LONDON: The former Soviet intelligence agency, KGB, had thoroughly penetrated the Indian Embassy in Moscow in the 1950s using a variety of "honey traps," including "female swallows" who presumably seduced diplomats there, according to a book on the agency's operations.

The book, authored by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, claimed that neither Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru nor the Intelligence Bureau (IB) realised how thoroughly the embassy in Moscow was being penetrated by the KGB.

An Indian diplomat codenamed PROKHOR was recruited, probably in the early 1950s, with the help of a female swallow, codenamed NEVEROVA, who presumably seduced him, according to the book titled The Mitrokhin Archive Volume II: The KGB and the World.

The KGB was clearly pleased with the material which PROKHOR provided which included on two occasions the Embassy codebook and reciphering tables. In 1954 it reportedly increased his monthly payments from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 4,000.

Another Indian diplomat, RADAR, was recruited in 1956, also with the assistance of a swallow, who on this occasion claimed — probably falsely — to be pregnant, the book claimed.

A third KGB swallow persuaded a cipher clerk in the embassy, ARTUR, to go heavily into debt so that he could compromise.

Expanded activities

The book said the KGB expanded its activities in India during the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1960s, KGB penetration of the Indian intelligence community and other parts of its official bureaucracy had enabled it to turn the tables on the IB, according to the book.

The book claimed that during the early years of Indian Independence, secret correspondence from Moscow to the Communist Party of India (CPI) was frequently intercepted by the IB in New Delhi.

According to the then head of the IB, B.N. Mullik, until the early 1950s, every instruction that was issued from Moscow had expressed the necessity and importance for the Indian Communist Party to overthrow the "reactionary"' Nehru Government.

Early in 1951, Mullik gave Nehru a copy of the latest exhortations from Moscow to the CPI, which contained a warning that they must not fall into Government hands. Nehru "laughed out loud and remarked that `Moscow apparently did not know how smart our Intelligence was'," the book claimed. "After the KGB became the main conduit for both money and secret communications from Moscow, high-level IB penetration of the CPI became much more difficult. As in other Communist parties, this secret channel was known only to a small inner circle within the leadership."

In 1959, the book claimed, a CPI leader agreed with the Soviet Embassy on plans to found an import-export business for trade with the Soviet bloc, headed by a senior party member codenamed DED, whose profits would be "creamed off" for party funds.

The CPI has already rejected as "concocted" the charges made against it in the book. — PTI

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