The age of the midnight knock

Within the space of three years after September 11, 2001, the US had set up its National Counter Terrorism Centre when the Congress enacted the "Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act" on December 17, 2004. The Act also created the office of the Director National Intelligence (DNI) to supervise and coordinate the functioning of the various intelligence organisations in the US and also advise the President. The NCTC is a part of the office of the DNI but independent of other intelligence organisations. It operates in partnership with the CIA, FBI, Departments of State, Defence and Homeland Security and with agencies abroad. It is the principal adviser to the DNI on intelligence operations and analysis relating to counterterrorism.

The British Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre is slightly different but like the US NCTC, is not empowered to have any operational activity, seize and arrest, as has been wrongly claimed by some in authority here. The CIA, however, continues to maintain its own Counter terror centre for operations abroad. In India, the R&AW does not have a counter terror centre for operations abroad.

No one is safe: Fears of a secret agency being empowered to arrest,
search and interrogate are real and are an anathema to a democratic
dispensation
Our proposed NCTC, after more than 60 years of terrorism, is the creation of an executive diktat without any parliamentary debate or legislation. It is a successor to the Multi Agency Centre, which never really took off because of turf rivalries. This new centre, which will be subordinate to the Intelligence Bureau, will have indirect powers to arrest, search and interrogate. The caveat that the suspect would have to be produced without any unnecessary delay is an elastic concept.

Arrests and detentions on the basis of suspicion under the supervision of an intelligence agency run the risk of misuse and overuse especially when our data banks about individuals are still inadequate. At the same time, the high powered and state-of-the-art NCTC will have to continue to rely on inexact human intelligence provided by ill trained and under manned forces in the field. The IB and not the NCTC, thus becomes ultimately responsible for follow up action. This would include action relating to international terrorism or acting purely on its own intelligence at other times. Thus, nearly four years after the Mumbai 2008 terrorist attacks, we are not sure when and what kind of NCTC we will have.

The NCTC is meant to be a service agency feeding the government as an interface and coordinating intelligence efforts without running those operations. Logically, the proposed NCTC should not become a super intelligence agency and following from this, take over the operational role of intelligence organisations. On the other hand, intelligence agencies should not become part of the NCTC or even subordinate to it. This would not only hamper intelligence effort that extends beyond intelligence on terrorism, and even warp results, which is far more dangerous.

Modern terrorism transcends multiple frontiers, languages and religions. Counter-terrorism needs human intelligence derived from a high level of multiple skills and expertise. This would mean skills in languages Indian and foreign, cyber and communication skills, knowledge about international banking, use of WMDs and CBW.

Countering modern day terrorism needs more than just guns and bullets or fancy trappings. The urge and, at times, the need to curb freedoms in the name of security is always there although we should accept that there would have to be some limits to liberties in this ruthless war.

Intelligence agencies are not human rights organisations. Their game is ruthless, requires a high level of deviousness, tenacity and the ability to subvert by whatever means. It is always dangerous to give such agencies the power to arrest and seize. Fears of a secret agency being empowered to arrest search and interrogate are real and are anathema to a democratic dispensation. It is not enough to declare that the present government does not have any authoritarian ambitions but the system proposed must have permanent inbuilt safeguards. Finally, the proposed NCTC should not be located in any of the Ministries or its departments.
Perhaps the NSCS under the NSA would be the best location.

One would shudder to think of all the possible misuses that this provision in the executive order allows. 'The dark age of the midnight knock' and 'enforced disappearances' would have arrived.

Source : Mid-Day Mumbai , 29th February 2012 ,Vikram Sood , a former chief of Resesrach and Analysis Wing (RAW)

Networking Intelligence

The National Intelligence Grid will be an umbrella organisation of investigating agencies providing a crucial centralized data system

KEY POINTS

· It is unclear how the National Intelligence Grid (NIG) will differ from the National Counter Terrorism Centre
· With a Parliamentary form of government and a Cabinet Committee on Security empowered to take decisions, ownership of the proposed NIG will be problematic
· While it is not necessary to replicate the NIG that has been set up in the US it is a useful template for the Indian system.

India is located in a volatile and unstable area surrounded by either inimical or failing states. The country faces an ongoing terrorist threat sponsored by Pakistan, home grown insurgencies and a rising power with which we have fought a war and with which we still do not have a demarcated border. In India, we face internal ethnic insurgencies, ideological upheavals and worsening socio-economic problems emanating from exploding expectations and imbalances that arise from a rapidly developing economy. In addition, today’s enemies have no borders and they have the advantage that they are usually invisible till they perpetrate their acts. The rapid growth of science and technology has altered the way future wars will be fought and how terrorists will equip themselves. Lethality will have a different meaning ranging from nuclear bombs in state arsenals to dirty bombs in the hands of terrorists, state sponsored cyber warfare to use of cyber technology by terrorists and the use of modern communications by the state and non-state actors. Speed, miniaturisation and lethality make for that extra surprise that the state has to match in case it has to deal with 21st century threats. As the scope and scale of threats increases with the passage of time, it is for nations to understand and appreciate fully this threat and then take necessary steps to protect the state’s vital interests including its population.

Modern Terrorism

Modern terrorism is driven not just by ideology, religion or ethnicity but ultimately monetary spin offs weigh in heavily with the sponsors and practitioners. The new economy of terror and international crime has been calculated to be worth US $ 1.5 trillion (and growing), which is big enough to challenge Western hegemony. All the illegal businesses of arms and narcotics trading, oil and diamond smuggling, charitable organisations that front for illegal businesses and black money operations, form part of this burgeoning business. Narcotics smuggling generates its own separate business lines, globally connected with arms smuggling and human trafficking, and all dealt with in hundred dollar bills.

The buzzword today is globalisation, including in the business of terrorism. Armed groups who have linked up internationally, financially and otherwise, have been able to operate across borders with Pakistani jehadis doing service in the US, France or Australia while Uzbek and Chechen insurgents have taken shelter in Pakistan. The manner in which Pakistani terrorist organizations have morphed and amalgamated in recent months gives an indication of their malleability and adaptability as well as control exercised over them by the state. This only exacerbates problems for the Indian intelligence and security services, including the counter terrorist. Indian security needsThere is no knowing the origin or nature of the next threat or terrorist attack. If September 11, 2001 was an act of airborne terror, the November 26, 2008 was an act of maritime terror, in its infancy. Today’s pirates off the coast of Somalia could be tomorrow’s terrorists acting across India’s 7500 kilometre coastline. Judging from recent experience, we need to be prepared to deal with state sponsored cyber warfare.

Historically, the Indian state has sought to improve the security systems episodically and not based on worked out threat perceptions for the future. The Chinese invasion led to the creation of the ARC, SSB and SFF. The Pakistani invasion of 1965 and the Mizo uprising on 1966 led to the creation of RAW. For years nothing new was created till the Kargil invasion which led to the creation of the DIA, NTRO and MAC. The Mumbai attack November 2008 led to the creation of the NIA, the proposed NCTC and there is talk of creation of National Intelligence Grid. Since the Kargil invasion of 1999, there has been a tendency to replicate US systems in India.

The US has an elaborate National Intelligence Grid. The blue print of the US Intelligence Community called the “500 Day Plan for Integration and Collaboration” describes the essence of the problem with these words “IC personnel have not fully developed the mutual trust or the information sharing networks that enable a common IC culture of collaboration. In today’s environment, the wide array of intelligence professionals with varied backgrounds and experiences need to work together with greater access and agility and collaborate on improvements and mission critical problems as a matter of course to achieve superior results.” It seeks to accelerate information sharing, build acquisition excellence, modernise practices and seeks to clarify the US DNI’s authorities. The US NIG has a different purpose, in that it seeks to integrate the Intelligence Community. The Indian system, envisages establishment of a huge data bank.

The first task is to get the NIG off the ground by May 2011. As one understands from what has appeared in print so far, the NIG is an ambitious programme which seeks to provide complete data about any individual. This would include land records, internet logs, phone records, gun records, driving license, insurance and income tax records, relating to rail and air travel, phone calls, bank accounts, credit card transactions and PAN cards. This data would be available to eleven government agencies like the IB, RAW, MI, DRI, and so on. All authorised agencies like the Railways, Income Tax, Air India, the state police and even banks, insurance and telecom companies will have access to this data. This is to be linked with the Unique Identification system to be established by February 2011.


There are a few essential requirements as we go in for improving our security systems.

1) The system must be adapted to Indian conditions with care being taken not to simply copy systems followed in other countries, notably the US and the UK.

2) It is no use forming new agencies unless the existing ones are first spruced up. Intelligence and police reforms form part of a general reform.

3) There must be a quick response mechanism in position from the Centre down to the point of action in the state.

4) It is not enough to have a new system unless there is reform bottom up and not merely creation of state-of-the-art superstructures.

5) Downstream, in tackling insurgencies and terrorism it is not enough to have a muscular response. Intelligence agencies need to analyse and evaluate the data and information, all in rapid time keeping in mind the high use of technology and cyber warfare from threats emanating from state adversaries.

6) Since there is a multiplicity of specialised intelligence agencies, there has to be a clearly and legally stipulated charter of duties for each agency who would make their demands on the NIG in accordance with their charters.

7) There has to be effective and imaginative media management.

8) It is necessary to create a culture in the Intelligence Community that creates co-ordination and collaboration – never an easy goal- and to be able to feed multiple consumers in real time.

9) Further, there has to be effective co-ordination between the agencies and among the various ministries and departments of the government.

10) In our structure where law and order is a state subject, there has to be a legislative enactment that empowers the centre that compels the states to cooperate either for data sharing, or follow up on intelligence inputs

11) Finally, co-ordinating and supervising all these intelligence agencies would have to be an Intelligence Co-ordinator as distinct from the National Security Adviser who is really the chief consumer of the finished product and then therefore the principal advisor.

Judging from the manner in which we organise our national census and our election cards, there are reasons to be skeptical about our ability to achieve this much needed data bank by the stipulated date, assuming that this has cabinet clearance. That said, there have to be safeguards against misuse of this data both by those managing it and those seeking the data. The NIG is located in a Presidential form of government in the US where the ownership of this system lies with the President. In India, with a parliamentary form of government and a cabinet committee on security empowered to take decisions, ownership of a proposed National Intelligence Grid (NIG) is going to be problematic. This is a subsequent issue.

It is not clear how NIG would be distinct from the NCTC, would it duplicate its data or will it merely superimpose itself. The personnel managing the NIG would need training and experience both of which have their own unavoidable gestation period. These are grey areas that need to be sorted out. Above all the NIG must be manned by trained men and women and not birds of passage.

It is not necessary to replicate the US system in its entirety but this is a useful launching pad to adapt to the Indian situation. In our case, the mere establishment of a NIG will not be enough unless there is a simultaneous root and branch bottom up approach simultaneously.


Source : Defence and Security of India,Vol 3(1), August 2010

Laws of Discretion

An Efficient system of checks and balances is essential to monitor intelligence coordination in India

It was a torrid month for Indian intelligence agencies, when the two issues of phone tapping and the arrest of an Indian diplomat for spying for Pakistan made prime time news. The media’s over-exuberance in the search for TRP ratings has meant that we have revealed far more than was necessary without realising the permanent damage we can cause to our security systems. This was Mumbai 2008 revisited. There were bureaucratic turf wars and cover-ups leading to lurid stories of high intrigue and low cunning. Quite apparently, there were no government or editorial guidelines that suggested discretion. Ultimately, the revelations made us look like a bunch of national sillies.

It is true that all systems are liable to misuse and abuse; but this does not mean that this is rampant or kosher. Further, to assume that once a new system of surveillance has been acquired it will be misused with a vengeance is a fallacy, just as much as it is to assume that a new weapons system acquired by the government will be misused against its own people. Recent examples of the phone tapping of some political figures based on the evidence published do not indicate that there was a concerted effort to tap their phones. Instead these were cases of inadvertent tapping as a result of what the system calls random search. This is a practice resorted to when the phone number of the quarry is not known or when the search has to be widened. A sustained effort would have meant logged records of various conversations over a period of time with their transcripts. In the absence of this, it is difficult to accept that there was either a government decree to tap or that there was a rogue element within the intelligence apparatus who was indulging in a private escapade. Besides, disclosures like the location of a National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) hub in or near Mumbai is useless knowledge to an Indian but vital for a terrorist looking for such locations to cripple Indian capabilities when required.

Amidst all the furore, the accountability of intelligence became the presumed cure-all buzzword for all the ills — real and imagined — of the system. The underlying and incorrect assumption of this demand is that intelligence agencies are laws unto themselves and that unless they are made accountable there would be no improvement.

The question that flows from this is: accountable to whom, under what rules and to what extent? In India we don’t even have a legal charter for the agencies. Only when there’s a legal charter that clearly demarcates the activities of all the agencies can they be held accountable. One suspects that this is the most difficult first step but the principle is simple, there cannot be accountability without a legal charter.

Oversight and empowerment should be concurrent. In the case of intelligence agencies this means oversight to assess overall performance in relation to the charter but not scrutiny of operational matters, strategic decisions, source, covert operations or funds. All these would remain with the head of the organisation within the scope of the charter. External micromanagement is disastrous and intelligence organisations need functional autonomy in personnel management. The appointment of the head of the service would be the prerogative of the head of the government but there is need for transparency in such appointments.

Another aspect of accountability must be considered. Here it is relevant to quote from a work of fiction and since fiction today reflects reality, it is apt. Vince Flynn in his book Separation of Power, says, “There was a definite need for congressional oversight, but there was also need for black operations. Politicians were politicians after all, and throughout the history of governments they have proven incapable of keeping secrets. By virtue of their need to talk, raise money and peddle influence, all but a few were simply unable to keep their mouths shut. This was the standard feeling among the intelligence and military types in Washington…”

Flynn reflects the true state of affairs in a country like the US, which has strong traditions of security management post-World War II and a presidential form of government with two major parties. We have seen our parliamentarians function inside and outside Parliament, and are aware of midnight deals before votes in Parliament. We also know that in a weak coalition, multi-party parliamentary form of government, various considerations, other than competence, determine the formation of parliamentary committees or ministries. These are the realities of our vulnerabilities.

Besides, oversight of the performance would not be enough unless other simultaneous steps are taken. The legislated charter would also need empowerment of the organisational heads, autonomy of function — both operational and administrative — which does not tie down the organisation to the fortunes of the bureaucracy elsewhere in the system. Earlier one had pleaded that the media should self-regulate but this apparently is not possible. We, therefore, need to introduce Western practices requiring media regulation on matters of national security.

Reforms and check-backs are necessary at all times to ensure quality intelligence and must not be episodic. Oversight has to be in the hands of those who have empathy and understanding about the business of intelligence and not with those who are ignorant, indifferent or even inimical. Finally, since accountability and oversight are so eminently desirable, all arms of the government should be covered and there should be no exclusions in the list.

The question, however, is — are we ready for this or are we, without thinking this through and in our zeal for control and power, merely tilting at windmills and conjuring cures worse than the disease?

Source : Hindustan Times , 13th May 2010 , Former RA&W Chief

Hacking Defences

The United States launched its experimental USAF X37B space plane on April 24, which is capable of doing Mach 20 and has been described as the first step towards the militarisation of space. The Russians claim they have a similar programme. Simultaneously, the US is developing missiles that travel at Mach 5 and would be capable of reaching anywhere in the world in an hour with their conventional payload. This Prompt Global Strike programme has the Russians and the Chinese worried as the US prepares for dominance in a possible non-nuclear world. These are the big ticket items being designed by the US to protect itself in the future where the emphasis is on size and speed.

Miniaturisation is the other catchword in military technology. At today’s rate of progress, we will see doubling of progress every 10 years, which will be the equivalent of a century’s progress. American scientists like Ray Kurzweill predict that by the end of 2020, artificial intelligence would be indistinguishable from human intelligence. Given that there are no limits to human creativity, to the power of ideas and also to human depravity, the use of this power will have wide consequences for mankind. As Winston Churchill once said: “The empires of the future will be the empires of the mind”.

America’s defence department has begun to use technology that creates virtual-reality surroundings in which to train their soldiers. Cellphones are being introduced in clothing that project sound directly to the ears. Computers in a few years from now will become essentially invisible. They will be embedded in our furniture and environment.

Smarter weapons that “think” and are designed for precise missions to maximise damage and minimise own-side casualties is the trend. The state-of-the-art Predator-armed UAV could become rapidly out of date with this new minitiarised technology, where future UAVs would be the size of a bird and much more lethal. The Pentagon’s research has been towards Future Combat Systems — smaller, lighter, faster, more lethal and smarter. The US Army plans Brigade Combat Teams, with unmanned robotic systems where a battalion of 120 military robots is fitted with swarm intelligence software to enable it to mimic the organised behaviour of insects. They are even developing Smart Dust, which are devices smaller than birds and bumblebees, not bigger than a pinhead. Once developed and deployed, swarms of millions of these could be dropped in enemy zones to provide detailed surveillance intelligence and also support offensive military operations.

In another part of the world, in West Asia, the Al Qaeda began its new audio production which enables downloading jihadist propaganda to iPods for believers. A prospective jihadi no longer has to go to a remote madrasa in Balochistan or Fata (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) in Pakistan to imbibe this fervour. He can get it online. These two events — the X37B and iPods for jihad — only means that while the exponential growth of science and technology might make life comfortable for us, it does not necessarily make us more secure. Ironically it also means that the US spends billions to protect itself while the terrorist merely takes the low-cost spinoffs from this technology to harm the West. In turn, the West spends trillions more to develop techniques to protect itself against these attacks.

In March 2007, the CIA began working on a digital library of national intelligence information that would have everything from raw data to analytical information. This is expected to be even bigger than the Library of Congress, which today is the world’s largest, with 120 million books/journals stored on 850 km of shelves, with 10,000 books added daily. Besides, there is such tremendous information overload that agencies have difficulty keeping track of the electronic traffic that is out there. Sixteen US intelligence agencies employ 45,000 analysts to track and analyse this traffic. The first text message was sent in Britain in 1992, while more than four billion messages are sent daily now. This does not take into account Twitter and other social networking sites. There are 1.6 billion people online today, and 60 per cent of the world’s population of 6.6 billion uses cellphones, up from 12 per cent in 2000. Huge amounts of this work has been outsourced in the United States to private companies who collect and transmit the data to produce the finished product of intelligence. A new intelligence-industrial complex, similar to the earlier military-industrial complex, operates in the US.

Intelligence and surveillance will also increasingly be electronic. It is no longer necessary to use “plumbers” to break into opponents’ headquarters as Richard Nixon did in 1972; all this can be done online, without any legalistic rigmarole. However, so can the terrorist access computers through WAN (wide area network). Technology makes this possible. Cyber espionage has become the new game. The Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto detailed how a China-based operation, which it called the Shadow Network, pilfered documents from the highest levels of the Indian defence ministry, National Security Council secretariat, diplomatic missions and think tanks such as the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. The attacks were all over India, targeting Indian military formations and Air Force bases. The base of operations was Chengdu, in the heart of China.

China began developing its cyberspace doctrine and capabilities since the late 1990s as part of its military modernisation programme. This doctrine of active defence, under which China should be ready to respond to aggression immediately, emphasises the development of cyberwarfare capabilities. The focus of this strategy of asymmetric warfare requires developing capabilities that circumvent US superiority in command-and-control warfare. The idea is to weaken the critical importance of the cyber domain to America’s military and economic power. Chinese hackers succeeded in high-level penetration of target computer systems, data has been stolen from foreign governments, financial and commercial institutions. Non-governmental organisations like the Falun Gong and Tibetan groups in India were not spared either.
Pakistan too had begun to develop its cyberwarfare capabilities in 2000 with a project interestingly named Operation Badr. The idea was to raise 313 “Java Mujahideen architects” across the world and 10,000 developers. Whether this is just an obsession that Pakistan’s military rulers have with religious symbolism or it signifies battles of another kind is difficult to say, but it is also difficult to ignore — considering the contribution the Pakistani state has made to terror in India and globally.

The future, with all its possibilities and dangers, is upon us. One wonders if we are ready to handle this.

Source : Asian Age , 29th April 2010 , Vikram Sood ( Former Head of RA&W)

National Counter Terrorism Centre in the Indian Context

It took the United States less than three years after the Twin Tower attack in September 2001 to get its National Counter Terrorism centre up and away. From our first major internationally organised terror attack in Mumbai in March 1993 it took us 17 years to think of setting up a similar centre. During these 17 years we went through a series of internationally organised high profile terror attacks. We did establish another agency as we always did after every crisis. After Kargil we established a Multi Agency Centre as recommended by the G C Saxena Intelligence Task Force. This failed to deliver because like all things Indian, the concept was wonderful but the implementation was flawed. It merely ended up being another office of the Intelligence Bureau.

The urgency to do something was apparent after the Mumbai massacre of 2008. Like the WTC attack in the US Mumbai 26/11 was about “us” because there was no such empathy after the several high profile serial attacks in the country. We hurriedly established the NIA in order perhaps to be seen to be doing something although this organisation was in no way going to stop terrorist attacks. Now that there is talk that an Indian version of the NCTC is on the anvil, many wonder what shape it would take.

There are two aspects that it must not attempt. One, aspire to become a super-intelligence organisation and following from this, take over the operational aspects of intelligence organisations. Intelligence agencies have far wider briefs than only ensuring national security arising from terrorist threats. What it must, however, do is to co-ordinate, evaluate and analyse all intelligence reports that relate to terrorism. The NCTC must then decide on a course of action and then task the intelligence agency or any special forces that are available for whatever action is necessary to abort the terrorist mission. Intelligence agencies must not become a part or even subordinate to the NCTC. They would function best in their existing role with greater co-ordination (not the easiest of tasks, admittedly) at the NCTC.

The US NCTC, for instance, integrates all foreign and domestic analysis to produce detailed assessments designed to support senior policymakers and other members of the policy, intelligence, sigint, elint, techint, law enforcement, defense, homeland security, and foreign affairs communities. These include items for the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) and the daily National Terrorism Bulletin (NTB). Besides this, the US NCTC is required to conduct strategic operational planning for CT activities, integrate all instruments of national power, including diplomatic, financial, military, intelligence, and law enforcement to ensure unity of effort. This is a tough ask and sounds difficult even in theory.

Despite the best of regulations, problems of co-ordination, managing ego battles and struggles for turf will always remain. It would thus be left to the genius of leadership to handle these. The best of superstructures will be rendered ineffective if the intelligence inputs are below par and the response mechanism from detection, pre-emption, prevention and destruction are flawed. Sound intelligence is a powerful tool in the hands of decision makers but they also must be understood that there are limitations. It cannot predict the future with certainty but can, with experience and understanding of the subject, provide the ability to see behind the wall. In the case of terrorism, where the enemy is invisible and unpredictable, this is the most difficult task.
The NCTC should be located institutionally in the system independent of personalities involved. In India we may think of a Ministry of Internal Security with both the Coordinator of Intelligence and Intelligence Chiefs reporting to the Prime Minister with sections of their organisations co-ordinating with this new Ministry.

Source : Hard News , March 1, 2010 Vikram Sood , Former Head of R&AW from 2001-2003

NSA: PM’s adviser, not superspook

Shivshankar Menon comes to his new assignment as National Security Adviser (NSA) with many proven credentials, but the one advantage that may have slipped past the notice of many is that he is about 15 years younger than his predecessor. This makes him more contemporary with his international peers and they will speak to each other in the same idiom. In some ways this is a generational shift in a country where wisdom is considered directly proportional to age. America’s NSA is the personal appointee of the President and does not have to go through the usual route of getting congressional approval for his appointment. This is for good reason because no Chief Executive and no country can afford to have the two of them functioning on different wavelengths. Mr Menon has taken charge at a very crucial time for India as the next decade will determine whether we finally make it to the Big League or will be destined to remain a potential global power — the perennial best man. Many of the geopolitical problems that confront India are well known.

The United States, still by far the strongest military, economic, technological and cultural power, has begun to face the reality of limitations of military power and that the taller the rhetoric, the harder the fall. There is a realisation and sotto voce admission among America’s leaders that they can no longer act unilaterally. China, possibly acting under premature hubris, seeks space for itself while the US finds it is unable to have the kind of free run it had earlier. It is this assessment that may have led to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s formulation of the Group of Two (China and US) as global arbiters. US President Barack Obama had leant backwards while in Beijing when he accommodated China in South Asia. Taking a cue from this, influential US thinktanks have now suggested that for US policies to succeed in Afghanistan, it is essential to solve the India-Pakistan tangle of Kashmir and for that it is necessary to involve China in a tripartite arrangement.

A significant power shift is likely to take place in Asia in the next few years. Whether or not India can make the triangle of US-Russia-China from Lisbon to Vladivostok into a rectangle that includes India will depend on India as much as the other players. There is a great churning of the oceans that has begun in Asia with the rise of China, the emergence of India and reawakening in Japan. The next few years will see continued struggle and competition for markets and vital resources that will shape military policies of nations and choke points will remain unstable.
The Indian Ocean has been an attraction for most empires in the past and the Czarist thrust for warm waters, or the later Soviet thrust into Afghanistan reflected this. Today the Indian Ocean acquires another strategic importance as it provides vital sea lanes to China and the rest of East Asia. China, despite the vastness of the Pacific, feels landlocked without control over the Indian Ocean. Its deep pockets have helped it acquire vital energy sources and routes that take gas through the Central Asian land mass into China, but the vast majority of energy-producing countries — Russia and West Asia — still look to the West as their main buyers. India ranks a poor third in this race.

Our own neighbourhood is likely to remain unstable and Afghanistan will not get sorted out in the foreseeable future, much less by mid-2011. It is not known how many and for how long will the Western forces remain in Afghanistan. Talks with elements of the Taliban have begun at some level. Pakistan’s quest for "strategic depth" — which at best means control over the Pushtun on both sides of the Durand Line — will keep the region unsettled and increasingly Talibanised. Consequently, Pakistan will, in the next few years, become increasingly irrational in its attitude, and flail before it threatens to fail.

Handling our new-found relationship with the United States and our old friendship with Russia is going to be a challenge and an opportunity. We must accept that the US, whatever its level of desire of friendship with India, will overlook Pakistan’s India-specific delinquencies and will not even remotely jeopardise its own interests in and with China. In fact, on Pakistan, there seems to be a strong level of understanding between the two even though this may become the next battleground between both of them in the unfolding Great Game. The US has concluded that the only points of departure between the US and India are on trade, climate change and Iran. They do not think that India’s sensitivities on Pakistan’s continued support to terrorism in India and the US continuously soft-pedalling this is a serious point of departure. Behind all the conviviality and bonhomie with the US, there lurk suspicions about the various defence-related acronyms like CISMOA (Communications Interoperability Security Memorandum of Agreement), EUMA (End-Use Monitoring Agreement), Logistical Services Agreement (LSA) and Basic Exchange Cooperation Agreement (BECA), and their small print.

Pakistan is unlikely to give up its policy of using terrorism as a force multiplier as long as its leadership does not have to pay a price for this. The tactics of terrorism will become more complicated where attacks will be planned in one country, financed from another, terrorists recruited elsewhere in another country and targeted somewhere else; they will be more sophisticated and lethal in the next few years; cyber-terror by terrorists and cyberwarfare by states will be more common. There are many players in the field today — the fanatics, criminals, drug traffickers and human traffickers — which complicates even further the task of intelligence agencies.

Other global and regional issues will impact India’s security. Issues like climate change, terrorism, energy security, water shortages, food security, migration, and some purely our own — our abysmal law and order, leading to insurgencies in many cases, health, education and infrastructure issues — will ultimately create security problems. Rapid economic growth will create socio-economic pressures arising from exploding expectations and demographic pressures on urban areas.

In a tangled and shrinking world, where various — and at times — contradictory interests coalesce, with different triangular or quadrilateral groupings overlapping, the new NSA will have to have the nimbleness of a Mizo Cheraw dancer, but one is sure he is surefooted enough for these intricacies. It will be useful to remember that the job is about advising the Prime Minister on national security in its widest connotation, which includes internal as well as external security matters. The NSA’s job requirement should not include running the security and intelligence apparatus. The NSA is the ultimate consumer of intelligence, not its producer. If the NSA inadvertently becomes the man responsible for the product, then he ends up being its salesman, however shoddy the product. Instead, he should be looking for the finished product and customising his requirements.

Source : Asian Age , 29th Jan 2010

Too Official to be complete picture

BOOK REVIEW : The Defence of the Realm –The Authorised History of MI5
by Christopher Andrew
1032 pages ,Allen Lane,Penguin

Christopher Andrew’s authorised history of the UK’s intelligence service MI5 whizzes past some of its big embarrassments

They used to say that if you do not want too many people to read your report then the best way is to make it so long, pack it with annotations and obfuscate at crucial points so that sooner than later the reader will lose interest. After 1100 pages based on information carefully gleaned from 400,000 Security Service (MI-5) files, Christopher Andrew’s monumental work - The Defence of the Realm - is the authorised history of the service. One wonders though how many will actually sit down to read this. Andrew’s book is a little longer that Stephen Dorril’s study of Fifty Years of Special Operations of MI-6 (SIS) published about ten years ago. Obviously the SIS got their book in first maybe because they have a shorter history.


Since it is an authorised version, which has been carefully scrutinised for clearance, it is natural that any information that would jeopardise national security interests has been excluded from the book, consistent with the policy of the Neither Confirm nor Deny principle. Andrew discusses the Hollis (DG MI-5 1956-65) saga in a few stray paragraphs strewn all over the book, Philip Knightley is more detailed about the suspicions relating to Hollis in his book on British intelligence - The Second Oldest Profession. This is the difference between an authorised version which is what Andrew’s book and Knightley’s book which could be defined as an authoritative version. Similarly, the 1996 defection of David Shayler and his disclosures of some operational details was a major embarrassment for the service but Andrew gives this a page and a half. Knightley has more on Shayler.


Shayler’s disaffection was at a time when cutbacks and constant changes in the mid-90s had affected morale. Some of the changes made at that time had improved efficiency but had affected camaraderie in the service, which is an intelligence service’s main asset.


There are the expected episodes of the suspicions that Prime Minister Wilson was suspect, apart from the treachery of the Magnificent Five - Philby, Burgess, Blunt, Maclean and Cairncross. Andrew speaks of the excessive paranoia that pervaded an intelligence organisation when moles were discovered or suspected to exist with spies spying on each other. In such an atmosphere of intrigues and conspiracies, real and imagined fears abound and, at times, are undistinguishable. The CIA counter –intelligence chief, James Angleton was an enthusiastic contributor the paranoia that gripped the British service those days. As Peter Wright, one of the great supporters of the conspiracy theories within the service, later admitted that as the scent of treachery lingered in every corridor, fears fed easily on the KGB defector Anatoli Golitsyn’s bizarre theories. It becomes necessary to ensure that intelligence agencies are carefully regulated so that while they remain externally ruthless and efficient against the enemy they do not end up subverting the very state that they are supposed to serve.


The Cambridge spies happened because intelligence of the period was distracted by the German threat and ignored the inroads the KGB had made into the system and the idealism of the few. The Nineties were difficult years for the service with the disappearance of the Communist threat. As a result the service seemed to lose its coherence and relevance till the Islamic extremist threat surfaced. This happens in all intelligence agencies because when the threat is not evident no one wants to think about it and prepare for it. When the threat eventually surfaces apparently unannounced, the agencies get the blame for not anticipating this. Today, the main activity of the service is counter-terrorism and following Islamic extremism.
There is little reference to India except for the early years. Later, in its 1985-86 report the Service referred to the growing threat from Sikh (and other sub-continental) terrorism and later asserts that good intelligence along with arrests of Sikh and Kashmiri terrorists ensured that the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi ‘frustrated plots to attack Rajiv Gandhi during his state visit.’


The book is not something for the average reader. It is serious stuff and like the trade itself, complicated and at times, fascinating. It is either for the historian or the professional and will find its place mostly on library shelves.

***

Source : Mail Today , 17th Jan 2010

Intelligence Reform

'Nothing should be as favourably regarded as intelligence; nothing should be as generously rewarded as intelligence; nothing should be as confidential as the work of intelligence.' Sun Tzu, The Art of War

It is possible that had the State paid any attention to Sun Tzu's principles, our systems might have been better equipped to handle events that led to and occurred on 26/11. In India we have violated all these principles, more or less consistently but especially in these last few years, since after the time of Rajiv Gandhi. In the aftermath of the Mumbai massacres, and even before that, throughout 2008 questions about intelligence failures have been raised after each major terrorist act. However, Mumbai was more than just intelligence failure. Like Kargil it was also a systemic failure but the starting point is inadequate intelligence, the failure to connect the dots within the system and then the rest just happened as the world saw on TV.


It is unfortunate that for a country like ours that has had to deal with insurgencies and unending terrorism for sixty years, the political leadership and a civil bureaucracy has viewed the business of intelligence collection with disdain. Efforts to control have usually meant putting roadblocks and reducing intelligence functions to bureaucratic practices.


Any state that seriously wants to preserve or enhance its national interests needs statecraft that is a mixture of diplomacy, intelligence, military technology and economic power. No single instrument is powerful enough in the pursuit of national interests and all instruments have to be sharp and powerful but intelligence is an important function at all times, peace or war or between the two stages. Unless leaders equip themselves with a strong intelligence arm, they will continue to be surprised and continue to make wrong choices.


In understanding the role of external intelligence we must first accept a few basic truths. Even the best intelligence will not be guarantee against all terrorist attacks or other nasty surprises but this will make the price higher, will be a deterrent and of immense help in investigations instead of what happens at present where the investigating agencies are blindsided. Secondly, intelligence is not just by the IB or R&AW or DIA; in case of terrorism it is the local state units in the district and the sub-division that have to perform. Third, since external intelligence operates on foreign soil, it is an extra-legal or even illegal activity. That is why governments need the cover of plausible deniability since relations between sovereign powers could get adversely affected even ruptured because of clandestine activities. That is also why preserving an intelligence operative's identity becomes vital but is often not understood. It is not a quirk of personality or a desire for mystery that makes an intelligence operative uncomfortable when he is exposed as so often happens in India. In fact the best intelligence operatives are those who have a passion for anonymity although in the Indian system this is impossible. Further, intelligence is often an amalgam of information and data from various sources – technical of various kinds and human sources, all of which is converted into knowledge by skilled analysts. But all this is not enough because intelligence is as good as the process that converts this information into knowledge and as good as the ability of the ultimate user to assimilate this intelligence.


Intelligence is generally considered evil because it is secret, therefore it must be controlled by transients who are either biased or ignorant about the methods and needs. There is therefore an absurd expectation among some wise people that intelligence agencies and their methods should be made transparent. At the other end of the spectrum is the declining professionalism among the agencies where they have been resorting to leaks to protect themselves. Presumably in an atmosphere of uncertainty and a highly politicised bureaucracy, this is another way to save one's gaddi – when sycophancy ceases to work.


There are other things that are wrong today within the agencies. The first aspect is to consider whether the present system of recruitment and manning the intelligence organisations is the best that is possible given the present nature and level of threats. National threats have changed there are other transnational threats that no single agency or a single country can handle. Besides there is no knowing how the new threats will evolve. The rapidly changing technological applications bring their own threats. Catastrophic terrorism, cyber terrorism, remote control missile attacks and virtual wars are the other new threats. International trade and commercial transactions have become faster and more intricate; banking transactions move at the speed of lightning. IT-driven globalisation also covers the criminal world. Interaction between narcotics smugglers, arms merchants, human traffickers and terrorists is that much easier, faster and safer. They all have access to sophisticated denial and deception techniques. Add to this, radical religious terrorists which are affecting India most dramatically and are supported by Pakistan in every way. The normal civil servant however bright just does not have these skills or the aptitude .

Within organisations there has been an increasingly greater reliance on techint in preference to humint capabilities. No amount of techint is a substitute for an intelligence operative or an astute and experienced analyst. The best techint is of little use if this is not preceded or accompanied by effective and sound humint capacities. Techint will give facts but not intentions and particularly in the case of counter terrorism, humint is an absolute must.


Intelligence collection and operations are increasingly highly specialised skills. This is not something that can be handled by men and women who seek to join an intelligence agency as a temporary haven or as an opportunity to treat the organisation as a secondary foreign office with no commitment to the profession. These are jobs meant for lifetime committed professionals who acquire their skills in tradecraft, languages, areas and issues over a long period of time. Besides relatively small organisations like the R&AW cannot have a revolving door where officers come and go every few years. The R&AW is the only major external intelligence organisation in the world that has a fixed quota for seconded officers to man its clandestine and analysis desks. In an era of specialisation this means that that these very skills are lacking; so is the commitment. This means a loss of talent every few years apart from other drawbacks that an officer has walked away with many operational secrets and can be vulnerable once he leaves.

The R&AW was not conceived as a Central Police Organisation. It was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the organisation's founding fathers, Rameshwar Nath Kao and Sankaran Nair, who repeatedly stressed that the R&AW should not become just another police organisation, and should have talent from wherever they could find, including other services of the Government of India. Recruitment to what would be a new service began in 1971 and many other lateral entrants later got absorbed in a service that became their new life. It was during the watch of Garry Saxena that the service rules were formalised and later other lateral entries were possible. The underlying principle of this was intelligence collection and operations were not assumed to be the preserve of any particular service but unfortunately the IPS still assumes it should have primacy in the R&AW and the result has been a constant and a debilitating battle between the in-house service and the IPS.


The result has been that apart from calamities like Morarji Desai that befell R&AW in the ninth year of its existence, the organisation has been subjected to periodic attempts at reforms which have been a little better than merely reorganising quotas among various services or creating more promotional avenues. These reviews and committees have attempted to exercise external control and succeeded in creating only road blocks. This has only meant increasing bureaucratisation of a profession which by nature has to be unconventional, and needs imaginative and flexible handling far away from stodgy bureaucrats who feel at home only in carefully structured and rigid systems. For this mindset, the process and not the result, is an end in itself.


Drawing the right talent has been an increasing challenge in the government. It is more so in the R&AW. The UPSC route may have been the more transparent, but now seems increasingly unimaginative and irrelevant to the needs. This is not to overlook that the IPS has contibuted some truly outstanding intelligence officers but these officers would have been outstanding anywhere. It is just that the requirements have changed today. Besides that an exam passed five, ten or twenty years ago does not qualify a man or a woman as an intelligence officer. The former Naval Chief Admiral Arun Prakash highlighted the kind of problem that exists in his recent article "The clear and present danger from 6th CPC". He pointed out the difficulties R&AW had in accommodating Naval officers on secondment because of the equivalences laid down by "the Kafkaesque Department of Personnel."


This comment underscores the problem of manning that afflicts both the intelligence agencies and the armed forces because as with the Navy, so with the Army and Air Force. There are other problems in a world where the threat perceptions are changing rapidly and where the terrorist is invariably a step or two ahead of the counter terrorist. There is a need to break out of the hierarchical system introduced in intelligence agencies where promotions within the organisations must lag behind the superior service, the IAS. Since personnel of intelligence agencies seek promotion within their own agencies there is need to change the nomenclature of their ranks, break free from the system of equivalence with the hierarchy and strike out on one's own. The same principle could apply to the Armed Forces who do not have to be bound down by archaic principles of equivalence. They can still be answerable to the civil authority of the government.

The regular UPSC recruit, however bright, will not suffice. The brightest no longer join the civil service. And an intelligence agency needs language skills, in depth knowledge about the target country and its cultural mores, computer whizz kids, technology experts, military men, financial experts and bankers who can help trace the financial trails of the terrorist, the ability to link the terrorist with the arms and drug smuggler. It needs economists, scientists, area experts, political analysts, university dons, journalists and those with the skills like those of Connie Sachs in John le Carre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." Ideally, therefore, an external intelligence agency should be able to pay its personnel well but be able to hire and fire for non-performance. It cannot afford to carry disgruntled men and women in its ranks. Promotions throughout will have to be performance based not linked to seniority. There has to be a fast track for those who excel. Since everybody cannot climb the ladder and there has to be some sidelining of even the bright ones, it is best for the government to consider the system of flexible pay bands so that officers can at least hope to end up with a better pay packet at the end of the day.

This means having to break out of the iron cage of the bureaucracy that little else besides impeding. This means recruiting in the open market from colleges and universities as all the well known agencies of the world like the CIA, the SIS and Mossad do. Catch them young and then mould them is the motto. In the present system, the man joins an organisation when he may be in his mid-twenties or if he is seconded, even much later. Most have got accustomed to the frills of bureaucracy, are married and with children. They are just too rigid to learn anything new and too old to take any risks or gamble, so essential for an intelligence operative.


It is of course unrealistic to expect any banker or finance wizard to give up his fancy job and work for a still lowly paid government assignment. The CIA faced with budget cuts in the Clinton era got over this problem by outsourcing which has now become an Intelligence-Industrial Complex rather like the Military-Industrial Complex that has typified US capitalism. It is estimated that today that outsourcing is a 50 billion dollar business annually and consumes about 70 % of the budget of the US intelligence community's budget and this includes those working on covert operations. The CIA, the National Security Agency and the Pentagon now have partnership arrangements with giants like Lockheed Martin, IBM, CACI and Booz Allen Hamilton. This may not be the model for India to follow but there is no way that there can be any effective functioning of intelligence agencies in the future without some involvement and reliance on the private sector. This involvement is going to be inevitable and necessary chiefly because it could be in the interest of the private sector to be participatory in the security of the country and it has the means and the resources to do so. The private sector could provide the technological inputs in battling terror.


In a fast changing world with a rapidly changing threat perception, intelligence agencies have not been nor allowed to be flexible to meet the evolving threat. There is hardly any surge capability where the agency can, on its own, shift manpower and resources to meet the new threat. The present system is far too cumbersome and slow to allow any rapid redeployment and by the time the new system is put into place the quarry has moved on, either morphed into something different or has just become too big so that the changes originally proposed become inadequate. The head of an intelligence organisation must have the flexibility and authority to move men and material around.


None of these freedoms would be available without checks and balances and accountability or oversight. We are perhaps not yet ready, as a people, to have the US system but the British system is better for us where accountability is to the Cabinet. A great deal would depend on the Prime Minister who needs to choose his chiefs of intelligence with great care. Past experience, career performance and integrity should be the main guiding factors and not seniority.

All this is meaningless unless there is a systemic overhaul. Both Mumbai and Kargil were as much systemic failures yet the target always is the intelligence systems. Mumbai occurred because the lessons of Kargil were not adequately learnt. Intelligence reforms without police reforms are pointless because the local policeman develops the strategic intelligence given by the central agencies. Police reforms without civil service reform are equally meaningless. And civil service reform without political reform is similarly meaningless.


Given the needs of the hour, the threats that we face and will continue to face in the future, the country can no longer afford to have nothing but the best.

Source : Indian Defence Review , January-March 2009

Don't give intel agencies a RAW deal

What can we learn from the Mumbai tragedy? The first lesson is that we must never forget what happened. The second is to honour the innocent and the brave who died. Third, to prioritise national vulnerabilities and set about protecting them. Fourth, we need to admit to failures and mistakes, then go about remedying them. Spare no cost, upgrade intelligence capabilities, carry out the much delayed police reforms, increase the efficacy of our commandoes and keep doing this, spare the Army from routine counter-terror activities and above all, re-establish the rule of law. Sharpen covert capabilities. And not let Pakistan, which is a nuisance, become a threat.

A people get the government they deserve and a government gets the intelligence it deserves. Our rulers today are those who have learnt nothing and have forgotten that Pakistani leaders sent in soldiers masquerading as so-called 'freedom fighters', but who were actually terrorists, in 1947, 1965, 1999 and now. We cannot have this glib talk about fighting terror jointly with Pakistan. It is like investigating murder with the help of the murderer. We had tied ourselves up in knots when we agreed that both Pakistan and India were victims of terror and today we see a rapprochement between the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan and the Pakistani Army on the western front as they shift their troops to the Indian borders. There is absolutely no need for grand magnanimous gestures -- magnanimity is a function of victory; otherwise it is appeasement.

As usual the Mumbai attacks brought forth comments from wet-behind-the-ears experts on TV with the regular chant of intelligence failure despite thousands of crores spent on intelligence collection. This is simply not true. Remember, intelligence organizations are known only by their failures and do not advertise their successes. Secondly, the amount spent must be seen from the perspective of the country's other major expenses on security like that on the paramilitary and the police. The Armed Forces had a budget of Rs 96,000 crore last year and the budget of the civilian intelligence is a miniscule percentage of the $1.1 trillion GDP of the country. India can afford to spend more as it gets economically powerful and more vulnerable to attacks.

Recent disclosures in the newspapers about RAW's inputs on September 18 and 22 would vindicate its position somewhat. These were based on intercepts and puritans would say that intelligence agencies should never disclose their source of information because this jeopardizes the future of the source --- human or technical. But this cacophony of ill-informed accusations seems to have forced this defensive action. The intelligence provided was actionable enough and armed with this any capable force should have been able to interdict the terrorists. These or other intercepts may not be available the next time because
it is simply not possible to intercept all the traffic and decipher or understand all that is intercepted. Intelligence collection is an intricate and imperfect skill and analysis is a difficult expertise which requires the ability to look and visualise behind the wall.

Inevitably at times like this we sprout experts of various hues. Some have suggested that the IB and RAW be merged. This is unworkable and ridiculous for several reasons. The two require totally different disciplines. Intelligence is a function of area, language and regional expertise and of operational skills honed over years of practical experience. It is not a function that can be professionally performed by birds of passage. External intelligence requires different skills in language, regions and issues. Its method of collection is different as it has to work in hostile surroundings, against the laws of the country to which its officers are assigned. Internal intelligence operates on home ground in accordance with local laws and has the backing of the state. The two functions are not interchangeable. Besides, no democratic country has one intelligence service.

Most of the accusations arise from prejudices simply because intelligence agencies function under secrecy and are, therefore, assumed to be sinister or incompetent. After one Prime Minister foolishly wrecked RAW in 1977 it has always been an endless struggle in the bureaucratic jungle of New Delhi. In 1999 RAW was a convenient whipping boy in the midst of command and systemic failure in Kargil. Even if we have the best intelligence in the world, it will be of no use without commensurate downstream systems.

Since intelligence does not function in a vacuum, mere changes in the intelligence organisations will not be enough. The Home Ministry has to develop its own cadre of experts given the intricacies of security and related problems. Regional and issue expertise rather like the MEA would be the need of the hour where officers rotate only between the MHA and the State. The so-called steel framework has degenerated over time into bureaucratic indolence and ignorance and must be made responsive and modern.

All this has to happen if we have to improve our chances of winning the battle against terrorism.

Source : Times of India, 5th December 2008

Intelligence reform or Perish

Unless someone has the wisdom of a sage, he cannot use spies; unless he is benevolent and righteous, he cannot employ spies; unless he is subtle and perspicacious, he cannot perceive the substance in intelligence reports. It is subtle, subtle, subtle.
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War
This quotation has been cited by Philip Knightley in his book, “The Second Oldest Profession.” The book is about spies and spying in the twentieth century and not necessarily something that is very complimentary to the trade although Knightley also quotes a former CIA counsel, Michael J Barrett who said “Espionage is the world’s second oldest profession and just as honourable as the first.” GC “Gary” Saxena, Chief of the Research and Analysis Wing in the 1980s quoting others used to say that intelligence was a game nations played and that it was a dirty game best played by men of honour.
Espionage is indeed as old as history. Chandragupta ran his espionage service for his Emperor, Ashoka, so did Emperor Akbar where he had his 4000 spies some of who reported to his National Security Council every evening. Delilah, the original honey trap, was a spy for the Philistines but later Mata Hari was a failure; Moses ran his espionage service and, at the time of Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham ran a security service free of cost to Her Majesty. Yet later in history, major powers went to war without an intelligence service. When the French went to war with Germany in 1870 it had no secret service because it had no money for this sort of activity. Two days after the war started, the French allocated 1 million francs to start an espionage service but Colonel Rollin, the man asked to start this remarked, “It was too late. Such a service cannot be improvised. It must be built up in the leisure of time.”
This is a fundamental truth very often forgotten by political masters. Intelligence is something vague and intangible for a politician to pay too much attention. It is neither a vote catcher, nor can it exhibit success in a way that a politician’s fortunes could soar. It is not like building a bund or a road that every can see. Only those who have a strategic vision and security consciousness understand this game.
The United States went through the Second World War without a formal human intelligence service. In fact it was the last major power to have a formal and proper intelligence service. And when it did have a formal intelligence service it missed out vital clues and could not predict the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union or even Pokhran II or the September 11 attacks. After the War, in pursuit of its global interests, the intelligence set-ups in the US and the Soviet Union expanded phenomenally as they fought their Cold War. US intelligence became known more for its covert actions across the globe and by the end of the 1970s more than 200,000 persons were employed in the business of collection of intelligence US.
The process of intelligence collection and its targets have changed with the revolution in technology, communications and the changing nature of threats. The covert action option is more readily exercised by major powers in protecting or enhancing its state interests. The traditional spy was in Graham Greene’s novels or in those much earlier by John Buchan, where the spy was either a “static” or “stationary” in a foreign country or was an “itinerant” who moved in and out of the target area. The task of such a spy usually was to cover docks, bridges, telegraph lines or whatever, pinch a document if possible and prepare reports with an essentially military objective. Today, with communications and transport revolution the handler no longer has to be in the same place as the agent being run by him. Internet, satellite phones and cell phones have ensured that. Satellite imagery and satellite communication monitoring has meant that all activity in target areas is totally covered - twenty-four hours, seven days a week. Technical espionage with the more glamorous gizmo has burgeoned to overtake human intelligence (HUMINT). Consequently, over time HUMINT considered to be a stodgy poor relation and old fashioned and definitely more difficult, took a back seat creating a vast gap not only in the collection of vital information but also in assessment and analysis.
External and internal intelligence are two essential ingredients of statecraft of any government. The former is the sword and the latter is the shield. Their effectiveness depends on how they are used not just by the government of the day but over a sustained period of time. This in turn depends on whether or not a country and its government have a strategic security concept or is interested merely in keeping crime off the streets, has no regional or other goals and really has no secrets to hide. In such cases all a country needs is a local criminal investigation department to hunt criminals and solve crime. The US did not have a formal internal intelligence service when Sep 11, 2001 happened but that was under the belief that the US was so secure and so immensely popular in the world that it had no internal threat. What it had was an investigation agency in the FBI and the gigantic and super-secret National Security Agency for technological snooping along with a host of other agencies – 19 in all.
In India, intelligence at the time of independence symbolised ultimate and secret imperial power that helped its masters hunt Indian nationalists or kept a watch on Indian dissidents. It was a government agency that had been run by the British with Indian employees to serve imperial interests and was therefore viewed as a successor to imperial power. It was something nasty and hateful. Soon after independence and for many years after that, there was suspicion, fear or contempt about intelligence activities.
The main charter in the early days for Indian intelligence was the Communist threat as it was in the British system and Pakistan became the new add-on. The Telengana uprising and the Pakistani misadventures into Kashmir immediately after independence bolstered these two threats. The 1962 and 1965 wars with China and Pakistan eventually led to the creation of the R&AW, just as years later, the Kargil war led to the creation of the Defence Intelligence Agency, the National Technical Facilities (renamed Research) Organisation and several other organisations meant to smoothen intelligence coordination and assessment.
Since the R&AW was born of the IB, in the initial years officers from the IB who were, almost without exception, from the Indian Police, manned it. Like in every service some made superb and successful external intelligence officers and some did not. It was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the R&AW’s founding fathers, Rameshwar Nath Kao and Sankaran Nair, who repeatedly stressed that the R&AW should not become just another police organisation, and should have talent from wherever they could find, including other services of the Government of India. Recruitment to what would be a new service began in 1971 and many other lateral entrants later got absorbed in a service that became their new life. The R&AW went through its roller coaster fortunes with Morarji Desai the impractical moralist who single handedly went about denigrating and curtailing an agency barely six years old and a successful one at that. It set back the agency by several years and a restive staff added to their problems. It began to get back into recognition from the mid-80s because the good fortune of both – an able organisational leadership and a political leadership that had a strategic mindset that felt the need for a sharp external service.
Inevitably, as it happens in India, success brings envy and suspicion. We are particularly adept at damaging our own instruments of power and governance. The R&AW was subjected to reviews and committees periodically and the attempt has been to progressively exercise external control. The professionals in the organisation would accept controls and supervision if other professionals exercise it. Instead, the consistent attempt has been to tinker in the name of reform and exercise control. The result has been increasing bureaucratisation of a profession, which, by nature has to be unconventional, and needs imaginative handling far removed from stodgy bureaucrats who feel comfortable working in carefully structured and rigid systems. On the other hand, the head of an intelligence organisation must have the freedom to deploy and re-deploy men and material according to perceived threats. Such agencies must have what they call a “surge capacity”; that is an ability, flexibility and freedom to surge the forces in one direction if need be. Of course, there have to be some checks and balances as it cannot have an intelligence agency out of control like in Pakistan.
Quite often the role of India’s two agencies, the IB and R&AW are considered as having common objectives and methods and therefore assumed that personnel are interchangeable. This is not so. The IB is the internal service, operating within the country also called the Security Service while the R&AW is the external service operating outside the country and often referred to as the Secret Intelligence Service. The former operates within and armed with the law of the country while the latter operates outside the realm of law of the country to which assigned. The Internal service makes patriots out of ordinary and sometimes extraordinary persons; the latter suborns and makes traitors out of ordinary citizens. The former has the protection of law, the latter does not. The former may not need to learn a new language or adjust to alien customs, the latter is useless without this ability. The two professions are similar in that they are secret and relate to security and espionage. But the talent required and the environment is totally different.
The biggest dangers to intelligence services in India are subversion by external forces and the politicisation of the agencies where the internal agency assumes that security of the state is the same thing as the security of the government while the external agency gets policised. The Security Service of the UK (better known as MI 5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI 6) are what their names signify. The former has more police functions, provides security to the State and not to a Government against its domestic political rivals and the latter has no police functions and provides intelligence about the external enemies of the State. Sourcing for recruitment is different.
If there is one lesson from September 11, 2001 – and there are many – and that is that one may have innumerable intelligence agencies including the behemoth called the NSA, the world’s largest, most secret, and most advanced spy organisation, no technical input will be enough without humint and interpretation of this technical intelligence. James Bamford describes it best in his book (“The Body of Secrets”) when he says that in Crypto City, scientists work on the largest collection of hyperpowerful computers, there are advanced mathematicians and language experts covering all parts of the globe. Time in Crypto City is measured in femtoseconds – one million billionth of a second. Scientists work in secret to develop computers that will perform more than one septillion operations every second. A septillion is the figure 1 with 24 zeros. Mercifully India does not need such an expensive arrangement as our interests are nowhere near as global as the US. But did all this elaborate arrangement prevent 9/11? Will it in the future? The answer to both is a definite no in the first case and a probable no in the second. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the chances of detection would improve with a better humint capability.
This brings us to the subject of recruitment and in house maintenance of the intelligence cadres. Recruitment will have to depend on the nature of evolving and existing threats. The technological revolution that the world has witnessed since the 1990s, and there is no knowing where it will lead us in the future, means that the threat has altered considerably from what existed in the 1990s. Cheap and advanced technology is now available virtually on the streets. The threats ahead are technology and nano-technology based; catastrophic terrorism, cyber terrorism, remote control missile attacks and virtual wars are the new threats. International trade and commercial transactions have become faster and more intricate; banking transactions move at the speed of lightning. IT-driven globalisation also covers the criminal world. Interaction between narcotics smugglers, arms merchants, human traffickers and terrorists is much easier, faster and safer. They all have access to sophisticated denial and deception techniques. One is not even talking about radical religious terrorists.
The age of the generalist and the bird of passage is surely over. An officer on deputation comes without area expertise, language skills and does not necessarily have the attitude, time or incentive to acquire these skills during his tenure long or short. The chief motive of such an officer on deputation is to hope for a comfortable foreign assignment without adding much to the experience basket of the organisation. Officers on deputation these days come with additional baggage – most are politicised or unwanted in the states. It is, therefore, a fallacy to assume that salvation of intelligence organisations lies through greater induction from existing services.
An intelligence agency can be effective in its national effort only if it is manned by men and women of talent, ability, commitment and expertise. Unfortunately this talent and expertise or commitment is no longer available in the civil service. The R&AW and the IB need more and more professional intelligence officers who are home grown, who are assisted by a never ending supply of qualified economists, scientists, computer whiz kids, mathematicians, and experts in international banking and finance. Area and subject expertise gets built in-house over a period of time. Such talents do not come cheap; nor do security or preservation and enhancement of the country’s interest. Recruitment has to be from the open market offering competitive remunerations, fast tracks for the efficient and an exit for others. The need is for a thoroughly professional intelligence corps and not one that functions on the basis of its origins, which is normally a recruitment examination passed several years ago or served by those who consider the R&AW to be a temporary safe haven from uncomfortable state cadres.
Recruitment to the civil services is not a selection process but merely an elimination process and not an assessment of merit or aptitude. Besides the wages are not attractive enough nor is career advancement any better. The civil service is no longer the career of first choice for most. The civil service age limit is high, by the time a probationer becomes an officer he is quite often in his late 20s. If he joins the R&AW after three years’ service elsewhere, he is nearly thirty or more; besides being married and father/mother of at least one child. Such a person is just too distracted, too old to be molded into anything new and it is not his/her fault. The esprit de corps required in a secret organisation just does not get cultivated with people who are already set in their ways and lives. In secret organisations, honour and élan are the two most important motivations, especially because there is no public recognition of achievements and there is general public skepticism about such organisations. There is usually envy for the external and fear of the internal service, which is why bashing the external boys is so much easier and appears self-justified.
Speaking of honour, Rabinder Singh and Ujjwal Dasgupta fell because they were not men of honour. They fell because they were weak. One cannot say that men and women disgrace themselves merely because they are in touch with foreigners; external intelligence cannot be collected without access to foreigners. External liaison is legitimate if officially authorised and need not lead to a person being suborned; it is when intelligence liaison is unauthorised that it becomes illicit and dangerous.
We are going to make a grave mistake by adhering to archaic practices just because that has always been the case. There is need to change all this given the new and other enhanced threats. If we do not, we will ultimately have a non-functioning agency that will fail the government and the people every time. We simply must professionalise or perish.

Vikram Sood

Courtesy : Indian defence review Jul- Sep 2006

Intelligence Quotient

The R&AW must retain a dedicated staff if it’s to remain alert to
threats

INTELLIGENCE AND the world of espionage are as old as history. Rameshwar Nath Kao, the first chief of R&AW, used to say that his friend, Comte Alexandre de Marenches, the French chief of intelligence during the Seventies, described this world as the best. Marenches used to say that espionage was an unscrupulous game played by gentlemen.
The world of intelligence is not just the James Bond kind of fantasy, although the point about willingness to take the initiative is valid. Intelligence is more the dogged George Smiley kind of life — patient and painstaking. It needs the skills of total recall and the ability to relate to events, like those of Connie Sachs, the former queen of research at the Circus. Marcus Wolfe, the East German spy chief, was Le Carre’s Karla. Romanticised in novels and vilified in real life, ultimately an intelligence agency becomes what its government wants it to be.
Any government keen on staying ahead of competition and thwarting threats would need a first rate external agency manned by men and women of honour who care for the organisation to which they belong. External intelligence, espionage and covert operations are a country’s first line of offence and defence. Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and, years later, Atal Bihari Vajpayee realised this. They understood the benefit of advice from an agency that would tell them the truth as it existed and not as was desired or wished for. For this, they kept the agency in a cocoon, sheltered from coalition or regional politics.
With time, the targets of espionage have changed. Newer and more complicated threats have been added to traditional military and political threats. Globalisation has brought threats to markets and resources; global terror has spawned a thriving global terror economy, where human trafficking, narcotics smuggling, gun running and money laundering feed on each other. Many of the threats are technology-driven.
Intelligence is neither a science nor an art that can be taught from a textbook. It is a craft that requires aptitude and a life-long commitment. Modern-day espionage also needs super specialisations — of languages, areas and issues, of tradecraft skills acquired over years of experience in the same field and analytical skills honed over years of study of the same topic or region. Intelligence is not something that can be bought off the shelf and its analysis requires uncommon rigour and discipline.
In India, too, there is a growing need to have in-house expertise dedicated to these specialisations, along with traditional espionage skills that are not lost every few years to transient passengers. It is not enough to recruit talent, difficult as it is with more lucrative and less dangerous avenues available. It is a problem of retaining talent and a problem equally of suitably handling talent that has either run aground or outlived its utility. It is no longer possible to assume that a civil service exam passed years ago qualifies a person to be an intelligence officer. The system of recruitment through a normal civil service exam was acceptable when job requirements were different. The multiple talents and expertise now required are no longer available in the civil services because people with skills and qualifications do not find government career paths attractive enough. The head of the organisation should, therefore, have the flexibility to temporarily outsource talent for specific requirements without disturbing the organisational hierarchy. Besides, each rookie who joins the R&AW must believe that the rules permit him to have a fair chance to make it to the top slot. Otherwise he will not give in his best or will drift to greener pastures midstream, taking away with him years of experience. But if it is decided to deliberately downgrade a service and make it less attractive, the results will be commensurate.
The R&AW is the only organisation in the Government of India that has a dedicated service and yet has been made to have a quota for birds of passage. The Indian Foreign Service does not have this, nor do the Railways or some others. Often, the organisation is considered a safe haven for those from uncomfortable cadres and services seeking temporary refuge till avenues at home improved. There was a time, at its inception, when the organisation needed experience and expertise from elsewhere, but once it was decided to form a service, the role of the transients was intended to gradually disappear. There is no reason why the R&AW should not follow the successful experience of other intelligence agencies and also recruit from outside the civil service.
Intelligence agencies function best when they are not stultified into bureaucracies since this only kills initiative, discourages risk-taking and frowns upon innovation. Intelligence agencies are like restricted clubs, elitist and exclusive in many ways, which cannot afford to have nasty little sub-groups plotting against each other. It has to be a life-time commitment, not an arrangement, however long, with the officer constantly looking at his parent service to return to, should the grass get greener there. You either belong fully or you do not. There is no room for those who treat this as a part-time pursuit because of lack of other avenues. There is no revolving door.
Periodic reform and upgrading to cater for future threats are necessary. But an intelligence agency loses its way if this reform is carried out by those who neither understand the system, nor empathise with it, or suspect it for its secret ways, or have a pre-determined agenda and are, at times, hostile to it. Reforms have really been more about creating quotas (how we love that word), which, instead of unifying, have only been divisive or about promotion avenues for a few. It does not really address core issues like strengthening élan in an organisation that has no other outlet, increasing professionalism and making it an attractive career opportunity in today’s context.
Reform endures when it evolves from within, as with all societies, and is carried out by those who understand the system. Rather than perennially tinker with and unsettle the system, it is time for the arbiters of the organisation’s destiny to hold out their hand to the men and women in the battlefield of intelligence, give them an assured future and encourage them to perform better for they fight a lonely war in silence.
Other countries have had reason to view the R&AW as a sinister organisation but that should be no reason for Indians to view it similarly. On the contrary, the image of a benign external intelligence agency should worry Indians just as much as a sinister internal agency should frighten them. Just because in the nature of things an intelligence agency is required to work in secret does not make it suspect. Consequently, over the years, there has been an unfortunate tendency to exercise greater and greater remote control but in reality this is only an exercise of authority without responsibility.
In India, the danger is that as we globalise and privatise, there may be a tendency to believe that traditional threats have disappeared in the blossoming global bonhomie, new threats do not exist and the future holds no devils. International threats do not emerge suddenly — at least not in the intelligence world. They take time building up, bit by bit. An alert and well-endowed intelligence outfit collects the straws to weave a mat but a distracted bureaucratised agency will miss out the signs again and again.

Source : Hindustan Times 21st June 2006

How and why it works

Intelligence co-operation or liaison, as it is called, is not a game for the novice or the uninitiated. Only a select few in an intelligence organisation are normally allowed to handle the arrangements and that too after having worked in the system for years. Intelligence co-operation goes beyond mere exchange of information. It can include help to upgrade abilities and facilities in each other’s countries. It is a vital and safe channel of communication even at times of near ruptured or in the absence of diplomatic relations. In today’s world, intelligence liaison has become fair game for all. Spying on friends is not taboo in this game and the best time to make inroads is when relations are warm and comfortable.

Heads of Government have quite often used their intelligence chiefs to convey sensitive messages to their counterparts or maintain contact with each other, especially where in the absence of formal relations there was need for political deniability. Effective intelligence is also a by-product of a sound relationship and trust between the intelligence chief and the chief executive of a country.

Intelligence co-operation need not only be a bilateral arrangement. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the English-speaking victors of the war – the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and Canada got together to exchange information about the common threat which was the Soviet Union at that time. Communications intelligence was exchanged by these countries and at times about uncomfortable political opponents who could not be covered by agencies because of domestic laws that prohibited such espionage. In the 1980s the exchange evolved into Project Echelon, which graduated from exchanging processed intelligence to ‘raw’ intercepts. Echelon monitors about 120 satellites all over the world, includes nonmilitary communications of governments, business houses, private establishments and individuals.

When stories about the Echelon leaked that one section of the allies were snooping on the other, Europeans like the French and Germans were livid. There was uproar in the European Parliament and the US and British were accused of ‘state-sponsored information piracy’. There were accusations/suspicions that the US used this system to advise its negotiators in the trade talks with the Japanese, on another occasion to help Boeing beat Airbus in the deal with Saudi Arabia and clinch the Enron deal with India beating the British bid this time.

The volume of traffic intercepts is indeed huge; the volume of international telephone traffic, including from cell-phones, is now estimated to be approximately 200 billion seconds a year. Any communication sent into space is susceptible to monitoring thus needs equally massive downstream activity to process this. Reliance on key words and voice recognition has its problems; the former can cause communications traffic jams and the latter is not completely reliable. In addition there is coverage through reconnaissance satellites which are like vacuum cleaners sweeping in everything and take high resolution photographs, keep the entire globe under watch, can detect nuclear blasts, warn of missile launches and can record the telemetry of missile flights. Bases strewn all over the world help download this data. It could be a comforting thought that one lives in such a stratospheric cocoon or highly disconcerting that we live in Orwell’s world.

The CIA and the KGB maintained contacts with each other even when the Cold War temperatures were near freezing. At about the same time, the US had two listening posts in Qitai and Korla in the Xinjiang province to listen into Soviet Russia in the 1980’s. The Germans also had an intelligence relationship with the Chinese service at least as far back as in the 1980s. The French intelligence chief, Alexandre de Meranches, founder of the secretive Safari Club that included other friendly and trusted intelligence agencies, had foreseen Soviet intrusion into Afghanistan and had advised the newly elected Reagan to prepare for a counter offensive in Afghanistan.

Apart from the obvious influence mechanisms, the Western power elite functions in many secretive ways. Many years ago, Robert Ludlum in one of his earlier novels had four powerful international individuals as the secret controllers of the world. It did not seem real then as Ludlum’s multi-talented covert cold warriors fought ruthless wars against enemies of the free world. But Ludlum obviously based some of his novels on the realities of the day and his fantasies were more real than those of General Musharraf.

There are other influential secret societies in the West like the Bilderberg Group formed in 1954 by a small group of rich and powerful trans-Atlantic individuals to help keep Europe allied to the US and communism at bay. This group (named after the hotel in Arnhem in the Netherlands where they first met) remains an exclusive and secretive group that includes politicians, financiers, the media moghuls and the corporate world. The group allows no reporters, there is only an answering machine and no minutes are issued which-leads to various interpretations about its role. For instance, the Serbs blamed Bilderberg for the war that led to the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic.

Another secret society, that has a number of former intelligence officers as its members, Pinay Circle (earlier known as the Cercle Violet), described as a secret right-wing transnational intelligence and direct action group used to fight communism. The Circle is said to be more in the business of regime change in the West to keep the US and Europe close to each other and right-wing. The group continues to exist although communism is no longer the threat it was. Its members have been persons like Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, (all three associated with the Bilderberg Group), George Soros, Paul Volcker, Turki Al-Faisal, the former CIA Chief, Willam Colby, and numerous other US, British and German intelligence officers like Frank Wisner jr. Nadhmi Auchi, a one-time Saddam Hussein confidante was also a member of this secret group. British luminaries have included Lord Julian Amery and James Goldsmith. The Circle is also linked to other influential groups like the Heritage Foundation and Opus Dei, often through its members. There were allegations that in the Seventies the group helped in the downfall of British Premiers Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, French President Francois Mitterand and the beneficiaries included Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

Additionally, like any other system, intelligence functions best in a certain milieu. Many of the major powers of the world have treated their intelligence services as an important sword-arm for providing internal security and for securing foreign policy objectives or denying adversaries and even friends their objectives. When the Mossad was hunting for the Black September terrorists in the 1970s, one of the agents had to masquerade himself as a woman. This agent was Ehud Barak, who later became the Israeli Prime Minister. Many others who headed their countries’ intelligence services switched to overt governance with ease and distinction. Bush Sr in the US was one; Andropov, Primakov and Putin in Russia, Kang Sheng and Chiao Shi in China became members of the Politburo, Klaus Kinkel became Germany’s Foreign Minister, Hosni Mubarak looked after the Egyptian Intelligence during Sadat’s Presidency.

In a world of globalised terror, globalised economics and competition, the traditional threats to the developed world have changed. Democracy and its preservation remains serious business extending beyond the tinsel and glamour of the screen and the rhetoric at election rallies. The system of global surveillance with and against friends will remain with all levers of control lying with the rich and powerful.

Source : Hindustan Times 21st oct 2006