Spies route:Uncle Sam’s spooks are watching us.

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Copenhagen. December 7, 2009.

United Nations Climate Change Conference. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh were hammering out India’s climate policy for the summit. Leader of the bloc of developing nations, India was not seeing eye-to-eye with the US. A worried White House quietly alerted CIA Director Leon E. Panetta to get cracking.

A former US Army intelligence officer and former chief of staff of president Bill Clinton, Panetta hustled top US scientists and spies to interpret all the intelligence gathered on India’s negotiating position and about individuals who were spearheading India’s climate change policy.

Declassified CIA documents show that the agency had started gathering intelligence at least seven months before Copenhagen. Ahead of the summit, the CIA’s Office of the Chief Scientist “supported and funded” an extensive study on India—The impact of climate change to 2030: Geopolitical implications.

The study suggested that the US pre-negotiate with India about the climate change issues and find a common ground outside the public and international eye. The CIA also shared its massive archives of classified environmental data with scientists. WikiLeaks confirmed America’s covert campaign to target India at Copenhagen.

All these plans are part of CIA-2015, Panetta’s grand blueprint for the CIA’s resurrection. Panetta wants the agency to recruit, train and retain a diverse workforce for more innovative deployments abroad. The immediate focus of Panetta’s shadow warriors is the region where they run secret facilities to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda.

But India’s growing clout has persuaded the CIA to turn the spyglass on New Delhi. The spooks in the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, are tracking virtually everything from Parliament proceedings to political parties to arms deals to internal security issues. For example, WikiLeaks leaked the cables on the cash-for-votes issue in Tamil Nadu. The sources quoted in the cable were highly-placed—Karti Chidambaram, son of Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, and M. Patturajan, former mayor of Madurai and right-hand man of Union Fertilisers Minister M.K. Alagiri.

A senior Indian intelligence officer who has been closely watching CIA-2015 confirmed the agency’s unprecedented interest in India. He said some of the CIA’s best men are secretly travelling through different states and are setting up networks to watch political developments and separatist movements. These networks will seek information about India’s nuclear arsenal and military modernisation. They will also keep their eyes peeled for terrorists who might prove dangerous to the US. Based on all this information, Langley will predict India’s strategy viz-a-viz Pakistan and China.

“The CIA is sending Indian-origin and south Asian-origin officers to India so that they can merge better,” said Jayadeva Ranade, former additional secretary, Research & Analysis Wing. “The basic approach [of the CIA] will be to befriend senior bureaucrats, senior military officials, politicians to find what our intentions are and what we are planning to do.” An intelligence field operative with 35 years experience, Ranade also did a stint in Washington.

The home ministry confirmed that more than 3,500 Americans are illegally overstaying in India since 2006. Neither the ministry nor the security agencies know their whereabouts. Onkar Kedia, spokesman, home ministry, told THE WEEK that his office did not have details about how many illegal aliens from the US had been deported.

A senior serving intelligence officer said that the ‘missing Americans’ could be part of a ‘deep penetration itinerary’. “For example, an undercover CIA agent might be tasked to locate himself for a specific period somewhere near Mumbai or Kochi to collect some information about the movement of warships,” said the official. “Once the job is done, the agent is withdrawn.”

There are instances of cooperation, too. In 1965, a covert CIA-Intelligence Bureau mission placed nuclear-powered sensors on Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot peaks to monitor China’s nuclear facilities. Captain M.S. Kohli of the Indian Navy was part of the team, thanks to his formidable mountaineering skills. He said he was never approached by the CIA after the joint mission.

Kohli said that even in the mid-sixties, the CIA was capable of deploying a team quickly and inconspicuously. “And they [CIA operatives] are unremarkable in their daily activities, such as walking to buy a newspaper in a drizzle,” said Kohli. “They know their organisation is always around them with a support and rescue plan.”

But, of course, there are instances when the CIA could not protect its own. The Memorial Wall at Langley, flanked by the CIA flag and the US flag, has 102 stars in memory of slain operatives. The CIA’s Book of Honor, a “black book bound with Moroccan goatskin”, lists the years of death and names of the operatives. But 40 stars are unnamed. Even the dead keep their secrets.

As the Americans pay dearly for collecting classified information, they use it primarily to defend their interests. For example, within 48 hours of the 26/11 attacks, then CIA director Michael V. Hayden contacted Hussain Haqqani, the Pakistani ambassador to the US, to possibly update him regarding information from India. The next day Hayden summoned ISI chief Lt-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha for a briefing.
After these two meetings, Washington started arm-twisting New Delhi to share information with Islamabad. According to a cable leaked by WikiLeaks (185722: confidential), New Delhi refused to share information with Islamabad. Washington continued arm-twisting and soon the US embassy in Delhi cabled Washington that India had agreed to share “some restricted information” with Pakistan.

On July 6, 2009, the CIA also fixed a meeting in the US between top intelligence officials of India and Pakistan. It is not known if the meeting was held.

The CIA has also been snooping about India’s nuclear and military facilities. India regularly figures in the CIA’s annual report on ballistic missile threats. The CIA had detected a shipment of beryllium bound for India from West Germany. As beryllium shells are used to house plutonium cores of thermonuclear devices, it was quite clear as to what India was up to.

Chief of the Army Staff General V.K. Singh told THE WEEK that adequate safety measures were taken in light of the increased activity of the western intelligence agencies. A senior Army officer said that retired officers who work for foreign defence and security companies were being closely watched as part of a counter-intelligence programme.

But the focus of the CIA is not limited to nuclear and military assets. Two chromite mines in Orissa and Karnataka and a pharmaceutical factory in Gujarat were listed among critical global infrastructure sites whose loss could “critically impact” the public health or security of the US. The factory manufactures chemotherapy drugs for a US firm; the list was compiled by the US State Department. Surprisingly, India’s output is only 18 per cent of the world’s annual chromite production.

The CIA has also dedicated resources in India to gather and analyse data that is freely available, like research articles, religious books and web sites. As part of this programme, the CIA allegedly commissioned a 20-state survey on Indian Muslims. Reportedly, US-based Princeton Survey Research Associates International were the main contractors. Allegedly, they sub-contracted it to TNS, a Delhi-based market research agency.

In Kerala’s capital of Thiruvananthapuram, TNS staff visited Karimadom colony, a predominantly Muslim area. The questionnaire was bizarre: Do you consider yourselves Indians first or Muslims first? Your views on imposing Islamic law in India? Do you like Osama bin Laden? Will you give him refuge if he comes to Kerala? Police nabbed four TNS staff after Karimadom residents complained.

The Kerala Muslim Jamaat Council (KMJC), the apex body of mahallu (parish) committees in southern Kerala, took strong exception to the survey. KMJC general secretary A. Pookunj said: “Many people speak of a growing radicalisation among Kerala Muslims. But how can a foreign agency come and ask us whether we will give shelter to Osama? What do we have to do with Osama? I wonder why the state has not taken any action against them [surveyors].” TNS representative Pradeep Saxena declined to comment on the issue as it is sub judice.

Lisa Curtis, a former CIA analyst and diplomat, said that while the US shares a strategic partnership with India, the CIA’s covert operations in India have fuelled unease and mistrust within Indian intelligence agencies. Said Curtis: “The defection of a senior Indian intelligence official to the US in 2004 and revelations of unauthorised meetings between a senior Indian intelligence official and an American intelligence official in New Delhi in 1997 have raised red flags in India. [There is] concern that the US will exploit these links for its own purposes.” Curtis was referring to the defection of Rabinder Singh, joint secretary of RAW.

The strategic partnership between Indian agencies and the CIA is mostly restricted to counter-terrorism initiatives. “The CIA has certainly not closed its eyes to the activities of Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and other such groups,” said Robert Grenier, former director of counter-terrorism at Langley. “Since 9/11, however, there has been a clear trend toward closer cooperation and coordination between al Qaeda and other extremist groups.”

Not surprisingly, the CIA was the first to alert India about the LeT’s plot to assassinate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. LeT cadre Shafiq Khafa and his two Indian accomplices, Hussain and Sameer, were behind the plot. The CIA also provided prior information about the attack on Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008, and about 26/11 as well.

More recently, according to a senior home ministry official, the CIA tipped off Indian agencies about Bangladeshi citizen Mohammad Shah Jalal, a forger who sneaked people into various countries. Jalal’s cell phone, 9540288157, was put on surveillance, leading to his arrest on August 23, 2010 from north Delhi. The police recovered fake ID cards of Nepal, Bangladesh and India, and two Indian passports—G6904616 in the name of Nirmal Singh and G6542237 in the name of Harjeet Singh.

For all the bonhomie between agencies, mention the name Omar Sheikh and everyone clams up and you will be shown the door. On January 22, 2002, two motorcycle-borne terrorists attacked the American Centre in Kolkata, a favourite base of the CIA. The attack was masterminded by Omar Sheikh, a UK-born militant of Pakistani descent, who had links to al Qaeda. He was one of the militants released in 1999 to save the lives of the passengers on board the hijacked IC-814 flight.

But no one really knows who Omar Sheikh is. And those in the know will not speak. An FIR, No 658/94, at Connaught Place police station is still open and he is now is prison in Pakistan. In his memoirs, former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf called him an MI6 agent. Many in Afghanistan believe Omar was a CIA agent.

A tribal leader in Kandahar told THE WEEK that Omar visited Kandahar and Paktia provinces in mid-1990s where Kashmiris, Afghans and Arabs were trained together by the ISI. “We always believed that he is close to the CIA,” said the tribal leader. The CIA and the FBI nabbed Fahim Ansari, another suspect in the Kolkata attack, from Dubai. Ansari was eventually handed over to India, but the agency stills remains mum on Omar.

Every relationship has its ups and downs. If India has benefited from its partnership with the CIA, what are we complaining about? M.K. Dhar, former joint director, Intelligence Bureau, puts it crisply: “The CIA has legitimate interests in India. But our problem with the CIA has been that it has targeted the sensitive segments of Indian panorama.” He recalled how the CIA had developed a mole inside prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s office in 1993. “The plot was exposed when we noticed a peon from the PMO frequently visiting a photostat shop in Khan Market in Delhi. He was smuggling files from the PMO.” The peon was arrested and his American handler was asked to leave the country. The court closed the case last year.

Many within India’s intelligence establishment say that the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has prompted the CIA to look closely at India. In December 30, 2009, a suicide bomber killed eight CIA officers in Khost, eastern Afghanistan. The worsening situation is making it difficult for the agency to freely move around and meet its agents in Pakistan and Afghanistan. So, New Delhi could be the new debriefing centre.

Panetta, widely respected within the Obama administration, chose India for his first official tour after he took over as director in 2009. He knows that India is a strategic ally, a relationship that Obama cherishes. It makes his job more challenging to confirm his country's hopes and fears about an emerging and, in many ways, unpredictable power like India.

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INTERVIEW/LISA CATHEY, DIRECTOR OF ‘CIA IN TIBET’

It was in 2005 that Lisa Cathey, a Washington-based award-wining documentary film-maker, came to know that her father, Clay Cathey, was a CIA officer posted in Calcutta and that he had worked on the Tibetan Task Force in 1962. The next thing she would do was to explore this little-known territory in a documentary, CIA in Tibet, which will be released next year. Excerpts from an interview:

What inspired you to make a documentary on CIA’s covert operation in Tibet?
On a visit to my father in 2005, I noticed a ‘Free Tibet’ bumper sticker on his golf cart. (He is in his 80s now, and plays a lot of golf.) I asked why he had it, and he replied that he had worked on a Tibetan operation in the late 50s and early 60s. I was stunned having no idea the CIA was ever involved in Tibet. I knew dad had been in the CIA, but he never shared any information on his work until that day. After reading up on it a bit, it was amazing that this dramatic part of Tibetan and US history was still so widely unknown, and I felt compelled to do a documentary to engage the public more on the subject.

Does your documentary throw light on how the Dalai Lama was whisked into exile in India?
One of the main things is breaking the myth that the CIA engineered the Dalai Lama’s escape. The Dalai Lama’s Lord Chamberlain, Phala, seems to have worked out a detailed plan for an escape during the Tibetan uprising. The CIA had no knowledge of Phala’s plans. The Dalai Lama wanted to re-establish his government in southern Tibet, where the Tibetan resistance still had a stronghold. When he learned en route that tens of thousands of PLA troops were hunting him as a fugitive, he agreed to go to India, at which point the CIA and the US state department worked directly with Nehru to secure political asylum.

How do CIA officers operate in a foreign land? Could you share any anecdote of your father during his posting in India?
In 1960, the CIA wanted to propagate positive sentiment towards the Tibetan struggle by publishing a biography of Gompo Tashi, the leader of the Chushi Gangdruk [the Tibetan resistance army that was supported by the CIA]. It was to be written by a ghostwriter contracted by the CIA, who had a long list of questions that was given to my father so that he could get the answers from Gompo Tashi, who was by then living in Darjeeling.
Dad was based in Calcutta, so Gompo Tashi had to fly down with an interpreter and wait all day in a hotel because they could only meet for a few hours at night, as to not arouse suspicion. There were still a lot of questions after three separate trips, and it became too hard on Gompo Tashi who was still suffering from old battle wounds, so the book was aborted. I’ve made a request under the Freedom of Information Act to see the notes from those meetings, but the CIA has not been forthcoming. I don’t know if the notes are even still in existence.

 

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INTERVIEW/ROBERT GRENIER, FORMER CIA STATION CHIEF IN PAKISTAN

Robert Grenier was one of the most experienced spies to run the far-flung US intelligence network. As station chief in Pakistan, he was on the frontlines of former president George W. Bush’s war on terror. He served the agency for over two decades and was one of its premier South Asian experts. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:

In 2010, CIA director Leon Panetta unveiled a blueprint for the agency’s future called CIA 2015. It talks of enhancing the capability of the agency and recruiting a diverse workforce with language capabilities. Is India a part of the CIA’s new resurrection?
Panetta’s five-year blueprint does not represent a sharp departure from the recent past. Rather, it seeks to further reinforce and build upon development plans, many of which have been in place shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
I would not say that India is directly a part of these changes, but active recruitment among Americans of Asian and South Asian background certainly would be. CIA is also planning to invest heavily to better manage huge volumes of data, and to adopt more efficient business management practices.

What objectives do the CIA primarily address in India?
It is obvious that India is neither a current nor a potential threat to the US, and that the two countries are coming closer. Therefore, I should think the main goal of US intelligence would be to enhance cooperation with India in areas where their interests clearly converge. Analytically, the US would want to better understand the regional and global implications of India’s rising economic and military power.

Many believe the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has brought more attention of the CIA to India.
Perhaps, but only to a degree. The difficulties in Afghanistan and Pakistan are primarily being addressed in those two countries. However, closer cooperation among regional militants with groups whose focus in the past has been restricted to Kashmir does tend to bring India more centrally into view for US intelligence.

How cooperative is the ISI in the CIA’s war on al Qaeda?
Since 9/11, the ISI has provided critical and, indeed, invaluable assistance against al Qaeda. It should be remembered that the high-profile members of the organisation such as Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramsi bin al-Shibh and many others were, in fact, captured by Pakistan. In the tribal areas of the far north-west, the situation is far more difficult, as these are areas beyond Pakistan’s effective control.

It is reported that suspected terrorist David Headley made several trips to Pakistan between 2002 and 2005 when you were station chief.
During my time in Pakistan, US intelligence was greatly preoccupied with a large number of active, high-profile terrorists operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If Headley travelled to Pakistan in 2002, he was certainly an obscure figure at that time. I have no personal recollection of him.

 

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INTERVIEW/JAYADEVA RANADE, FORMER ADDITIONAL SECRETARY, RAW

Jayadeva Ranade, former additional secretary in Research & Analysis Wing, has built his reputation almost entirely on his mastery of intelligence analysis. During his 35-year-long career, he served in “different situations and environments”. His last foreign posting, prior to his retirement in late 2008, was as an undercover RAW station officer at the Indian embassy in Washington. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:

In July 2009, US diplomats were allegedly asked by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to spy on diplomats of other countries, including India, at the United Nations. Where is the line drawn between the usual diplomat’s business and the intelligence world?
Countries have generally always kept a clear distinguishing line between intelligence officers and diplomats. And while you have cases of intelligence officers posted as diplomats, diplomats don’t engage in activities that are not commensurate with their accepted diplomatic status. The reason is very simple. The diplomat is supposed to represent his country, build bridges with the government of the country to which he is posted, collect assessments and keep his government informed. He is not supposed to go around trying to steal secrets or blackmail people into parting with sensitive information or getting them to engage in espionage.

How does the CIA run its spy network?
The CIA is a huge agency with lots of money. Both the number of employees and size of the agency’s budget are not officially disclosed. But they are widely spread and active, including here for a long time now.

The CIA has been operating in India for a long time?
Yes, the CIA has been operating in India. They are now recruiting, or rather I should more correctly say, sending officers of Indian and South Asian origin to India so that they can merge better. Their basic approach will remain the same, namely to befriend senior bureaucrats, senior military officials and politicians. That is how they start penetration.

Are Indian agencies aware of the CIA’s growing interest in India?
Yes, they were aware about the CIA’s growing espionage activities in India and the region. It is not a secret. Particularly after 9/11, the CIA launched a programme to recruit more South Asian people, who have language skills in certain areas of their interest, and India was one of them.

Was the covert operation given any name?
I’m not aware, but it was part of their general expansion.

Were RAW and other intelligence agencies aware that the CIA was sending more people to India?
Yes, India would be aware that CIA has plans to expand its activities in India. I don’t know whether the CIA has added to its numbers here. CIA personnel also come to India in the guise of diplomats.

Did they use the diplomatic passport as a cover to enter India?
Yes, that is how intelligence agencies work across the world. The FBI has no business to be here so if they want to visit they come as FBI agents. But the CIA uses diplomatic cover.

 

[misterme2]

We weren't prepared 20 yrs ago and we still are not prepared for any threat......goes to show you...the capable ppl of India died decades ago under these corrupt, narrow-minded bureaucrats.