As a people we are new to the task of managing the affairs of a modern state. So we tend to fluctuate rather wildly from the one extreme of complacency to panic and scare-mongering. Witness the manner in which we ignored the defence of the Himalayas up to 1962 despite warning signals from 1956 onward and how we allowed ourselves to be traumatised by a minor defeat involving a small part of our armed forces in 1962. We did not recover from it for almost a decade and regarded it necessary to conclude a treaty with the Soviet Union in 1971 in order to be able to cope with the Bangladesh crisis. We might well be repeating that story once again.
To avoid that, it is necessary to examine carefully what the investigations in the current espionage case have revealed so far. We have to go by what has been published. A good deal of it is sheer fantasy which makes it difficult to sift the grain of truth from the chaff of fabrications and plants. But certain points stand out.
Surprising though it may appear, one point that emerges clearly is that while Indian intelligence has uncovered a number of Indians who have been willing to sell top-most secrets to one or more foreigners, they have not discovered a foreign spy ring. The persons concerned can be said to have constituted a ring, as most reports suggest, if they all handed over the purloined documents to one individual, Coomar Narain, and if he in turn passed them on to a French diplomat in New Delhi. But that does not make it a French spy ring.
The distinction is not a matter of semantics. It is important. If the French had set up the spy ring, it is inconceivable that they would have brought in so many individuals and then done something even more stupid, that is, exposed them to one another and run the risk of the discovery of one link by Indian intelligence, leading to the arrest of all others. Intelligence agencies do not function in that manner. That is why the arrest of one spy seldom leads to the arrest of another. A1l espionage cases which have come to light in Britain and elsewhere, for example, would show that this is so without an exception.
Important Distinction
It can well be argued that, the distinction is not important as far as the result is concerned. Which is that India’s topmost secrets have been betrayed. This is, of course, true. But the distinction is important for another reason. It shows that if the CIA operates in India, as it must, those operations cannot have been affected too adversely by the present exposure.
The report which formed the basis of the CIA’s briefing to a Senate committee of India’s alleged plans to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear facilities at Kahuta last year are believed to have come from the gang currently in the limelight. It could have come from this source, but in my view, it did not. My reason for taking this view is that the Frenchman in question could not have been so inept that so obvious an exposure of the source of information – that is himself – would not have alerted him and persuaded him to leave the country well in time. Indeed, if the CIA had committed a faux paux and unwittingly exposed its source, it also would have alerted the contact.
It has been suggested that the Frenchman could have been running a kind of private enterprise in his dealings with the CIA. This is a patently absurd proposition and speaks of our inexperience in this business. Missions of major countries such as France do not function in such a lackadaisical way that individual officials can operate their own trade in espionage. So the Colonel could have taken his government into confidence and sought transfer back home or elsewhere if the CIA’s action had exposed him, that is, if he was in contact with the CIA and he was its source of information.
Two inferences follow. First, in our anxiety to convince ourselves that we have finally caught the CIA in the act, we must not take it for granted that the Frenchman was working for the CIA.
Secondly, if the information for the CIA’s briefing to the Senate committee came from another source, as I have argued it did, this source would acquire a deeper cover than the one it has enjoyed so far if our intelligence agencies also make the assumption that they have smashed Western espionage in the country. Whatever else they might have done, they have not smashed Western espionage proper – collective or individual. All that has been taken care of is a rather amateurish enterprise mounted by fellow Indians for personal gain. The Frenchman found it useful to let them go on.
Double Upheaval
Mr. Rajiv Gandhi has said that the government discovered certain gaps in the security arrangement in the course of investigations in Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination and that this led to the uncovering of the spies in various offices. That must be the case. But that need not rule out a helpful nod from another source as well.
In view of frequent charges by the Soviet propaganda machine against the CIA and the West, it would be tempting to rush to the conclusion that the Russians could give the information as they were rumoured to have done at the time of the Operation Bluestar last June. Those rumours could not have been true. How could the Russians have told Mrs. Gandhi that Bhindranwale was about to proclaim the establishment of a Khalistan government on a strip of territory near the border and that Pakistan had decided to recognise that government? The government in Islamabad is not a mad house. But that apart, the temptation that the Soviets could have provided such information should be resisted.
A double upheaval has taken place in the country with the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi and the emergence of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi as a leader in his own right. Since Mrs. Gandhi had concentrated so much power in her own hands, her disappearance was by itself bound to necessitate a new approach and perhaps the establishment of a new set-up on the part of foreign agencies operating in India. Since she has been succeeded not just by a new Prime Minister but a new power arrangement, that compulsion is greatly reinforced.
This is a theoretical proposition. But the possibility should not be rejected that one set-up which had exhausted its utility, or was useful only to the French, has been deliberately and cynically abandoned and exposed either to protect some other set-up or to establish a new one. The same incidentally must be true about the KGB and its allied espionage agencies.
Need For Control
Counter-intelligence is a painstaking business; it can neither prosper in the glare of publicity nor produce the kind of rich harvest which our agencies claim to have harvested. And it has to be carefully controlled by the highest political authority, either the Union Home minister or the Prime Minister himself.
Rajiv Gandhi is reported to have given the intelligence agencies a free hand in their investigations. This is supposed to provide another piece of evidence that his style of functioning is going to be very different from that of his mother who kept all the strings in her own hands. But departure from her style or no departure, one hopes that this report is not correct. Policemen cannot be let loose on the nation without running grave risks. They must report to a designated top political authority every day, convince him of the justification for the next step and secure precise orders.
Indian intelligence agencies have not been known to be either wholly scrupulous or particularly efficient. They have fabricated reports against individuals out of favour with the existing government, including Mrs. Gandhi during the Janata period, and their record has been far from impressive; the former Prime Minister had interesting stories to tell about them.
So soon after the obloquy they attracted on their heads on account of her assassination and their failure earlier to provide details to the army of the kind of resistance it could expect in the Golden Temple complex, they have got a wonderful opportunity to rehabilitate themselves; they can easily become over-zealous in their own cause.
As the British discovered and said, the Indian police had to be kept under strict control to prevent them from going berserk. Most intelligence men in India are unfortunately policemen which is one reason why they are not capable of providing the government with an overall assessment.
It is also known that RAW and IB have been at odds with each other, that both have been faction-ridden and that both, especially RAW have suffered on account of widespread dissatisfaction among its officers with their emoluments, promotions and working conditions. These raise implications which should be kept in mind by the Prime Minister.
(Concluded)
The Times of India, 30 January 1985