BOOK
REVIEW
TITLE:
THE UNENDING GAME-A Former R&AW Chief’s Insights Into Espionage
AUTHOR:
VIKRAM SOOD
PUBLISHER:
PENGUIN VIKING, 2018
PRICE:
Rs. 599/-
Spying
For Your Country
Intelligence gathering these days is not all careful-not-to-squeak
“gum shoe”. The old style “private detective”, overcoat and hat pulled down low
over the brow, has acquired a lot of supplementaries.
The two world wars ushered in the breaking of secret-code
Ciphers, and monitoring of Ham Radio frequencies. Spying became as much a HQ
Expert feature as the Agent in the Field.
Speed is of the
essence now to thwart threats, increasingly from Islamic Terrorism with a
nuclear overhang.
The tools at hand have multiplied. There is HUMINT- Human
Intelligence; received from both trans-border and undercover resources, and still,
in 2018, probably the best way for qualified professionals good at finding
nuggets amongst “unprocessed intelligence”.
There is also OSINT- that which comes through third
countries who have access to target countries. TECHINT, meaning technical
intelligence gathered from snooping devices, voice transcripts, recordings, and
increasingly the social media.
There is satellite
and photo surveillance/reconnaissance – IMINT.
COMINT- from monitoring communications and conversations. ELINT- radar and electronic intelligence-intercepts,
decrypted cipher messages, topographical information.
Is there just too much information being generated to
afford timely analysis? The author of this book, Vikram Sood, former R&AW
Chief who retired in 2003 after 31 years in intelligence, thinks it is best
suited to developing and executing medium to long term strategies. This book, written
in a rich anecdotal style, certainly affords an insight, particularly on the
operability of the process in a democracy.
Intelligence plays a more inward-looking and repressive
role in totalitarian regimes and dictatorships. The history of organizations
such as the KGB in the erstwhile USSR, the STASI in the former East Germany,
SAVAK in pre-revolutionary Iran, Egypt’s Mukhabarat, all point to “the midnight
knock” purpose of intelligence
gathering. “Enemies of the State”, a code phrase for dissidence, had such
unfortunates jailed, tortured and eliminated.
In terms of international espionage, the most extensive
and well-funded is certainly the CIA. Other admired and dreaded Intelligence
organizations such as Israel’s Mossad and Pakistan’s ISI are partially CIA
trained. Of course, the fanatical dedication to ideology and country, observed
in the Mossad and ISI, make them very much harder to infiltrate.
In India, the true mother of external intelligence was
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her legendary R&AW Chief RN Kao.
Subsequent administrations took a less supportive view, making for neglect,
stagnation and stunting. Prime Minister Morarji Desai actively cut R&AW
down-to-size. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi revived its fortunes somewhat; even
as Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao more or less ignored it.
Prime Minister Modi has a healthy respect for
intelligence and has demonstrated it with the prominence given to the National
Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, a former spy himself. Prime Minister Modi has
gone out of his way to arrange for international intelligence sharing
particularly to prevent Islamic terrorism and economic offences and absconders.
Intelligence, it appears, is almost invariably run from the top echelons of the
political pile.
Vikram Sood’s book takes the reader on a tour of the
world’s intelligence services and their modus
operandi, using an elegant prose to do it.
For example, Sood describes the American collaboration
with the Pakistanis in his chapter on the ‘Asian Playing Fields’: “Apart from
the money generated by the Americans and the Saudis, opium cultivation in
Afghanistan and the processing of opium into heroin in Pakistan was encouraged
to finance the war…. By 1990 the region accounted for 70 per cent of the total
global production….The CIA would deliver weapons at Karachi and the ISI would
carry them inland in their transport company, the National Logistics Cell. The
vehicles on their return to Karachi from the NWFP would carry processed heroin
for global shipment.” Other stringent American laws crack down on drugs, but so
what?
The Soviets were no slouches in the espionage game
either. In the days of the Cold War, they put money and effort into India to
try and expose “the CIA hand”.
The much talked about second volume of The Mitrokhin
Papers has nearly 17,000 stories planted in the Indian media between 1972 and
1975.
Citizen and Minister Morarji Desai, was said to be a very
productive and paid CIA informer, says Seymour Hersh in one of his books!
But of course, as India has changed and grown into an
emerging economic power, and the USSR has collapsed into history, the chess
pieces have had to be rearranged.
The Chinese too have become increasingly important
players in the world intelligence community. According to Sood: “They freely
use diplomatic cover in missions abroad, deploy their defence attaches and use
journalists.” They also infiltrate academia, defence manufacturers and even the
CIA itself, using their ethnic Chinese employees whose sympathies can be
aroused. Chinese Intelligence sponsors a number of Think Tanks in China via its
Ministry of State Security (MSS), most useful in reciprocal interchanges with
other Think Tanks and in the ever popular “Track II Diplomacy”. Since
everything is state owned however,all roads in China do lead to Beijing.
And today, the Chinese classic Art of War by Sun Tzu
which advocates defeating the enemy without firing a shot, is an international
and universal aspiration, in a world bristling with nuclear weapons that
guarantee Armageddon if used.
But, with international cooperation, specifically with
ideas transmitted by a French Intelligence Chief to Ronald Reagan, then in his
first term as US President, the Soviet Union was eventually brought down.
Comte Alexandre de Marenches suggested that Reagan should
frequently refer to the USSR as an ‘Evil
Empire’ in order to encourage its fissiparous tendencies. He further suggested that the US frame the Soviet
Union, by purchasing Soviet armaments in
the black market and shipping them to battles against Soviet allies so that
they became confused. Lastly Marenches suggested that the US should encourage
the Islamists and promote the Koran to make the Turkmen, the Uzbeks, the
Tajiks, the Kazakhs and the Kyrghyz- all restive.
Vikram Sood narrates tale after tale of string-pulling
and shadow-boxing around the rich and
inflential secret societies of the world, with profound effects on the future
course of events.
A background in espionage has produced many heads of
government including current Russian President Putin. However, it takes great
nerve and patience, and is certainly not a career choice for the faint-hearted.
(1,038
words)
For:
THE SUNDAY PIONEER AGENDA BOOKS
August
14, 2018
Gautam
Mukherjee
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