Intelligence

At their masters� beck & call

The Statesman

Indian intelligence needs
to examine the rot within,
writes BIBHUTI BHUSAN NANDY

THE opening speech of the director, Intelligence Bureau, at the conference of the directors general of police and state intelligence last month revealed the downside of the Indian intelligence leadership. Addressing the Deputy Prime Minister not fewer than four times, the spymaster intoned: “Sir, we are beholden to you”. Whether the DPM relished it or not, this ‘crude display of servility’ has raised disturbing questions regarding intelligence-policy interface.

There is no question that policy makers have to continually project their intelligence requirements to the secret services concerned. But the interplay between the policy community and the intelligence community must not blur their distinct roles and separate functional identities, much less undermine the operational freedom and analytical objectivity of the intelligence agencies. The conduct of the US and British secret services in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq illustrates how an intelligence community �beholden� to policy-makers tailors its output to policy considerations. The CIA and the MI6 had no evidence that Iraq possessed any weapons of mass destruction or that Baghdad had any links with the Al-Qaida. Nonetheless, under unrelenting pressure from Washington�s neo-con warmongers � Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al. � the CIA sent doctored reports suggesting Baghdad was guilty on both counts. The MI6, for its part, �cherry-picked� and �sexed up� its product towards boosting the Bush-Blair anti-Saddam disinformation campaign as a prelude to launching the illegal and immoral attack on Iraq.
If the US and the British secret services, operating under well-established norms of accountability and legislative oversight, failed to resist the executive pressures, one can well imagine the vulnerability of their Indian counterparts, run solely on executive fiats, to political manipulations and misuse. The IB and the state Special Branches, willing privy to political cover-ups, provide their respective ruling cliques the tittle-tattles needed in framing political enemies and disciplining party renegades.
For the IB, counter-intelligence � meant to fight back foreign espionage, subversion, and sabotage � is no longer an operational priority.
Instead, the domestic political intelligence brief comprising such questions as whether Mr Karunanidhi has invited Mrs Sonia Gandhi to a political rally in Chennai or who among the Chhattishgarh BJP MPs have come under Mr Ajit Jogi�s seductive spell has become the Bureau�s preferred preoccupation.
To carry out this �onerous task�, the DIB resorts to extensive wire-tapping, violating all statutory norms and safeguards provided under the telecommunication laws and the Pota. Hyper-allergic even to the most constructive criticisms, the IB brass launches technical surveillance on politicians, journalists and media commentators at the slightest provocation, but lack of professional finesse and clumsy use of unsophisticated devices give away the operations. Since the publication of a critical piece of the present writer on Indian intelligence in The Statesman sometime back, he has had direct experience of such monkey business. Interaction between the DIB and the policy bosses in �politically sensitive matters� has inevitably a conspiratorial aura. For the sake of deniability, communications are done strictly by way of personal briefing and through unsigned notes, trusted personal aides on both sides acting as crucial adjuncts. These �special reports�, not counter-intelligence (CI) achievements, constitute the benchmark for performance appraisal in respect of the DIB and other senior IB officers. No wonder, no CI wizard has ever made it to the top slot. The whole system reeks of unmitigated politicisation. The only saving grace is that the IB is an unflappable chameleon. It changes colour with every change of government with supreme alacrity. Intense inter-agency rivalry and intra-agency factional feuds have always been the bane of Indian intelligence.
Tired of the fight between the then IB director MML Hooja and his number two, RN Kao, Indira Gandhi split the IB in 1968 and created the R&AW. The two services have hardly ever seen eye-to-eye on any important issue. In the Eighties, a R&AW operation snapped the fraternal ties the Ulfa, NSCN, PLA and Chin rebels had forged with a leading Myanmarese insurgent outfit that had sheltered, trained and armed them for years. As a result, in 1990, the Indian insurgent groups sought sanctuary and base facilities in Bangladesh. At inter-agency meetings and other government forums, the R&AW repeatedly pressed for tightening the security along the Indo-Bangla border, but the IB persistently rubbished this recommendation. Unsurprisingly, Bangladesh, in tandem with the ISI, soon began harbouring Northeast insurgents.
Recently, the killing of the dreaded Pakistani terrorist Gazi Baba by the BSF at Srinagar sparked off a fierce controversy between the para-military force and the IB. It was a top rate counter-terrorism operation by any standard, ranging from meticulously collecting tactical intelligence on the real-time movements and location of the target to the launching of the pinpointed lethal attack on his hideout.
The killing of Gazi Baba electrified the whole country, but the IB, clueless about his latest whereabouts, insistently questioned the outcome of the encounter, even after the terrorist�s widow had identified her husband�s dead body. Its credibility at stake, the BSF divulged to the electronic media many sensitive details of the operation to prove the bona fides of its claim. The pettifogging by the Bureau ended only after the DG BSF produced clinching evidence that satisfied the DPM that Gazi Baba had indeed been killed.
Time was when for intelligence officials secret fund was a sacred fund. Misappropriating or misusing it in any form was unthinkable. But reports of blatant misuse of SS fund are rampant today, especially in the R&AW. These range from misappropriation of agents� pay by case officers to pocketing of hefty sums against non-existent �special operations�, often in collusion with superior officers.
Fearing possible cuts in SS budget in the subsequent year, successive R&AW chiefs retained the unspent secret money by giving false certificates of expenditure year after year. As a result millions of dollars piled up in the �Secretary�s Almirah�.
Purloining from this unaccounted kitty has gone on unchecked for long. The worst case was the much talked about diversion of a huge amount by one Secretary (R) that secured him immediately on retirement a cushy constitutional position in the Northeast.
An inept, greedy and spineless leadership, operating in absolute secrecy, is at the root of the ills that afflict the Indian intelligence community.
The decomposition has run too deep into the system to be reversed, surely not until it is restructured, focusing on accountability based on strict parliamentary oversight. Going by the post-Kargil intelligence reforms fiasco, however, neither the government, nor the intelligence community is prepared to accept such a reform.

(The writer is former Additional Secretary, Research and Analysis Wing, Cabinet Secretariat, retired Director General, Indo-Tibetan Border Police and former National Security Adviser, Government of Mauritius)

February 6, 2004 at 10:19 PM in Espionage - general | Permalink | TrackBack (213) | Top of page | Blog Home