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EJ Sharland Esq British Embassy
Bangkok
HICK 19/5
cc. 44101
RSTRY No. 14
IRD
RD
Dear John
197
POSSIBLE UK PARTICIPATION IN THE SPECIAL NARCOTICS OPERATION (SNO)
1.
Just before Norma Rolph, the Hongkong Commissioner for Narcotics, left Bangkok he said that he had found the American BNDD agent, who runs the SNO in the North very difficult to deal with. One the evidence of a recent long conversation with the agent in question I can understand why, and it seems to me that we should look very carefully at the proposal made by Rolph that a Hong Kong police officer should be posted to the North to do Liaison work.
2.
This suggestion was welcomed in Bangkok both by the US
As a gesture Embassy and by the regional BNDD chief Fred Dick. it would clearly have value for them, though maybe only in terms of publicity and public relations in showing that there is international concern over the narcotics problem an aspect which in terms of our bilateral relations with the Thais might not be too welcome to us. Whatever the situation in Bangkok, the way the operation in the North is organised would seem to me to make
The it difficult for anyone to do liaison work as such. Americans have what amounts to their own tame police force of about 5 officers and men spread over the North in 5 "garrisons", staticed at Fang, Mae Sai etc with two more garrisons about to be put into operation. The three American BNDD agents now here pay their own informants and lead raids but they need the Thais to actually make the arrests. In addition, although the agents co-operate fairly closely together, each man runs his own cases,
To do pays his own informants and is virtually autonomous. liaison work with the Thai police would not be very useful so any Hong Kong-based officer sent to do liaison work would need to work with the Americans, which would put him in a very difficult position. He would be a somewhat unwelcome parasite on the American organisation unless he were doing a useful job of work which the Americans recognised as such. To my mind there are three possibilities: firstly, that he should concentrate on information, running his own set of informers and swapping information with the Americans; secondly that he should effectively
CONFIDENTIAL & ECLIPSE
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