Intelligence & National Security Discussion

[putnanja]

Gaps in air surveillance network: CAG report

New Delhi, October 24 : India has glaring gaps in its air surveillance coverage due to a shortage of radars and its submarine fleet is obsolete and facing a serious dip in force levels, the latest CAG report on the defence services says.

Coming down heavily against the Government for not clearing acquisition plans of radars by the IAF, the CAG report says that India’s air defence system is based on a model formulated in 1976 that is in urgent need of a relook.

Revealing that India is facing a 47 per cent shortage of radars needed to detect inkling aircraft, the report says that the Government has not yet cleared any of the revised air defence plans of the IAF that were submitted since 1976 despite “significant changes in security scenario”.

On the naval front, the report says that India holds just 67 per cent of the force level envisaged in the 1985 plan and the availability of submarines is as low as 48 per cent as the fleet is old and reaching the end of service life. Even the missile firing capabilities are not up to the mark, the report says.

Blasting the Government for not clearing IAF’s radar acquisition plans, the report says that repeated delays in the tendering process and objections by the CVC on the purchase of Israeli radars has led to a lowering of air defence capabilities.

On top of that, the report says that IAF is not utilising the existing radar systems adequately. It says that the ‘watch hours’ prescribed by the Government to keep external surveillance are not being met by the IAF and surveillance levels are as low as 4 per cent of the approved norms.

[ASPuar]

B Raman mentions the inter intelligence agency chaos, and LTTE's making hay consequently in his book, The Kaoboys of R&AW.

In his words, the LTTE would take money from R&AW, which the IB and DGMI didnt know about. The LTTE took money from the IB which R&AW and the DGMI didnt know about. And the LTTE took money from DGMI which R&AW and IB didnt know about.

An allround merry go round!

[sum]

Gaps in air surveillance network: CAG report

New Delhi, October 24 : India has glaring gaps in its air surveillance coverage due to a shortage of radars and its submarine fleet is obsolete and facing a serious dip in force levels, the latest CAG report on the defence services says.

Coming down heavily against the Government for not clearing acquisition plans of radars by the IAF, the CAG report says that India’s air defence system is based on a model formulated in 1976 that is in urgent need of a relook.

Revealing that India is facing a 47 per cent shortage of radars needed to detect inkling aircraft, the report says that the Government has not yet cleared any of the revised air defence plans of the IAF that were submitted since 1976 despite “significant changes in security scenario”.

On the naval front, the report says that India holds just 67 per cent of the force level envisaged in the 1985 plan and the availability of submarines is as low as 48 per cent as the fleet is old and reaching the end of service life. Even the missile firing capabilities are not up to the mark, the report says.

Blasting the Government for not clearing IAF’s radar acquisition plans, the report says that repeated delays in the tendering process and objections by the CVC on the purchase of Israeli radars has led to a lowering of air defence capabilities.

Is the situation so grim? I thought that the Israeli radars had been given the go-ahead

How can we claim to have a decent AD network if we have only 53%(acc to CAG a.k.a bean counter) of the required radar coverage??

[shyamd]

What a joke. We can get the intel but we can't make good use of it. Who cares if people die all over India? Clearly the govt doesnt.

RAW And Rudderless

A lack of skilled officers, a host of controversies and little accountability. Has India’s premier intelligence agency touched a new low?

IN APRIL this year, well before the commencement of India’s recent wave of urban terror attacks, Western intelligence bureaus gave the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) information about potential strikes in several cities, including Jaipur, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Kolkata. At the time, RAW chief Ashok Chaturvedi was on leave, having reduced his work commitments ostensibly owing to bad health, though it was also no secret that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was unhappy with his performance. Passing over his organisational second-in-command PV Kumar, Chaturvedi chose Sanjeev Tripathi, currently at number four in the agency, to fill in for him during his absence. With intelligence assessment at the core of his brief, Tripathi, it is believed, either ignored the information or did not deem it important enough to act upon.
In his 18 months as the head of RAW, Ashok Chaturvedi appears to have embarrassed himself and his organisation. Today, the situation at India’s external intelligence agency is at such a low that, sources say, foreign intelligence outfits are reluctant to pass it information — little, after all, happens when they do. As RAW chief, Chaturvedi enjoys a degree of autonomy unusual for intelligence bureaus the world over. In the US, for instance, the Central Intelligence Agency head has four levels of supervision; Chaturvedi has one.
Earlier this year, Chaturvedi was on the verge of being sacked, a first for any RAW chief. The Prime Minister stopped short, however, after the intervention of former RAW chief GS Bajpai, who is also Tripathi’s father-in-law. This, along with Chaturvedi’s long-time friendship with Tripathi, is the reason sources ascribe to Tripathi’s disproportionate influence in the agency, and to Chaturvedi’s backing his bid to succeed him when he retires in February 2009. Not removing Chaturvedi may have been the first mistake, say insiders, and handing Tripathi the prized seat could be the second.
Chaturvedi and Tripathi are part of a domineering Indian Police Service (IPS) lobby within RAW. The IPS candidates, along with those on deputation from other civil and paramilitary services, have always been at loggerheads with RAW’s own cadre, the Research and Analysis Service. The hostilities are currently manifesting themselves in the fight for the number one position. Most are rooting not for Tripathi but for Kumar, who belongs to the RAW. Ever-shifting guidelines for those on deputation have worsened rivalries. The most recent change allows those on deputation to work with RAW without resigning from their parent cadre. They can rise in seniority within RAW and return whenever they feel dissatisfied with their position. This has created a lot of resentment within RAW; many see the agency’s revolving door of arrivals and departures as preventing the creation of a unified team committed to intelligence gathering.
Some startling revelations show the extent to which petty personal issues are obstructing work at the agency. According to a reliable source, a RAW officer posted in Bangladesh got intelligence before last year’s Hyderabad blasts that the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al Islami (HUJI) was planning an attack on a major South Indian city. This intelligence was sent to Delhi. Shockingly, because of a grudge against the officer, his Delhi counterpart did not pass the information to his supervisors and to the Prime Minister’s Office, as is protocol. “Everybody inside knows about it, yet no disciplinary action has been taken,” the source said.
But insiders say disciplinary action is not something India’s premier intelligence agency is known for. Sources told TEHELKA that after the 2002 Gujarat earthquake, a RAW officer posted in Bhuj was found to have swindled 70 percent of the relief material, but was let off with a mere demotion. “Should someone of dubious integrity be allowed to work in intelligence?” questioned a source.
The dearth of qualified, motivated staff is severely impacting RAW’s ability to col-lect quality human intelligence at the grassroots level. Strangely, the deputation phenomenon has led to a crucial problem: competent candidates who clear the civil services examination don’t want to join RAW at the bottom, because they know they can join another service and enter RAW at the Class I level. This allows them to escape the agency’s mandatory requirements of learning a foreign language and spending time on India’s borders.
It is no surprise, then, that insiders say RAW’s own recruitment standards are below par. Its technical cadre has not had a single qualified BTech graduate for at least four years. There is no benchmark or specific aptitude test to qualify for the agency. Sources say that those who do not make it to the more highly regarded services are RAW’s most likely recruits. “The glamour associated with the agency has quietly faded and fewer and fewer people want to join,” a former RAW chief told TEHELKA.
Jyoti Sinha, who took premature retirement from the agency, agrees that personnel reform is urgently needed. “Unless you have a sound, consistent policy, it is impossible to develop the kind of expertise and experience you need in the field of intelligence. Frequent changes in personnel policy have led to so much uncertainty. It has eroded the quality of human resource and expertise. Not only RAW but the government must also share the blame for this deficiency.”
ASENIOR OFFICER told TEHELKA that RAW is relying too heavily on technology and failing to cultivate reliable on-the-ground sources. “The money that should be spent on cultivating sources is being spent elsewhere, and RAW has no way of checking this,” another source added. RAW has a budget running into thousands of crores, and yet there is no external performance or financial audit. There seems to be no mechanism to check whether what RAW is delivering is worth the near-inexhaustible funds at their disposal. There are several indications to show it may not be.
Sources say the lack of actionable intelligence is also because of the organisation’s dearth of members of minority communities, especially Muslims. “In my six years of service, I did not come across one Muslim employee,” says a former senior RAW officer. Some justify this by saying that intelligence agencies the world over tend to follow the right-wing mainstream makeup of a country, to safeguard against being compromised. But past scandals show this has not insulated RAW from traitors.
Ironically, when intelligence inputs do come, RAW fails to analyse them adequately. “They have state-of-the-art interception equipment but the intercepts are not read properly,” says a source. The reason is astonishingly simple: the lack of adequate language skills. A senior officer who recently left RAW told TEHELKA that while he was in the organisation not one analyst on the Pakistan desk knew Urdu. “All the analysts do is correct the grammar of the briefs and pass them on to the Prime Minister,” he added, emphasising that most lack any background in the desks they are handling. There is no mandatory requirement, and assignments are mostly arbitrary, depending on vacancy. “It would be pure coincidence if someone from Tamil Nadu was handling the LTTE desk,” he said.
FURTHER, SOURCES say, even most field officers do not know the language of the country they operate in. “Having enough language skills to converse with locals should be a basic requirement. But that is not the case in 90 percent of RAW’s postings,” said a former RAW officer. Sources told TEHELKA that the current RAW officer in China does not know Chinese, the person in Saudi Arabia does not know Arabic, and the person currently posted in Paris is one of the few in the organisation who actually knows Pashto. Languages like Pashto, Burmese and Singhalese are, in fact, considered inferior and officers are not even willing to learn them, a senior reliable source said. “Everybody wants to learn French or Spanish,” he added. Another basic issue at the root of RAW’s intelligence failures is the agency’s refusal to make a distinction between field operatives and analysts. In most agencies, these are two distinct jobs, allowing complete secrecy for operatives while giving analysts the chance to mingle in other circles to widen their perspective. But in RAW, the blurring of this distinction is compromising the effectiveness of both operatives and analysts.
In fact, intelligence gathering is being compromised by the blurring of another key distinction: the line between the personal and the official. This comes from the chief himself. Even the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been roped in to give weight to Chaturvedi’s personal dislikes. Only recently, it was asked to press charges against Major General VK Singh for his 2007 book, India’s External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing. Curiously, these instructions came months after the book was published. Sources say Chaturvedi only ordered the action after he discovered he had found mention in the book. Highlighting RAW’s lax work culture, Singh had said in his book that a senior officer did not come to office for six to eight months, peeved that someone else had been promoted instead of him. The officer turns out to have been Chaturvedi himself.
Singh has now filed 21 Right To Information (RTI) applications to show that Chaturvedi’s case against him is baseless. The CBI chargesheet accuses him of revealing the names and locations of RAW officers, information the organisation holds top secret. Astonishingly, Singh says this information is easily available in the public domain. Through RTI applications, he was able to get the names of all RAW employees from the Department of Personnel and Training. From the Ministry of External Affairs, he procured the names of all Indian embassy employees world-wide. Matching the documents, Singh says he knows the name and location of every RAW officer posted abroad. Yet RAW insists this is classified information. “RAW has created a hush-hush aura around itself so it doesn’t come under the scanner and its anomalies are never exposed,” Singh says. “Clerks are taught from the day they join to label everything top secret, even circulars for tea parties.” What is even more ironic is the wealth of information about RAW one can find online. Wikipedia gives the exact coordinates of several RAW bases, including ones in foreign countries. “Even I did not know we had a base in Kazakhistan,” Singh says. “But I found out about it on Wikipedia.”
Singh had pointed out several instances of corruption in his book. He now tells TEHELKA that all the systems he had pointed out as corrupt were initially removed but reinstated after he left. The only concrete action has been a new rule that no employee can write a book about RAW even after retirement.
Sources point to another disconcerting trend — foreign postings in RAW are decided not by operational needs and merits, but by personal motivations. For instance, reliable sources tell TEHELKA that a RAW officer currently posted in the Northeast was sent there as a punishment, because it was believed he had been leaking stories about Chaturvedi to the media. More surprisingly, an operative currently in Vietnam is not even from the intelligence department. He is an administrative officer sent because the RAWchief wanted to return a favour. Similarly, the officer posted in Indonesia a few years ago was from the ministerial cadre. “Older people who have never been abroad are given a foreign posting as a reward, so that they can make some money before they retire,” a source said.
THE LURE of the ‘plum’ foreign post in ‘luxury’ countries like the US or the UK has also led to a dearth of officers willing to go where it matters. There has been no RAW operative in Iraq for the last four years, says Lieutenant Colonel S Maladi, who joined RAW’s technical cadre on deputation from the army in 2000. Of his own experience, he says, “I was offered the Afghanistan cover post and I wasn’t even in the intelligence department,” adding that he soon learnt three others in the bureau had been sent notices to leave for Afghanistan, but had refused to go. Current RAW officers defend the organisation, saying this work culture is prevalent throughout the civil services. That, perhaps, is the crux of the problem. “RAWseems to operate like any other government department and lacks the ethos of an elite intelligence unit,” said a former senior officer.
Under Chaturvedi, RAW has been described as a rudderless ship, and there seems to be a sense of despair among the few proud sailors who have seen better days. “I only spent two years in the organisation and I am very fond of it,” former RAW Chief AS Dulat told TEHELKA. “I hate to see all this dirt flying around, running it down,” he added. But the grime is more evident now than ever before. In the latest episode to discredit the agency, Nisha Bhatia, a director at RAW’s training institute, tried in August to commit suicide outside the Prime Minister’s office, indicting Chaturvedi and joint secretary Sunil Uke on sexual harassment charges. Bhatia told TEHELKA she was driven to this extreme step after requests for action found no response. She initially told Chaturvedi that Uke had offered her Rs 30,000, withdrawn from the secret service fund. TEHELKA has a copy of Chaturvedi’s reply: “Please call both the concerned officials and sort out the problem. I don’t wish to be disturbed on such issues,” he wrote. While Chaturvedi has termed the allegations baseless, Bhatia says she is willing to take legal action. If she goes ahead, it will not be the first time RAW is dragged to court. If appeals for more accountability and for the creation of a parliamentary oversight committee looking into RAW go unheard, it may not be the last.

Source: Tehelka

[sum]

The dearth of qualified, motivated staff is severely impacting RAW’s ability to col-lect quality human intelligence at the grassroots level. Strangely, the deputation phenomenon has led to a crucial problem: competent candidates who clear the civil services examination don’t want to join RAW at the bottom, because they know they can join another service and enter RAW at the Class I level. This allows them to escape the agency’s mandatory requirements of learning a foreign language and spending time on India’s borders.

A very crucial anamoly in our system...needs to be rectified ASAP..

Also, whats this business of western agencies passing info on Indian terrorists within India??How are they able to get hold of such info within our country?:-?

[satya]

Deputation concept was created in Civil Services for 'trickle down' effect on the knowledge gained at such premier central services . In case of officers posted with R&AW it was thought to be a two way street with officers gaining experience and taking it back to their state cadres to create expertise in state's intel agency and R&AW gaining grass root officers from state cadre having the option to chose the brightest among various cadres thereby increasing its talent pool & providing R&AW its cutting edge . However with the increasing nepotism foremost problem & political influence in even petty officer's postings ( a senior IPS officer told about changing times , when in early 80s usually SSP will recruit policemen independently & local MLAs & MPs use to ask & plead with SSP if 1-2 of their supporters can be recruited , now table has turned with SSP requesting Home Minister if SSP's relative can be recruited ! ) , this system has outlived his utility & the suggestion on creation of specialized Senior Executive Service in Sixth Pay Commission shows there are concerned minds in power corridors . Solution is in the creation of National Intelligence Cadre something Sh. Narender Modi is demanding ,can be a first step in right direction to provide a collective pool of talent for various intel agencies .
Accountability has to be brought in so to make sure that officers are held accountable in discharge of their duties , if Armed Forces can have such a system why leave Intel agencies & Police from it going by their importance in country's defense .

Interestingly article mentions about intelligence inputs being sent to PMO without much R&AW's in-house analyst's comments indicating PMO has got its own analysis wing either under NSA or separate .

[Anabhaya]

Solution is in the creation of National Intelligence Cadre something Sh. Narender Modi is demanding

Isn't there a IRS - Indian Research Service?

and parliamentary oversight. Tis a tragedy. Even some of the ex-officers have cried aloud for this. Obviously providing for parliamentary oversight will make it impossible to use IB resources for political espionage against domestic opposition.

[sum]

, reliable sources tell TEHELKA that a RAW officer currently posted in the Northeast was sent there as a punishment, because it was believed he had been leaking stories about Chaturvedi to the media.

Im guessing that this was the person who leaked all those stories to some ME paper wherein they were all printed....

Only can hope that important resources werent diverted just to conduct htis hunt for the "leaky" officer...

[ramana]

The core problem seems to be heirarchial organization. Its being run as a govt bureau instead of an intel organization. All thse tiffs about seniority etc. Some thing needs to be done.

[shyamd]

Also, whats this business of western agencies passing info on Indian terrorists within India??How are they able to get hold of such info within our country?:-?

Techint, comms intercepts usually. Sometimes humint. Possibly monitoring terrorists within TSP. We may have the same info but it may not be disseminated(need to seperate relevant intel from the irrelevant).

Lot of the terror financing is from Gulf sheikhs, so maybe monitoring this line. Can receive intel about terror attacks in India from many sources.

[ramana]

Book review, Deccan chronicle, 2 nov, 2008

he devious Bachelor

By Jacob Heilbrunn


THE IRREGULARS: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington
By Jennet Conant,
Simon & Schuster,
$27.95, pp 393

Roald Dahl is famous for his mischievous children’s stories. But as Jennet Conant reports in The Irregulars, he was also a British spy. Conant, who has written popular accounts of the secret development of radar and the atomic bomb, shows that Dahl, a former R.A.F. hero, parachuted himself into Washington blue-blood circles in 1942 and used his embassy post to begin spying on Britain’s closest and most important ally.

Like his chums Noël Coward and Ian Fleming, both of whom also assisted British intelligence during the war, Dahl was firmly in the tradition of the amateur gentleman-spy, and in Washington he soon acquired a taste for a lavish lifestyle that he never lost. To the end of his life, Conant writes, Dahl demanded that his publisher dispatch a Rolls-Royce to collect manuscripts from his home. In Washington, where the grand parties and salons depicted in the Henry Adams novel Democracy lingered on, Dahl’s combat record, good looks and charm made him a prize social catch.

Dahl’s entry into Washington high-life was immeasurably smoothed by the avuncular Texas newspaper magnate and oil tycoon Charles Edward Marsh, who had moved to the capital to aid the New Deal. Marsh, who lived in a 19th-century mansion in Dupont Circle, introduced Dahl to his friends. Soon, Dahl was hobnobbing with Eleanor Roosevelt during weekends at Hyde Park, where he also met the president, allowing him to become, Conant expansively concludes, "a back-channel conduit of information" to Churchill.

In 1943 a crafty Canadian industrialist and associate of Winston Churchill, William Stephenson, tapped Dahl to join his spy network, British Security Coordination. Stephenson’s original mandate had been to help push America into World War II. After Pearl Harbour, he was assigned to keep tabs on America’s postwar plans and to counter any lingering isolationist sentiments. Despite America’s entry into the war, a number of conservative newspapers and socialites remained rabid Roosevelt haters and loathed the British Empire. Many of them lived in Washington; according to Conant, "with the playgrounds of Europe closed to tourists, moneyed society was forced to stay home, and Washington was brimming with wealthy dowagers and their bored, unmarried daughters". What the journalist Joseph Alsop later called the "WASP ascendancy" ruled Washington social life.

Dahl befriended the publisher of the reactionary Washington Times-Herald, Eleanor (Cissie) Patterson, whom Roosevelt had denounced as a social "parasite" more interested in giving tea parties than in aiding the war effort. There was also the hostess Evalyn Walsh McLean, whose son-in-law, Senator Robert Rice Reynolds of North Carolina, had initially blamed the Pearl Harbour attack on the British who, Conant writes, now "monitored his every move."

McLean, who never received her guests without the 45 1/2 carat Hope diamond dangling from her neck, made Dahl a regular at the glamorous Sunday night dinners she presided over in her Massachusetts Avenue manor house, which featured dance orchestras, previews of first-run movies and a hundred or more guests per gathering. According to Conant, "all Dahl had to do was keep up a cheerful front and eavesdrop his way through the yawning Sunday breakfasts, hunt breakfasts, luncheons, teas, tea dances, innumerable drinks parties, banquets and not infrequent balls".

Certainly Dahl, as Conant shows, was not slow in compiling a remarkable record in wooing heiresses and dowagers. Conant numbers among his conquests the beautiful congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce and the even more stunning Standard Oil heiress Millicent Rogers, who had eloped to Paris at 19 with one Count Ludwig Salm von Hoogstraten and, after her divorce, lived in an 18th-century manor in Virginia that was, we learn from Conant, stuffed with a trove of Empire and Biedermeier furniture. Indeed, "inspired by her eclectic finds, from the group of antique clocks to a cluster of superb drawings by Watteau, Fragonard and Boucher," Conant says, "Dahl vowed that as soon as he had enough put away, he would begin buying paintings for a modest collection of his own."

Years later, Conant writes, Ian Fleming, about to publish his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale," would irk Dahl by having an affair with Rogers in Fleming’s Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye.

How much does all this have to do with World War II? Dahl’s stream of gossipy reports about the doings of the Washington glitterati were nectar for London, which was terrified that the Roosevelt administration would turn on it after the war ended. Every government, then and now, is always keen to learn the inside dope. But what Conant never makes quite clear is whether Dahl ever supplied any information of real consequence.

Conant herself becomes so entranced by the glistening details she has excavated from oblivion that she never provides a coherent narrative. It’s a pity that Conant, a diligent researcher and gifted writer, has produced a mere trifle so conspicuously lacking the verve and panache of Dahl himself.

[shyamd]

Folks, there is a possibility of another cyber intelligence organisation will be created in India. This time to protect's critical national infrastructure. This is due to frequent hacking attacks from the 3rd dept of PLA. In april, hackers got into the MEA databases and the comms(possibility the PM comms system or system where instructions are given to consulates abroad, it is definetly comms system related to the national security system though) system. Following the attacks, NTRO conducted an audit on vulnerabilities of the system. The audit will be public soon, and will recommend that the new service, will be staffed from various agencies. NTRO, Army cyber command and Economic intelligece department.

[sum]

The audit will be public soon, and will recommend that the new service, will be staffed from various agencies. NTRO, Army cyber command and Economic intelligece department.

Has NTRO itself got over the staffing and turf war woes to recommend and divest staff away from itself?

[K Mehta]

Centre to set up modern checkposts

In a bid to promote bilateral trade and people-to-people contact with the countrys neighbours, the Centre on Thursday decided to set up state-of-the-art integrated checkposts (ICPs) at 13 identified entry points on the land borders of the country at a cost of Rs 635 crore.

A decision to this effect was taken by the cabinet committee on economic affairs (CCEA) at its meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

In the first phase, one ICP each will be set up at Attari on the India-Pakistan border, Moreh on the India-Myanmar border, Ruxol on the India-Nepal border and Petrapole on the India-Bangladesh border, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Prithivraj Chavan, told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

The proposed 13 ICPs would be set up under a new scheme in the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-2012).
Phase II
In Phase II, nine ICPs will be set up. These will be at Hili and Chandrabangha (both in West Bengal), Sutarkandi (Assam), Dawki (Meghalaya), Akhaura (Tripura), Kawarpuchiah (Mizoram), Jobgani (Bihar), Sunauli and Rupaidiha/Nepalganj (both in UP), highly placed sources in the commerce ministry told Deccan Herald.

[ramana]

The old bugbear intel failure is being used again.

Centre to act on terror strikes in N.E.

Wiki article on Traffic Analysis

This is also a key technique in trend watching. Analsysts measure trends by hte number of column inches of space given to a topic in a few key publications to discern trends. The content doesnt matter. Given enough material the trend shows itself.

[Venkarl]

Why are we not discussing about malegaon blasts? army officers? hindutva groups..abhinav bharat? is it a sensitive issue to discuss about here? pardon my ignorance..

[ramana]

Its being discussed in the Internal Security Thread in Strat forum. That has much higher visibility.

[satya]

2008 Beijing Olympics Security Management Myth and Reality of Intelligence Inputs on Terror Attack

Introduction

2008 Beijing Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, is now a history. The opening and closing ceremonies, held respectively on 08th Aug 08 and 24th Aug 08, presented spectacles of never before workmanship in every respect. 302 events in 28 sports, held in 37 Games venues, 31 in Beijing and six others in the cities of Tianjin, Shenyang, Shanghai, Qinhuangdao, Qingdao and Hong Kong, comforted 11028 competing athletes and a vast multitude of spectators including 88 heads of states and 200 celebrities, without slightest distraught, contrary to boggy of terror attack raised by none other than the Chinese security mandarins themselves.

Non-happening of inevitable mishap of any description stands out as a sure tribute to the ingenuousness of the system in place as happening of otherwise imponderable events tests positive to manageable gloss over short of abject failure of it. It is simultaneously a pointer to the quality of statecraft. Intelligence, a process and a product of omnivorous collection, storage and analysis of information, provides much needed insight to executive actions to plug the holes, as it existed and/ or could arise. In the bargain, intelligence is a “public function” of the state arm(s) of intelligence gathering. The validity and legitimacy of the organ is, accordingly, intertwined with the “public interest”. Depending on the outreach of the intelligence inputs to policy to domestic and international power equations, it has potential to make or mar the developments. The aftermath of the invalid and illegitimate US and British intelligence inputs, tested against the parameter of public interest in the case of US policy on Iraq, particularly the US-led 2003 Iraq war is an open testimony to this effect.[1] There are umpteen number of cases world wide.

The paper is aimed at examining the validity and legitimacy of the Chinese intelligence inputs on security threat to the host cities and different venues of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games with specific reference to the magnitude and dimension of the Chinese institutional response to handle the challenges. The specifics of the Chinese intelligence remain guarded secret. There is no way either to have straight access unless the Chinese intelligence agencies come to declassify the information. It could yet be methodologically gleaned, pitting the known broad side of the Chinese intelligence in the public statements of Chinese intelligence outfits and follow ups.

Schematically, the study design delves into and addresses: the Chinese Intelligence Collection Module and Process; the Hardness and Depth of Intelligence; the Intensity of Perceived and Manifest Security Threats; and, the Viability and Aptness of Institutional Response. Data mining for the study has understandably been confined to open source materials, particularly the Chinese print media. Nothing better could have otherwise been expected as no intelligence is supposed to platter classified information. The accuracy of the findings thus draws on the upbeats of the analysis.

Chinese Intelligence Collection Module and Process

The Chinese intelligence collection module, brought to bear upon during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, reflected a rare fusion of inter agency networks, where the professional agents and political mentor shared and worked hand-in-hand to achieve simultaneously the operational and goals.

Beijing Olympic Security Command Center (BOSCC), formally set up on 30th June 2005 in Beijing, served as the front office, overtly responsible for organizing and directing all security operations. The organizational structure and function of BOSCC tend to reflect the form and spirit of collective leadership and wisdom. As elsewhere, the party functionary headed the organization. By virtue of being the main host city of the Games, the Deputy Secretary of the Beijing Municipality Party Committee Qiang Wei called the shot as Chief while Liu Jinguo, vice Minister in the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) functioned as the First Deputy Chief, Ma Zhenchuan, Director of the Beijing Municipal Security Bureau and Zhu Shuguang, the Deputy Commander of the HQ of the PAPF, as the Deputy Chiefs.[2] The BOSCC subsequently developed the operational system and rules to gain the optimum efficiency in the job.

The three Chinese intelligence setup, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), respectively responsible for domestic, foreign and military intelligence were to feed BOSCC on both the broad and specific sides of the security threat. The Chinese fourth estate, the New China News Agency (NCNA) played the much needed supplementing and complementing role for the purpose. Notwithstanding, the International Liaison Center, operating under the command and control of BOSCC since January 2008, provided necessary connects with the foreign intelligence agencies. Besides the top western outfits, the BOSCC looked for and received valuable inputs from the previous Olympic host countries, particularly Australia and Japan as well as South Korea which had experience of meeting security threats to the football World Cup in 2006.[3]

Chinese intelligence mandarins seem to have worked the conceptual frame work of this module of intelligence collection quite early. They had perhaps firmed up their direction of work as well. This is well testified from a number of public statements of different levels of stakeholders, which included the Minister of Public Security Zhou Yongkang. Addressing two days International Conference on Security Cooperation for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, beginning September 10, 2007, Zhou called for closer international collaboration on information sharing and risk analysis. He favoured establishment of early risk warning mechanism. He was simultaneously categorical in raising finger against the forces of terrorism. Liu Jing, vice Minister of Public Security, added to the list other sources.

The Ministry of Public security (Gonganbu), the agency responsible for internal security, apparently took lead. The Department of Intelligence coordinated the task of compilation of lists of potential trouble maker agencies and persons with the three other departments of the ministry at the national level, and the provincial, prefecture and county level outfits.[4] It included compilation of lists of domestic and foreign potential trouble maker groups. In the first stage, it drew out broad categories of suspected elements. Quite simultaneously, the Ministry of State Security (Guoanbu), the agency responsible for external intelligence got into touch with sister agencies outside. Meanwhile, the research wing of the Ministry of State Security, known as the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) started articulating thoughts on horizon and dimension of threat to the host cities and venues of the Games.[5] The views of experts in the field were collated and shared with the Ministry of Public Security. For the purpose, it got into floating and collating views expressed in its tri-monthly publication Guoji Guanxi Yanjiu (Studies in international Relations) and a number of open ended symposia. It did as well use its collaborating organizations. The Second Bureau of the Ministry of State Security entrusted with the task of collection of foreign intelligence, used non-professional intelligence agents, particularly academics and high-tech Chinese professionals for gathering general and incriminating information on foreign elements.

For long, the Ministry of Public Security worked on broad aspects of plausible threat. It concentrated on four categories of foreign and domestic sources of threats. The foreign sources of threats, targeted for the purpose included: the evangelic Christians, eager to end China’s religious restrictions; the activists, wanting Beijing to use its oil buying leverage with Sudan to end the strife in Darfur; environmental campaigner, concerned about climate change; and, militant Islamic groups, some of which were home grown. The domestic sources of threats were, accordingly perceived to be: the Tibetans, allegedly espousing independence as the Chinese officials held or real autonomy as the Dalai Lama and ilk opening expounded; the Falungong followers, suppressed as spiritual cult; the farmer groups, upset at land confiscation; and, the Non-government Organizations (NGOs), particularly those which got foreign funding and were vocal about human rights record of China.

In April 2007, the Chinese intelligence mandarins came to spell out their target in more or less precise terms. The Ministry of Public Security then issued a general nationwide order, requiring strict examinations on all people both in China and overseas, who were to witness the 208 Beijing Olympic Games. They included members of the Olympic Committee, athletes, media and sponsors. With this, the Ministry of Public Security also provided a list of 43 types of people in 11 categories to be barred from attending the Olympic Games in any situation. The ambit covered almost every set of people in hundreds and thousands through out the length and breadth of China and outside whom the Chinese leadership and establishment could consider antagonistic today and in times to come. The finer print of the list speak of involvement of all intelligence outfits.

Even as it was stupendous job to tick every one, the Chinese intelligence outfits achieved the target at a relatively fast pace, particularly in urban areas. The Public Security Stations (PHS) in a rural area is posted with a PHS Chief, a Deputy PHS Chief, a small administrative staff, and a small police force. In an urban area it had a greater number of administrative staff members and seven to eighteen patrolmen. The household section of the PHS maintained a registry of all persons living in the area. Births, deaths, marriages, and divorces were recorded and confirmed through random household checks. The station regulated all hotels and required visitors who remained beyond a certain number of days to register. All theaters, cinemas, radio equipment, and printing presses also were registered with the local public security station, permitting it to regulate gatherings and censor information effectively. It also regulated the possession, transportation, and use of all explosives, guns, ammunition, and poisons. The PHS is entrusted with the task of controlling change of residence. They take cue from the provisions hukou (household registration) system in vogue.

At their end, the intelligence outfits under the Command and Control of the General Staff Department (GSD), the General Political Department (GPD), the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLA AF) put their act together to meet all shades of security threat to the host city and venues of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In a series of joint meetings, officials of the Second Department under the General Staff Department, International Liaison Department and China Association of International Friend’s Contacts under General Political Department, the Sixth Research Institute under the People’s Liberation Army Air Force and the People’s Liberation Army and naval intelligence exchanged notes with their counterparts in the Ministry of Public Security. Nevertheless, the Chinese intelligence mandarins did as well take expert advice of some of the reputed security hands, which included Neil Fergus, former Australian Director of Intelligence at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

Adequacy of Chinese Intelligence Inputs

The basic intent and purpose of the Chinese intelligence operations as such was to zero down probability of terror attacks, their intensity, time factor and locations. It differently meant getting at the capabilities and intensions of each probable source of threat. The framework of the Chinese intelligence operations, as discernible from the list of 43 set of people in 11 categories as the target, gives out much desired glimpses of China’s approach, goals and objectives and last but not the least, the predictability of the whole exercise in real time. Conversely, it speaks out whether the intelligence inputs, so collected and analysed through, could stand to the test of actionable intelligence in terms of adequacy and hardness.

The Chinese approach to get to the end source of threat in sequence after two stage value added sorting process as such is in total conformity to a mass model. It has particular relevance where the intelligence outfit has to acquit well in combing through politically high risk populace spread over to a very large geographical expanse in a given time frame. It called for disaggregating the first stage threat source and then the second stage threat source catch hold the end threat source. 43 sets of persons in 11 categories, barred to get into the host cities and venues of the events, as such, signify, respectively, the second and first stage threat source.

While conceptually sound, it suffered a major flaw. The 11 categories, so presented do not measure the test of exclusiveness. It was not again a product of chance. It was rather a studied camouflage of China’s quasi political design. For a variety of reasons, the Chinese intelligence mandarins preferred to orchestrate the stand points of political masters and ignored the basics of the discipline. The 11 categories, considered key to disaggregated 43 sets, are themselves disaggregated sets of three otherwise notional sources of threats: the Tibetan Buddhists, the East Turkestan Activists and the Falungong followers.

Box-1 testifies the point. But for Cat-II, Cat-III and Cat-IV, none other categories literally stand independent to itself. Antagonism can not exist without a reason, perceived or real. It is, indeed, central to all set of opposition. Terrorists do as well carry antagonism, for either perceived or real reason. It applies with a difference to all. The categorization is thus speculative in nature. It is not borne of hard facts. Tibetan Buddhists did not find mention even as the Chinese media much less Chinese leadership never spared a single occasion to hurl insinuations. They have been meticulously referred as the Dalai Lama clique. The cliché stands straight for the Tibetan Buddhist and wide range of advocates of Tibetan cause. Cat-III-Cat-VI and then again, Cat-VIII-Cat-XI just constitute simple reiteration and reflection of Chinese political design to brand the Dalai Lama, the East Turkestan Activists and the Falungong followers as the sources of terror threat to a noble cause such as Olympic Games. This was again a diplomatic design to silence all critics on the issue of human rights violation, and solicit support of the western powers, particularly the European Union and some of its vocal members, such as Germany and France, who can not be ignored while not acceding to their demand for more humane treatments.

Box-1 Barred Category of People

Cat-I: Antagonistic Elements
Cat-II: Adherents of Falungong
Cat-III: Religious Extremists and Religious Infiltrators
Cat-IV: Secessionists of Ethnic Minorities
Cat-V: Harmful Media Persons
Cat-VI: NGOs, prone to pose threats
Cat-VII: Persons, opposed to CPC
Leadership
Cat-VIII: Persons, awaiting judicial action
Cat-IX: Criminals under surveillance
Cat-X: Terrorists
Cat-XI: Members of illegal organizations


The picture is little different when each of the 43 sets of persons in 11 categories, suspected to harbour terrorist designs to the detriment of either the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games or the Chinese state, are put to test against such parameters. Notwithstanding, they hold insights into the foundation and practices of Chinese criminal justice, in consonance or otherwise the tenets of jurisprudence. In turn, it is an exhibit of how surging China, swearing its credentials as responsive to reasons and rationale in the conduct of state affairs in the comity of nations.

The sets of feared after people in each of the 11 categories, as presented in Box-2, could possibly have grudge against the Chinese state as much as the leadership. They could as well take advantage of the occasion to register their discomfiture. It was yet next to impossible either for the individual player or their collectives to impair the show.

Morimportantly, the sets of people so suspected to harbour nefarious design, largely fall

Box-2 Barred Sets of People, Category-wise

Cat-I: Antagonistic Elements

(a) Overseas anti-China forces and members of antagonistic Organizations

(b) Key figures in ideological disputes

(c) Active participants in illegal pre-natal sex identification and frequent traffic violators

(d) Antagonistic elements inside China

(e) Family members of people injured, disabled and killed in unrest and riots

(f) People who have once been sentenced for counter revolutionary/ other crimes and their family members

(g) People who have fled overseas, and who have close contacts with them



Cat-II: Adherents of Falungong

(a) Adherents of Falungong and other cult organizations

(b) Members of 14 categories of organizations and members of 7 categories of their derivatives, who follow Falungong in disguise

(c) Members from 14 categories of Qigong organizations



Cat-III: Religious Extremists and Religious Infiltrators

(a) Members of illegal religious organizations, both in China and abroad

(b) Members who have been caught by the Chinese authorities for engaging illegal religious activities

(c) People who have given illegal sermons

(d) People who have illegally distributed religious publications/videos/audio tapes

(e) People who have illegally established religious institutions/schools/sermon sites



Cat-IV: Secessionists of Ethnic Minorities

(a) The three forces of Xinjiang and their contacts in China and abroad

(b) Members of Dalai Lama’s exiled government and affiliates

(c) People who have protested for secession on ethnic grounds

(d) People who have given funds for secessionist activities in China and abroad



Cat-V: Harmful Media Persons

(a) Members of overseas media working for institutions and organizations hostile to China

(b) Media employees who persist in their antipathy and vilify the party and government



Cat-VI: NGOs, Prone to Pose Threats

(a) NGOs outside China having connections with overseas government, supporting subversive/ sabotage activities

(b) Members of all types of NGOs, who pose potential threat to 2008 Beijing Olympic Games


Cat-VII: Persons, opposed to CPC Leadership

(a) People who harbour grievances against the Party and the Government

(b) People who have filed frivolous petitions and law suits

(c) People who have complained against China to foreigners and who collude with outside forces



Cat-VIII: Cat-VIII: Persons, Awaiting Judicial Action

(a) People against whom public security agency have filed cases

(b) People whose residences are under surveillance

(c) People who have been detained/arrested on suspicion of crime or even released but, are yet being suspected

(d) All types of people, who are on run from the law or who have escaped from the crime or justice

(e) People who have been listed as wanted and are being investigated against

(f) Criminals against whom border exit restrictions have been applied



Cat-IX: Criminals under surveillance

(a) Criminals who have been sentenced and are deprived off their political rights

(b) Criminals sentenced to parole, or serving sentence outside the prison but still under surveillance or criminals detained outside the prison

(c) People sentenced to serve their term outside the reform through labour term

(d) People allowed to seek medical treatment outside the detention and reform centres



Cat-X: Terrorists

(a) Members of Terrorist Organizations

(b) Supporters of terrorist organizations

(c) Relatives of members of terrorist organizations or people with close contacts with them


Cat-XI: Members of Illegal organizations

(a) Members of political organizations not legally registered

(b) People engaged in activities in organizations that are not legally registered

(c) People from illegal organizations who use internet and whip up discontent against the Party


into the category of just aggrieved lot. There are then alleged criminals of different denominations. In category-I, the listing of antagonistic elements, in overseas and at home, hold near clear reference to the participants and adherents of June Fourth Movement (Liu Si Yundong), popularly known as pro-democracy movement. While they then aroused worldwide indignation, and the PRC lost face in the West as the 27th and 28th Group Army trampled and killed thousands of demonstrating students in Tiananmen Square under tanks on 04 June 1989, the movement and its proponents are by now bygone lot under the weight of surging China. It is logically improbable that the Chinese intelligence network should have acted on hard intelligence inputs against any of the (a)-(g) set of Category-1 personnel.

It holds good for the rest of the 10 categories and their respective set of persons. In retrospect to what happened in couple of incidents, including the killing of 16 police persons in Kashi in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region on 04th Aug 2008, the set of (a)-(d) persons in Category-IV and (a)-(c) in Category-X, some how test positive to the test for the possibility of near hard intelligence inputs at their back. In most other cases, the Chinese intelligence mandarins were rather speculative. In fact, at long last, Senior Colonel Tian Yixiang, head of Beijing Olympic Security Coordination Group, conceded that the perceived threat to 2008 Beijing Olympic Games emanated basically from the East Turkestan Islamic Group (ETIM).

In scope, the Chinese intelligence inputs, supposedly pursued in all purported sincerity stood a chance to touch all conceivable nook and corner, within and beyond the national border, from persons, their groups, and when all said and done, the mastermind. The proposition stood ground even as the framework of intelligence collection over stretched its boundary, perhaps in fear of leaving aside some thing some where, much as the theory sidelined the practice, and, in the pursuit, it remained skewed for all intents and purpose. While nothing cataclysmic happened, and perhaps nothing of the kind, be it a repeat story of 1972 Munich Olympic or a variant of 9/11, was ever expected, the Chinese system of intelligence operation, brought to bear upon as such during and before the Games, did not acquit as foolproof, real time intelligence cover, capable of thwarting terror design, in its perspective. The point is conversely testified from different untoward incidents that took place slightly before and during the Games, both deep inside and the heartland, in the face of total security.[6] A measure of jittery, discernible in China’s knee jerk response to the claims of Seyfullah, self styled Commander Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), about the involvement for the Kunming, Shanghai and other bomb blasts, do as well speak volumes. Had the Chinese intelligence mandarin actionable intelligence inputs at their disposal, both in term of time and location, the security mechanism in place should have been a success in preventing, much less busting the terror design, if any.

Intensity of Perceived and Manifest Security Threats

In the intelligence function, particularly where it relates to terror threat, it is common for the intelligence agencies to assess the threat level. They are based on the assessment of a range of factors including current intelligence, recent events and what is known about terrorist intentions and capabilities.

Given the intricacies in intelligence gathering, it is but rare that specific threat information is available and can be relied upon. More often, judgments about the threat will be based on a wide range of information, which is often fragmentary, including the level and nature of current terrorist activity, comparison with events in other countries and previous attacks. Intelligence is only ever likely to reveal part of the picture. We can not expect the Chinese intelligence network to do any better.

Chinese literature on terror, some of which articulated by quasi academic outfits of the Chinese intelligence establishment such as the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), suggested that the Chinese intelligence mandarins adhered to an archetype, nearly similar to their practice in disaster management, in defining and predicting potential threat to people and Critical National Infrastructure (CNI).[7] In its perspective, it is a normative tool at the disposal of decision makers to veritable response to the threat.

Box-3: Response Archetypes to Levels of Terror Threat

Response Level

Description

Threat Levels


Normal

Routine protective security measures, where the desired force level of security cover constituted of individual and/ or composite teams of police force, affiliated to and drawn from different departments under the command and control of the Ministry of Public Security at provincial/prefecture/ county level units.
Low and Moderate


Heightened

Additional protective security measures, where the desired force level of security cover constituted of composite teams of varying size and proportion, affiliated to and drawn from the specialized Police and PLA units. Substantial and Severe

Exceptional

Maximum protective security measures to meet specific threats and to minimise vulnerability and risk, where the desired force level of security cover constituted of composite teams of substantially large size and proportion, affiliated to and drawn from the specialized police and PLA units.
Critical

Threat level, as shown in Box-3, expresses just likelihood. In absence of specific intelligence input, the time frame of incident was much a subject matter of speculation, the round about of which had to be close to best available opportunity to get to soft target. For the Chinese intelligence mandarin, it was spread over to the entire period of 130 days of torch relay, beginning 25th March 08 in Olympia, Greece, and most specifically, from 31st March 2008 when the torch was scheduled to arrive in Beijing. The dates closer to different shades of events and locations susceptible to different grades of propaganda value stood at the back of different levels of threats. It is again not absolute. It is subject to change as the threat scenario changes in the contexts of changes in the capability and intension of the primary and secondary sources of threats. In the similar vein, response levels stand to indicate needed levels of protective cover for each level of threat. As a matter of principle, both the designated threat and response levels are subject to review and change.

The job of determining the threat and response levels in China is rather institutionalized. This has its historical roots and theoretical basis.[8] It got shaped in the broad context of East Turkestan movement gaining momentum and China pedaling regional cooperation through the mechanism of Shanghai Cooperation Group (SCO) while rise of incidents of bank robberies, hostage taking and armed drug trafficking in Post-Mao era in 1980s had gone into firming up the idea.[9] The formulation and vetting of decisions takes a long and yet streamlined route of involvement of key functionaries entrusted with security tasks in various institutions and their departments both under the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the State Council.

A quick response mechanism is in place, where, at the national level, Anti Terror Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security and the Office of the National Anti Terrorism Coordination Group (NATCG) play the pivotal role. In addition, all the province level political entities, with Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Xinjiang and Tibet at the forefront, have set up counterparts of NATCG at their disposal to keep in touch and take up follow up measures.

Low and moderate levels of perceived terror threats, as discernible in Box-4, found nearly absolute congruence with manifest terror threats. Outside China, beginning Olympia, Greece, on 24th Mar 08, the Olympic Torch Relay ceremony faced disruptions, protests demonstrations and banner raising in most countries in six continents, representing range of issues, particularly those related to China’s human rights records, opposition to China’s strong hand treatments to monks, nuns and common people in Tibet in March 2008, the war in Darfur, Sudan, China’s tacit support to the regime in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, North Korean defectors, territorial disputes over Spartly and Paracel Islands with Vietnam, Falungong prosecutions, issues related to political status and lives of people in Xinjiang and Taiwan. In some measure, these people fall in the category I-VI and their sets of people, the Chinese intelligence mandarins have been apprehensive of.

Box-4: Congruence of Perceived and Manifest Threats

Perceived Threats/ Response Category

Opportune Form and Shape

Opportune locality


Opportune Period

On Ground Manifest Incidents

Low and Moderate

Petitions/Protest Demonstrations/ Banner Raising

Within/ Outside China
24 Mar 08-24 Aug 08:Torch Relay/ Games

Boycott calls, disruption of speech, roadside demonstrations, raising of banners

Substantial and Severe

Violent Disruptions/ Explosions in Public Places/Suicide Bomber/Attack and Harm to Athletes

Within China, in particular soft targets in sensitive minority nationality habitations, venues of events, International Air Ports/PLA AF Bases/PLAN Bases


08 Aug 08- 24 Aug o8 and the intervening period slightly before and after: Games

Violent Attacks

Critical

Violent Attacks Land and/ or Sea/Air with conventional/nuclear warheads

Within China, in particular the venue of opening/ closing ceremony/Games venues/ VVIP residential locations / Critical National Infrastructure
08 Aug 08-24 Aug 08

No such incident

Inside China, close to the opening ceremony of the Games, and that again, in the heart of host city Beijing, disaffected groups, such as the Falungong and multitude of others, made their presence felt in different ways. As the security forces, particularly the dreaded Public Security Bureau (PSB), had set safety net in every nook and corner and stalled free movements of common people much less those under the scanner, quite a large number of aggrieved people, sought permission to petition. To demonstrate adherence to international practices, while China had set up “petition zone” at locations 25-50 km away from the venue in set Chaoyang, Fengtai and Haidian districts of Beijing, the strident conditions served as the first line of ban. Most of the applications were summarily rejected, and where they were entertained, the authorities settled the issue just as promises. There was, in the bargain, no petitioner in any of the three venues. Blogs speak of before hand detentions and persecutions. Legal activist Ji Sizun was taken into custody when he went to a police station to check whether there had been progress on his application for a protest permit to denounce corruption and demand more political rights. Two old women, who said their homes had been forcibly demolished to make way for Games-related construction, were sentenced to re-education through labour for applying to protest, though the sentence was later rescinded.[10] However, there was yet an incident of groups opposed to China's rule in Tibet having hung a Tibetan flag on the Olympic Green and unfurling a banner near the new state television headquarters, ignoring the protest parks altogether.[11]

Worst happened in Kashi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, just four days ahead of the Opening Ceremony of the Games, that 16 police persons lost life and 16 others suffered grievous hurt, in their own precinct, the border police post headquarters, allegedly masterminded by the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP).[12] Chinese electronic media said two men drove a dump-truck at a group of policemen out for Early morning exercise, crashed to a halt and threw grenades or home made explosive devices. They then began slashing at survivors with knives before being overwhelmed and arrested.

Three weeks ahead of the Opening Ceremony 21st July 2008, two explosions on board two buses with a difference of an hour at a stop on People's Road West, one of the main thoroughfares of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province had killed two persons and injured 14 others. There was then news about third explosion later in the morning, in which two people were killed and one injured, but this was discounted by local officials.Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) had then claimed responsibility for this and several pre-Olympic terror attacks. It included July 17, 2008 attack in Wenzhou and Guangzhou and May 5, 2008 Shanghai bus bombing. The leader of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) Commander Seyfullah had warned both athletes and spectators against plausible future attacks in several highly populated urban areas, with a view to ultimately sabotaging the Olympic Games.

These and many other such events apart, the Chinese media reported an incident of 07th March 2008 some days later, where a woman passenger onboard China Southern Airlines Ulumuqi-Beijing flight CZ6901 allegedly intended to ignite the restroom of the plane with gasoline that she had supposedly carried along.[13] There was then media blitz about busting “violent terrorist gang”, planning to kidnap athletes, journalists and other visitors to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.[14] Nevertheless, the Chinese intelligence mandarin suspected terror attack with a radiological “dirty bomb”. Chinese nuclear safety agency took eight training courses with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Anita Nilsson, head of nuclear security with IAEA, and Peter Colgan, one of her deputies, discounted any credible intelligence behind IAEA decision to help China to minimize nuclear threat.[15]

All these happenings except supposed terror attack with radiological “dirty bomb” make up part of low and moderate threats. Much what happened and the recourse that the Chinese security system then took do not necessarily call for hard on ground intelligence. Given the elements of antagonism, and discord that then existed between the Chinese state and the group of people behind the incidents, it was but much expected turn of events.

Viability and Aptness of Institutional Response

Security challenges to 2008 Beijing Olympics Games had two shades: group threat; and, lone wolf threat. In assuring safety and security to 90000 domestic and foreign spectators to the Opening Ceremony, 82 heads of states and 200 celebrities included, at Beijing’s “Bird’s Nest” and nearly seven million others during the rest of the events, the resurgent displayed a mania, some thing like tremendous face at stake. The security model sought to stamp out all possibility of untoward happenings.

To deal with group threat, both foreign and domestic in 11 categories and their respective 43 sets of persons, the Chinese model relied on “exclusion device”. It applied strict visa norms to debar suspected foreign spectators. Holding Olympic ticket was no guarantee for witnessing the Olympic Games. The Beijing Olympic organizing committee (BOOC) issued a stern, nine-page document, covering 57 topics, ranging right from a ban on sleeping outdoors to the need for government permission to stage a protest.[16]

Chinese had put in place an all-pervasive surveillance network made up of 300,000 cameras, facial-recognition technology, biometrics, and databases. Unconfirmed reports suggested China taking help of Plano, Texas-based China Information Security Technology, for identity cards for the local populace that carried radio signal devices and a chip that recorded not only a person's height, weight and identification number, but also health records, work history, education, travel, religion, ethnicity, reproductive history, police record, medical insurance status and even his or her landlord's phone number.[17] China blocked 2500 websites and allowed only government sponsored companies to broadcast audio and video files on internet. Notwithstanding, China jailed 51 on-line dissidents. In a rare show of transparency, New China News Agency (NCNA) quoted Ulumuqi Police Chief and reported arrest of 82 suspected Xinjiang based terrorists and forceful closure of 41 places of worship.[18] In all seven host cities, there were restrictions on the movements of people and their vehicles.

Over 100000 hard core PLA officers and men, 30000 of which drawn from 112th, 113th and 114th Mechanized Infantry Divisions of 38th Group Army under Beijing Military Area Command together with 100000 PAPF personnel and hundreds and thousands of volunteers guarded the host city of Beijing and 31 Games venues. Notwithstanding, China deployed two surface-to-air missiles and their launchers Hongqi-7 just 300 yards away from the Olympic Sports Center Stadium, which, during the Games, hosted pentathlon and soccer events and a mile away from the “Bird’s Nest”, the venue for the “Opening” and “Closing” ceremonies. Notwithstanding, the PLA AF and PLA Navy units secured the Games against the eventualities of air and naval terror attacks.

In the light of discussions in the foregoing sections, an institutional response to terror threat to 2008 Beijing Olympic Games of this scale was, thus, not borne of hard intelligence input. It met just perceived threat. Validity and legitimacy of the response stood ground just on less one probability of chance.

[shyamd]

The Wi-Fi Disabled

The terrorists get net-savvier, but India is yet to sharpen its cyber terrorism combat gear

SAIKAT DATTA
In December 2004, a committee led by no less than the principal scientific advisor to the government of India, R. Chidambaram, laid down the roadmap for dealing with cyber-terrorism in India. The recommendations included details of how a group could be set up to trace, track and hack online terrorists as well as glean critical intelligence hidden in cache memories from across the world.

Cut to 2008, and the agency that was to play the pivotal role in implementing these recommendations, the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO),has just one eight-man team, led by a brigadier from the army’s Signals wing, to deal with all aspects of cyber-terrorism. Had the recommendations been implemented and the structures put in place, Indian Mujahideen would have had to deal with a very different deterrent and investigative arm when it shot off the e-mails spewing hatred and threats.

Instead, with the NTRO sitting on a massive budget but no sanctions for manpower, the IB and RAW were forced to set up their own capabilities with their limited resources. Result: a criminal duplication of effort while the agency mandated by a Group of Ministers to act as the repository of all technical intelligence twiddled its thumbs. Worse, a draft bill drawn up by NTRO and the law ministry to provide a legal cover to Indian intelligence-hackers never went to Parliament.

So, when the IM first hacked into Khalsa College’s wi-fi network in Matunga to send its first e-mail to the media, it could not be traced on time as the ats, the local police station and the Mumbai police’s cyber crime cell dithered over taking charge. Finally, a case was registered with the Matunga police station and then transferred to the cyber crime cell. The e-mail sent minutes before the Delhi blasts met a similar fate.

The fact is police cyber cells have to depend on private professionals. "What’s missing is a centralised internet traffic monitoring system," says Pukhraj Singh of Torrid Networks, a Noida-based information security firm. "Forestalling such attacks will depend on the Indian cyber-forensic team’s technical and linguistic expertise to monitor such sites."

The government’s cyber-forensic departments have woefully limited capabilities. Singh and his colleague Dhruv Soi recently found out that as many as 100 of the 250 wi-fi networks tested were insecure, waiting to be hacked. That’s all terrorists lurking in cyberspace can ask for.

By Saikat Datta and Debarshi Dasgupta

Tracing Virtual Footprints

The choreographed sequence of government responses was enacted flawlessly after five bombs killed 28 and injured another 130 people in national capital New Delhi on September 13. Union home minister Shivraj Patil was quick to visit the sites of the explosions—Ghaffar Market, Connaught Place and the M-Block market in Greater Kailash, Part 1—but couldn’t offer more than a mechanical reiteration of the vague promise to take "stern action" against the perpetrators. National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan was equally agile in summoning the intelligence chiefs and reading out the usual riot act, berating them for the latest round of "intelligence lapses". If anyone expected a top official or arm of the government to accept responsibility for the dead or admit to security lapses, it would have been hoping for too much.

India’s state of preparedness on the internal security front can be found reflected in the health of the intelligence apparatus. The systematic decimation of the capabilities of our two prime intelligence agencies—RAW and the IB—partly explains the lack of any clear strategy to fight terrorism. The IB, struggling to constantly upgrade its technical intelligence wings, has had to divert funds and manpower for this. It has not received any major sanctions for augmenting its resources. "It took the Ahmedabad blasts to finally get a long-pending proposal for additional manpower sanctioned by the home ministry," a senior intelligence official told Outlook.

Where the bureau sought 4,000 new posts, the government, rattled by the Ahmedabad serial strike, sanctioned an additional thousand. But, says the official, "it is too late because this manpower will be inducted in batches and training them will take more time. Which means we can use them effectively only by 2012."

The IB’s ambitious plan to connect all states and other central agencies for real-time intelligence-sharing has also been bogged down by the lack of funding. The Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) still does not have the hardware or the software to enable its functioning as a national information coordination and repository exchange.

Meanwhile, NSA M.K. Narayanan, say critics, has been far too preoccupied with the more "glamorous" task of helping with the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal when he should have been attending to matters of national security. Before the Ahmedabad blasts on July 26, he was busy garnering support for the beleaguered upa government ahead of the confidence vote on July 22. And weeks ahead of the Ahmedabad strike, he was using IB assets, including its safe houses, to brief leaders of prospective upa allies like the Samjawadi Party on the nuclear deal, a job that could easily have been left to nuclear experts and foreign ministry officials. And, four days after the blasts in Delhi, he was on his way to Beijing to carry out another round of border talks with the Chinese! .........

Penetration of existing system by PLA hackers, and the reccommendation is another organisation.

[chetak]

B Raman mentions the inter intelligence agency chaos, and LTTE's making hay consequently in his book, The Kaoboys of R&AW.

In his words, the LTTE would take money from R&AW, which the IB and DGMI didnt know about. The LTTE took money from the IB which R&AW and the DGMI didnt know about. And the LTTE took money from DGMI which R&AW and IB didnt know about.

An allround merry go round!

Don't forget how the intelligence agency jokers shafted the Indian Army in all this mess.

The details of the Army's ops briefings was directly leaked to the LTTE, leading to increased Army causalities.
So much so, that the Army later started to conduct separate briefings after these jokers left, and with completely different parameters that were not disclosed to intelligence agencies.

The Army continued to operate in a vacuum without knowing whom to trust.
No wonder that the Army took such a hit.

[Anabhaya]

So after more than twenty decades inter agency chaos still hurts the INTEL set-up and yet nobody want to be doing anything seriously about it?

Recommendations of the KRC report are implemented only on paper and new manpower is sanctioned **after** bomb blasts.

And manya NSA gets IB to do the INC's bidding but won't forget blasting the agencies when something goes off.

PUHLEEESE put the agencies under purview of Joint-Parliamentary Committees. For the love of god!!!

[nsa_tanay]

I searched Internet and found many sites giving referencr to RAW operations in Srilanks, Maldives, pakisthan, Bangladesh,Sikkim,Bhutan, Nepal. But I could not find a single one having the slightest mention of RAW's operations in China. Are you aware of/heard about any of RAW's operation in China , except the 'Nandadevi' (With help of CIA, RAW installed a nuclear listening device) operation ?

[Philip]

PIO's of UK citizenship,here's your big chance to become a "spook" and kick terrorist ass by applying to join MI-6.Interested anyone?!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... drive.html

MI6 launches ethnic minority recruitment drive
MI6 has launched a drive to recruit more ethnic minority spies – but warned potential applicants not to expect to behave like James Bond.

By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 6:57AM GMT 20 Nov 2008

MI6 has advertsied for ethnic minority spies, but warned it won't be like James Bond.
The Secret Intelligence Service's head of recruitment said that it needed more black and Asian agents to cope with changing threats to British security.

The man, identified only as John, said that the service needed to be "more flexible, more adaptable", after years of a "rather comfortable cold war existence".

MI6 has placed adverts in publications aimed at ethnic minorities for several years, but yesterday broke with tradition by inviting black and Asian people to meet with serving intelligence officers, The Guardian reported.

Ten per cent of the service's latest fast track intake were from ethnic minorities, but it wants to do more to improve the diversity of recruits.

Earlier this year it emerged that MI6 had hired gay rights charity Stonewall charity to help it attract more homosexual staff, and in 2005 it started advertising vacancies on its website as part of an effort to move away from its traditional Oxbridge recruitment networks.

But those impressed by the gun-toting antics of Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace are being advised to think twice before applying. MI6 is looking for people with discretion and the ability to sustain relationships, John said.

"We are not looking for a James Bond – people jumping out of windows, running around disobeying orders, drinking dry martinis, clutching women and firing guns," explained Catherine, one of the agents at yesterday's event.

[kit]

I searched Internet and found many sites giving referencr to RAW operations in Srilanks, Maldives, pakisthan, Bangladesh,Sikkim,Bhutan, Nepal. But I could not find a single one having the slightest mention of RAW's operations in China. Are you aware of/heard about any of RAW's operation in China , except the 'Nandadevi' (With help of CIA, RAW installed a nuclear listening device) operation ?

Maybe there is nothing much to talk about / quite a lot that will never become open ? Now which one is more likely !

[KiranM]

I searched Internet and found many sites giving referencr to RAW operations in Srilanks, Maldives, pakisthan, Bangladesh,Sikkim,Bhutan, Nepal. But I could not find a single one having the slightest mention of RAW's operations in China. Are you aware of/heard about any of RAW's operation in China , except the 'Nandadevi' (With help of CIA, RAW installed a nuclear listening device) operation ?

Maybe there is nothing much to talk about / quite a lot that will never become open ? Now which one is more likely !

No matter how lax our political masters may be with our Intelligence agencies, there would have been/ are operations against PRC. Government does not micro-manage all operations. And our spooks must run something with what they can muster. Ops against Pak is also a lot of 'unconfirmed' reports. You can forget those on PRC even being 'unconfirmed' for a long time.

[Philip]

The news that the US spied on British PM Tony Blair and the techniques used,beggar more questions about the vulnerability of secure commns. of VVIPs even in India.One hopes that we are on a more secure footing.

http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org ... urity.html

Tony Blair and phone security
By wtwuon November 25, 2008 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
ABC News in the USA has a whistleblower story: Whistleblower: U.S. Snooped on Tony Blair, Iraqi President

Initially this whistleblower David Murfee Faulk alleged illegal snooping on the phone calls of innocent US citizens, including journalists and the families of US soldiers serving in Iraq. He has worked as a US Army Arabic language translator at the National Security Agency "Black Hall" listening post at Fort Gordon, Georgia, before becoming a local news reporter. These allegations have been taken seriously enough for a US Congressional investigation into them to have been started.

He claims that he had access to a secret database called Anchory, formerly known as the SIGINT Online Intelligence System i.e. a signald intelligence database run by the National Security Agency.

Given that the British press are following the ABC News scoop, it is sad to see them getting simple details from the original wrong:

The Daily Mail has spoiled its report of the story with the following inaccuracy and misspelling:

Mr Blair was given the code named "Anchory" as his private telephone calls were routinely listened into and recorded.
The Daily Telegraph and the Press Association reports do not make that mistake, although somehow The Guardian's headline to the syndicated PA story more accurately describes him as an "ex-Navy Operator", (see the previous ABC News report which describes him as a "former Navy Arab linguist") even though the PA story text says "US Army Arabic linguist"

Such simple errors call into question the accuracy of the rest of these stories, and of these mainstream media organisations as a whole.

These UK media reports , whilst bemoaning some alleged "unwritten rule" about not spying on allies, miss the obvious question of how it was technically possible for anyone to intercept the phone communications of a British Prime Minister, no matter who they are.

Is Gordon Brown's mobile phone or voicemail also being intercepted by the US National Security Agency ?

How much UK mobile phone and landline and internet traffic is currently being handed over in bulk to the US National Security Agency by UK Government agencies like GCHQ ?

Is the United Kingdom's GCHQ intercepting President Bush or President-Elect Barack Obama's mobile phones ?

If GCHQ and the Whitehall securocats securocrats cannot even keep information of a "personal nature" about a British Prime Minister's "private life" out of the clutches of foreign intelligence agency phone interception systems, then why should they be trusted with the massive Communications Traffic Data centralised database, which Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is planning to inflict on tens of millions of innocent British people ?

A second US whistleblower, Adrienne Kinne, a US Army Reserves Arab linguist, who independently corroborated Faulk's allegations, mentioned the interception of satellite phones in the Middle East, which should come as no real surprise to anyone, given that on some systems, the only security by default is the TIMSI.

A TMSI (Temporary IMSI) is a pseudo-random number, which changes periodically, and is generated from the IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) number. This makes it a bit more difficult for an eavesdropper to intercept a particular phone call locally

However, we would have expected that any satellite phone equipment used by a British Prime Minister would have extra end to end UK Government Approved encryption or at least commercially available AES encryption built in.

Similarly, there are strongly encrypted mobile phones which hopefully are used by British Cabinet Ministers and senior Civil Servants and Diplomats both in the UK and overseas.

It should have been impossible for even the NSA to listen in on the content of such conversations via end to end encrypted devices like these, although, of course, they may have been able to determine the approximate physical location of Tony Blair's phone, and, perhaps who he was calling or receiving a call from, through Communications Traffic Data analysis, and radio signal triangulation.

However, given Tony Blair's ineptness with computer technology, it is entirely possible that he succumbed to the temptation to use normal mobile phones when chatting with his family, friends, Labour party appartachiki, and perhaps those involved in the "cash for honours" scandal. This alone, could have revealed information of a "personal nature" about his "private life".

Prime Minister's mobile phones have been snooped on in other countries e.g. see the previous Spy Blog article from 2006: Vodafone Greece "hacked" - is Vodafone UK safe ?, so Tiny Blair security team should have been well aware of the risks.

If Tony Blair, or those he was in normal mobile phone contact with, were dim enough not to change their default voicemail passwords, and to actually make use of this voice mailbox message interception, this could also have, perhaps indirectly, revealed information of a "personal nature" about Tony Blair's "private life" to the NSA, and to other foreign intelligence agencies.

News of the World's "Royal Editor" Clive Goodman and private detective Glenn Mulcaire were convicted under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act for doing this (ineptly and repeatedly, hundreds of times, from their own phones) to members of the Royal Family and their staff, to some football related celebrities, and to Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes.

See NOTW "Royal Editor" pleads guilty to mobile phone voicemail interception

Categories:Communications Data Privacy
Tags:GCHQ, NSA, Tony Blair 1 Comments
By G on November 26, 2008 1:00 PM
if you want an account of how incredibly poor the UK media is at any sort of fact checking, blatant bigotry, bias and smear, to name a few, you could do with reading something like Nick Davies - Flat Earth News, it is rife with bad apples from the top down, and only a tiny handful of gems hidden away and repressed

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[skher]

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/terror-attac ... 122-3.html

Petrol pump blown up, RAF may storm hotels

CNN-IBN
Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 23:56

Mumbai: At least four people are reported to have been killed and 15 are injured as unidentified groups of gunmen opened fire in at least four places across south Mumbai on Wednesday night.

Mumbai police confirm it is a terrorist attack. The five-star Hotel Oberoi is under siege and gunmen are reported to have held the occupants hostage.

Reports say 10 gunmen are holed up inside Hotel Oberoi.

Firing and gunshots are also reported from CST Railway Terminus, the popular Café Leopold restaurant and Cama Hospital - all in south Mumbai.

Hotels under siege

The first incident took place at between 2215 hrs IST and 2230 hrs IST when bullets, apparently from automatic weapons, were fired at police and paramilitary forces outside the Taj Hotel in south Mumbai.

The next, near simultaneous shooting took place near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus police station in which six people were injured.

Police have cordoned off the CST Railway Terminus, a crowded place at this time of the evening, and have stopped entry.

Press Trust of India reports two persons armed with automatic weapons and hand grenades are holed up inside the CST station.

PTI also reports three people, employees of Taj Hotel in South Mumbai, were killed after being fired upon by terrorists and an equal number of people died in a bomb blast in a taxi at Dockyard Road.

The lobby of Hotel Oberoi is reportedly on fire.

At CST

Unidentified persons opened fire near Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, headquarters of the Central Railway, which is a world heritage building and remains crowded almost throughout the day.

Local train services to and from CST have been suspended. A police official said he saw two people, armed with automatic weapons at CST.

"They opened indiscriminate fire and fled inside. They are reported to be holed up between platform seven and eight," he said.

Two more blasts have been reported from Majhgaon and BPT Colony.


* Colaba: Petrol pump blown up

* 10 killed in Colaba attack

* Gun battle outside Metro cinema hall

* Hotel Oberoi, Hotel Taj under siege

* RAF considering commando action, may storm hotels

* Local trains suspended

* Gunfire and grenades, the latest modus operandi of terrorists

* Roads in Mumbai completely deserted

* Terrorists still holed up at Nariman House

* Crowded areas and buildings one behind another, difficult situation for rescue

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/st ... 40:00%20PM

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indi ... 761410.cms

http://www.zeenews.com/nation/2008-11-2 ... 0news.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7751160.stm

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... 91,00.html

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/advani-calls ... 126-3.html

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/00 ... 270340.htm

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/at-le ... gs/390967/

[ASPuar]

The fruits of motivated elements permitting the media to yap on about "Hindu Terror" and "Terror in uniform". We are at war. Who will save us now?

Shame on this country. Shame on her, and shame on us. And particulary shame on the fifth columnists in the media. And shame on this government that wanted to make a poll issue out being soft on terror. Words cannot express my rage and anger and frustration at the weakness of our national psyche.

[abhijitm]

I am damn frustrated too. not because the way indians have died but because I know nothing is going to happen.

we need to keep our head cool. Just accept the fact that this is the life of our next generation. May be someday they will find a way.

[babbupandey]

This is the intelligence failure of the year. Thanks to Mr. Shivraj Patil.

[Vivek K]

Pandeyji,

You may be right but the biggest failure is still of either gathering or analysing intelligence.

I request the admins permission to open a thread titled " Indian Response to Terrorism". BRF does count. Opinions expressed here do sometimes strike their intended targets. We need to all collectively put our heads together and plot the future course of action hoping that the GOI will notice and emulate.

[ramana]

Vivek K Thanks for asking. Please go ahed. Bu trealize you need to police it to make sure it doesnt go astray.

[babbupandey]

Vivek,

The agencies are quite good at collecting intelligence (accepted that R&AW is struggling to cope up under the current director). The problem is coordination between the agency and providing solid, actionable points to the states - this is the job of home ministry. Mr. Patil, it seems when it comes to running the ministry or choosing clothes to wear in front of media, attaches just a little more importance to the latter.
Possibly, aiding terrorists by his inaction is his way of controlling the population of India.

[shyamd]

Race to Replace India's Controversial Spy Chief is on

The race to find a replacement for the controversial chief of India's spy agency, the Research & Analysis Wing – known by its acronym RAW - is entering the home stretch. As to who may eventually succeed Ashok Chaturvedi, the current chief of India's external intelligence agency, remains very much a closely guarded secret.

Sources familiar with the dossier say that Chaturvedi's disastrous tenure has created enormous security consequences for the country with more terrorist attacks in more parts of the nation than in any previous period.


The same sources report that several Western intelligence agencies have refused to share vital information with RAW due to a lack of trust between the services, something they blame Chaturvedi for.


"Even Prime Minister [Manmohan] Singh has stopped the weekly meeting with the current head of RAW," a source who asked not to be identified told the Middle East Times. The prime minister, the source said, regards these meetings as "pointless."


Hoping to avoid repeating similar mistakes the Congress-led government asked its investigative agencies to vet potential candidates on the shortlist of possible names. They were told to pay particular attention to "flaws or embarrassing scandals that could emerge."


Among the leading candidates is Sanjiv Tripathi, currently the head of the Aviation Research Center (ARC), a parallel organization within RAW involved in Signals Intelligence. Tripathi is a close friend and ally of Chaturvedi and has often been described as the RAW chief's protégé. Tripathi is an administrator and has no region-specific expertise, but the investigative dossier on him has revealed a number of highly damaging allegations.


Tripathi joined RAW in 1972 with his father-in-law G.S. Bajpai, a former head of the organization, easing his application through the backdoor. Classified records show that there was a problem over his time of induction from the Indian Police Service (IPS). The Ministry of Law and the personnel department discovered that Tripathi was wrongly admitted a year earlier than he was supposed to. Effectively he was not qualified at the time of his allotment to join RAW, but under pressure from his father-in-law improper favors were made.


Bajpai is himself a controversial figure. He was the head of RAW when Congress Party leader, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated in May 1991 by a female Tamil Tiger suicide bomber whilst campaigning for the upcoming general elections. Bajpai was blamed for the massive intelligence failure and for not warning that more security would be required at public events, and as a result only served one year as head of the spy outfit.


Bajpai's son, Ashok, was also in RAW and had a contentious record. According to U.S. sources, when stationed at the Indian consulate in New York, Ashok Bajpai was warned by the FBI about his indiscreet conduct. Subsequently, he refused to go on assignment to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, with his father pleading that it was too dangerous.


Ashok Bajpai was eventually forced to resign when it transpired that he failed to prevent the defection of a RAW colleague, Rabinder Singh, to the CIA.


Coincidently, Rabinder Singh's immediate superior was none other than Bajpai's son-in-law, Sanjiv Tripathi, who inexplicably survived the scandal.


As the head of the ARC, Tripathi has allowed his mentor, Chaturvedi and his wife Asha, unsanctioned use of helicopters to travel on private visits to temples around India. A picture of them visiting a temple in Tarapith, West Bengal, appeared in the November issue of the investigative magazine Tehelka. The fact that the head of an intelligence organization was using government transportation for personal trips has raised a number of questions.


As reported by Middle East Times last Feb. 6, Tripathi is also tainted by his conduct when he was stationed at the Indian High Commission in Mauritius. M.L. Tripathi (no relation) who served as High Commissioner to Mauritius complained to the foreign ministry that Sanjiv Tripathi was masquerading as the high commissioner.


The dossier that has been sent to the prime minister also reveals that Tripathi's wife, Neeta, an ordinary artist had held numerous exhibitions of her paintings at the High Commission's cultural center in the capital of Port Louis. Some paintings were sold, but the transactions were never declared and the proceeds were wired to India through a Hawala operation. Hawalas are informal cash transfer systems that are often used by international terrorists to avoid detection from intelligence and revenue agencies.


Neeta Tripathi also entered into a clandestine business arrangement with the wife of influential Mauritius politician, Jaya Krishna Cuttaree, who was foreign minister in the Paul Bérenger government which lasted from 2003-2005.


Sanjiv Tripathi is openly known for being very close to Cuttaree and Bérenger and tried but failed to help them retain power in the July 2005 general elections.


Despite Bérenger's well-known hostile views toward India, Tripathi had been hoping to become the national security advisor to the prime minister of Mauritius when it looked like his career in RAW was reaching a dead end. The relationship between Tripathi and Cuttaree continued when Tripathi returned to India.


Tripathi's daughter is married to the son of Prabhat Kumar, a former governor of the state of Jharkhand and who had also been a cabinet secretary in 1998.


Tripathi had been hoping that Kumar would be able to use his political connections to enhance his chances of succeeding Chaturvedi. However, Tripathi's daughter is currently in the process of divorcing Kumar's son and this may have damaged his chances. Tripathi has been making a number of trips to Geneva, where they live, on the premise of reconciling the couple. As a result, his responsibilities at work have been ignored.


According to well informed sources Tripathi has also used his position within RAW to sideline his perceived rivals. "Two former colleagues, Jayadev Ranade and Lt. Colonel S. Maladi, both regarded as exceptional and highly professional officers, were hounded out of the agency by Tripathi when Chaturvedi took over," said the sources.


Another candidate for the top job in RAW is Rana Banerjee, a Bengali who was brought up in Allahbad, Uttar Pradesh. He was recruited into the intelligence agency from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). He is the longest serving Pakistan analyst and is the number three in the organization.


However, unlike most senior members of RAW, Banerjee has never been in charge of a covert operation. He has only been given desk jobs where he works as an analyst. This may be related to his past and present behavior and his skills as an intelligence officer.


"Banerjee was stationed at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad in the late 1980s where, due to his indiscreet behavior, his cover was blown by Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI," said the source.


According to information seen by the source, supporters of Tripathi inside RAW leaked information that in a another incident, Banerjee, during a drunken episode started screaming and shouting sexual innuendos and vulgar comments outside the home of Nisha Bhatia, a female RAW employee who in August tried to commit suicide outside the prime minister's office because of sexual harassment by her male colleagues, including Chaturvedi.


"The incident brought the Delhi police and the issue had to be dealt with internally by RAW," a source told the Middle East Times.


Investigations have now revealed that this was not the first time Banerjee had made unsolicited advances toward Bhatia. Another incident occurred when both had previously been at the IAS academy in Mussoorie in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Bhatia was undergoing a middle management course and Banerjee was on a lecture assignment in late 2004.


Banerjee, according to the dossier, had a reputation of making inappropriate sexual gestures. Despite all of this, Banerjee still has hopes of eventually becoming the next head of RAW and is expecting the support of the IAS lobby and the Bengali network.


However, sources familiar with the dossier say that the "Bhatia saga threatens to permanently damage his career prospects."


There have been persistent rumors that Chaturvedi who is due to retire next Jan. 31, is trying to seek an extension that would see him continue as RAW chief till after the 2009 general elections. This would be to try and ensure that Tripathi can succeed him. This though appears to be highly unlikely, especially after the Bhatia scandal.


The other contender for leadership of RAW is P.V. Kumar from the southern state of Kerala. Very little is known about him particularly as he has stayed out of the spotlight. It is known that Kumar is one of the very few China experts within RAW.


Although the Indian media seems to be of the view that he has a good standing within the agency, it is unclear if Kumar has an effective lobbying campaign or support from political mentors and for this reason may not get the top job.


There are suggestions that someone from the rival agency, the Intelligence Bureau, could be brought in to head RAW. The names of Nachal Sandhu and K.C. Verma have been mentioned over the last few months. Sandhu, is a specialist on terrorist groups operating in Kashmir and Verma was the director of narcotics and is currently secretary-security in the cabinet secretariat. Although both are capable officers neither would be well received within RAW particularly as it would be viewed as trying to bring in an outsider with a separate agenda which has the potential to totally demoralize the agency.


Although no individual has assumed the mantle of frontrunner, the Congress-led government will be looking to choose the candidate who can repair the damage and bitterness that Chaturvedi has created in India's premier intelligence agency.

[sum]

Link

Lashkar tested sea route to Mumbai in 2007 dry run

Praveen Swami

The 8 Lashkar fidayeen were all Pakistani nationals

They had been told to travel north from Mumbai to J&K

MUMBAI: Lashkar-e-Taiba commanders had used a commercial fishing boat to send a fidayeen squad to Mumbai in 2007. Investigators now believe it was a dress rehearsal for the latest terror attacks.

Eight Lashkar fidayeen, all Pakistani nationals, were sent across the seas from Karachi on the morning of March 3. The men arrived in Mumbai late that night, and hid in a safe house near the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. It was organised by a local Lashkar sympathiser.

Unlike the suspected Lashkar fidayeen unit that staged the attacks, the eight-man squad had instructions to travel north from Mumbai to Jammu and Kashmir.

However, Maharashtra Police investigators believe that Lashkar commanders carried out the operation to test the reliability of the Karachi-Mumbai sea route.
Muzaffarabad to Mumbai

Jammu and Kashmir Police investigators say the eight men travelled by road from Bait-ul-Mujahideen, the Lashkar’s operational headquarters in Muzaffarabad, to Rawalpindi before heading south to Karachi by train.

Travelling in groups of two, they had strict instructions to board separate compartments on the Rawalpindi-Karachi journey, and to avoid conversations with each other and other passengers. In Karachi, they were made to wait in a room on the outskirts of the city for almost a week.

They were finally told that the time had come for them to begin their journey to Mumbai.
Tracked till arrest

Four days out to sea, the commercial fishing boat in which they were travelling was stopped by an Indian Coast Guard vessel.

The boat was allowed to go after its captain paid a bribe. But unknown to them, the “corrupt” Coast Guard officials had used the opportunity to plant a tracking device on the boat. The device later enabled Indian intelligence personnel, who had learned of the Lashkar operation from informants, to track them until the time of their arrest in Jammu.
Fidayeen composition

Interrogation records of Lashkar operatives Jamil Ahmad Awan and Abdul Majid Araiyan, both of whom are being tried for their alleged role in the abortive operation, show how Awan told his interrogators he had joined the Lashkar in November 2005, after hearing incendiary speeches at a mosque in Abbotabad on alleged Indian atrocities in Jammu and Kashmir. The oldest of five children, Awan was working as a wage labourer. He had dropped out of school in Class X two years earlier, after his family found it could no longer pay for his education.

Like Awan, Araiyan was drawn to the Lashkar because it appeared to offer an escape from the tedium of everyday life. A resident of Nawab Shah district in Pakistan’s Sindh province, Araiyan was the youngest of his 90-year-old father’s eight children. In the estimation of his family, the 1987-born Araiyan was the least successful among the children. Despite his family’s hopes, Araiyan proved an academic failure, and dropped out of school in Class IV.

In 2000, Araiyan was persuaded to take up religious classes at a local madrassa: his parents feared he would fall a victim to bad habits.

But after hearing fiery anti-Indian speeches delivered by Lashkar-linked clerics at congregations in rural Punjab, he signed up for military training.

In late 2003, months after President Pervez Musharraf’s government proscribed the Lashkar, Araiyan received a 40-day Daura Khas advanced course in guerrilla warfare techniques. This was at the Lashkar’s sprawling Umm al-Qura camp, which draws its name from an Arabic term sometimes used to denote the city of Mecca. Awan also trained at Umm al-Qura in 2005-2006.

Kudos to the action in the bolded part by our agencies...
Sad that we couldn't thwart it the second time around...The agencies have worked very hard(and somewhat efficiently) under the given political constraints and do not deserve the scorn which will be heaped on them in coming days.

[ASPuar]

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage ... ongest+day

The longest day



In the immediate aftermath of 26/11, even before the post-mortems begin and the excuses are offered up, three points need to be made. These are preliminary reactions but I think they will remain valid even weeks from now.

First, it is utterly and completely bizarre that while we whine about the Home Ministry, the intelligence establishment gets off scot-free even as Indians are murdered on the streets.

It is impossible for the police to guard every building or check every passenger. All over the world, terrorism is fought through intelligence. A good security service penetrates terrorist cells, monitors radio traffic and picks up intelligence about terrorist activity.

The Bombay attacks prove that we have the worst intelligence service of any major power in the world. These attacks were meticulously planned, involved two dozen attackers, many more terrorists in back-up roles, vast quantities of arms and ammunition and, probably, crores in funding.

Yet, our intelligence services had no idea that such an attack was being planned. Clearly, intelligence is the last quality that we should associate with our spymasters.

These attacks also demonstrate the hollow nature of the many claims made by various police forces to have ‘broken the backs’ of terrorist cells and arrested various ‘terror masterminds’.

The terrorists are completely unaffected by the puny efforts of our security forces. They strike when and where they want to. And Indians die.

We’ve had enough excuses. Heads must roll. You would have thought that by now at least one of the country’s spymasters would have offered to resign.

No one has. And so, dismissals become imperative.

Second, we should recognise that there is a new dimension to these attacks that was missing from earlier terrorist strikes. The aim of the Bombay terrorists was to continue the global jihad on Indian soil. That’s why they sought out American and British passport holders and that’s why Israelis and Jews were among the principal targets of the violence.

Combine that shift in emphasis with the sophistication of these attacks and some conclusions become inevitable. Clearly, these terrorists were funded and, probably, armed and trained by global jihadi forces. These were not angry students making homemade bombs. These were world-class terrorists.

That should tell us that India is now part of the global terrorist battleground. If the international jihadi network decides to treat us on par with Israel, England, America and other countries that are seen as enemies of its twisted version of Islam, then the Bombay attacks may only be a beginning. Worse may follow.


And we have no capacity to handle the increased level of threat.

Third, L.K. Advani was right when he said that these attacks were not like the usual bombings, but he was wrong when he drew a parallel with the 1993 Bombay blasts.

When we saw the television pictures of the Taj Mahal hotel in flames, it was not the 1993 blasts we thought of. It was 9/11.

It sounds flip and glib to say that these attacks constitute India’s 9/11. But that, in fact, is the truth.

The significance of 9/11 was that it made Americans conscious of the danger they were in and aware that nothing was safe; that terrorists could destroy such powerful symbols of American prestige as the World Trade Center.

In our case, 26/11 has had the same impact. By striking at the heart of prosperous and largely peaceful south Bombay, the terrorists have served notice that there is nothing they cannot do, and nowhere that they cannot reach.

Bomb blasts are painful, traumatic events. But this long drawn-out crisis is far worse in the damage it has done to the Indian psyche. The inability of the authorities to bring the situation under control in a few hours has worried and frightened Indians. With each hour that the crisis continued, we felt vulnerable, impotent and humiliated. It was as though we had lost control of our destiny. And we would never feel safe again.

Guesswork in the aftermath of a tragedy is always a risky business. But I wager that when the time comes to write the history of modern India, 26/11 will be remembered as the turning point in our attitude to terror. It will be remembered as the day when we Indians came to terms with vulnerability.

And, with a bit of luck, as the day when we demanded that those in charge of protecting us either did the job they were supposed to or left it to somebody more capable.

The government must realise that this is not just another terrorist strike. This one has changed all the rules, both in terms of the impact it has had on the Indian psyche and in the anger and fear that now course through our veins.

No more promises. No more speeches. It’s time to act

Sanghvi is absolutely correct, in that, an operation of this size, involving this much preparation leave a big wake behind it. It is a shocking matter that noone has been able to get even a whiff of it, other than belatedly claiming that they had warned the government that there "Might be some coastal attack" about a year ago. No mention of what level of threat was perceived, how, when, or by whom.

I would imagine that the government is siezed, in a general sense of the possibility of coastal attack. We have a coastguard for that purpose. But why was there no specific intelligence gleaned from what has obviously been a massive operation? Does the R&AW and IB want to get away with pretending that having said there might be a coastal attack, their responsibility ends? The coastguard cannot be on limitless high alert, indefinitely, on the basis of a report like this.

Deputationism, ad-hocism, and bureaucratic 9 to 5 work culture at the R&AW, as reported by Maj Gen VK Singh, and other insiders has obviously taken its toll.

Whereas the R&AW was envisaged as a service which entailed permanent deputation via absorption in the RAS, of late it has become fashionable to bring in deputationist officers who do not join permanently, but are attracted by the foreign postings and travel. And the less said about the present Secy (R) the better, if news reports are anything to go by.

The Intelligence Bureau too, has been moribund for some decades now. Understaffed, manned by officers who come and go and treat the bureau like just another central deputation, the real work done there is very little. Starved of resources, it uses local police to gather intel. Which is usually of very dubious nature, mostly pertaining to the financial preparations of opposition parties. In effect, the IB has become a glorified opinion poll agency.

DGMI has its hands tied, with no foreign posts and no responsibility beyond 5 miles from the international border. It can have little impact on intel gathering, and in effect it is a dumping ground for poor officers.

Its time that national security was placed in the hands of someone competent!

[ASPuar]

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage ... knee-jerks

No more knee-jerksCOMMENT ON THIS ! Be the first to comment

Brajesh Mishra speaks to Vinod Sharma
November 27, 2008
First Published: 21:55 IST(27/11/2008)

In his address to the nation after the terrorist invasion that has shocked Mumbai and India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated the need for a federal investigating agency. For its part, the BJP wants tougher laws to face up to the threat that’s growing in proportion with each passing day.

As either objective cannot be realised soon enough for want of a political consensus, I would suggest urgent measures in tune with the available institutional material and human resources. But above all is the need for a political and administrative will to act — and act fast.

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has a presence in every district of the country. Why can’t it coordinate with intelligence outfits in states until the proposed federal investigating agency is in place? Equally important is the task of training the police forces and insulating them from political interference to measure up to a challenge that’s quite distinct from the usual law and order duties.

The police’s role is pre-eminent as the terrorist groups inimical to India have, after rounds of attack on places of worship, begun aiming at ‘soft targets’ — especially those crucial to our economy and overall public good. One can safeguard, for instance, the army installations or the South Block. But it is very difficult to afford that kind of protective cover for railway stations, hotels and hospitals that have come under fire in Mumbai, on the pattern first witnessed in Ahmedabad.

The targeting of railways infrastructure terrorises people and pummels the economy. Similarly, if the local citizenry and foreigners have the fear of trigger-happy gunmen lurking in their backyards, what would be the fate of our tourism industry and investments we’re seeking from abroad?

The September 20 Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad brought to the fore this very change in terrorist tactics. But one cannot, on the strength of this parallel, jump to the conclusion that the mayhem in Mumbai’s Taj and Trident hotels is also the handiwork of those who blew up the Marriott, located in the vicinity of several high-security installations — such as the Pakistani PM’s House and the Parliament complex — in Islamabad. If not from the same school of terror, the men holed up in Mumbai’s landmark hotels are copycats who styled their script after Pakistan’s worst terrorist attack, to deliver a more lethal blow to cosmopolitan Mumbai by engaging in wanton killings and taking foreign tourists and visitors as hostages.

Given the reach and the expanse of the challenge — not to mention the killer gangs’ level of training and resolve — the fight against terror cannot be won through knee-jerk responses. It’s a long-drawn battle that requires equanimity of mind, sharp reflexes and a political culture that disallows electoral objectives to take precedence over national interest.

Brajesh Mishra is former National Security Advisor

(As told to Vinod Sharma)

[nishug]

Where is the cry of intelligence failure ???? there was so much of it during and after kargil.

Is there any other thread specifically discussing attacks in mumbai ?

[manu.p]

Intelligence, Intelligence , Intelligence - this should ring in the minds of authorities , every day, every hour , every minute.

Intelligence agencies of a country are the first line of defense.In this case , it is the first line of defense , that was breached.We need to address this issue first.Intelligence agencies like RAW operate using a "black budget" and details are not presented to the public in budget speeches.From what we are seeing, I believe we are not investing enough.We need a bigger "Black Budget".For a country that has close to $20 Billion defense budget, I think we need to invest a few billion dollars more into RAW and IB so that they can expand their base, create more informers and infiltrate using bribes/coercion and other tactics.We can do with a squadron of Fighter jets or a couple of stealth ships, or a 100 T90s less ......instead , divert the money into intelligence gathering and aggressive covert ops.

In the short term, we need to avenge this attack , gathering intelligence on the crucial actors and assasinating them one by one, covertly, mercilessly - always maintaining plausible deniability.

Manu

JAI HIND

[babbupandey]

It is heart breaking to see the stories of each of the people who died in the attack. I saw the sorrow of a father who lost his 23 year old son in the attack - it brought tears to my eyes.
It is high time that India responded with much more intensity and as much brutality to show that we are not a weak nation.