chetak wrote: ↑14 Feb 2026 22:39
one was the fruit of the poisonous tree that is still bearing poisonous fruit today, and the other was a professional diplomat with a spotless record.
This is a no contest.
My last on this matter
Yes, one was a diplomat that promised Nixon he would faithfully render his policies even when he disagreed with them (rather than, e.g., quit). Moreover while CIA documents have been declassified detailing such payments in Chile and Italy, nothing has emerged regarding India. That is, there is zero independent corroboration for Moynihan’s claim.
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For the record, this is the exact Moynihan quote:
Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, Page 41
In New Delhi I had pressed the Embassy to go back over the whole of our quarter-century in India, to establish just what we had been up to. In the end I was satisfied that we had been up to very little. We had twice, but only twice, interfered in India politics to the extent of providing money to a political party. Both time this was done in the face of a prospective Communist victory in a state election, once in Kerala and once in West Bengal, where Calcutta is located. Both times the money was given to the Congress Party, which had asked for it. Once it was given to Mrs. Gandhi herself, who was then a party official.
Still, as we were no longer giving any money to her, it was understandable that she would wonder just to whom we were giving it. It is not a practice to be encouraged.
So this is interpreted by everyone as Kerala (1957) and West Bengal (1967).
- We are to believe that the Congress asked the CIA for money. In 1967, it is somewhat plausible; but in 1957, the Congress at the height of its powers, with Tatas, Birlas, Dalmias financing it, had to ask the CIA for money to contest the elections in Kerala? That strains my credulity.
No doubt the CIA could funnel money into political campaigns, even undetected, through middlemen; but Moynihan isn't saying that, he is saying that the Congress asked for money.
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Paul M. McGarr, whose 2024 book, "Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India's Secret Cold War" , the quote from which triggered this discussion, does not give anything beyond what Moynihan wrote.
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Further, read what Moynihan wrote - the CIA had in 1947-1973 (or 1975)
"twice, but only twice, interfered in Indian politics to the extent of providing money to a political party".
As far as I can tell, 1961 was before 1973.
In March 1961, before leaving to take up his ambassadorial posting, Galbraith had taken exception to the scale and scope of the CIA’s interference in India’s internal affairs. During a briefing provided by Richard M. Bissell Jr., the Agency’s Deputy Director of Plans, or clandestine operations, Galbraith was ‘appalled and depressed’ to learn of the CIA’s intention to spend a sum ‘well into the millions [of dollars]’ to bankroll the election campaigns of pro-Western politicians, and subsidize anti-communist Indian newspapers and magazines. Such activity, Galbraith lamented, was unlikely to prove effective in swaying Indian opinion, but was almost certain to leak into the public domain, damaging Indo-US relations and compromising his position as ambassador. Emboldened by the CIA’s public humiliation following its disastrous Bay of Pigs operation against the Castro regime in Cuba that April, Galbraith attempted to rein in the Agency’s activities in India. Although only partially successful, the ambassador’s resolve to limit covert American intelligence operations in the subcontinent earned the disapprobation of the Agency, which dismissed him as, ‘basically anti-CIA.’
Back in 1967, opposition groups on the left of India’s political spectrum seized upon Galbraith’s comments in The Washington Post as confirmation that the CIA had been actively subverting democracy in South Asia. Exasperated by Galbraith’s indiscretion, the CIA’s Director, Richard Helms, curtly informed the former ambassador that he had, ‘raised unshirted hell in India and [had]...provided the central point of an acrimonious debate in the Lok Sabha [India’s lower parliamentary chamber].’
So, Moynihan was either lied to by the CIA, or Moynihan knowingly lied when he said "twice, but only twice". Since Galbraith had penned something in the Washington Post, Moynihan knowingly lied. So much for a professional diplomat with a spotless record.
....a comprehensive account of the CIA’s cold war operations in India and, more precisely, the Agency’s wider impact on Indo-US relations remains a notable lacuna within the considerable body of scholarly work addressing America’s intelligence community. The memoirs of CIA Directors and former Agency officials largely omit reference to India, or skim over intelligence operations in the subcontinent. Likewise, accounts of ambassadorial tours in the subcontinent, penned by such luminaries as Galbraith, Bowles, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, offer only tantalisingly brief glimpses of the scale, scope and broader significance of CIA activity inside ‘the world’s largest democracy’.
The quotes in this last section are from "‘Quiet Americans in India’:The Central Intelligence Agency and the Politics of Intelligence in Cold War South Asia", that too by the aforementioned Paul M. McGarr.
