My Life in a Squirrel Cage

Colonel Flagg, How I Miss You!

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12 August 2023 (Saturday)

My Life in a Squirrel Cage

Colonel Flagg, How I Miss You!

By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德

TAIPEI - There was a time when my life changed in a weird and permanent way that made me feel like Colonel Flagg, the neurotic CIA agent, in the old Tv series MASH.

Writing about defense and intelligence issues makes you a target when you are overseas.  The government wants to know who is leaking information to you.  I have had surveillance teams on me in China and even the democratic-ruled South Korea.

But for me, being under surveillance by Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB) was a disappointment.  It became too normal, too predictable, too unimaginative…

The NSB went apeshit, when I published my report in Jane’s Defence Weekly in January 2001 outlining the joint U.S.-Taiwan signals intelligence (SIGINT) antenna base at Pingtun Li on Yangminshan. See posting HERE.

The NSB was the custodian of the joint U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) program listening-in on Chinese communications and my presence on the island had gone unnoticed until the Jane’s article appeared.

This is when they began appearing.  A young woman and an old man.  They popped in-and-out of my life.  It was never a daily thing, but they surprised me on their persistence. 

I am not a mind-reader.  Nor do I have ESP.  I have no fantasies even of being a hero in my own life narrative.  But I can spot surveillance teams when they follow me around.  When I do, why not take them to a good movie or grab a beer?  Their lives must be boring.

When I drill down on a story, I use a stainless steel bit and enough torque to unscrew a tooth out of a tiger’s jaw.

And like all dentists, people hate me.

Why?  Basically, because I use deceptive practices to learn the facts when transparency becomes opaque bullshit. 

See my North Korea-Taiwan book HERE.

So when the below article came out on 26 August 2001 in the United Daily News accusing me of being a CIA agent, I decided to call my future memoir’s My Life in a Squirrel Cage.

It was Hunter S. Thompson, the gonzo-journalist of the Rolling Stones, who warned that “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”.

And no matter what I do today to convince people I am not a spook, it never materializes on their face as the truth.  If anything they look disappointed, as if they needed intrigue, mystery, and subterfuge in their lives.

I do not blame them because people hunger for a Sherlock Holmes and even after 30 years I have never met one.  Nor have I ever met a John Wick.  I have drunk whiskey bottles dry with Blackwater and every kind of intelligence officer there is in the world, but no one, so far, has served as an archetype of espionage and covert action.

Monsters, yes, they are monsters.  But none you would probably recognize.

Sorry for the disappointment…

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