Spies and the spycraft: Vappala Balachandran’s ‘Intelligence Over Centuries’

Sandeep Dikshit

A VETERAN commentator on intelligence, including for The Tribune, Vappala Balachandran, in his familiar dispassionate style, draws on his two decades with RAW to make a 360 degree tour de force of the art of intelligence. Here, in one book, are answers that many have been trying to find. There is the mundane, such as the real identity of John Le Carre’s Karla, the mysterious Soviet spymaster, but who in reality handled the top-level defectors from the US? He is none other than Rem Krassinikov, the famous spycatcher and disruptor of CIA’s operations in USSR.

Or, how much of gathering intelligence entails sordid honey traps, midnight break-ins and brutal killings? The thunder is stolen by covert ops, but 90 per cent of intelligence comes from open source intelligence or OSI. Ordinary, as it may seem, ignoring OSI can have disastrous consequences, such as the Mumbai attacks. Mumbai would lead one to ask about Galwan. Vappala concludes it was a major strategic assessment failure. As was Kargil.

Do intelligence agencies score more self-goals than successes? Sometimes. As when the Russian FSB conducted a survey that found that the Ukrainians would welcome the Russian Army! Or, the CIA’s projection of the USSR’s annual growth at 6 per cent. In reality, it was zero, which caused hardening of US policy towards the Soviet Union.

Which is the best intelligence agency in the world? Mossad? This may not appear flattering considering that so many of its covert ops backfired. The killing of PLO leader Abu Jihad in 1988 led to the first Intifada. The killing of Hezbollah supremo Abbas al-Musawi in 1992 brought in Hasan Nasrullah, who forced the Israeli army to withdraw from southern Lebanon.

Vappala reminds us of Nehru perusing Chanakya’s works to conclude that spies have a great role in maintaining sovereignty. India’s 21st century spycraft, he says, is a continuation of this oriental thinking supplemented with tech, which leapt after the advent of international terrorism as it became difficult for agents to penetrate hardened religious groups. Encryption is mentioned in ‘Kamasutra’. One of the 64 arts is secret writing by simple substitution, very similar to one-time pads used by intelligence agencies.

An astounding fact is that British intelligence was allowed access to IB’s records and outstation offices till Indira Gandhi put a stop to it in 1975. She must have been chuffed by the IB fearing an armed revolution if CPI (M) leaders visited Cuba. It needs to be further examined whether the “loud disconnect between Nehru’s strategic priorities and priorities pursued by the IB” were responsible for the fiasco with China.

Defectors, moles, double agents and traitors flit through as do private do-gooders like James Donovon, who facilitated the exchange of Soviet superspy Aldrich Ames for US pilot Francis Gary Powers, a role enacted by Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Bridge of Spies’. Those who inflict the worst damage are home traitors such as Britain’s Cambridge Five, our own Coomar Narain and the Larkin brothers, and two outed moles in RAW.

Intelligence gathering never remains still. It is getting buffeted by globalisation, which loosened the monopoly of states on communications technologies. The second challenge is to make them accountable. Despite former Minister Manish Tewari’s attempt to codify oversight that may never come to pass. Nor will the current shape of RAW, which now resembles the IB/Central Police Organisation model. But Vappala’s strident critique of the unethical US-Saudi-Pakistan covert ops in Afghanistan would indicate that the bulk of his serving colleagues might have their hearts in the right place.

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