Free Deadly Deceits by Ralph W. McGehee

his good-willed manner accepted the challenge to introduce each member of the Sit Tribe by his or her tribal name—an interesting task after a few drinks, and he almost made it without a slip, but not quite. Ray also gave an award for the best female costume to the statuesque, beautiful wife of one of the case officers; her costume was a revealing bathing suit. After Ray gave her the award, she put her arms around him, turned his back to the audience and bestowed a most obvious pinch, to the delight of the crowd.
    Driving home from the party in a caravan of cars, dressed up in our costumes, sipping champagne out of fancy crystal glassware, we passed by the hovels of the Taiwanese people. I looked inside one tin shanty and saw several people in virtual rags huddling over a charcoal fire. My eyes met those of a young man. He stared uncomprehendingly out at me, while I looked through him. We seemed people from two different worlds—one of affluence, comfort, dedicated to having fun; the other of grimy poverty, where it was a struggle to stayalive. Over the years I have thought of that moment and wondered how we in the CIA could ever have expected to understand what was happening in a foreign country when we existed in such a rarefied world, cut off from those we ostensibly were there to help.

6. NORTH THAILAND:
    SAVING THE HILL TRIBES
    â€œDAD, what do you do?” my 13-year-old daughter Peggy asked about six months after we had settled into our home in North Thailand. She had been observing my strange comings and goings, my home office with its safe, map, and cameras, and my frequent hushed conversations with a variety of visitors. She wanted to know what it was all about.
    I braced myself. I knew that simple question was inevitable, one that every child asks sooner or later, but I had dreaded it. In earlier years the children were either too young to notice or my activities were less overt, so I had gotten away with a joking, “Oh, I’m just a paper pusher.” As Peggy persisted this time, though, I knew this answer would no longer do.
    Norma had felt all along that we should be truthful with the children, that our family trust came before my oath of secrecy to the Agency. This very clear set of priorities had been reinforced in her mind a hundredfold by her personal experience when she arrived in Thailand. I had flown ahead to North Thailand to make the necessary arrangements for the family to join me. Once I found a house, I wrote to Norma to fly to Bangkok, where I would meet her. But the housing deal fell through, and the next day I had written to Norma not to come yet. She never received the second letter. She had gone ahead, sending me her flight number and arrival date, but that letter had been held at the Thailand station, and I never received it.
    After a grueling, sleepless flight of 16 hours with four cranky children, she had arrived to find no one there to meet her. Since we were traveling on unofficial passports and no one had notified the Thai authorities, she had trouble gettingpast customs and had to talk her way into a two-week visa. Speaking not a word of Thai, she took a taxi to a good hotel, but in one day the expense exhausted the cash she had in her purse.
    The next day she went to the American Embassy and asked if they could put her in touch with me. After a lot of hassling in which everyone claimed never to have heard of me, she made contact with an official who explained that I was in the North. He didn’t understand how I had not known of my family’s arrival, but he promised that I would be contacted immediately. In the meantime Norma explained that she was out of money and had five mouths to feed. She asked if an advance could be made. He made a call, but the finance officer said that she could not be authorized funds because my assignment was in the North.
    There is no anger or determination like my wife’s when something threatens her brood. The official offered