Sweet knives, bitter wounds
Honeytrap is a preferred intelligence tool to break enemy ranks
Wealth, wine and women are the three prongs which intelligence agencies across the world employ to break enemy ranks, but the first two do not have the allure of ‘honeytrapping', neither in the snaring nor in the telling. A couple of weeks ago, an armoured corps officer of the Indian Army posted in Suratgarh in Rajasthan reported to his seniors that he had been honeytrapped by a Bangladeshi woman. Less than a year ago, another officer of the same rank (lieutenant colonel), who was sent to Dhaka to pursue a course, informed the authorities that he was caught in a sordid net. It is speculated that the same woman was involved in both the cases.
Barely has a year gone by without a case of honeytrapping coming to light in the past decade. Be it defence officers, Research and Analysis Wing operatives or embassy employees, the targets have been across the official spectrum. In 2010, Commodore Sukhjinder Singh, who was sent to Russia to oversee the refitting of the warship Admiral Gorshkov, was found in a compromising position with a local woman in photographs that reached the Naval headquarters in Delhi. In 2008, Brigadier (retd) Ujjwal Dasgupta of the RAW and Shib Shankar Paul, a systems officer at the National Security Council Secretariat, were arrested on suspicion of leaking information to an American embassy official suspected to be a CIA agent. The truth in this case, however, remains shrouded in mystery with several versions. An embassy official in Beijing was reportedly called back after it was suspected that he was involved with a Chinese agent. Another one was called back from Colombo as well.
“There is no morality in intelligence gathering, all this happens all over the world,” said Lt-Gen. (retd) R.K. Sawhney, former director-general of Military Intelligence. “Earlier physical proximity was required [for honeytrapping], but now with the internet, you can transgress borders,” he says with a clear reference to the latest case involving the Bangladeshi woman, in which the breach happened on Facebook. Though the Army maintains that no confidential information was passed on, the officer had been frequently exchanging messages with the lady.
“Every man has a poison. You have to identify it,” said a former spook. “The first step is identifying where the knowledge you seek is kept. Then you identify the key men in charge of safeguarding that knowledge. You do extensive profiling of the men, study them, find their weaknesses and determine who is important and who is dispensable. Then you eliminate those who will not succumb to any temptation. Then work begins on the ones who are literally the last ones standing.”
Sometimes a woman agent might choose to be the bait while sometimes the agency might enrol a local whose loyalties are confirmed. The CIA recruited several Pan Am air hostesses during the seventies to act for them. K.V. Unnikrishnan, a RAW officer who had been dealing with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, was honeytrapped by one such agent.
“Honeytrapping works on the basic premise that men will be interested in pursuing a sexual relationship, especially if they think they can get away with it,” said a former RAW official. Posted in India or abroad, government employees, including service officers, get strict instructions not to interact with people of other nationalities. “Even if you play a round of golf with a foreigner you are supposed to come back and inform the authorities,” said a colonel.
Officers have to toe a fine line, especially those who are nominated for courses and missions abroad. “We want the men to interact, build bonds but at the same time they cannot get too friendly. Maturity is required. Officers exposed to the outside world are thus chosen very carefully,” said Sawhney. While warnings are issued, it is not easy to find out if they are being heeded. “It is not always easy to keep tabs on people in sensitive positions but of late there has been an increased effort in this direction,” said the RAW official.
A honeytrap operation starts off in an innocuous manner with contact being established in a social setting. Seemingly harmless exchanges develop subtly into more serious ones. “The process has to be handled delicately throughout. It is not as if information is doled out as a reward at the end of every assignation,” said an Intelligence Bureau officer.
Like any methods of espionage, honeytrapping, too, is fraught with danger. In the male-dominated world of spying, women have to contend with the concerns about their professionalism. “Women can be unpredictable. You have to deal with them very carefully, even factor in the probability of an emotional attachment,” said the IB officer. And if the woman in question is a civilian then the handling officer has to tread extremely carefully.
An Army officer from the intelligence corps recalled dealing with a honeytrap in the nineties. “This was in Baramulla during the peak of militancy when we used a local woman to infiltrate a ring of insurgents,” he said. The woman was the wife of a terrorist under arrest and would come to the Army area every day after his arrest. “We would help her out from time to time and after six months or so I sensed that she was turning. We cultivated her for some more time before offering her the assignment,” he said. She turned out to be an excellent informant. “She would give us the exact location of an arms cache or when the next round of infiltration might take,” said the officer, who is now retired.
But the officer had to take several precautions for the operation. “I did not even inform my seniors. In intelligence gathering the element of suspicion is always there. If you are recruiting a woman from outside, people will wonder whether you are also involved in some way or the other,” he said. But he had to ensure that at no point could the woman turn around and accuse him of any wrongdoing. “A middle man was the contact person and you have to ensure that he is absolutely secure. In the two years that the woman gave us information, I never had any contact with her,” he said. The reason for a woman to become a honeytrap, he said, could be anything from material benefits to idealism.
The case of Madhuri Gupta, a junior Indian embassy employee in Pakistan who was arrested in 2010 on charges of passing on information to the Pakistani agency Inter-Services Intelligence, was the first instance of reverse honeytrapping in India to come out in public. There are hushed whispers about the wife of an embassy official (again in Pakistan) who was honeytrapped by a strapping young local. “Being a spouse she had no access to papers but she would visit people within the embassy with a hidden recorder. Over tea she would chat with them, perhaps read aloud the subject line of a file lying around or muse over the papers the staffer was handling. The recording would then be passed onto her lover,” said an IB officer.
There are several ways of gathering intelligence but honeytrapping gets the most attention because of its seemingly glamorous nature. Dig deeper, spooks say, and you will find that all operations have the same starting point, identifying the man's weakness. If you thought that seduction topped the list, think again. “Over the course of my long career I have found that flattery is the beast which has been the undoing of many men. Feedback about yourself is one of the greatest human needs. However, it has to be informed flattery, a mere sucking up can put people on their guard,” says a retired IB officer.
This is followed by vengeance, where the fires of resentment against an organisation or a senior or even a feeling of frustration with a job assignment is stoked. “Material needs and carnal desires actually rank third on the list. Sometimes a man can be subjected to more than one mode of entrapment,” he said.
And what are the wages of the sin? While the lieutenant colonel in Suratgarh is facing a court of inquiry, Commodore Singh was sacked. Brigadier Dasgupta, Paul and Madhuri Gupta were arrested under the Official Secrets Act.
All, they say, is fair in love and war. And love still seems to be the most potent weapon to win the battle, as it has been since the days of Samson and Delilah.