A fascinating insight by VIJAY BALAN into spycraft and intelligence in modern Indian history
Popular lore has spun intelligence gathering into tales of suave, tuxedoed men defeating enemy designs single-handedly while sipping martinis. Reality, however, is more prosaic. The largely workaday discipline has several facets.
Human Intelligence (HUMINT) is the art of gathering intelligence from human sources. While overt HUMINT is gathered by diplomats and military attaches, its covert version is performed by spies. As far back as World War II, Japanese intelligence and the Indian National Army (INA) created spy schools to train Indians in codes, evasion, secret inks and explosives to work behind British lines in India. In response, the British employed Indian double agents to neutralise the schools (my book, The Swaraj Spy).
Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) is the craft of intercepting the adversary’s electronic communications. In the Indian context, the super-secret Aviation Research Centre (ARC) and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) perform this task. A successful example is the interception, recording and ‘leaking’ of a conversation between President Musharraf and Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz during the Kargil conflict that, contrary to official denials, exposed the involvement of regular Pakistani forces in the conflict.
Counter intelligence (CI) detects, exploits and neutralises activities by foreign intelligence agencies within one’s country. The story of Rabinder Singh is fascinating. A R&AW officer, he became a double agent working for the CIA. With Indian CI hot on his heels, he fled to Nepal, from where he moved to the US in 2004: an example of the CI chess game played by the agencies of two otherwise friendy countries.
Psychological Operations (psy-ops) is the rather sterile moniker given to the ‘mind games’ played by countries to shape the perceptions of key opposition decision-makers. During the 1971 Bangladesh war, India para-dropped a battalion of about 800 men at Tangail to block Pakistani troops retreating to Dacca. While it was not possible to photograph the airdrop in action, an intrepid officer in the Ministry of Defence, Ramamohan Rao, released a picture from an earlier exercise in Agra to the press. He carefully captioned the picture, “Troops of the Indian Para Brigade being airdropped over East Pakistan”. While it was true that the inserted battalion was part of the brigade, the perception was created that an entire brigade of 5,000 men had been dropped! The Pakistani commander, Lt. Gen. Niazi, later pointed to that picture as one of the reasons for his surrender.
Imagery Intelligence (IMINT) once relied on reconnaissance aircraft with cameras flying over enemy territory. The task has been taken over by satellites flying in low earth orbits (LEOs) in recent years. Analysis of satellite imagery is a highly specialised art. Many have seen images from open sources (as opposed to classified documents) during the Chinese intrusions in Ladakh in 2020. An interesting example of defeating IMINT comes from the 1998 nuclear tests at Pokhran (Operation Shakti). An earlier planned nuclear test in 1995 had been cancelled because of detection by US satellites. For the 1998 tests, India took steps to avoid detection. While the exact counter-moves may never be known, India is reported to have timed its activities at the site based on calculated orbits, used the cover of night and arranged dug-out sand to match prevailing wind patterns.
Cyber Intelligence is the youngest of the disciplines, and has both offensive and defensive elements that go beyond intelligence gathering. Armies of smart engineers writing code in computer rooms try to hack into the enemy’s military and civilian systems, while at the same time protecting one’s own networks from intrusion. Some countries, like the US, have created dedicated Cyber Commands. For obvious reasons, information on successful offensive and defensive operations in this domain are hard to come
by. India, with its large reservoir of software talent, may perhaps
develop into a major power in this field; this is certainly a space to
watch.
