 Ali recruited Moerdani to be Deputy Intelligence Assistant and gave him his first taste of intelligence work as the armed forces were fighting in the dense Borneo jungles against the Malaysian Armed Forces alongside servicemen from the Commonwealth of Nations.In addition to becoming Deputy Intelligence Assistant, Moerdani also became part of Ali's Special Operations (Opsus) intelligence team.His task was to gather intelligence on Malaysia from Bangkok under the cover of being a Garuda Indonesia ticket seller.