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Old 30th May 2013, 15:33
  #25 (permalink)  
Whenurhappy
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Doing military history research in Malaysia can be a bit of a problem, to say the least. About 6 years ago I was funded to go out to Malaysia and Singapore to revisit some of the LL from the Emergency (1948-1960) and to get access to archives and to extant military and police locations I had to apply some 3 months beforehand to the 'Economic Research Unit' of the Prime Minister's Department (don't be confused by the name - nothing to do with the economy or research; more about internal security and control). In spite of the DAdv and his team pushing this, approval wasn't granted so I chanced it and got great assistance from the RMP HQ in KL, but on the basis that I didn't acknowledge them.

In spite of the relaxed approach in Malaysia, they are particularly sensitive about military and security matters. Singapore - generally regarded as a particularly anal state - by contrast, could not have been more helpful and they opened up all sort of Internal Security archives for me.

In the end I never got the access to the archives that I wanted/needed in KL, but found the 'Foreign Relations of the US' and the CIA archives at the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland, US ,had a lot of the HUMINT documents I needed!
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