Thomas Bain

Thomas R. W. Bain (born ) is known for intelligence work done behind the Iron Curtain in 1988 under the pseudonym "Orange". He is currently a dean at the International School of Project Management in New Delhi, India. Early life Bain was born in London. He lived Kingston upon Thames attending prep school at Highfield School (Liphook, Hampshire). He has dyslexia, and made slow progress in the educational system. In 1982 he moved to Spain, and took up Hispanic Studies in a small private college in Salamanca where he met up with friends of Golo Mann. Upon return to France he qualified for the Classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles. He accomplished his Khâgne in the Lyceé Jules Ferry. The same year he discovered a new archeological area at Les Baux-de-Provence. He accomplished his BA Humanities in the radical Paris Nanterre University. He completed M.Phil. at the Geneva-based IUEE (Institute for European Studies), and later attended the doctoral seminars of Wlad Godzich in the University of Geneva. April 1988 The students of the IUEE (as above), sympathising with many of the faculty in exile, organised two study tours of the Soviet Union. The first one went to Kyiv and Moscow, the second to Budapest and Prague. He attended both. The tour of the Ukraine gave him insight into the degree of hostility vis-à-vis Moscow, and the signs of dissidence in the leadership of the Komsomol. In Moscow, a 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 organisations. 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 into Hungary. He was followed in Prague by the police, and in a jest of defiance took them on a 14 kilometre 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.