Intelligence & National Security Discussion

[shyamd]

^^ Hopefully, the intelligence co-ordination canl mean covert ops and India will join the Al Qods brigade unit in Af-Pak (spoke about it in the ME thread) but of course thats too big a wish. India will now have access to human intel reports from NWFP. I think the Iranians want India's COMINT(from Af and Hind) to complement their human sources in the area, in return India will get access to intel from sources in NWFP.

--------------
Article number 2, the sources are probably those senior guys who have gone AWOL.
Mathur’s free run in Pakistan

NEW DELHI: A B Mathur, recently posted in the Research and Analysis Wing to possibly take over as chief in 2011, has serious question marks over his record.

While posted in Islamabad in the late ’90s, his bank account details of a previous European posting was noticed by the RAW top brass. There was around $125,000 parked in his personal account in Brussels; a bank statement managed to find its way to the then RAW chief.

It was more or less equivalent, contend experts, to what Mathur would have earned during his entire posting, including his foreign allowance. If his entire salary and allowance were deposited, on what did he live? How could a government servant be awash with so much money? Mathur was returning to headquarters from Islamabad, but the then RAW chief felt queasy. Signs had emerged that Mathur might be freelancing in addition to working for the RAW. RAW wanted to repatriate Mathur to the Intelligence Bureau, but it didn’t seem keen on having him back; the IB in turn was considering sending Mathur back to his parent cadre, Manipur.

The then RAW chief Vikram Sood along with IB counterpart Shyamal Dutta met the then National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra. Mishra asked the IB to enquire and papers, including bank statement for a year and correspondence, were handed over to the IB. When contacted, Sood refused to get into the details, saying only: “<Ab yeh sab baathein kyon bekar mein ched rahe ho? Thab bhi kuchh nahin hua, ab bhi kuchh nahin hoga.> (“Why are you uselessly raking this up now? Nothing happened then, nothing will happen now.”) But other sources familiar with Mathur’s case say the money was only one aspect.

Another dimension of Mathur’s Pakistan posting worried the Pakistan desk at RAW HQ. It found that Pakistani intelligence went unnaturally easy on Mathur; Islamabad is usually the toughest posting of a RAW officer’s career. Each and every move by undercover officers is closely and aggressively monitored by local intelligence. Barring one incident, where his car tyre hubs were maliciously removed, Mathur seemed to have thrived – while almost the entire RAW team under him was harassed, declared <persona non grata> and thrown out of Pakistan.

People posted in Pakistan at that time remember that Mathur had an extraordinarily free run in Islamabad as well.

They noticed that the ISI handlers showed deference to Mathur and his wife, even when they went shopping. How could it be possible, considering that he headed the visa section, traditionally the RAW cover? Or was it because of his extra-official activities in Islamabad? Islamabad tends to be a hectic posting for any RAW officer and yet Mathur found time to put his feet up in the Gulf area now and then. (Gulf area??? Yeah sounds very dodgy to me...as thats an ISI hub for Indian agents...Or in Mathur's defence was he running agents who happened to be in DXB and/or on operations there)

The details or result of the IB’s enquiry are unclear, but Dutta’s successor, K P Singh, who viscerally disliked RAW, dumped Mathur in Guwahati.

IB appears to have heaved a sigh of relief with Mathur’s return to RAW in September.

[ASPuar]

BAsically what is happening in RAW is this: Whereas it was conceived as an organisation which was to be multidisciplinary, and to have its own service cadre (The research and analysis service, RAS), the IPS has finally come around to cornering it as yet another secretary level posting goldmine for itself.

AB Mathur is from the IPS. He is an outsider. He doesnt have as much experience as the RAS cadre officers who are currently special secretaries, and Additional secretaries. Nevertheless, he has been positioned as RAW chief in 2011.

This is what happened with PV Kumar, the seniormost RAS officer this time also. The IPS lobby ensured that KC Verma, yet another outsider was appointed Secretary, RAW instead of Kumar.

Basically, IPS has a field day, and the nations external intel agency goes down the drain. Ashok Chaturvedi, the last IPS genius to head RAW, was a notorious failure.

And as for the guys who have gone "AWOL", they are all back on the job. But it is hardly surprising that when people who have given their whole life to working in a career, suddenly find that there is a glass ceiling, and they can never reach the top of their profession, they are a bit upset.

[shyamd]

Oooo...Part 3 on RAW

The burial of an enquiry into a double agent

V Sudarshan
First Published : 19 Nov 2009 01:11:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 19 Nov 2009 04:25:24 PM IST

NEW DELHI: National Security Advisor M K Narayanan has been trying to mould the Research and Analysis Wing in his own image for the past five years. All he has managed, say serving officers, is to consolidate his grip over RAW without improving it, thereby plunging morale to rock bottom. A series of unfortunate stewardships imposed from outside to fix RAW has driven it to the brink of incompetency and worse.

The first opportunity came when Rabindra Singh, a RAW joint secretary suspected of being a double agent, defected in 2004. Singh was handing RAW secrets over to the USA, to where he fled from Kathmandu via Vienna once he was discovered.

Narayanan wanted to sack the then RAW chief C D Sahay. He began systematically undermining Sahay; he planted his own man, P K Hormese Tharakan, former Kerala police chief who was occasionally deputed to RAW, as Sahay’s eventual successor. The then NSA, J N Dixit, countered that Narayanan himself had not been sacked when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated (Narayanan was the IB chief), and that no intelligence heads rolled after the Kargil intrusions were discovered.

(Incidentally, no intelligence chief was sacked after 26/11; the NSA also remains untouched). Dixit died in early 2005 and Narayanan, who replaced him, had a free hand to fix RAW.

Tharakan was not a terrorism expert, nor a Pakistan expert, nor a China expert.

He was, stress erstwhile colleagues, a Yes-man to the NSA. Polite and affable, he dithered over crucial decisions – until the NSA prompted him. He presided over a post-Rabindra defection enquiry that has not damaged a single officer’s career; in some cases, the opposite has happened.

Shashi Bhushan Tomar was the last man to see Rabindra Singh after the latter’s car was searched as he left RAW HQ in Delhi on April 19, 2004. Tomar, suspect colleagues, tipped Singh off that he was under RAW surveillance, enabling the double agent to evade his stake-out and escape.

Singh fled to the US, and Tomar, believe it or not, is now posted in New York. Perhaps the two meet for a drink, suggest RAW officers, who add that perhaps the two raise a toast to Narayanan.

That the NSA wasn’t “really” interested in solving the mystery became evident to those who attended the handful of meetings in which videos and audios of Singh’s surveillance were scrutinized by Narayanan and others.

Strangely, the NSA never once bothered to call the man in charge of the surveillance, Special Secretary Amar Bhushan. N K Sharma, a director-level officer who worked with Bhusan, was denied a foreign posting till the enquiry’s completion; he is now back from a European posting at the RAW’s training facility in a Delhi suburb where his hands are full with Nisha Bhatia, the RAW officer who recently consumed rat poison outside the prime minister’s office (she has been deemed unemployable under a specific government rule).

Another example of Tharakan’s pliability by the NSA came with the question of a cadre review. Former RAW chief A S Dulat was mandated by the NDA government to submit a cadre review of the RAW. This went into improving prospects of various categories of officers; creating new posts; and looking at the issues of insiders, outsiders, deputations and permanent secondment – aspects crucial to a mixed cadre outfit like the RAW’s.

Imbalances would lead to administrative chaos, as indeed has happened the last few years. The NSA wanted a review of the review, and subsequently Tharakan rejected much of Dulat’s suggestions (made on Sahay’s advice).

This rejection stank of an agenda.

That agenda became clear when the next RAW chief took over.

[Sudip]

Oooo...Part 3 on RAW

The burial of an enquiry into a double agent

V Sudarshan
First Published : 19 Nov 2009 01:11:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 19 Nov 2009 04:25:24 PM IST

NEW DELHI: National Security Advisor M K Narayanan has been trying to mould the Research and Analysis Wing in his own image for the past five years. All he has managed, say serving officers, is to consolidate his grip over RAW without .

this article has comments by some Mr Krishna J Dixit whose has a blog here

Dixit was killed by Pakistanis
Our nation is run by an unknown illiterate barmaid from Italy whose birthplace, birthdates, qualification and association are under a cloud. Modern times with instant communication and mass media, it appears that foreign nations could place someone at the top of our political structure. Next in the line could be a drug and Columbian connection through Raul. What type of persons are these who have come to occupy positions of power in this era of Pappu Yadav, Bhulan Devi, and Lalu Yadav?

In a restaurant in Cambridge town Sonia first met Rajiv in 1965. Rajiv was a student in the University, but could not cope with the studies and left for London. Sonia followed him to London in 1966. As per available information in London Sonia was working in an outfit run by Salman Thassir a Pakistani ISI operative who had offices in Dubai and London. The Pakistani was running an import export business in Dubai as an ISI front. Pakistanis are very fond of Sona or Gold and it was Salman who might have named Antonia as Sonia. Also it is a fact which I had seen, is that every female that is recruited by any Pakistanis in Dubai or London are recruited after the casting couch test. It must be the Pakistanis who had placed Antonia alias Sonia Gandhi in front of Rajiv Gandhi. It is also no surprise that J.N.Dixit spent some of his last moments on Sunday night chatting with Pakistan's High Commissioner Aziz Ahmed Khan at a party and by morning he was dead. Dixit was killed because he was proposing exchanging equal area between Pakistan and India where as Sonia wanted to favor Pakistanis. Based on the inside information and as Pakistanis and Sonia felt that Dixit is a hindrance to them on their long term plans, Pakistanis killed him.

Reports in Malayalam media indicate a conspiracy and possibly a case of murder over the sudden demise of India's National Security Adviser Jyotindra Nath Dixit. Mr. Dikshit was Kerlite and is a malayali Nair. Jyotindra Nath Dixit was later adopted by one Gandhian. Dikshit later married his mother at the Wardha ashram of Gandhiji. The young Dixit was a favorite of Gandhiji, and is one of the boys seen in the famous pictures of Gandhiji. . Obviously he was a man of absolute integrity and had strong views on national concerns. J.N.Dixit had the total trust of the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. Reports had said that Dixit was under strain of late because all the decisions are taken by Sonia and not by Manmohan Singh. The reports further stated that he was tense after having dissented at the PMO over some interference from the office of Sonia Gandhi. He was even discussed with his wife whether he should quit his job because of this. One of the major item in which he dissented was over the appointment of P K Hormis Tharakan, former Police Chief of Kerala to the top post of RAW. Few days earlier to Dixit’s death, Hormis Tharakan assumed charge of RAW chief. Mr. Dikshit knew about the Syrian Christians of Kerala, and Hormis Tharakan who is one of their leaders has international links to destabilse India and is an active member of their pan-national Christian networks spanning every country of the world and ties to Opus Dei the Italian spy agency. Dixit had no choice as the Christian Sonia controlled every top appointment in the country and she has even successful in making Jayalalitha to appoint a sidelined Christian IPS officer A. X. Alexander, as the present Director General of Police, Tamil Nadu recently. In one of the drinking session in Dubai this Alexander revealed one of the main duties of the Tamil Nadu top police officers. It was that the top police men are to procure college girls for the lesbian Jayalalitha. Now Sonia has put all Syrian Christians like Vincent George and others as her trusted lieutenants. . Vincent George who was involved in an abduction cum serial rape case of a minor Hindu girl in Kerala is back in power The same group of Christians like M. O Mathai who managed the affairs of Nehru and P C Alexander who managed Indira Gandhi.

It is necessary to understand this type of murder we should go back a little in history. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai was killed on 30th December 1971 at Kovalam, in Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala. I talked to well informed businessmen in Thiruvananthapuram. What they told me is that there were two ladies in his room when he died. Apparently the two ladies were the assassination squad who were sent in after proper planning. Since Sarabhai has married a Keralite, it is impossible for him to have any type of affairs so openly in a public place like Kovalam. The killing of Sarabhai must have been a Pakistani operation through Dubai using their routine Syrian Christian agents of Kerala. Kerala Christian businessmen in Dubai are fronts for many Pakistani terrorist funds and they are known to arrange women from Kerala for the Pakistanis in Dubai.

Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha, who is the father of the Indian nuclear program, was also killed under suspicious circumstances. At that time the Controller of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre was one E.C. Allardice. Allardice was a mix product of British and French parents. At that time, Intelligence Bureau of Home Ministry was investigating Controller Allardice for his suspicious spying activities for America’s spy agency CIA and for Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI. The Joint Secretary of Department of Atomic Energy, Mr. Hadi, a Muslim who was very close to Allardice was trying to cover up and protect the entire episode. Dr. Bhabha's travel plans were supplied by Allardice to CIA and ISI and this had resulted in the plane crash that killed Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha.

The latest in the political murders were Kumaramangalam and Mursoli Maran. Outwardly it looks like that they died of natural causes, living among the gulf Christian community and what was going on there, makes me suspicious that both of them were killed off because both of them were patriots, and wanted the nation to progress. The programme and policies brought by them are going to reduce the income of places like Dubai which has very low oil income and very high expenditure and depends on free trade zones, duty free shops etc. Dubai had blocked the setting up of these in India all these years with the help of Christian and Muslim bureaucrats. They finished the ministers using hospitals like the Christian owned Apollo group, which had ties with Varkey group in Dubai at one time.
posted by n.krishna @ 3:30 AM

can anyone verify the authenticity of the gazillion facts he burped? though a lot of it seems shady

[Philip]

The "gadzillion" allegations in the blog appear to take them to the farthest boundaries of the universe of conspiracy theories.Having said that there are some very interesting points mentioned about historical events.

First,the death of Dr.Homi Bhabha in an air crash,still a mystery ("He died when Air India Flight 101 crashed near Mont Blanc in January 1966. Conspiracy theories point to a sabotage by the CIA intended at impeding India's nuclear program, but his death still remains a mystery.")came at a time when he publicly said that India could produce a nuclear device in a short time.The crash reportedly took place in the Swiss Alps near Mt.Blanc and no debris was ever found.

Now this crash bears similarities to another infamous incident,that of the bombing of the Air India "Kashmir Princess",which was to have taken the Chinese premier,Chou-En-Lai to the Bandung Conference in Indonesia.Chou ,through his agents in Taiwan got wind of the plot ,which was perpetrated by Koumintang agents who placed the bomb aboard the aircraft at Hong Kong airport,the British displaying a "Nelsonian" eye.The bomb was actually transported to Hong Kong by CIA agents who reportedly picked it up from the US embassy in Delhi! Unfortunately for the plotters,Chou changed plans at the last moment and due to a delay in schedule,there were survivors of the crash.
("Steve Tsang of Oxford University wrote in the September 1994 edition of China Quarterly, "Evidence now suggests that Zhou knew of the plot beforehand and secretly changed his travel plans, though he did not stop a decoy delegation of lesser cadres from taking his place.")
Had there been no survivors,this "accident" would've met the same fate as that of the aircraft carrying Dr.Homi Bhabha.Some interesting facts from Wik:

(The day after the crash, China's Foreign Ministry issued a statement that described the bombing as "a murder by the special service organizations of the United States and Chiang Kai-shek" while Hong Kong Governor Sir Alexander Grantham maintained that the plane was not tampered with in Hong Kong. However, on 26 May, an Indonesian board of inquiry later announced that a time bomb with an American-made MK-7 detonator was responsible for the crash and it was highly probable that the bomb was installed in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong authorities offered HK$100,000 for information leading to the arrest of those responsible. They questioned 71 people connected with the servicing of the Air India flight. When police began to focus on Chow Tse-ming, a janitor for Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co., he stowed away to Taiwan on a CIA-owned Civil Air Transport aircraft.

The Hong Kong police concluded that the Kuomintang had recruited Chow to plant the bomb to kill Zhou Enlai. Apparently, he had bragged to friends about his role in the bombing, and had also spent large amounts of money before he left Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Police tried to extradite Chow, but Taiwan refused and denied that Chow was a KMT agent.)

CIA Involvement:
(In 1966, a U.S. Senate committee investigating CIA operations heard testimony that gave murky details of a CIA plot to assassinate an "East Asian leader" attending a 1955 Asian conference. That leader's identity would remain unknown until 1977, when William Corson, a retired U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in Asia, published Armies of Ignorance identifying that leader as Zhou Enlai.

On 24 October 1967, a CIA agent John Discoe Smith defected to the Soviet Union. There, Smith accounted many of his operations in his memoirs, entitled I Was an Agent of the CIA, including his delivery of a mysterious bag to a KMT agent. He says that in 1955, Jack Curran, a CIA officer attached to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, asked him to deliver a bag to a Wang Feng at the Maidens Hotel in the Indian capital. Smith claimed that the bag contained the bomb used to sabotage Kashmir Princess.)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir_Princess)

These above two "accidents" in my opinion,were clearly assassination attempts upon the life of Dr.Bhabha and Chou-En-Lai,perpetrtated in the main by the CIA during Cold War days.In the case of the allegation about the "poisoning" of Mr.Dixit,the fact is that he was one of our most experienced diplomats ever,who had been in all the regional troublespots of Afghanistan,Pak,Sri Lanka,etc. and was High Commissioner in Lanka during the IPKF's sojourn there.Dixit was a trouble-shooter par-excellence and his death when he was India's NSA,was a massive blow to the country.Did he really have a "last supper" with a Paki diplomat? That is the question that must be answered.If he did,then the probability of him being given substance to bring on a heart attack cannot be ruled out.That he was under much strain in his post is another supposed "fact",but whether that was because of differences with Sonia-G is a less convincing allegation.Dixit had the full confidence of Rajiv-G during his time as PM and that would've stood him in good stead with the "first family".

The allegation about "Syrian Christians" (I'm not one!) being in the pay of Pak,etc.,is simply too far fetched.Firstly,the Syrian Christians (SCs) are "Orthodox Christians",who have been at loggerheads with the Roman Catholics for about two thousand years and it is being terribly racist to label an entire community as such,even if any of them were guilty of such treasonable behaviour.Furthermore,"Opus Dei" is a Catholic organisation,where both priests and lay menbers work in concert and have nothing to do with the SCs.In fact,the Keralite connection is more obvious in the allegations in the Indian Express about the pathetic performance of our current NSA,MKN a very controversial figure even earlier,with his alleged role in the N-deal vote in the house-allegedly making MP's "offers they couldn't refuse",using safe houses as secret venues for dealmaking,as one magazine alleged.He had around him a few fellow Keralites like Tharakan,etc.But to be fair,what about the galaxy of Punjabis who rule Delhi?

The Indian Express inside story of the rot within our premier intel outfit is a more serious matter from the alllegations in the report,double-agents,etc.,which if even partially true is a dismal and depressing situation in the most critical of all institutions that impinge upon our security.It is incumbent upon the GOI at the helm to immediately stop the "rot" and restore the credibility and capability that was once its hallmark,especially under Mrs.G.

[Avarachan]

Philip,
Thanks for your post. I'm Indian Orthodox, and the views in that post regarding Syrian Christians were laughable (and offensive).
The official website of the Indian Orthodox Church (which is officially named the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, but will probably be re-named soon) is http://www.mosc.in.

_____________________

Update: I thought this was obvious, but the offensive comments I was referring to were made by Mr. Krishna J. Dixit. Mr. Dixit is not a member of BRF. I was thanking Philip for being sensible and rejecting Mr. Dixit's looniness.

[Sachin]

Thanks for your post. I'm Indian Orthodox, and the views in that post regarding Syrian Christians were laughable (and offensive).

Avarachaayo . I don't think Philip has mentioned any thing negative about the Orthodox church. Request you to re-read his post.

[Prabu]

Philip,
Thanks for your post. I'm Indian Orthodox, and the views in that post regarding Syrian Christians were laughable (and offensive).
The official website of the Indian Orthodox Church (which is officially named the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, but will probably be re-named soon) is http://www.mosc.in.

Pls don't bring religion here in BR, especially When facts are spoken by respectable oldies !! Look at the seriousness of the national security issues which are most worrysome !! If that doesn't bring any worry in you and if it causes religious worriesto you , then i am really worried about India's future !!

[putnanja]

The walking-talking disaster of a spy chief - Part 4

NEW DELHI: Would you appoint as your spy chief a man described as “serially paranoid”, a “walking-talking disaster”, or a “washout”? National Security Advisor M K Narayanan did when in 2005 he allowed Ashok Chaturvedi to become the Research and Analysis Wing chief, proving that the NSA had an agenda and did not care about the RAW leadership’s quality.

Chaturvedi, who RAW insiders say was related to the then cabinet secretary, B K Chaturvedi, was incoherent – and it did not matter whether he was chewing paan or not. His gaffes were too many to be listed here, except one.

Chaturvedi’s wife, say RAW sources, got a diplomatic passport (D1027182, issued in New Delhi on 15/2/2008; lapsed on 28/2/2009; renewed till 13/9/2009) on which she traipsed around the world, contravening rules. This was unheard of. If it was the UK in April 2008, it was the US in June, Algeria in July… you get the picture. “Mrs Chaturvedi was everywhere,” said a source.

Chaturvedi was vindictive. He set about destroying careers of those who he imagined were against him in the RAW. “There were groups, factions, bitterness and rampant favouritism,” said a senior RAW hand. Chaturvedi demanded only loyalty of his cronies, not competency. He stopped short of daily loyalty oaths.

Narayanan exploited the situation, encouraging people to rat on one another.

This affected the RAW’s functioning across the entire spectrum of its activities, even operations. A RAW officer said: “When you start victimizing on such a large scale, there is naturally no useful work going on.” During Chaturvedi’s watch, the entire RAW team in Nepal was exposed in the local media, severely setting back operations.

Narayanan personally took care of the rest of the neighbourhood: he began to review operational activities and to prune operations on the pretext that RAW was duplicating the Intelligence Bureau’s and foreign ministry’s work. RAW insiders say this has led to deterioration in the RAW’s Kashmir and Pakistan operations and capabilities: “What had taken years to assiduously build was dismantled in a few cursory meetings”.

Departmental operational meetings made three things obvious to the top RAW echelons. Narayanan was killing initiative taken by the very chiefs he had an integral part in appointing; Narayanan had no confidence in those people; and most importantly, he was interested only in trimming the RAW’s profile and footprint.

Yet that was only part of his agenda.

A RAW hand put it bluntly: “The administration has been buggered, operational capabilities stunted, and expertise destroyed systematically”.

As a result, there is a void in areas of critical importance to the RAW, like China and Pakistan. Chaturvedi’s final disfavor to the RAW was allowing A B Mathur back.

[K_Reddy]

Revolution in South Asia
A Naxal sympathizers Blog. Quite disturbing that they seem to operate in the open. Read the comments. I found this one on Reddit.
http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2009/ ... -adivasis/

[ramana]

Isnt it being exposed right now in those series of articles? names even if they are not true are being thrown around.

I recall in the 70s one woman& her husband won the Wills Filter "Made for Each other' contest and wasn't allowed as she was uncooked per the India Today of those days.

[UPrabhu]

This thread is depressing

[sum]

RAW insiders say this has led to deterioration in the RAW’s Kashmir and Pakistan operations and capabilities: “What had taken years to assiduously build was dismantled in a few cursory meetings”.

Why does this same statement repeat over and over again every few years?

IKG is supposed to have dismantled everything built up over the years and the same happens after 10 years?

[abhishekm]

RAW insiders say this has led to deterioration in the RAW’s Kashmir and Pakistan operations and capabilities: “What had taken years to assiduously build was dismantled in a few cursory meetings”.

Why does this same statement repeat over and over again every few years?

IKG is supposed to have dismantled everything built up over the years and the same happens after 10 years?

20 years before IKG Morarji Desai tried to dismantle everything during his years in power. I've heard of cleansing and regeneration but this is ridiculous! It's a miracle that RAW hasn't imploded yet. In 1970 Britain expelled several dozen KGB officers operating under diplomatic cover and the Soviets never really recovered from this blow until the middle of the 1980s. Hope it doesn't take 15 years to rebuild RAW's network in Nepal...

[putnanja]

MK Narayanan’s new bête noire: P Chidambaram

NEW DELHI: The buzz in India’s intelligence community is about how National Security Adviser M K Narayanan is chafing over the rise and rise of Home Minister P Chidambaram.

Chidambaram is proactive unlike predecessor Shivraj Patil, famous for carrying on about Sai Baba at meetings on internal security. Chidambaram, say sources, is sharp at meetings, wellprepared, follows things closely and does not suffer fools. Officials liken him to a breath of fresh air. They say India has a home minister who is engaged, hands-on and who wants to deliver.

Chidambaram treats the NSA on par with the intel l igence heads.

Narayanan, by protocol a minister of state, finds himself waiting outside Chidambaram’s room with others if he arrives early for the daily morning meeting. He gets no special favour. At times the NSA comes away from the meetings exasperated and often reminds his intelligence sub-peers that it was he who cleared Chidambaram politically when the latter began his career: “Iska maine hi clear karvaya tha”, is one remark doing the grapevine.

“I hope the home minister is not listening”, is another. There is a bit of posturing, aver sources who say the frequent utterances have two inferences: that he is piqued; and that he doesn’t care if it gets back to Chidambaram, secure that Sonia Gandhi backs him.

The NSA apparently gets worked up for having to explain Kashmir, again and again, to Chidambaram.

(“Oof ! How many times do I have to teach these fellows!”). Ironically, none of the NSA’s contemporaries or juniors remembers Kashmir being his forte. When NSA was Intelligence Bureau director, Kashmir’s problems were at an incipient stage and defied quick analysis or firm predictions.

V P Singh became prime minister and banished Narayanan to the Siberia-like Joint Intelligence Committee.

When Chandrashekhar succeeded VP Singh he brought Narayanan back to the IB at Rajiv Gandhi’s behest. Kashmir, though, was not on top o f Narayanan’s agenda or mind.

Chidambaram has risen due to performance and has inherited two challenges: Naxalism and Kashmir, both complicated and tricky, fraught with intelligence pitfalls and policy missteps.

Part of the blame for the proliferation of Naxals should go to the NSA, point out sources. After all, this was his “forte” in the IB.

Sources also say that Chidambaram is lucky that no further terrorist incident has occurred since 26/11. How long will his luck continue? Not very long if the external intelligence agency RAW continues to deteriorate under mediocre heads simply to fulfil Narayanan’s personal agenda.

(Concluded) (In yesterday’s instalment of ‘The ROT inside RAW’, the report inadvertently mentioned that Chaturvedi took over as RAW chief in 2005; he took over on February 1, 2007. The error is regretted.

– Editor)

[sum]

(“Oof ! How many times do I have to teach these fellows!”). Ironically, none of the NSA’s contemporaries or juniors remembers Kashmir being his forte.

The four part series on RAW has been a really depressing read and doesn't inspire a safe and sound sleep at night.

[Prabu]

MK Narayanan’s new bête noire: P Chidambaram

NEW DELHI: The buzz in India’s intelligence community is about how National Security Adviser M K Narayanan is chafing over the rise and rise of Home Minister P Chidambaram.

Chidambaram is proactive unlike predecessor Shivraj Patil, famous for carrying on about Sai Baba at meetings on internal security. Chidambaram, say sources, is sharp at meetings, wellprepared, follows things closely and does not suffer fools. Officials liken him to a breath of fresh air. They say India has a home minister who is engaged, hands-on and who wants to deliver.


“I hope the home minister is not listening”, is another. There is a bit of posturing, aver sources who say the frequent utterances have two inferences: that he is piqued; and that he doesn’t care if it gets back to Chidambaram, secure that Sonia Gandhi backs him.

– Editor)

Are you listening this Mr.Chidambaram ?

[Sudip]

Article on 26/11 by Time magazine. I apologize if it has already been posted or the facts already shared.

India Still a Soft Terror Target a Year Later

The trial of Sabahuddin Ahmed for his work in facilitating last year's Mumbai massacre reveals an uncomfortable truth about India. Unlike his fellow accused, the Pakistani gunman Mohammad Amir Ajmal Qasab, Sabahuddin is Indian and for five years he was an alleged one-man sleeper cell hiding in plain sight. Even though he was arrested almost 10 months before the Mumbai attack, Sabahuddin had allegedly managed to provide enough information in terms of directions and diagrams to allow the terrorists to launch their assault with "absolute precision."
Ahmed easily exploited the gaping holes in the fabric of India's public safety — flaws that still exist a year after the attacks. According to his statement to police, Ahmed paid an acquaintance Rs. 50,000 (about $1,000) to buy admission to a college in Bangalore, and used his student ID to allay police suspicions while he was crossing from Kashmir to Bangalore — even as he was bringing a cache of weapons in by train. When he ran out of money, his handlers arranged to have funds sent to him through India's unregulated network of cash-transfer, or hawala, traders. For the equivalent of $2, an Indian, who had bought the right to smuggle jackfruit across the Bangladesh border, arranged for him to cross without documents to that country's capital Dhaka, where he met with agents of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group believed to have planned the Mumbai attacks.
............................ Until those margins are narrowed, security experts say, India continues to be the world's biggest soft target. "We remain as vulnerable today as we were on 26/11," says Ajai Sahni, Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management, using the shorthand for the Nov. 26, 2008, attacks. "Corruption undermines and negates everything."
In India, corruption is taken as an unfortunate fact of life even for otherwise law-abiding citizens. For example, ration cards are a lifeline for India's poor, giving them access to subsidized rice, lentils and kerosene. But to get them, you need a birth certificate or proof of residence —something many Indians lack. So, they often pay clerks to issue ration cards without a supporting document. A tea-shop worker in Mumbai told me he bought one for Rs. 5,000 ($111). Meanwhile, the ration card is a step toward a passport. In theory, passports are difficult to get; police officers are supposed to visit you in person to verify your identity and address. However, according to an entrepreneur who helps set these things up, as long as you don't have an arrest record, the police will skip that formality —for a few hundred rupees. There is no need for counterfeit documents; for a fee, authentic ones are readily available.
Given the size of the Indian bureaucracy, with 18 million public employees serving more than a billion people, "you can never create a foolproof system," says Ajay Behera, an assistant professor at Jamia Millia Islamia who has written extensively about regional security. But in such a porous system, he says, a small group of relatively uneducated people can organize a major operation. "Almost anyone can do anything here," Behera says. "It doesn't require that high a level of sophistication."
Making India harder for would-be terrorists to penetrate would require reform not just of the bureaucracy but also the police. Local and international human-rights groups have exhaustively documented the crisis in Indian policing, criticizing the Indian police for everything from taking bribes to engaging in torture and extrajudicial killing. Eight national commissions have also recommended wide-ranging police reforms, few of which have been implemented.
Lower-level Indian police officers and border guards remain underpaid and undertrained, while being given almost unchallenged authority over the people they are meant to serve. A 26-year veteran of the Mumbai police told TIME that his monthly salary is Rs. 10,360 (about $230). ........................ By late 2006, after the July 2006 Mumbai train blasts and an October 2006 attack in Kashmir, security on the Indian border had become very strict. But Sabahuddin, in his statement, says that Rs. 10,000 ($222) was enough to get past the Central Reserve Police Force. "They asked me to give my address and I gave them a fake address in Kolkata," he says. "To verify me, they called my friend... [and] they got confirmed that I am an Indian and allowed me to travel."
The Mumbai attackers are believed to have come by sea from Karachi, and over the past year, the Indian government has added new vessels to tighten up security along its long maritime border with Pakistan. But Behera estimates that getting through a checkpoint costs only about Rs. 5,000 ($111). Despite the necessary investment in new boats and training, corruption is still a vulnerability, says Pushpita Das, who is researching coastal security at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. "The liability still remains.".................

[SaiK]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 281178.cms

!?!?

[Jamal K. Malik]

Two crore mobile users go unconnected mid-night tonight

New Delhi, Nov 30 (PTI) Nearly two crore mobile phones without unique identification numbers will go out of service from mid-night today, with government deadline to operators to block calls to such devices on security concerns expiring tonight.

A senior government official said, "We are not extending the deadline (of November 30). We have asked the operators not to process the calls passing through those phones without the IMEI number from today."

The 15-digit International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number helps security agencies trace calls made from and received on handsets.

T R Dua, acting director general of COAI, said "According to our estimate there are about 1.8-2 crore handsets which are without the IMEI numbers. We had asked for extension of the deadline and since, that has not been done, we will adhere to the the given deadline.

Good move.

[ramana]

Why was the name RAW ( Research and Analysis Wing) chosen for the external intel service? It looks like it was split from something bigger.

[ASPuar]

In response to Ramana's question:


1. It is called the Research and Analysis Wing, because it is the Research and Analysis Wing of the Cabinet Secretariat of the Government of India.

2. It was created by splitting the intelligence bureau's external intelligence wing, away from the internal.

[Rahul M]

administratively speaking, R&AW is not a separate organisation like CIA etc but a dept of the CS or of de facto that of the PMO.

[sunny y]

Another hero sufferd a lonely & unhonoured death .....Please read this, this came in today's HT newspaper. Sometimes I don't understand why why cannot govt. help such people who are ready to sacrifice their lives without even blinking an eye. What more these dhoti clad politicians want ??

Family seeks posthumous recognition for gutsy spy

Ravindra Kaushik went to extremes in his zeal to serve the country. But he died unhonoured and unsung in a Pakistani prison.
His family, virtually ignored by the Indian government, now wonders if his effort was really worth it. Kaushik became an undercover agent in 1975, at the age of 21, just after he graduated.

As a spy in Pakistan, he took enormous pains to conceal his identity. He first converted to Islam, taking the name, Nabi Ahmed. He enrolled in a law college, duly graduated, and married a Pakistani girl. He applied to the Pakistan army, underwent the gruelling entrance test and got himself selected. All the while he continued supplying intelligence to India.

In 1983, however, his cover was blown. Another Indian agent, Inayat Masiha, was caught crossing the border and blurted out Kaushik's name during interrogation. The Pakistani authorities laid a trap, which Kaushik walked straight into. He was arrested in September and spent the remaining 18 years of his life in jail.

"We did not know anything about his profession," said Rajeshwarnath Kaushik, his younger brother, who lives in Jaipur. "All he would say when he visited us was `I am serving the nation'."

All that his family, which kept trying to get him released till he died, got was Rs 500 per month after his arrest, raised to Rs 2000 a few years later. After Kaushik's mother Amladevi died, even this meagre pension stopped.

"We don't want money. The battle was to get my brother back," said Rajeshwarnath.
"Now all we want is that his contribution should be officially recognised. But even that hasn't happened so far, and seems unlikely."

The protagonist of a novel by former intelligence chief Malay Krishna Dhar, Mission to Pakistan, is based on Kaushik.

[sum]

Amazing cover story in this edition of "The Week". Its on Indias biggest ever and most successful covert ops o foreign lands ( Nepal).

It seems that upto 400 Pakis/terrorists have been brought into India via this operation( usually end up getting caught in Gorakhpur after being drugged and brought into India ) and Nepal is almost sterilised of Paki connections sice last few years. Amazing info and nice interviews with ex-RAW and IB bosses. Unable to find a online link for the same!!!

Vikram Sood( in his interview)says the IC-814 was the "biggest success and greatest blunder of Pak" as RAW went on overdrive in Nepal and literally hunted down the Pakis like never before on foreign lands.

Added: Sidd has posted the same in Internal security thread. Enjoy.

[krishna_krishna]

Simply awesome , something to cheer about after reports on that organisation is weekened by the advsior :

http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/ ... Id=6362808

[rohitvats]

Simply awesome , something to cheer about after reports on that organisation is weekened by the advsior :

http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/ ... Id=6362808

Now,could this article be in response to the series of reports about infighting and interference in R&AW in last couple of weeks? Sort of good Psyops? But I ain't complaining.....

[Brando]

I find it oddly suspicious that an article so detailed is released so quickly after such a large covert operation. Usually Intelligence agencies have a very secretive attitude towards past operations and only with great difficulty and after a LOT of time do they allow such articles to be published.

[shyamd]

Its a tactic to drive fear into LeT, ISI. Everyone was aware of what was going on in Nepal, especially ISI. Its probably to show ISI, we are doing the same in Bangladesh...Beware. So, any ISI pals flying to Dhaka will be sweating through immigration and will be worried. Plots will be abandoned etc etc. It just increases the cost of operations against India. In Northern Ireland, British used these tactics well. IRA themselves admitted that 80% of plots were cancelled out of fear that teams were under surveillance and worried about informers/being caught etc.

The timing is interesting though, MK Dhar has not mentioned it in his books either, if I am not mistaken. This is probably a Psy-op.

[svinayak]

It just increases the cost of operations against India. In Northern Ireland, British used these tactics well. IRA themselves admitted that 80% of plots were cancelled out of fear that teams were under surveillance and worried about informers/being caught etc.

They will create alternate channels and meeting point.

Idea is to go after every new thing so that it is nipped at the bud.

[RoyG]

What exactly do we do with the pigs that aren't flipped by our intelligence agencies? Languish in jail forever?

[shyamd]

They will create alternate channels and meeting point.

Idea is to go after every new thing so that it is nipped at the bud.

Yes they will have to create alternate channels e.g madrassa's in terai region (Nepal). Didn't get your last point btw. But its costly to change plans, re-training etc.

But if it is difficult to operate in bangladesh, ISI would have lost money, logistics etc. So, flow is stemmed temporarily. But these moves need to be done.

If bangladesh is too difficult to operate in, then ISI will have to focus on Nepal and Myanmar/Gulf-UAE?

[kmkraoind]

I cannot understand why they are being fed and kept live, instead of dumping them. Keeping them alive is having keeping a live tumor in your body. When this was released like Masood Azhar it will create problems. Probably they need training from AP police, who specializes in eliminating unreformable scum.

[Rahul M]

If bangladesh is too difficult to operate in, then ISI will have to focus on Nepal and Myanmar/Gulf-UAE?

maldives, sri lanka.

[shyamd]

Rahul, they don't share a land border with India. So, its hard to illegally escape. That was why Nepal and Bangladesh were great for them. They could enter and leave India undetected. But I suppose they could use boats to go towards Maldives, making it much harder to intercept. That's the next major threat to smuggle arms and weapons into the country. It has already been going on, dawood &co have been doing it for a while. The explosives for 93 attacks were carried by boat. Its a major threat.

[Rahul M]

sri lanka India sea route is quite porous. it's not difficult to transfer a person aboard a fishing trawler in sea. maldives to India air route has already been used a lot by ISI. but sure, it's not the same as BD or nepal.

[Jarita]

A question
- Are we not compromising Indias interests by discussing everything so openly and laying it out for all to see

[RoyG]

^^no.

[Jarita]

Folks,
Some of you are old enough to remember but did Morarji Desai not blow the cover of several Indian agents in Pakistan?

[Jarita]

^^^ Thank you for the robust and detailed explanation as to why were are not.
That really allays all anxieties