrenderedoi fled. Lo himself fled into Thailand, where he was arrested a few hours later bv Thai police and returned iir shacliles to Rangoon. Years later, still insisting that he had pulled off this coup in his capacitv as "diplom'at". mv fiiend divute6d to me sbm'Jdetails of the"exercise. As author Weiner tells us. McAvov had been conduit for millions of dollars to Japan's LDP and prime minister Kishi. But Lri and his opium army were a much less expenslveexercrse. "The operation cost Uncl e S am hbout U S $800," McAvoy told me. "Those pony train escortscame cheap. Very." anthonypaul2@bigpond.com