Public Intelligence Failures...

David Petraeus and his alleged extramarital lover
Image courtesy: therightscoop.com

Yesterday's news of David Petraeus's resignation as director of the CIA was surprising. Mostly because of Petraeus's seeming 'can do no wrong' image that I had built in my mind, from his tenure in the US Army.

TV news reports discussed the FBI (counterintelligence division's) investigation that exposed this affair after analysis of his personal email accounts. The woman in question, or her close aides, was suspected of having had access to them.

The unravelling of this episode set me thinking about (counter)intelligence failures for India. The one episode I vividly remember is that of Rabinder Singh of the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external spy agency, because this was all over the papers a decade ago. 

Rabinder Singh's disappearance from India, evading counterintelligence who were in pursuit, was far more high profile than any other that I can remember. This Wikipedia article Singh describes the Rabinder Singh affair very briefly, and this one by B Raman, former IB chief, goes into much more detail on this affair and some others. 

What surprised me was that Rabinder Singh was not a mole for Pakistan's ISI, but that of a 'friendly nation', the USA. Friendly or not, a lot of risk is taken to cultivate an asset with access to sensitive information. It was my impression earlier that the USA, with its liberal immigration policy, was a haven inside its borders for spies of other countries (it is; remember the exchange with Russia of long-term stationed spies recently?) who might make an entry through study visas, for example. The Rabinder Singh affair, where his sister, a US citizen, played a role in helping the CIA cultivate him, tells me that immigration is probably a useful thing for the US, giving it good reach into pretty much any country in the world through relatives and cultural links.

 

Hamid Gul, the director general of the ISI during wind-down of the US covert operation in Afghanistan in the late eighties, said in a TV interview, that when he was the DG, a copy of any paper that was signed in the PM's office in Delhi was on his desk before the ink dried. While Gul is a lot of empty bravado, I hope that level of ISI reach into India is not the case today. Especially since Pakistan is a lot weaker now than it was in the 80s and 90s.

A low-level Urdu translator in the Islamabad Indian high commission was compromised by a male ISI agent two years ago. An Indian army office on a training trip to Dhaka was compromised a year ago by an ISI woman agent, but admirably, this officer admitted to the compromise and alerted his superiors.

With all the technology in place today for national security and espionage, the importance of human intelligence has never been higher. How come one never hears of a mole that the RAW cultivated inside Pakistan or other countries in the world? Is the RAW really that good at having its moles evade counterintelligence? I highly doubt it.