MY favourite British television series is MI-5, or Spooks as it is titled here in Malaysia.

I don’t watch the series on TV because of too many commercials and instead, get a whole season's episodes on DVD to see how MI-5 chief Sir Harry Pearce makes good decisions, controls his operatives with precision and professionalism, and keeps the nation safe from threats, both internal and external.

If I have that feeling of not being safe in this country, I will reach out to my comforting DVD player and watch Spooks.

But the secrets they have are kept among themselves, and occasionally, they'd share them with the Home Office Minister, who in some episodes has been known to be a Russian mole… sigh! Don’t know who to trust anymore!

I want to tell you a short story, since a certain Cabinet minister cannot keep his secrets from the nation.

In the late Eighties, I risked my life to do my “national service” for the country, and got a secret commendation
for a job well done.

Among my tasks was to be flown, via our Hercules or Charlie 130 transport plane, over the Spratly's atoll to survey and take pictures of Chinese and the Vietnamese spy ships trying to stake a claim on our Terumbu Layang Layang, as we call it.

We fought serious psychological warfare with our “belligerent” neighbours, and won many battles.

I have also been sent to our border areas, sometimes for days, and even deep inside a neighbouring country, to gather information on how our northern borders had  been breached. Here, too, we had to fight a hard psychological battle.

We won, and they withdrew; and I was told not to go to that particular northern country for at least a year.

I have, over the years, sent reports to the National Security Council on the state of country’s union, quietly and without fanfare.

When you serve your country, you do it well, and do not expect any reward; it is just your duty!

I was in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and was the only journalist who managed to get into the besieged town of Konjic to get in touch with a leader of a particular group of Bosnian freedom fighters there, the specifics of which I cannot divulge.

In the late Eighties, about 10 or more low-ranking Malaysian intelligence officers, including officers from the Royal Malaysian Air Force intelligence unit, were arrested for passing sensitive secrets to foreign countries.

Guess what? The problems were dealt with quietly and again without fanfare, and without the public knowing.

When five members of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) were caught in the riverine area of Sungai Melayu in Johor, we dealt with the situation by calling up the Singapore government, but quietly.

I can cite many instances where we did things of a sensitive nature, which involved clear and present danger to the country, without alarming the entire nation.

After all, that is what a government is for, to look after the interests of the country and people.

Where is this going? I was not going to yap about all the things that I do and not do, for I see no reason to do so. So why did the defence minister of Malaysia make unnecessary statements, such as “officers selling military info”, when his predecessor Datuk Seri Najib Razak dealt with such sensitive issues with utmost secrecy.

I just wonder why the minister, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi, had to announce it to the world and at the same time, give the impression that our Armed Forces are filled with people who are ready to sell the country!

If he can blurt out sensitive issues in public when he should not have, then I have every right to tell the world what I did, since nobody cares to keep secret a secret.

In one of the Cabinet meetings, Prime Minister Najib was heard saying that two Cabinet ministers “were either inefficient or incompetent”.

This was in reference to the price hike on sugar and the exorbitant prices given for the two missing jet engines, which turned out to be not as expensive as reported by a minister.

As for me, I was going to take all my secrets to the grave. But then, if we have ministers entrusted to manage to the country committing a major faux pas, why should I care?

Then, the minister made his public statement, which was widely quoted, about Armed Forces personnel selling secrets to foreign countries when the matter could have been dealt with internally. So, what are we to think?

I believe Sir Harry would have asked his MI-5 operatives to find out quietly who had been selling information, trail them and catch them red-handed. And if necessary, shoot them. And he would have handled the situation more discreetly and with due diligence, considering the time and conditions that we live in.

As it is now, Zahid has only succeeded in making the traitors wiser. More traitors will go underground and some may even have left for neighbouring countries to avoid arrest!

The moral is of the story is, if we care about our country, then we really have to think about when to be discreet and when to tell it all.