Rony wrote:Haryana intel had no clue on Maruti trouble
Not just speeches, I bet the diary he has been writing every night since 40 years has some information that many in Delhi's corridors of power would never want be revealed.PratikDas wrote:Yes, it reflects his experience in giving speeches.
ramana wrote:ShyamD
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?....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....
Are those really India's "Look East" policy specifics?
Austin is probably right. Its not SE Asia per se thats valuable. The CIA and the US intelligence community as a whole was rather severely criticised for the intelligence failure surrounding the 1998 Shakti tests. I think they were willing to recruit anyone inside, and hoped he would eventually gain access to the really valuable materials.Austin wrote: ....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.
To stop or severely cut back intelligence sharing and even other areas of security cooperation whenever there's evidence of such behavior.What can be done to stop such activity ?
Good moves by PC but he has to answer for the so called hindu terror. But I guess was that move enough to win the votes? Answer is no.Elevation of power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde to Home Minister of India reveals UPA II's mindset that gives preference to seniority and not to merit. It shows that good governance has nothing to do with politics of the day otherwise no one, howsoever cynical, could justify Sushil Shinde's promotion to exalted Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) on the day of the worst power outage in India and in the recorded history of the world.
If Shinde's colleague from Maharashtra Shivraj Patil was fired for his inability to handle Mumbai attacks by terrorists on November 26, 2008, then the July 30-31, 2012 power outages was no less than 26/11 in magnitude with crores of people going powerless for two days consecutively. Maybe the only thing that was missing in the past two days were 166 deaths.
But then UPA II has turned the Karma theory topsy turvy with "you show me a person and I will show you the rule" theory.
Handing over the Power portfolio to corporate affairs minister Veerappa Moily as additional charges signals nothing else but his rehabilitation with the Congress power centers before Karnataka state assembly elections next year. Again merit and rewards theory is a loser.
While the movement of P Chidambaram to finance portfolio was much needed, given the state of Indian economy and lack of vision in the north block, the shuffle had more to do with the minister's personal desire to move as home ministry is a case of diminishing returns.
With his proposal for setting up of National Counter-Terrorism Center being shot down by Opposition state chief ministers and his idea of selective lifting of AFSPA being dismissed by defence minister AK Antony, Chidambaram exited while the going was still good.
For 70-year-old affable dyed in a wool of bygone Congress era, Shinde would have rather preferred the comfortable job of external affairs minister rather than 24X7 job as the home minister of India.
The former Maharashtra chief minister was apparently considered for home minister's job after he declined to join as the finance minister on count of sight trouble in his left eye.
Promoted to home minister now, Shinde will find that the character of the ministry has changed after Chidambaram's stint. The ministry is more focused on hard core internal security issues and less of the politics of Centre-State relations.
It was during Chidambaram's regime that both the national security advisor to PM and RA&W chief were accountable in daily morning intelligence briefings and internal security decision making processes.
While Shinde faltered as power minister even in terms of augmentation of power capacities, the Maharashtra politician should know that one wrong move in the home ministry will seriously impact India.
Remember Telengana statement of Chidambaram in 2009. Rather than continuing to entertain his electorate from Maharashtra, Shinde needs to ensure that the streamlined processes left by Chidambaram remain intact and this includes the bio-metric system to ensure all MHA mandarins are in north block in time.
Being a former policeman himself from Maharashtra, Shinde does not need to be told the threat terrorism and left wing extremism pose to India. Maharashtra has been brutally hit both by Islamists and Hindu radicals in the past decade and Naxalites are a clear and present danger in Gadchiroli area of the state.
Politically nurtured by Sharad Pawar in 1970s, the Solapur politician nowhere appears as anal as Chidambaram was while handling the home ministry. In fact the two are opposite sides of the Congress coin.
Chidambaram as a home minister was aloof, decisive and contemptuous of bureaucratic mistakes, Shinde as power minister has shown that he is approachable, affable and a consensus man--more in the SB Chavan, home minister in 1980s, mould.
While home ministry definitely needs a deft political touch to manage regional satraps, a far cry from Chidambaram's aloofness, Shinde will have to go on an overdrive if he has to succeed as home minister before the 2014 elections.
Kashmir is on the boil again over alleged killing of a youth in Bandipore, Pakistan based terror groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba are active in India according to incarcerated 26/11 accused Abu Jundal, Naxalites have started softening up urban centers as future launch pads, Telengana issue is still unresolved and water disputes among states are on the rise.
Just as Chidambaram will have to come up with radical solutions to push the projected GDP growth rate of 6.5%, Shinde will also have to think afresh on a national scale and not confine himself to Maharashtra politics.
As a home minister he will have to deal not only with national strategic issues with international ramifications but also on trivial issues like fire in north block. Chidambaram knew and Shinde should know that complexion of the game changes in five minutes in the home ministry.
For the past several years, however, Rasheed’s visa requests have been summarily denied. By the time he filed for another visa a few months after returning from his post-26/11 trip, a new high commissioner, Sharath Sabharwal, had arrived in Islamabad—and his friend Mathur had been prematurely called back to India, five months before his anticipated departure and without any successor in place. The reason for Mathur’s unexpected exit was openly discussed inside the High Commission, according to two sources who were then posted in Islamabad: Mathur, they said, had been sexually involved with his domestic help, a young Pakistani woman. Mathur’s lapse rendered him vulnerable to exploitation by Pakistani intelligence—fatally compromising his continued service to the IB in Islamabad. Shortly after Sabharwal arrived, Mathur confessed, and was promptly sent back to India.
Mathur has since been returned to his IPS cadre in Tamil Nadu, where he was appointed police commissioner of Madurai earlier this year. Contacted by phone, Mathur confirmed that he had been posted in Pakistan until April 2009, but declined to comment further; he did not respond to subsequent interview requests. Several of the former R&AW and IB chiefs told me that it was rare for an intelligence officer to be remanded back to their cadre. Without commenting directly on Mathur’s case, the former intelligence heads, who used words like “uncommon” and “unusual”, suggested that similar moves—particularly for an officer previously deemed fit for a sensitive post like Pakistan—were usually a form of punishment or an acknowledgement that the officer had lost the trust or confidence of the agency.
Does IPS even have a "conduct unbecoming of an officer" charge?ramana wrote:The guy should be dismissed from service for conduct unbecoming of an officer.
wth is that supposed to mean ?Aaryan wrote:Nothing on pune BLAST?????
btw, on the IB officer's case, KGB IIRC had a rule that officers were okay to have relationships with foreigners provided they cleared it with the bosses. even then a one-off incident was forgiven if the person confessed on his own post-facto.IIRC KGB OTOH had a rule that officers were okay to have relationships with foreigners provided they cleared it with the bosses. even then a one-off incident was forgiven if the person confessed on his own post-facto.
this was to prevent blackmailing by adversary intel services.
Honeytrap is a preferred intelligence tool to break enemy ranks
Wealth, wine and women are the three prongs which intelligence agencies across the world employ to break enemy ranks, but the first two do not have the allure of ‘honeytrapping', neither in the snaring nor in the telling. A couple of weeks ago, an armoured corps officer of the Indian Army posted in Suratgarh in Rajasthan reported to his seniors that he had been honeytrapped by a Bangladeshi woman. Less than a year ago, another officer of the same rank (lieutenant colonel), who was sent to Dhaka to pursue a course, informed the authorities that he was caught in a sordid net. It is speculated that the same woman was involved in both the cases.
Barely has a year gone by without a case of honeytrapping coming to light in the past decade. Be it defence officers, Research and Analysis Wing operatives or embassy employees, the targets have been across the official spectrum. In 2010, Commodore Sukhjinder Singh, who was sent to Russia to oversee the refitting of the warship Admiral Gorshkov, was found in a compromising position with a local woman in photographs that reached the Naval headquarters in Delhi. In 2008, Brigadier (retd) Ujjwal Dasgupta of the RAW and Shib Shankar Paul, a systems officer at the National Security Council Secretariat, were arrested on suspicion of leaking information to an American embassy official suspected to be a CIA agent. The truth in this case, however, remains shrouded in mystery with several versions. An embassy official in Beijing was reportedly called back after it was suspected that he was involved with a Chinese agent. Another one was called back from Colombo as well.
“There is no morality in intelligence gathering, all this happens all over the world,” said Lt-Gen. (retd) R.K. Sawhney, former director-general of Military Intelligence. “Earlier physical proximity was required [for honeytrapping], but now with the internet, you can transgress borders,” he says with a clear reference to the latest case involving the Bangladeshi woman, in which the breach happened on Facebook. Though the Army maintains that no confidential information was passed on, the officer had been frequently exchanging messages with the lady.
“Every man has a poison. You have to identify it,” said a former spook. “The first step is identifying where the knowledge you seek is kept. Then you identify the key men in charge of safeguarding that knowledge. You do extensive profiling of the men, study them, find their weaknesses and determine who is important and who is dispensable. Then you eliminate those who will not succumb to any temptation. Then work begins on the ones who are literally the last ones standing.”
Sometimes a woman agent might choose to be the bait while sometimes the agency might enrol a local whose loyalties are confirmed. The CIA recruited several Pan Am air hostesses during the seventies to act for them. K.V. Unnikrishnan, a RAW officer who had been dealing with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, was honeytrapped by one such agent.
“Honeytrapping works on the basic premise that men will be interested in pursuing a sexual relationship, especially if they think they can get away with it,” said a former RAW official. Posted in India or abroad, government employees, including service officers, get strict instructions not to interact with people of other nationalities. “Even if you play a round of golf with a foreigner you are supposed to come back and inform the authorities,” said a colonel.
Officers have to toe a fine line, especially those who are nominated for courses and missions abroad. “We want the men to interact, build bonds but at the same time they cannot get too friendly. Maturity is required. Officers exposed to the outside world are thus chosen very carefully,” said Sawhney. While warnings are issued, it is not easy to find out if they are being heeded. “It is not always easy to keep tabs on people in sensitive positions but of late there has been an increased effort in this direction,” said the RAW official.
A honeytrap operation starts off in an innocuous manner with contact being established in a social setting. Seemingly harmless exchanges develop subtly into more serious ones. “The process has to be handled delicately throughout. It is not as if information is doled out as a reward at the end of every assignation,” said an Intelligence Bureau officer.
Like any methods of espionage, honeytrapping, too, is fraught with danger. In the male-dominated world of spying, women have to contend with the concerns about their professionalism. “Women can be unpredictable. You have to deal with them very carefully, even factor in the probability of an emotional attachment,” said the IB officer. And if the woman in question is a civilian then the handling officer has to tread extremely carefully.
An Army officer from the intelligence corps recalled dealing with a honeytrap in the nineties. “This was in Baramulla during the peak of militancy when we used a local woman to infiltrate a ring of insurgents,” he said. The woman was the wife of a terrorist under arrest and would come to the Army area every day after his arrest. “We would help her out from time to time and after six months or so I sensed that she was turning. We cultivated her for some more time before offering her the assignment,” he said. She turned out to be an excellent informant. “She would give us the exact location of an arms cache or when the next round of infiltration might take,” said the officer, who is now retired.
But the officer had to take several precautions for the operation. “I did not even inform my seniors. In intelligence gathering the element of suspicion is always there. If you are recruiting a woman from outside, people will wonder whether you are also involved in some way or the other,” he said. But he had to ensure that at no point could the woman turn around and accuse him of any wrongdoing. “A middle man was the contact person and you have to ensure that he is absolutely secure. In the two years that the woman gave us information, I never had any contact with her,” he said. The reason for a woman to become a honeytrap, he said, could be anything from material benefits to idealism.
The case of Madhuri Gupta, a junior Indian embassy employee in Pakistan who was arrested in 2010 on charges of passing on information to the Pakistani agency Inter-Services Intelligence, was the first instance of reverse honeytrapping in India to come out in public. There are hushed whispers about the wife of an embassy official (again in Pakistan) who was honeytrapped by a strapping young local. “Being a spouse she had no access to papers but she would visit people within the embassy with a hidden recorder. Over tea she would chat with them, perhaps read aloud the subject line of a file lying around or muse over the papers the staffer was handling. The recording would then be passed onto her lover,” said an IB officer.
There are several ways of gathering intelligence but honeytrapping gets the most attention because of its seemingly glamorous nature. Dig deeper, spooks say, and you will find that all operations have the same starting point, identifying the man's weakness. If you thought that seduction topped the list, think again. “Over the course of my long career I have found that flattery is the beast which has been the undoing of many men. Feedback about yourself is one of the greatest human needs. However, it has to be informed flattery, a mere sucking up can put people on their guard,” says a retired IB officer.
This is followed by vengeance, where the fires of resentment against an organisation or a senior or even a feeling of frustration with a job assignment is stoked. “Material needs and carnal desires actually rank third on the list. Sometimes a man can be subjected to more than one mode of entrapment,” he said.
And what are the wages of the sin? While the lieutenant colonel in Suratgarh is facing a court of inquiry, Commodore Singh was sacked. Brigadier Dasgupta, Paul and Madhuri Gupta were arrested under the Official Secrets Act.
All, they say, is fair in love and war. And love still seems to be the most potent weapon to win the battle, as it has been since the days of Samson and Delilah.
The only case in the recent past which saw this clause (of at President's pleasure) was used to dismiss ACP Pradeep Sharma of the Mumbai police. Noted for the 'encounter killings', he at one point was summarily sacked using this provision which cannot even be appealed in the courts of law. The charges was that he was getting too cozy with the underworld. It is another story that he was reinstated to service after a year or two.ramana wrote:They all serve at the pleasure of the President. Unfortunately it hardly ever gets revoked.
'Verifying reports of faulty Chinese parts in def equipment'
So much for security. Whichever source one purchase from. Hope this is DDMitis or some silly MP asking rubbish questions.PTI | 05:08 PM,Aug 08,2012
New Delhi, Aug 8 (PTI) Government is verifying media reports claiming that a large number of faulty Chinese spare parts have been used in the defence equipment sold by the US, Defence Minister A K Antony told Rajya Sabha today. "There have been media reports that the faulty spare parts made in China have been used in the defence equipment being sold by US, which are being verified," Antony said in his written reply. The Minister said this in reply to a question on whether the government was aware that a large number of faulty Chinese spare parts have been used in the defence equipment that were being sold by the US. Antony also tabled a list of various defence equipment purchased from America during the last five years. The list included Indian Naval Ship Jalashwa, UH-3H helicopters, Harpoon missiles, Long Range Acoustic Devices, modern hull penetrating periscopes, side scan sonar, C I30J aircraft, sensor fused weapons, C-17 Globemaster-III, P-8I maritime reconnaissance aircraft, Quick Reaction Team (QRT) boats, etc. Replying to a question on acquisition of 126 fighter aircraft for the Indian Air Force, Antony said, "The proposal for procurement of the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) is currently at the stage of commercial discussions." The proposal will be considered further after the Contract Negotiations Committee (CNC) concludes its deliberations and submits its report, he added. (More)
Station chief's are usually declared - others are notVikasRaina wrote:How often is the name of the station officer revealed in official communication and burn him for life like it happened in the case of RAW officer in Beijing ?
Is there no policy against it ?
abhishek_sharma wrote:The anti-social network: How al-Qaeda survives
This article contains the following link
Monograph: Understanding the Form, Function, and Logic of Clandestine Insurgent and Terrorist Networks: The First Step in Effective Counternetwork Operations (PDF, 138 pages, 5.9 MB)
The government has decided to challenge a decision of the Central Information Commission in the Delhi High Court.
The decision allowed the disclosure of records related to appointment of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) Chief.
In a communication to RTI applicant Subhash Agrawal, the concerned official informed that it has been decided to file an appeal in the Delhi High Court against the decision of Central Information Commission in this regard.
"The Department of Personnel and Training which is concerned with the matter, has been requested to take further necessary action," the communication read.
The Cabinet Secretariat in an RTI reply had said the documents cannot be made public as RAW is exempted from disclosures under the transparency law.
Activist Subhash Agrawal who had sought the information under the law approached the Central Information Commission when the higher authorities in the Secretariat failed to respond to his first appeal against the Central Public Information Officer.
During the hearing, the Cabinet Secretariat had claimed that directive have been issued for disclosure of information as desired information did not relate to exempted organisation but to the manner in which the appointment was made to that organisation by the competent authority.
"Thus the appellate authority has clearly accepted that the desired information does not relate to the exempted organisation but to the Cabinet Secretariat," Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra said while disposing of the appeal.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-new ... 17972.aspxArmy to disband VK Singh's snoops
Rahul Singh, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, August 23, 2012
A clandestine military intelligence unit — set up by former army chief Gen VK Singh and accused of tapping the phones of top political leaders — is to be shut down. The so-called ‘technical support division’ was controlled directly by VK Singh, who had taken on the government over a dispute on his age — a battle he eventually lost in Supreme Court.
The unit had faced allegations of listening in on mobile phone conversations of politicians and bureaucrats at a time when the age row was at its peak earlier this year.
Sources said army chief Gen Bikram Singh has issued directions to constitute a board of officers to probe the unit’s mandate, tasks executed by it and its financial records. A three-star general will head the clean-up act.
“The army wants to fix responsibility before disbanding the unit. It’s surprising why a unit with no strategic relevance was reporting directly to the army chief,” a senior officer said.
This is the first instance of a chief setting up such a unit —which had a budget of about Rs. 18 crore.
VK Singh, who retired on May 31, had claimed he was born in 1951, contrary to official records that showed he was a year older.
Post-retirement, he has continued to speak out against the government, even sharing the stage with Anna Hazare.
It was alleged the snoop unit had illegally deployed two sets of mobile phone interception equipment.
The army had in March accused Lt Gen Tejinder Singh — who formerly headed the Defence Intelligence Agency — of planting stories about the alleged snooping by the force.
VK Singh had also accused Tejinder Singh of offering him a bribe of Rs. 14 crore to clear the purchase of substandard Tatra trucks. Tejinder Singh subsequently filed a criminal defamation case against VK Singh.
Pradeep Sharma was an Inspector in the Mumbai Police as far as I remember. As such, he did not serve at the President's pleasure, but rather at the Governor's pleasure.Sachin wrote:The only case in the recent past which saw this clause (of at President's pleasure) was used to dismiss ACP Pradeep Sharma of the Mumbai police. Noted for the 'encounter killings', he at one point was summarily sacked using this provision which cannot even be appealed in the courts of law. The charges was that he was getting too cozy with the underworld. It is another story that he was reinstated to service after a year or two.ramana wrote:They all serve at the pleasure of the President. Unfortunately it hardly ever gets revoked.
