324 • MALAYAN SECTION
local director of military intelligence, Colonel Paul Gleadell. TheSe-
cret Intelligence Service’s regional headquarters,Combined Intel-
ligence Far East(CIFE), was located in Singapore and headed by
Dick Ellis. However, there was a lack of interagency cooperation be-
cause of a legacy of bitterness over the wartime activities ofForce
136 personnel who disobeyed orders in 1941 to surrender to the Japa-
nese and fought a guerrilla war in the jungle while others endured
capture.
MI5’s E Branch (Colonial Affairs) was represented in Kuala Lum-
pur by thesecurity liaison officer(SLO),Arthur Martin, and in
Singapore byCourtney Youngand then Jack Morton. The appoint-
ment of Sir William Jenkin as security adviser was intended to coor-
dinate CIFE,Special Branch, and the Security Service, but it was
the arrival in 1950 of Sir Robert Thompson as director of operations
that transformed the situation. In 1952, upon the resignation of the
police commissioner, Colonel Nicol Gray, GeneralSir Gerald Tem-
plertook over as high commissioner and began to isolate the Malay
Communist Party (MCP) by recruiting a large Home Guard and
armed police militia. Under Templer, MI5 provided Arthur Martin
and Alec MacDonald to run the Special Branch in Kuala Lumpur,
with Keith Wey as SLO and Guy Madoc running the Security Ser-
vice. The application of orthodoxcounterintelligencetechniques to
counter the terrorists resulted in the penetration of the terrorist orga-
nizations and the recruitment of the MCP’s charismatic leader,Chen
Ping, by his former Force 136 commander, John Davis.
Those British intelligence officers who served together during the
Emergency became known as the Malay Mafia and afterwards exer-
cised considerable influence over security and intelligence policy and
operations in London.See alsoMALAYAN SECTION.MALAYAN SECTION.The Malayan Section of theSecret Intelli-
gence Service(SIS) operated underInter-Services Liaison Depart-
ment(ISLD) cover and recruited from the Malay Communist Party
(MCP) to deploy an impressive number of mainly Chinese agents
very quickly. John Davis and Richard Broome alone supervised the
insertion of 163 MCP members into Japanese-held territory before
the final British collapse. Most perished, and 11 SIS agents were cap-
tured and executed after one engagement at Kuala Pilah. A team led