James C. Scott, noted anthropologist and author dies after "having suffered from heart and kidney failures, Maung Hmek had decided to pull the plug on himself, declining dialysis and other medical interventions, but he was still following Myanmar affairs" (Remembering Maung Hmek aka Shwe Yoe aka James C. Scott)

Best known for his book Seeing Like a State, he was mentioned many times on Metafilter, mostly in passing. (See this review for more details on his book and possible problems with his approach: Paul Seabright: The Aestheticising Vice, LRB Vol. 21 No. 11 · 27 May 1999) There's one area of his life which was much less discussed - his collaboration with the CIA in the '60s. From the Berkeley, CA, Oral History Center's interview, in his own words:

So I had also, not knowing what to do, I applied to join the CIA. I had applied to Harvard Law School and had been accepted, and on a kind of flash of daring, I applied for a Rotary Fellowship to Burma, and I got the Rotary Fellowship to Burma. I thought to myself, I can postpone Harvard Law School, I can always go to law school, but when am I going to get a chance to go to Burma? And so, I decided to go to Burma and spent a year there, and in the meantime—this is not in a lot of my stuff—the CIA people asked me to write reports on Burmese student politics and so on, which I did. Then they arranged through the National Student Association to have me go to Paris for a year and be an overseas representative for the National Student Association. I went to the Congo; I went to Ghana; I went to, oh, Scotland. I spoke at the French National Student Union meeting. I went to the Polish—first American to go to the Polish National Student meeting, et cetera.

and a little later

So at the end of my Burma year, I saw, if you like, student politics in three or four different places, and including—we're talking '60, and so I met the sort of Communist leaders of the CGMI, which was the Communist student union in Indonesia, most of whom were killed after '65, and so on.

The linked obit above claims:

If Maung Hmek was in a situation to report to the CIA as a Rotary International Fellow in Yangon and Paris in his postgrad years, he had more than redeemed himself by turning against the state and state apparatuses as one of the most influential anarchists of our time.

but this will be decided by future historians.