Nations ignore intel inputs at their own peril
ON August 15, 1975, then Bangladesh President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family were assassinated in the early hours in a coup d’état by their army personnel in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi. The New York Times quoted the Dhaka radio as claiming that the step was “in the greater interests of the country” to end an ‘autocratic government’. Mujib’s close associate and cabinet minister Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad took power after the coup.
American journalist Lawrence Lifschultz, then a leading voice in South Asian developments, recalled that he was informed about this while at the Indian Independence Day celebrations at the Red Fort, addressed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Bangladesh’s The Daily Star (November 19, 2009) quoted him as saying that “the United States had prior knowledge of the coup which killed Mujib, and that the American Embassy personnel had held discussions with individuals involved in the plot more than six months prior to his death.” The sensational theory, which was not proved, was that an America-China axis was growing to undercut PM Indira’s growing influence in South Asia, backed by the Soviet Union.
However, this issue continued to agitate Indian political and intelligence circles for a long time. In December 1975, I attended the annual DIG-CID conference on intelligence and crime in New Delhi as the Deputy Commissioner of the Special Branch-CID in Bombay. In those days, the state chiefs of police did not meet annually on intelligence issues. The Intelligence Bureau used to host only the deputy inspectors general of the state. However, officers of all Central agencies, including the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the CBI, used to be in attendance.
Our conference was inaugurated by then Home Minister Kasu Brahmananda Reddy at the Vigyan Bhawan after a ‘welcome tea’ the previous evening at PM Indira’s house at 1, Safdarjung Road. Reddy’s suggestion that we needed to be vigilant over foreign developments affecting our security was interpreted as a veiled criticism of R&AW since there was a general impression that our foreign intelligence agency was remiss in anticipating the developments.
We spent the last day of our conference with R&AW officers so that we could be briefed on external developments. During the discussions, a senior DIG (CID) asked RN Kao, then the chief of R&AW, a loaded question on whether we were ‘caught napping’ during the Bangladesh coup. Those in the audience squirmed in their seats at the expected explosion from Kao, who was at the peak of his power and influence. However, all he said in a firm but low voice was, “I can assure you that we were not surprised at the developments.”
I did not understand the full import of Kao’s answer until I joined R&AW in May 1976 to know how a foreign intelligence agency works, which for outsiders would appear to be labyrinthine, as it cannot adopt the public protocol of an internal agency or a law-and-order department. All we could do in circumstances like these was process and convey such information through diplomatic channels, keeping secrecy as the prime objective. In this case, PM Indira had asked Kao to alert Mujibur about the looming conspiracy. Kao told me after his retirement that Mujibur had dismissed such a possibility, thinking that his people would not do anything like that.
The same was the case with the August 1991 coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. All American papers accused the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) of not alerting the White House. It was made worse when news agencies reported that US President George HW Bush had learnt about it from CNN on August 18 while on a holiday at Kennebunkport. Bush confirmed this in his book, A World Transformed (1998), which he jointly wrote with his National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft.
However, Bush also added that then Deputy National Security Adviser (later the CIA Director) Robert Gates had met him at breakfast on August 17 and briefed him that the “prospective signing of the Union treaty meant that time was running out for the hardliners, and they might feel compelled to act.” Gates thought that the threat was serious, although he had no specific information on what might happen. “The next day the plotters struck.”
The Los Angeles Times said on September 26, 1995, that declassified CIA documents indicated that the agency had reported as early as May 1991 that “Gorbachev would be finished politically even if he survived a coup attempt.” It said the first report (April 19, 1991) conveyed that the leaders of the Soviet military, the MVD (internal security police) and the KGB (intelligence service) were “making preparations for a broad use of force in the political process.” The secret CIA report added that “preparations for dictatorial rule have begun.”
James Risen, a noted intelligence expert who had compiled the report, said decision-makers often failed to understand the import of the CIA’s reports and act upon them. It is this failure, which was evident even during the processing of intelligence prior to the attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, that continues to bedevil security decision-making.
Sometimes, foreign intelligence agencies run into headwinds in conveying information that applies to even a friendly foreign country. Apart from our experience in Bangladesh in 1975, we faced a similar situation in Sri Lanka. In October 1994, we had received intelligence that the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) was about to conduct an operation near Colombo along the same lines as it did against Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. This time, the target was Gamini Dissanayake. One of Sri Lanka’s brightest politicians, he could have become the island nation’s PM.
We had conveyed it to Sri Lanka through diplomatic channels. But Dissanayake and 50 of his followers were assassinated in a suicide bomb attack during a poll rally on October 24, 1994. Our advance intelligence did not translate into protective or preventive action because of a systemic failure in intelligence-processing in that country.
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