The Filipino political merry-go-round is abuzz with their greatest spy scandal ever. The FBI's arrest of a Filipino-American who worked no less than at the White House has the country in a tizzy.

He reported through Ray Aquino, an ex-police deputy to the national commander of then Philippine national police, now Senator 'Ping' Lacson. In Manila fingers are pointing in every direction.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, in desperation, had her spokesman say this "would affect the reputation and integrity of members of the Filipino community in the US". Nonsense. Filipino stock just doubled in America. She is grasping at straws.

The opposition is stupidly standing its distance, claiming not to have benefitted, saying they just received commonplace information. Information from the White House, centre of the Imperial Order, commonplace?

Whether the data are commonplace, their origin from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue make them anything but that. It may be common knowledge that the president is stubborn and over-rates herself, but for it to come from the Oval office, or near it, makes it ever so different.

The opposition thinks it simply can't afford to admit how well it's done, lest it get tarred with an anti-Washington brushbecause it doesn't understand how Washington works. If Filipinos understood that Washington respects success - and what was this if not a successful operation? - the opposition would be crowing.

In their private circles, maybe the thousand dollar bottles of Petrus, for which ex-president Estrada was famous, are flowing.

Spy game

The fact that no one seems to realise in Manila is that this is a coup of a high order for the Philippines. What other country can penetrate to so high a level? A former student of mine is in jail for life for jobbing tonnes of documents from US Naval Intelligence, on behalf of his Israeli cabinet minders. But not the White House.

Throughout the Cold War, we knew there were spies in the Pentagon and, as it turned out, even in the CIA. But the White House? Philippine prestige should take high marks. It's on the road to be taken seriously.

Of course the FBI has to take it seriously and had to arrest Leandro Aragoncillo and Ray Aquino. If it keeps Jonathan Pollard in jail for life against the most serious pressures from the highest Israelis it certainly is going to press charges against a clever Filipino-American and his Filipino comrade. But so what? They won't be hanged and there will be presents aplenty for their relatives back in the provinces, from the well-stocked larders of the opposition that hired them.

The spy game is all about not getting caught. It's okay if you get the goods and aren't exposed. Sometimes the spied-upon even wants you to spy, to be sure the 'right' message is got abroad - this can amount to disinformation in its most sophisticated form. The fingers only point when your luck runs out, or (as I suspect happened in this case) you overreach.

National problem

No one ever expected Filipinos would get so far. So it was for the opposition and not for the government? So what? That matters only according to which side you are on.

In the Philippines, families and opposition entities can be as powerful as the government - that's the national problem - and no one has ever attached blame within the country for doing something against the government.

It's almost the national game. There is no purpose these days in the paralysed government in Manila; it's a political game for its own sake, leading nowhere.

The fact is that this is another major blow against Arroyo and her administration, withering away so rapidly. That's why Malacanang is demanding that the US should "speak out". What should Washington say? That she isn't pompous and doesn't over-rate herself?

Aragoncillo was sending reports of what everybody dealing with the embassy in Manila knows the highest brass are routinely told.

It's not as if the reports so far published were of what kind of bribes she or, more likely, her husband were taking (like what has kept NAIA III, the lovely new international terminal, closed for three years?), or what kind of secret deals she was making with other countries. Or what member of the presidential family controls the Customs bureau, even possibly someone located in San Francisco? It was just routine, subjective stuff.

But in the Philippines, still, what America thinks is of the essence. It is routinely believed that Washington can turn a switch off and on and make or break presidents. And as long as people think it, in a perverse way it's true.

The real problem is that Washington doesn't pay enough attention to the Philippines. Maybe it will give it the time it deserves now: there is genuine political paralysis in Manila, and possibly only Washington can broker a way out.

America has a historic partnership with the archipelago, and the current crisis reminds us how much America still counts in Manila.

But Manila should count its blessings and take the real lessons from the crisis: anyway you cut it, it's the Philippines that has gained, even if Arroyo has lost yet another round.

W SCOTT THOMPSON, presidential appointee in four American presidencies, is the author of 11 books on politics.