The Hindu : National : French intelligence penetrated PMO in 1980s: Ex-RAW official

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French intelligence penetrated PMO in 1980s: Ex-RAW official

The CIA often operated through the spy agencies of the West

Favours direct access of RAW, IB chiefs to Prime Minister
Brajesh Mishra diluted their role as advisers

NEW DELHI: A former top official of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has claimed that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) was penetrated by the French intelligence and the CIA had a mole in a spy agency of the country in the1980s.

“The French intelligence penetrated the PMO and shared with its West European and American counterparts the intelligence and documents collected by it. It had access to a large number of top secret reports sent by the R&AW and Intelligence Bureau (IB) to the Prime Minister on their sensitive operations,” the former Additional Secretary in Cabinet Secretariat B. Raman writes in his forthcoming book, The Kaoboys of R&AW - Down Memory Lane.

The CIA, knowing the “well-known distrust” of Indira Gandhi of the U.S. activities, often operated through the spy agencies of West European nations “till the detection of the penetration of the PMO by the French intelligence,” he says.

“Much later in 1987, the IB detected a CIA penetration of the R&AW’s office in Chennai to collect intelligence and documents about the R&AW’s activities in Sri Lanka.”

“Continuing weaknesses”

Observing that “continuing weaknesses” in India’s counter-intelligence capability in this period was a major cause of concern, Mr. Raman gives several examples, including one in which an Australian woman, working on a U.N.-sponsored project, was living with a police officer deputed to the R&AW in Delhi “without the Counter-Intelligence and Security Division of the organisation being aware of it for some time.”

Mr. Raman refers to several “Kaoboys,” as they were called after having either been handpicked by or having worked under one of the greatest names of Indian intelligence, Rameshwar Nath Kao, who headed the External Intelligence Division of the IB and later the R&AW.

Mr. Raman, who joined the IB’s External Intelligence Division in 1967 and subsequently moved to the R&AW after it came into being in September 1968, deals with a variety of subjects in the book to be released next week.

Favouring a direct access of the chiefs of both the R&AW and the IB to the Prime Minister, he says the role of these top spy officers was “diluted” over the years.

Mr. Raman says Brajesh Mishra, after becoming the National Security Adviser to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, “established the practice of all advice to the Prime Minister — either from the intelligence chiefs or other senior officials — going through him.”

“He [Mr. Mishra] diluted the role of the intelligence chiefs as advisers to the Prime Minister on national security matters and kept their roles restricted to the collection, analysis and assessment of intelligence and its dissemination.” — PTI

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