Intelligence & National Security Discussion

Thomas Kolarek · Post by **Thomas Kolarek** » 17 Jul 2012 03:01

If he is in Florida could he be my neighbor ? Why cant RAW hunt him down in US ?

abhishek_sharma wrote:Former RAW officer tells the complete story of the double agent who got away

rsingh · Post by **rsingh** » 17 Jul 2012 03:57

Must for everybody.

[youtube]y3qkf3bajd4&feature=related[/youtube]

member_19648 · Post by **member_19648** » 17 Jul 2012 16:15

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-new ... 90202.aspx

IB, R&AW brass almost got the sack after 26/11

The government came close to sacking top intelligence officials soon after 26/11 because of serious lapses that led to the 2008 Mumbai attacks, senior officials have told HT. Disclosures made by 26/11 handler Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, have only confirmed the assessment that IB
and R&AW both failed in analysing, disseminating and acting upon intelligence that was fairly specific.

The unprecedented step of fixing bureaucratic accountability wasn’t taken only because the chiefs of the internal and the external agencies were retiring soon after, an official revealed. The Intelligence Bureau chief was to retire December-end, a month after the attacks. The Research and Analysis Wing chief’s tenure was to end January 2009.

“The government wanted to send a similar message through the intelligence community as it did in political circles by removing home minister Shivraj Patil and Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh,” the official said.

Confirming intelligence failure, Jundal has told his interrogators that the SIM cards used by the 10 terrorists in Mumbai were sent to Pakistan in advance. The SIMs were sent to PoK through Laskhar-e-Taiba operatives by the Jammu and Kashmir Police as part of a covert operation aimed at infiltrating the terror outfit’s ranks.

In a costly slip-up, the IB didn't monitor the numbers though it received the details, including a list of numbers, five days before the attacks.

If Jundal and the others present in a 'control room' in Karachi were able to coordinate the finer details of the 26/11 strike, it was because the 10 terrorists were armed with Indian mobile numbers well before they set sail for Mumbai.

The details of the SIM cards were shared with the IB through a note marked 'secret'. Thirty-five SIM cards were given to Lashkar operatives, the note said.

It underscored the need for the numbers to be monitored, saying, "These numbers are likely to emerge in other parts of the country. These numbers need to be monitored…."

The numbers, however, were not put under surveillance by the intelligence agencies. According to the dossier shared with Pakistan by the ministry of external affairs, Ajmal Kasab — the lone terrorist taken alive during the attacks — and his nine accomplices were four nautical miles (7.4km) from Mumbai on 26/11 at 4pm and got off a dingy in Colaba's Badhwar Park, a little after 8pm.

It was only after midnight - when the carnage was well underway -- that the security and intelligence apparatus realised that some of the numbers being used by the terrorists were on the list shared by the J&K Police.

Similarly, while R&AW had specific inputs that Mumbai hotels would be targeted and sea route used, the information was not disseminated to the officials concerned. The task of plugging the holes was begun by P Chidambaram when he took over as the home minister from Patil.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 17 Jul 2012 16:42

They should have sacked the IB , RAW and NSA chief plus other officer from Mumbai police department and even Home Secretary and Top Bureaucrats , only politician were told to leave their position only later to find place in Central Cabinet and CWC.

Remember the drama from NSA and HM at that time to submit their resignation to Sonia Gandhi ....pity but we dont seem to learn.

member_23626 · Post by **member_23626** » 17 Jul 2012 20:09

All is just nautanki, ISI and others are in bed with these chutiyas....

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 17 Jul 2012 20:35

That HT piece slips in a good word for PC amidst the total intel failure and lack of accountability in Indian system! If those chiefs were going to retire anyway why not sack them or send them on leave till they retire? It gives wrong message that neglecting your oath is acceptable for a GOI official.

I would put the heads of RAW and IB in one room and tell them next failure both will be shot. Maybe they both will take the American visa route.

From 20/10/1062 to 26/11/2008 its has been failure after failure due to petty fights between the two factions/groups. They don't deserve to be called agencies.

IB is penetrated by UK and RAW by US.
Neither works for India while eating namak.

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 17 Jul 2012 21:17

26/11 was failure across the bureaucracy and some radical changes need to be pushed through. So who is going to break heads and sort all this out? Point at MMS and ministers. Have they done anything to resolve the core issues? Very patchy.

- CG tripled In size
- coastal police with useless boats
- NSG in various cities
- intel reform ... Well naresh chandra report is out
- PC delivering threats to Pak apparently

IMO, they have partly addressed the concerns - threat to pak. But there are still many holes, which will take a very long time to resolve. By that time people wont remember 26/11.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 17 Jul 2012 22:18

PC delivering threat to Pak , I suppose Rawalpindi must be trembling with fear

They must be so used to such threat right from PM to HM over past 2 decades that I have seen them giving such threat that they will hardly feel amused by it.

There is lack of accountability among the top bosses when high value terrorist strike take place , no independent review done by JPC or other body and hardly any follow up action taken ....even the KRC implementation has been far from satisfactory , only political shuffling takes place the rest of bureaucratic/military circle hardly gets impacted........I think they simply buy time , memories are short and its more shorter in india after 6-8 months there are many other stories to catch up with so the past events are forgotten and burried.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 18 Jul 2012 00:55

Book list on Military Intelligence
and

Bibiliography on Intelligence

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 18 Jul 2012 00:56

Air Uty site:
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awcgate.htm

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 18 Jul 2012 12:32

Austin ji - apparently he said another attack and the next war will be to finish TSP. to be fair Pranab did say this publicly too.

member_19648 · Post by **member_19648** » 18 Jul 2012 12:44

shyamd wrote:Austin ji - apparently he said another attack and the next war will be to finish TSP. to be fair Pranab did say this publicly too.

Everything put in proper place, harking strong response and actually responding strongly are miles apart. After the Mumbai attacks also, there have been several attacks, like recent bomb blasts in Mumbai. Surely, the impact scale was different, but then an attack is an attack, the last time I heard, the leaders were abstaining from calling names and leaving all options open, as if Indians, one day as an experiment would try to blow their own homes!!! How can you categorize a terrorist attack based on impact, loss of lives are losses, the numbers don't matter. It has been happening year after year and the public doesn't even gets to know the real perpetrators until the memory fades and the next one occurs. Regimes change day in day out, words are just words, its action that matters.

PratikDas · Post by **PratikDas** » 18 Jul 2012 12:47

No "foreign forces" for Pranab's India to fear next time? What would change or has already changed for the threat of "foreign forces" to vanish after the next attack?

Pranab, PC and MMS truly complement each other when racing to do the least in response to terror.

sum · Post by **sum** » 18 Jul 2012 17:00

shyamd wrote:Austin ji - apparently he said another attack and the next war will be to finish TSP. to be fair Pranab did say this publicly too.

Riiight...and we saw what happened after the next attack in Pune and after that in Mumbai.

Maybe, he meant another attack on 26/11 of another year and it would happen else business as usual ( with some cricket matches thrown in)

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 18 Jul 2012 17:11

shyamd wrote:Austin ji - apparently he said another attack and the next war will be to finish TSP. to be fair Pranab did say this publicly too.

Yes , I recollect Narsimha Rao gave similar warning after 92 Mumbai blast and I heard something similar after Parliament attack.

Fighting TSP a nuclear armed country would be a different ball game and there are many pulls and pressure that India will face incase it initiates a war ....every one in power knows it so they just resort to forward looking statements

Prasanna · Post by **Prasanna** » 18 Jul 2012 17:53

<del>

Boreas · Post by **Boreas** » 18 Jul 2012 20:21

Austin wrote:
Boreas wrote:The simplest benefit is.. it lets you identify many more hidding under the rag. In older times it also helped in breaking ciphered communication.
All that is fine but at the time when he was running out from country they should have nabbed him if R&AW knew what he was up too as the former boss writes.

The only time spies fly out is when they know their game is up or are tipped about being under surveillance and make good of their escape that what Rabinder did with CIA help.

I suspect he wrote that to clear his organisation name of any failure in nabbing Rabider and gave a different story to it.

There was no way he would have managed to escape by dodging the deep suveillance put on him. As per my understanding it was an unprecendeted effort by CIA to 'evacute' him, that led to his escape. There could be two reasons because of which it happened -

1. RAW left some breathing space for him to get in touch with his handlers, to identify the whole network.

2. Everybody failed to estimate the importance of information Rabinder singh was possessing. Without a doubt it could be concluded that he had knowledge of certain details which could have seriously compromised CIA's operations in this country. To protect which CIA came out in open and took him away, on the risk of hammering state-to-state relationship between us and india.. which were warming up pretty fast at that time.

There have been many cases in the past where CIA moles have been identified. But never before CIA tried to do something similar. A brief account of few such incidents can be found in public domain.. in B R Raman's blog.

It is not often discussed but all this wasn't very pretty for CIA either and a lot of heads were rolled after this.

Thomas Kolarek wrote:If he is in Florida could he be my neighbor ? Why cant RAW hunt him down in US ?
abhishek_sharma wrote:Former RAW officer tells the complete story of the double agent who got away

RAW doesn't have the mandate to conduct covert ops/executions like Mossad/CIA.

yantra · Post by **yantra** » 18 Jul 2012 21:47

rsingh wrote:Must for everybody.

[youtube]y3qkf3bajd4&feature=related[/youtube]

What a chilling account of deception by KGB! Esp the manipulations in India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and others! How the "helpful idiots" helped them manipulate Indians..

sum · Post by **sum** » 19 Jul 2012 08:22

^^ Love the way he uses the words "useful idiots" and "political prostitutes" to describe all our Desi leftists who were under the spell of Moscow.

Sad thing is that as the years have gone by, the number of "useful idiots" in Desh only seems to be multiplying ( with multiple masters like China, US etc to add to only Soviets earlier)

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 19 Jul 2012 17:57

^^ Despite this, they have never been able to stop us going to war or go nuclear, MRCA etc. What does this tell you? They have never been able to penetrate the core decision makers. They admit themselves that they dont know what we are doing or who makes decisions!
--------------------
Apparently there were 57 collaborators that helped CIA in Rabinder Singh case. CD Sahay is going to be in trouble for not doing anything

sum · Post by **sum** » 19 Jul 2012 20:02

^^57 collaborators??

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 19 Jul 2012 20:18

Only 57?

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 19 Jul 2012 20:42

That is a low number

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 19 Jul 2012 20:46

sum wrote:^^ Love the way he uses the words "useful idiots" and "political prostitutes" to describe all our Desi leftists who were under the spell of Moscow.

Sad thing is that as the years have gone by, the number of "useful idiots" in Desh only seems to be multiplying ( with multiple masters like China, US etc to add to only Soviets earlier)

Even Indian authorities have been using these same useful idiots for Indian purpose.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 19 Jul 2012 21:18

Following is from an interview of Major General V.K. Singh(served in RAW) on his book "India’s External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing".. in which he blames Amar Bhushan :-

The defection of Rabinder Singh, a joint secretary with RAW looking after the Southeast Asia desk, shocked the agency. Maj Gen Singh now writes, "...lack of leadership at the top was responsible for the major fiasco." The activities of Rabinder Singh, a suspected CIA mole who later defected to the US, had already been brought to the notice of his superiors. A middle-ranking officer, S. Chandrashekhar, alerted special secretary Amar Bhushan. Rabinder was put under surveillance.

So how did Rabinder defect with such ease? The answers perhaps lie in the lax manner in which Bhushan handled the sensitive case. Bhushan, alleges Singh, was too busy appropriating positions for himself to attend to the Rabinder matter. "He (Bhushan) changed his designation from additional secretary (personnel) to special secretary without the approval of the department of personnel and training." Soon Bhushan was also appointed as the head of Aviation Research Centre (ARC), an autonomous outfit under RAW.

Singh feels that the then RAW chief, C.D. Sahay, "did not have the gumption to tell Amar Bhushan to stay out of RAW" and concentrate on his work in the ARC. Instead, Bhushan was allowed to induct N.K Sharma from the central paramilitary forces who had no training in counter- intelligence into RAW to keep a watch on Rabinder. As Sharma blundered along, Rabinder flew out to the US via Kathmandu. He left with top-secret RAW documents, including assessments on Southeast Asia countries as well as information that he had accessed from the reports of other officers. Ironically, Sharma was "rewarded" with a plum foreign posting.

While the Rabinder Singh episode is a stark example of the rot that had set in, Singh goes on to record other examples of professional misconduct. He refers to an additional secretary, who when overlooked for promotion to the rank of special secretary, did not attend office for months. But no disciplinary action was taken against him. "This is unheard of. In the army, anyone away without leave for more than 30 days is declared a deserter," says Singh. This revelation is likely to embarrass a senior serving RAW official. Then again, Singh writes about how a senior officer spent lakhs having a logo designed for the agency. It could never be used for security reasons. Equally shocking is the case of an officer who funded his daughter’s education from the secret funds given to RAW. He had listed his daughter as an informant and paid her for ‘services’ rendered.

Singh feels the lack of accountability and financial auditing is detrimental to RAW’s efficiency. "Coming under the ministry of home affairs, the Intelligence Bureau has a modicum of ministerial control," he writes. But "RAW does not even have this fig leaf of restraint to curb its activities." He says it is strange that our intelligence agencies are exempt from accountability which even the armed forces are subservient to. "If war is too serious a business to be left to generals, should not intelligence be considered too serious a business to be left to spies?" asks Singh.

source: http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?235003

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 20 Jul 2012 03:59

57 is the number I am told, God knows the real figure. A contender for the next RAW chief role comes under a cloud as he was involved in the rabinder Singh defection controversy.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 20 Jul 2012 12:22

yantra wrote:What a chilling account of deception by KGB! Esp the manipulations in India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and others! How the "helpful idiots" helped them manipulate Indians..

A lot of such chilling account interview by KGB , CIA etc are just empty boasting to gain personal credibility or just pysch-ops to discredit the other agency ...most of it are just half truth or lies take all such interview with the skepticism it deserves.

Intelligence would protect their asset if its important and they would not revel what really matter if some agent has defected from the other side.

If we start believing all that intelligence says then we may just turn up blaming each other as foreign agents because we might have a different POV.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 20 Jul 2012 14:05

shyamd wrote:Apparently there were 57 collaborators

Are you serious ? It is not possible that 57 people worked tirelessly to see Rabinder Singh flee the country unless RAW is an Indian subsidiary of CIA.

Most likely when such defection occurs its between the agent and the handler , no one really knows about it except the higher up in the handler like station chief or other .......having more people in loop means certain failure or higher risk of it failing.

Likely Rabinder was tipped off by handler or got alerted he was after all an agent himself and all agents are trained to check if they are under survellence more so if you are spying for some one else you would be double alert.

RAW/IB CI ommision would have been that he survived so long , remain undetected during routine debrefing/lie detector check etc or even if they were suspicious of him they failed to follow up on him .........the recent Russian Spy who defected to US in the infamous Anna Chapman case avoided Lie Detector Test or Promotion something CI in FSB should have followed up but they didnt ........so shit can happen with any agency purely due to human carelessness.

Rabinder was perhaps too important to CIA that they made sure he was told to defect to US even at the risk of bringing the improving Indo-US relation in bitterness over this.

yantra · Post by **yantra** » 20 Jul 2012 18:56

Austin wrote:
yantra wrote:What a chilling account of deception by KGB! Esp the manipulations in India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and others! How the "helpful idiots" helped them manipulate Indians..
A lot of such chilling account interview by KGB , CIA etc are just empty boasting to gain personal credibility or just pysch-ops to discredit the other agency ...most of it are just half truth or lies take all such interview with the skepticism it deserves.

Intelligence would protect their asset if its important and they would not revel what really matter if some agent has defected from the other side.

If we start believing all that intelligence says then we may just turn up blaming each other as foreign agents because we might have a different POV.

You are right - every statement has to be taken in perspective and evaluated before judging. As someone in the thread pointed before, despite all the "useful idiots", the GoI and Indian democracy has survived and thrived. Goes on to show how successful KGB, CIA, ISI and others have been...

My comment was more on the way communist brain-washing worked as a machinery - I will give an insight into the Chinese version of it as well.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 21 Jul 2012 02:58

Austin wrote:
yantra wrote:What a chilling account of deception by KGB! Esp the manipulations in India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and others! How the "helpful idiots" helped them manipulate Indians..
A lot of such chilling account interview by KGB , CIA etc are just empty boasting to gain personal credibility or just pysch-ops to discredit the other agency ...most of it are just half truth or lies take all such interview with the skepticism it deserves.

Intelligence would protect their asset if its important and they would not revel what really matter if some agent has defected from the other side.

If we start believing all that intelligence says then we may just turn up blaming each other as foreign agents because we might have a different POV.

Well....Yuri was both enormously candid and enormously (but sincerely) alarmist.

I don't think he ever got over his Marxist and KGB training - in his mind, most people are sheep, and the sheep of America, like the sheep of India were being eaten alive by the wolves of the KGB.

After all he lived in a time when communism was still growing worldwide in leaps and bounds in the third world (Nicaragua, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, etc), and first worlders were harshly questioning themselves. The problem was that none of those societies were not particularly democratic to start with before they fell to communism.

People in democratic societies may fall for propaganda when it comes to events overseas, but they can be relied on to look after their own interests at home. They aren't going to throw away what they have for the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' if the majority think their lives are good, or at least getting steadily better.

And while Yuri would be the first to tell you how rotten the Soviet system was, he like most others could not imagine it collapsing without the most violent application of external force. He just couldnt imagine it consuming itself and discrediting Marxism for one, perhaps two generations.

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 21 Jul 2012 20:35

Austin wrote: Are you serious ? It is not possible that 57 people worked tirelessly to see Rabinder Singh flee the country unless RAW is an Indian subsidiary of CIA.

Most likely when such defection occurs its between the agent and the handler , no one really knows about it except the higher up in the handler like station chief or other .......having more people in loop means certain failure or higher risk of it failing.

Likely Rabinder was tipped off by handler or got alerted he was after all an agent himself and all agents are trained to check if they are under survellence more so if you are spying for some one else you would be double alert.

RAW/IB CI ommision would have been that he survived so long , remain undetected during routine debrefing/lie detector check etc or even if they were suspicious of him they failed to follow up on him .........the recent Russian Spy who defected to US in the infamous Anna Chapman case avoided Lie Detector Test or Promotion something CI in FSB should have followed up but they didnt ........so shit can happen with any agency purely due to human carelessness.

Rabinder was perhaps too important to CIA that they made sure he was told to defect to US even at the risk of bringing the improving Indo-US relation in bitterness over this.

That number is what our investigators found. Not sure how they got that number and what definition of collaborators they chose.

Lets just say that the GoI is aware of what the US is upto in India and they are very keen on collecting info on certain facilities, politics (including first family - Gandhi's), trying to find out who is in the circle of decision makers on nuke/security matters (yes they are not sure who is in the circle! Wiki leaks confirmed it!).

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 24 Jul 2012 02:20

Fearing recruitment, India restricts contacts with CIA

Monday, July 23rd 2012, 05:46 AM

New Delhi, July 23 — Fearing that the CIA might use counter-terrorism meetings to recruit Indian intelligence operatives, New Delhi has restricted agency-to-agency contacts with Washington, says a new book.

Scholar Prem Mahadevan says that unlike the 1970s when India was a virtual socialist state, the hunger for government jobs has fallen considerably since the Indian economy opened up in 1991.

"Today, middle-ranking IB (Intelligence Bureau) and RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) officers are vulnerable to enticement by well-funded foreign intelligence agencies - a factor which has constrained counter-terrorism cooperation post 9/11."

Mahadevan's book, "The Politics of Counterterrorism in India" (I.B. Tauris), says the fears are not altogether unfounded.

It reveals that since 2001, there have been at least two cases of penetration of RAW by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

"Also, at least nine RAW officers have gone abroad without leave since the agency's creation in 1968. Most defected while posted in Western Europe or North America, in pursuit of a more comfortable lifestyle.

"Subsequent investigations revealed that they had been recruited by Western intelligence agencies prior to their defection and had functioned as agents in place for some time."

The book says that particularly damaging was the defection of Sikander Lal Malik, a personal aide to RAW chief Rameshwar Nath Kao.

"Malik defected during the 1970s while posted to the US and is alleged to have taken extremely sensitive information with him."

Although Indian intelligence agencies have committed blunders, the book says, they are also responsible for some spectacular successes.

Despite official sympathy for the Palestinian cause, the agencies prevented anti-Israeli attacks on Indian soil that became common in Europe in the 1970s.

And in the years after the Iranian revolution of 1979, the IB and RAW together rounded up and deported dozens of Iranian and Iraqi terrorists intent on killing each other in India.

The IB, it says, "deserves credit for its successes in neturalising the threat from foreign intelligence agencies".

It says RAW once tapped the telephone of then Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto "but the agency could only hear his end of the conversation and had to guess what the other party was saying".

The book, however, says infiltrating into jehadi networks has become nearly impossible because of the very low number of Muslims in the Indian intelligence.

"The RAW does not have a single Muslim in its 10,000-strong manpower pool while the IB has a small number of Muslims.

"These operatives did a sterling job of raising new informer networks in Jammu and Kashmir during the 1990s... Despite their performance, the IB and RAW remain averse to employing Muslims, preferring to invest in technical collection."

Contrary to public knowledge, Indian intelligence agencies have faced budget cuts, the book says.

The RAW budget was slashed by 10 percent when P.V. Narasimha Rao was prime minister, denying it two badly needed reconnaissance aircraft. Also during Rao's term, a further 20 percent cut hit intelligence operations.

The book accuses then prime minister Morarji Desai of seriously damaging RAW because of his allergy to his predecessor Indira Gandhi, who founded the agency. Desai, it says, forced some of RAW's "most distinguished officers" into retirement, forced it to stop hiring new recruits, cut its strength by a third, and shut down its offices in Jaipur and Chandigarh.

Because of Desai, RAW's agent networks inside Pakistan, including those in Pakistani Kashmir, were deactivated "and were never rebuilt".

"During a conversation with the Pakistani president in 1978, he let slip that RAW had penetrated the Pakistani nuclear plant at Kahuta. The Indian agent on-site was identified and eliminated."

IANS

Read more: http://india.nydailynews.com/newsarticl ... z21TuwEWFv

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 24 Jul 2012 03:32

shyamd wrote:57 is the number I am told, God knows the real figure. A contender for the next RAW chief role comes under a cloud as he was involved in the rabinder Singh defection controversy.

From teh TOI article on the fictional work

As for the “agent’s collaborators”, says the writer, 57 employees who shared information regularly with ‘Ravi’, continue to serve RAW. While 26 of them were never asked for an explanation, 31 who actively colluded and shared extensive operational details were posted abroad.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 24 Jul 2012 03:35

ShyamD

....He left with top-secret RAW documents, including assessments on Southeast Asia countries as well as information that he had accessed from the reports of other officers....

What would be so important about Indian views on South East Asia that he gets sanctuary from US which is ready to jeopardize the so called relationship?

Are those really India's "Look East" policy specifics?

sum · Post by **sum** » 24 Jul 2012 07:58

One more story on this:

Ex-Raw officer criticises agency through novel

The latest work of fiction on RAW, authored by a former officer of the country’s external intelligence, authored is about intense rivalry among intelligence and enforcement agencies for sending their men abroad in embassies for liaison ending up in exposing exposing assets and covert ops.

The novel - “Escape To Nowhere” - written by former RAW special secretary Amar Bhushan based on the true story of his colleague Rabinder Singh fleeing to the US in 2004 -- contains interesting nuggets of inside information that that should nudge the intelligence apparatus into some self-correction.

Bhusahn prefers to call the RAW he served as “the Agency” and tells through fictional characters the real counter-intelligence operation placing his own former joint secretary Rabinder Singh under surveillance. Singh is introduced as “Mr Ravi Mohan”, a senior analyst of the far-eastern branch of the Agency. The US intelligence agency, the CIA, had managed to compromise Singh in order to ferret out highly classified information from the RAW.

And when Singh-Ravi Mohan is exposed by preying eyes of his own colleagues, they plan his great escape, obviously with the tacit connivance of some US moles at the top echelons in the NDA government.

Bhushan is critical of some previous RAW chiefs, whom he describes as “expatriats” since they were not drawn form the agencies’ own cadre, for what he claims of “turning the security environment within upside down by expanding the liaison network indiscriminately”.

Over the period of time more “exotic locations” were added for posting undercover operative in high commissions and embassies though the intelligence outfits of those foreign countries had little to contribute to expanding or securing national interests.

Surprisingly, the decisions were taken to accommodate increasing clamouring for foreign travel by agency officials and their wives, the book remarks. “In the process, a large number of officers were exposed to the suborning overtures of foreign intelligence operatives, for whom it became much easier to identify Agency’s officers and track down footprints of their sensitive operations,” Bhushan writes. Such “glasnost” also paved way for officers, who are willing to be recruited as agents to satisfy their “weakness for money, gifts, scholarships and good time”.

Though the RAW remains the espionage organisation authorised to interact with their foreign counterparts, the glamour and fat pay and perks that come with liaison exploits has been the envy for other government agencies. The Intelligence Bureau, CBI, Enforcement Directorate Ministry of External Affairs, Home Ministry and the defence intelligence agencies started interacting with foreign spys without being trained to handle complex, shady, dark underbelly of the world of espionage.

The book implies that the RAW opposed tooth and nail FBI’s opening office in New Delhi and Indian agencies going to foreign stations and attend sub-standard courses and seminars offered by intelligence agencies off shore.

Wonder who these US moles in top echelons of NDA govt were?

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 24 Jul 2012 12:20

ramana wrote:ShyamD

....He left with top-secret RAW documents, including assessments on Southeast Asia countries as well as information that he had accessed from the reports of other officers....
What would be so important about Indian views on South East Asia that he gets sanctuary from US which is ready to jeopardize the so called relationship?

Are those really India's "Look East" policy specifics?

Sir, I find that very interesting too... Wasn't that SS Paul guy who was accused of taking home his work and passing on info on India's take on the Kra canal to a CIA operative?

SE Asia is important for a number of reasons: SE Asia is big for crime (arms trade, fake currency, passports etc), trade route for US west coast which India could block.
Probably the latter. But again I can't think of this being a major factor.

An Indian naval base is to be established in south east asia, so it could be that too. Who knows US could be pushing the party not to allow Indian base.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 24 Jul 2012 12:45

Quite disturbing to hear about CIA trying to penetrate RAW top/mid echelon if these ex Bosses version have to be believed and this is something GOI knows about but perhaps is doing little to stop ....seems post 99 blast where CIA got no clue of the upcoming even they have aggresively tried to penetrate RAW/IB to find out what going in hope not much is lost. What can be done to stop such activity ?

shyamd · Post by **shyamd** » 24 Jul 2012 16:58

It was bad up until mid last year. Relationship has resumed as normal since then. They trained our top police guys.

Prevention - Good CI set up, deception, penetrate them, media campaigns to be alert, diplomatic pressure on them.

To be honest, we allow them to exist.

Rony · Post by **Rony** » 24 Jul 2012 23:16

Haryana intel had no clue on Maruti trouble

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 24 Jul 2012 23:24

From the article posted by sum above:

Over the period of time more “exotic locations” were added for posting undercover operative in high commissions and embassies though the intelligence outfits of those foreign countries had little to contribute to expanding or securing national interests.

Surprisingly, the decisions were taken to accommodate increasing clamouring for foreign travel by agency officials and their wives, the book remarks. “In the process, a large number of officers were exposed to the suborning overtures of foreign intelligence operatives, for whom it became much easier to identify Agency’s officers and track down footprints of their sensitive operations,” Bhushan writes. Such “glasnost” also paved way for officers, who are willing to be recruited as agents to satisfy their “weakness for money, gifts, scholarships and good time”.

Some people feel that we should not question agencies like RAW and IB. (This came up when we were discussing B. Raman's views last year.)

They should read the paragraph shown above a few times.