“Malaya is an Intelligence war,” he repeatedly asserted.1 In the absence of good intelligence, jungle patrolling, no matter how professionally carried out, failed to produce results. As one officer noted, “No intelligence meant no contacts and no contacts meant no intelligence.”2 In theory, the police were in the best position to provide useful intelligence. However, until Templer set in train comprehensive reforms, both police and military intelligence were often inaccurate or useless. A British officer, John Chynoweth, served with the Malay Regiment. He received a top-secret debriefing of an informer and used the information to plan a patrol. The result was “the most colossal mess-up of an operation ever.”3 Only a last-second instinct for restraint prevented Chynoweth from accidently killing innocent villagers. He pondered what had gone wrong and speculated that the informer might have deliberately denounced the villagers as part of an ongoing personal feud, might have made a genuine mistake, or might have simply hoped that the patrol would somehow encounter a terrorist and then he would “earn”
