This is kind of interesting- CIA and Mossad penetrating India??
Date Posted: 30-Jun-2004
JANE’S INTELLIGENCE DIGEST – JULY 02, 2004
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India’s CIA spy scandal
India’s external intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has launched a major internal investigation for possible moles following the apparent defection of a senior officer recruited by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). JID’s regional intelligence correspondent reports on a scandal the Indian authorities are not keen to air in public.
The Indian government fears that the defection of Rabinder Singh, who held the senior rank of joint secretary and who headed the agency’s Southeast Asia department, is only the tip of the iceberg in a possible infiltration operation by the CIA and Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service. The focus of the investigation will be RAW, as well as the Intelligence Bureau, which handles counterintelligence and the Defence Intelligence Agency. The mole hunt is expected to extend to Indian embassies around the world where RAW personnel operate under diplomatic protection, particularly those who liaise with foreign intelligence agencies.
According to informed intelligence sources, several Indian operatives have already been suspended pending investigation. One senior intelligence official committed suicide on 13 June in New Delhi, although it is not yet clear whether this incident was linked to the current Singh investigation.
The scandal, which broke on 5 June, risks damaging India’s post-11 September 2001 strategic alliance with the USA and an earlier one with Israel, Washington’s key ally in the Middle East. It is also likely to result in New Delhi placing limitations on intelligence sharing with both the USA and Israeli, which could impact on the US-led ‘war on terrorism’.
India has decades of experience in combating such militants based in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There is speculation that the current scandal, which could extend throughout the Indian intelligence establishment, will also result in a wide ranging shake-up and re-organisation of the Indian intelligence agencies.
Telephone taps
Predictably, Indian security authorities are saying little about the Singh case, but domestic sources report that counterintelligence became suspicious of Singh about six months ago, putting him under surveillance and tapping his telephones. It is not clear what alerted security authorities, but he was confronted by counterintelligence officials on 19 April (shortly after he had been in the USA) and questioned about ‘sensitive files’ he had allegedly removed RAW’s headquarters in south New Delhi.
On 4 May, counterintelligence reported to RAW’s chief’s that Singh, whose wife and other family members live in the USA, had bank accounts in Singapore, Brunei and the USA. The report recommended that he should be arrested.
However, Singh apparently vanished on 14 May, the day before Indian authorities had planned to apprehend him on charges of spying for the CIA. He appears to have slipped across India’s northern border into Nepal, from where the CIA spirited him away to the USA.
The new government in Delhi is keen to keep the Singh affair under wraps. However, on 5 June Singh – a former major in the Indian Army – was formally dismissed as a RAW officer under Article 311 (2) of the constitution which enables the president to dismiss any officer without holding a formal departmental inquiry if such a probe is not considered to be in the national interest. There is no provision for a judicial review of such a decision.
Singh is the highest ranking Indian intelligence officer to defect. He joined RAW in 1977, and for some time in the 1980s was a field agent in West Asia and Western Europe. He was head of the RAW office in Amritsar, where his main task was gathering intelligence about the Pakistani military and Sikh militants being trained by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
In West Asia, Singh monitored terrorist groups, while in Europe he concentrated on keeping track of Sikh militants operating there. He was not considered to be a particularly capable analyst, but was given good marks for his work in the field.
Intelligence courses in the USA
It is not clear at what point Singh was recruited by the CIA, but it now seems likely that he had been working for the USA for some considerable time. Along with scores of other Indian intelligence personnel, Singh had attended counterterrorism courses in the USA and Israel over the years. During these foreign trips, Singh would frequently break away from his group, saying he was visiting friends or family. RAW investigators now believe he used these trips to meet his CIA handlers.
Other Indian intelligence officials who attended these seminars are understood to be under investigation on the grounds that both the CIA and Mossad appear to have used these occasions to recruit agents.
The Singh case is the third known instance of penetration of India’s intelligence establishment by the CIA. In 1987, random surveillance of a suspected CIA officer by Indian authorities resulted in a senior RAW official being arrested for spying for the US agency.
In 1996, the head of the Intelligence Bureau’s counterintelligence operations, and the former chief of security at the Ministry of External Affairs, was found to have a relationship with a female CIA agent in New Delhi. During the 1980s and 1990s, there were at least two unsuccessful attempts by the CIA to penetrate Indian intelligence. This time round, however, the agency would appear to have had more success – for a time, at least.
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