Love or loath him, Abdullah Ahmad is a man of many talents and a successful public intellectual in a political environment that those who are in power seldom read and those who read, often dare not venture into politics.

Widely known or remembered as a young personal adviser, political operative and deputy minister of the second prime minister Tun Abdul Razak for 13 years from 1963 to 1976, Abdullah has always been admired for his political skills but also loathed for the power and influence he wielded behind the scene during the1960s and 70s.

He was trusted by Abdul Razak (then deputy prime minister and defence minister) to the extent that he was delegated the authority to write a private letter dated Dec 11, 1963 to then US president Lyndon B Johnson.

The letter was to complain about US military aid to Indonesia when the Sukarno regime was adopting a hostile posture and confrontational policy against the newly formed Federation of Malaysia.

According to a historian of Malaysia-US relations Pamela Sodhy, Abdullah urged the president "to stop any further military aid forthwith to Indonesia as long as it maintains and fosters hostility towards its smaller and peaceful neighbour".

He was also quoted as claiming that Indonesians were using American-built Hercules airplanes to "terrorise" Malaysia.

"So far, it perplexes me how, despite strong opposition from leading (US) senators and representatives, the American government still continues to dole out money to the belligerent Indonesians and yet in the next breath croons support for Malaysia. This double standards must stop", he was further quoted as protesting to Johnson.

Of course, Johnson did not personally reply to Abdullah. Instead, he instructed Ambassador Bell to respond and thank Abdullah for his letter but also "to avoid any discussion of the complaints about aid (to Indonesia). (see Pamela Sodhy, The US-Malaysia Nexus - Themes in Superpower-Small State Relations , Kuala Lumpur, ISIS Malaysia, 1991; p.246)

Real battleground

In May 1965, Abdullah followed then Umno backbencher, Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his unofficial delegation to attend the allegedly anti-American Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organisation Conference at Winneba, Ghana. Also joining the delegation were, among others, Lee San Choon (who later became MCA president) and Musa Hitam who later became Mahathir's first deputy from 1981 to 1986.

The then prime minister and Umno president, Tunku Abdul Rahman (1903-1990) was said to be furious and reported to have publicly accused the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organisation of being a "communist setup... financed by Russia and China". (see J Saravanamuttu, The Dilemma of Independence: Two decades of Malaysia's foreign policy , 1957-1977, Penang, USM, 1983; pp. 72-73)

Seen from this historical perspective, it is rather clear that Abdullah's passion for foreign policy and the conduct of Malaysia's international relations is not new. Neither is his rhetoric or worldview.

However, Abdullah's real battleground was inside Umno and Malaysia: together with Mahathir, Musa, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and Khalil Akasah, Abdullah was considered as the key anti-Tunku supporters of Abdul Razak.

According to political scientist Dr Khoo Boo Teik, Mahathir, Abdullah, Musa and their Razak-centric circle "were seen by their Malay admirers to be uncompromising Malay nationalists" (see Paradoxes of Mahathirism - An intellectual biography of Mahathir Mohamad , Oxford, OUP, 1995, p.18)

More power and influence

From the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, the group was not only active in campaigning for a shift of Malaysia's foreign policy orientation and posture from one of pro-West and anti-communism to what is now known as "non-alignment", but also, above all, for the introduction of a more comprehensive race-based affirmative action programme that sought to "redress the socio-economic imbalances" between the Malays and non-Malays.

With the assumption of effective executive and emergency powers by Abdul Razak ( left ) in the aftermath of the allegedly "inter-racial riot" on May 13, 1969, Abdullah's anti-Tunku circle gained even more power and influence, and he was himself appointed as an Umno's representative on the first National Economic Consultative Council (NECC) which finally articulated the highly controversial New Economic Policy (NEP) to be implemented for 20 years from 1970 to 1990.

In 1970, when Abdul Razak formally took over the positions of Umno president and Malaysia's prime minister. Abdullah was at the height of his power and influence as a backroom operative and later, a deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Department.

Abdullah's role, power and influence as the "right-hand man" of Abdul Razak in his dealing with other members of the ruling elite extended even to Sabah: in July 1975, he was assigned by Abdul Razak to foment discontents against the then chief minister of Sabah, Mustapha Harun who allegedly acted like a warlord and embarrassed the federal government by giving covert support to the Moro rebellion in southern Philippines.

After the political operations conducted by Abdullah, a new party, Berjaya was formed in Sabah to check and balance against Mustapha's United Sabah National Organisation (Usno) which had been an ally of Umno. However, Mustapha held out until Abdul Razak's death in January 1976.

In that year, Abdullah was also assigned to "brief" Harun Idris, the then Selangor mentri besar who was found to have committed acts of corruption and sacked from Umno. The "briefing" took place secretly in a hotel at Fraser's Hill in Pahang.

Harun was later convicted by the court and jailed. He died recently.

However, Abdullah's power and influence did not last due to the demise of Abdul Razak, who was succeeded by the politically and physically weak Tun Hussein Onn (1922-1990).

Without the political protection and patronage of Abdul Razak, Abdullah soon found himself besieged by supporters of the Tunku-Mustapha-Harun alliance within Umno, who were collectively identified as the "old guards" and operated by the then home minister, Ghazali Shafie, an equally Anglophile Umno ideologue and strategist. They hated Abdullah and his fellow members in the Razak's inner circle.

He was detained without trial under the Internal Security Act (ISA) on Sept 2, 1976 for allegedly being a "pro-Soviet communist".

Abdullah's 'confession'

The then inspector-general of police, Haniff Omar also claimed that the police had discovered "evidence" of Abdullah's "contacts with several foreigners", presumably staff of the newly establish Soviet Union Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

In 1999, Haniff who had retired from public service and served as a director of Genting Bhd - the country's sole casino operator - also publicly supported the sexual allegation against former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim.

In a February 1977 television "confession", Abdullah "admitted" that he had "close contact with several officers of a foreign embassy in Kuala Lumpur in 1968". (see Harold Crouch, ' The Umno Crisis: 1975-1977' in Harold Crouch, Lee Kam Hing & Michael Ong., ed. Malaysian politics and the 1978 Elections, Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1980; pp. 11-36)

After six years of detention without trial, Abdullah was released unconditionally after Mahathir came into power in July 1981. In 1986, Abdullah created a controversy in Malaysia and Singapore when he delivered a speech in Singapore, asserting the ethno-nationalist doctrine of 'Malay supremacy' in counterbalance to what he perceived to be 'Chinese supremacy' in Singapore

After venturing into academic research in UK where he obtained a Master of Letters from Cambridge University, and business for a while, he was appointed by the Mahathir administration in 1996 to be Malaysia's Special Envoy to the United Nations. Later, he was also appointed as the executive director of the New Straits Times Press, Malaysia.

Journalists sacked

In 2000, after Kadir Jasin, another mouthpiece, albeit less colourful, of Mahathir and Umno was dropped as the editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times , Abdullah was appointed in his place and seemed to have regained his power and influence.

However, political intrigues and office politics appeared to continue to haunt Abdullah. In September 2001, Abdullah sacked three senior journalists of the New Straits Times , including editorial adviser Samad Ismail.

Samad, an anti-Lee Kuan Yew ( founder of Singapore's People's Action Party), was a leading light in the inner circle of Abdul Razak in the late 1960s and 1970s in which Abdullah was also a member.

Samad was detained thrice without trial allegedly for being "a communist". The first detention was made in the 1950s by the British colonial authority. In fact, it was Samad's public 'confession' on Sept 1, 1976 that purportedly "implicated" Abdullah in the alleged Soviet "spy-ring" in Kuala Lumpur in the late 1960s and early 70s.

In May this year, he also sacked well-known writer and the newspaper's associate editor Rehman Rashid, following the latter's refusal to write a speech for him.

Finally, Abdullah himself was summarily dismissed by Umno's management committee for allegedly writing an article that upset the Arab Saudi government.

However, it is popularly believed that he incurred the wrath of new Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his supporters, for publicly using the New Straits Times to campaign for Defence Minister Najib Tun Razak to be the number two in the party and government. Najib is Abdul Razak's son.

The vicissitude of Abdullah's fortunes in politics and public life indeed conjures up Byzantine images of political jealousies, power struggle, intrigues and conspiracies, real or concocted.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM). Wong is a former member of Parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily (now Sin Chew Daily). He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew, he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.