How India became a battleground for CIA and KGB in the 1970s

[seemslikeadream]

Hasan Suroor

It seemed like the entire country was on sale, says book "People in high places, including ministers, were willing to provide sensitive information to the highest bidder"


LONDON: Damaging new claims about how India became a battleground for the CIA, the U.S. spy agency, and the KGB — the erstwhile Soviet intelligence agency — in the 1970s as they competed for influence in the subcontinent are made in the second volume of The Mitrokhin Archive. The book is based on secret KGB papers smuggled into Britain by Vasili Mitrokhin, a former archivist, after the fall of the Soviet regime.

According to extracts published in The Times on Saturday, people in high places, including ministers, were willing to provide sensitive information to the highest bidder and "it seemed like the entire country was for sale."

Oleg Kalugin, who became the head of the Soviet Foreign Counter-Intelligence in 1973, is quoted as saying that on one occasion the KGB "turned down an offer from an Indian minister to provide information in return for $50,000 — on the grounds that it was already well supplied with material from Indian foreign and defence ministries."

Mr. Kalugin is reported to have remarked: "It seemed like the entire country was for sale; the KGB and the CIA had penetrated the Indian government. Neither side entrusted sensitive information to the Indians, realising their enemy would know all about it the next day."

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http://www.hindu.com/2005/09/18/stories/2005091803540900.htm