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Thomas Bain (Orange)

Thomas R. W. Bain was born in London in 1964. He is known for intelligence work done behind the Iron Curtain in 1988 under the pseudonym "Orange". He is currently Dean (education) at the International School of Project Management in New Delhi, India.

Early Life

Bain lived in Kingston upon Thames and near Southampton while attending prep school at Highfield School (Liphook, Hampshire). He suffered from Dyslexia, and made slow progress in the educational system. He was put back two full years in study when he moved to France, where his dyslexia was disregarded in a small town school in the South-West of France (Monsempron-Libos). Later in the suburbs of Paris he was put into the Saint Erambert School (which had collaborated with the Germans during the WWII) "to discipline him". He revolted and was expelled for listening to and discussing AC/DC. In 1982 he moved to Spain, and took up Hispanic Studies in a small private college in Salamanca. Upon return to France he passed the state exams to get into the state educational system, a school then called Lyceum Claude Debussy, now called Lyceum Jeanne d'Albret. He excelled and was made Head Boy. He qualified for the Classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles. He accomplished his Khagne in the Lyceum Jules Ferry, one of the topmost. At the same time he accomplished his BA Humanities in the radical Paris West University Nanterre La Défense. Bain then migrated to Switzerland, where he accomplished his M. Phil in European Studies at the Institut Universitaire d'Etudes Europeennes (IUEE), the institut was founded by Denis de Rougemont, and had a federalist outlook. Later on he attended the doctoral seminars of Wlad Godzich in the University of Geneva.

April 1988

The students of the IUEE (as above), sympathizing with many of the faculty in exile, organized two study tours of the Soviet Union. The fist one went to Kiev and Moscow, the second to Budapest and Prague. He attended both. The tour of the Ukraine gave him insight into the degree of hostility via-a-vis Moscow, and the signs of dissidence in the leadership of the Komsomol. In Moscow, student from the highest school of politics and administration leaked the shape of the Army: suicides and an organizational incapacity. Moving on to Budapest, the dissent was quite open, and Bain saw the opportunity of a break-apart of the Communist Block. In a meeting with the then dissident Professor Géza Jeszenszky the option of letting East Germans out of Hungary was discussed as a means of bringing the Wall down. Bain also met with FIDESZ leaders, and learned that recently NGOs in Hungary were allowed to be financed internationally, an open door for the West to finance dissident organizations. He went to Prague to meet leaders of the democratic opposition, in an underground Café called "U Kafku" and further discussed the plan of letting East Germans through Czechoslovakia in Hungary. He was followed in Prague by two stooges, and in a jest of defiance took them on a 14 kilometer walk around Prague. On his return to the Europa Hotel, the receptionist called him into the lift and explained that the police had been through his belongings. He had to leave. Bain escaped from Prague due to an InterRail pass, he was able to get into a train without buying a ticket (he would have been noticed at the ticket counter). On the train, stooges noticed him but it was too late the train had already crossed the border into Germany. In Munich, he was hidden by a former girlfriend for 5 days, while the German television showed pictures of him as accused of common crimes of murder in Czechoslovakia. He escaped from Munich thanks to former Hungarian exiles, in a freight compartment, then from Zurich to Geneva in a toilet. On arriving to Geneva he took several different taxis to the house of Professor Dusan Sidjanski. Here he discussed all the plans of the dissidence to bring down the Wall, and subsequently hid for a month in a flat in neighboring France, in Annemasse. His research report signed with the pseudonym "Orange" was shared with Émile Noël, Secretary General of the European Commission. It was shared with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), as well as the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It is said to be one of the key documents that alerted the West of changes in the East, and triggered of a change in their foreign policy towards the East.