Dispersión Dinámica de Luz (DLS)

The almost three-year (1981 to 84) post-retirement tenure of Kao as the Senior Adviser to Indira Gandhi in the Cabinet Secretariat did not have the brilliant dazzle of his tenure as the founder and head of the R&AW between 1968 and 1977. His main task as Senior Adviser was to advise Indira Gandhi on all matters relating to national security and to co-ordinate the functioning of the intelligence agencies. As Adviser on national security matters, he continued to be heard with respect and his advice was often followed with benefit by her and her senior officials---whether the advice related to developments in Afghanistan, the terrorism in Punjab, relations with the US, the USSR, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh and the problem of the Sri Lankan Tamils. His high-level contacts in Washington DC brought about a softening of the hostility to Indira Gandhi in the Reagan Administration. However, as intelligence co-ordinator, he was not that effective due to reservations at some senior levels in the IB regarding his suitability for this task.

Kao, who had joined the Indian Police in 1940, had initially served in Uttar Pradesh before joining the IB in 1947. He spent nearly two decades in the IB before he was asked to take over the responsibility for the creation of the R&AW. His initial years in the IB were spent in the performance of tasks relating to physical security, including the holding of the enquiry into the April 11, 1955, crash of the Kashmir Princess aircraft of Air India in which a team of Chinese and East European officials and journalists was traveling to Jakarta from Hong Kong to attend the Afro-Asian summit conference at Bandung in Indonesia. The crash was caused by an explosion on board the aircraft. The KMT intelligence was suspected. After the Sino-Indian war of 1962, he was associated with the raising of the Aviation Research Centre (ARC) as part of the Directorate-General of Security (DG&S), with the assistance of the US intelligence community. He served as the ARC’s Director. This brought him into close contact with the US intelligence and helped him to build up a network of contacts, which was to stand the R&AW in good stead in subsequent years. However, his exposure to intelligence analysis and operational work in the IB was limited. He handled analysis and operational responsibilities of a real nature only for about four years in his capacity as the Joint Director in charge of external intelligence and communist activities in India before he was chosen by Indira Gandhi to be the first head of the R&AW.

A group of IB officers headed by the late M.M.L.Hooja, who was the DIB at the time of the bifurcation, strongly opposed its bifurcation and the creation of the R&AW. When their objections were overruled by Indira Gandhi, they resented her decision to make Kao its first chief. They viewed him as unsuitable for this task because of his limited exposure to analysis and operational work in the IB. After he took over as the head of the R&AW, they created difficulties for him by not making available to him all papers relating to the external intelligence divisions of the IB. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Kao had to create the organization almost from scratch without much assistance from the IB by relying on the memories of those of us, who had served in the IB’s external intelligence division under him. Some of us were even arbitrarily asked by the IB to vacate our office rooms even before the R&AW could find alternate accommodation for us by hiring private buildings. Kao sent some of us on a tour of the border areas in order to get details of the trans-border posts set up by the IB for the collection of intelligence about the neighbouring countries from the IB officers

posted in the field. I was sent on a long tour of the North-East. The IB officers posted there were polite, but not very communicative. Hooja and officers close to him created similar difficulties in respect of the division of the assets of the Monitoring Division of the IB, which was responsible for the collection of TECHINT.

The IB also made a determined bid to retain the liaison division, which was responsible for liaison with foreign intelligence agencies, and the Directorate-General of Security (the DGS) under the control of the DIB, but Indira Gandhi did not agree and these were transferred to the control of Kao. While the liaison division became a part of the R&AW, the DGS was maintained as a separate organization, but with Kao as its head. Thus, Kao wore two hats as the head of the R&AW and as the chief of the DGS. This practice has continued ever since.

The brilliant performance of the R&AW in 1971, the influence acquired by Kao in the policy- making circles and his emergence as a close adviser of Indira Gandhi added to the jealousies of the IB officers closely associated with Hooja. So long as these officers, who were put through their professional paces by Hooja, continued to be in service in the IB, their mental reservations regarding the advisability of Indira Gandhi’s action in bifurcating the IB continued to influence their attitude towards Kao and the R&AW. They held the view that since many of India’s internal security problems had trans-border linkages and arose from the state of the relations of India with its neighbours, the same organization should have remained responsible for the collection of internal and external intelligence. Long after my retirement, I once happened to travel with the then DIB by the same flight. During a chat on the internal security problems, he said that many of these problems were due to Indira Gandhi’s original sin of bifurcating the IB. He strongly argued for a re-merger of these two organizations.

These reservations about Kao and the R&AW in the minds of some senior officers of the IB, who rose in the profession under Hooja, did have an impact on their co-operation with Kao after he took over as Senior Adviser in 1981. While he got excellent co-operation from the R&AW officers at all levels, one cannot say the same thing about the IB. There were officers, who had served under Kao in the IB and held him in great esteem. They extended their whole-hearted co-operation to him. There were others, who had inherited the prejudices of Hooja against him. Their co-operation left much to be desired.

During his tenure as the Senior Adviser, he continued to enjoy the total trust of Indira Gandhi as he had done between 1968 and 1977 as the head of the R&AW. She valued his advice on all national security matters. His reputation as her close adviser attracted the foreign intelligence agencies with which the R&AW had a liaison relationship and he was often in receipt of invitations from them to visit their headquarters for discussions. In certain instances, Indira Gandhi chose to operate through him rather than through the then head of the R&AW. One could cite the examples of the visits undertaken by Kao to Washington DC to remove misunderstandings in the minds of the Reagan Administration regarding her policy on Afghanistan and to Beijing, with the help of the Yugoslav intelligence, to test the waters for a possible visit by Indira Gandhi to China, which did not materialize due to her assassination. One could also cite her using him and not the head of the R&AW for resuming the dialogue with Laldenga and for discussions with one of the US-based Sikh extremist

leaders in Zurich. While handling these tasks, Kao took great care to see that the authority and the importance of the head of the R&AW were not undermined.

The R&AW had two heads when Kao was the Senior Adviser to Indira Gandhi. Suntook, who had been appointed as its head by Morarji Desai in 1977, continued as its chief till his superannuation in March, 1983. He was succeeded by G.C.Saxena, who functioned as the Director of the R&AW till his superannuation in March, 1986. Both of them had excellent relations with Kao, who held them in great regard. He saw to it that he did not come in the way of their independence and effectiveness.

Under Indira Gandhi, Suntook revived the R&AW’s covert action capability, which had remained in a state of suspension under Morarji Desai and Charan Singh. Indira Gandhi was also keen that the organization should take active interest in meeting requests for training from the intelligence agencies and police forces of Third World countries. Under Suntook and Saxena, the R&AW arranged training courses for intelligence and police officers from the Maldives, Uganda, Mozambique, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mauritius and Seychelles. It also trained the cadres of the ANC of South Africa and the SWAPO of Namibia. Two retired officers of the R&AW----one from the Police and the other from the Air Force--- were sent to Zambia to work as intelligence instructors. In addition to my other work, I was also put in charge of arranging and co-ordinating this training. In that capacity, I had visited some of these countries. I could see the tremendous respect which Indira Gandhi commanded among the leaders of these countries. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they looked upon India as Indira Gandhi’s country. Despite her innumerable other preoccupations, she found time to attend to the requests for assistance from the leaders of these countries. Dr.Milton Obote of Uganda, who had replaced Idi Amin, was a great admirer of Indira Gandhi. He was very keen that India should persuade all Sindhi and other Indian-origin businessmen, who had fled from Uganda under Idi Amin, to come back to Uganda and re-start their business ventures. He wanted India to run the tourism business in Uganda, including the hotels. Unfortunately, none of the Indian businessmen was prepared to go back.

When Suntook was the chief, the MEA for the first time raised the issue of what they alleged was the unusually high standard of living maintained by the R&AW officers posted abroad. The late R.D. Sathe, the then Foreign Secretary, officially wrote to Suntook about an R&AW officer posted to South-East Asia, who had taken a large bank loan in order to buy a very expensive Mercedes Benz car. “ Where from is he going to find the money for paying back the loan and the interest?” Sathe asked. The MEA also raised the case of another officer posted to North America, who, according to them, had ordered an expensive Mercedes Benz car and paid for it even before he left India for his foreign posting. “How did he raise the foreign exchange in India?” they asked. Narasimha Rao mentioned to me that during his travels abroad, he had noticed that R&AW and IB officers posted in the Indian Embassies had the largest and the most expensive cars. “How do they manage to find the money?” he asked. He also pointed out that the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies could easily identify Indian intelligence officers from the expensive cars maintained by them, since no other officer could afford to maintain such cars. Such complaints about the allegedly lavish life-style of at least some R&AW officers caused considerable embarrassment to the organization and, with great difficulty, Suntook managed to convince the Foreign Secretary that while there might be some bad eggs in the organization, the majority of the officers maintained an austere life-style.

Just before Suntook retired on March 31, 1983, a traditional ally of India sought India’s assistance in a very sensitive matter. After discussing this at a top secret meeting attended by a very small number of officers, Indira Gandhi accepted a suggestion of Kao to send Suntook on a visit to that country for further discussions with its Prime Minister. He returned from the visit only some days after March 31, 1983. As a result, he could not formally hand over to Saxena as the chief on March 31, 1983, and a farewell party arranged by the staff in his honour in a local hotel had to be postponed without giving any reason for the postponement. This gave rise to some speculation about his whereabouts. A disgruntled member of the ministerial cadre of the R&AW against whom Suntook had taken disciplinary action for his participation in the strike of 1980, told the Delhi correspondent of a leading daily published from Kolkata that there was panic in the organization because Suntook had fled to the US without properly handing over charge to Saxena and had taken with him many classified files of the organization. The newspaper published the story under an eight-column banner headline on the front page. The Editor was contacted and a strong protest was lodged over his newspaper publishing a blatantly false report fed to it by a disgruntled employee of the organization. We demanded that the newspaper should publish our denial of the story and apologise. He declined. The Government then referred the matter to the Press Council, which expressed its disapproval of the action of the newspaper in publishing a false report and, subsequently, in refusing to publish our denial and an apology.

Somehow, the US State Department in Washington DC had come to know of the sensitive request made by the Prime Minister of that country and the top secret visit of Suntook to that country at the instance of Indira Gandhi for further discussions. It got its information from the US Embassy in Delhi. A well-known American investigative journalist came to know of this from his contacts in the State Department. He contacted the Indian Embassy in Washington DC to check up whether such a request had been made by that country to New Delhi and, if so, what would be the response of India. The Embassy sent a message to the MEA in Delhi. Everybody in Delhi was surprised as to how the US Embassy had come to know of the discussions at a top secret meeting convened by Indira Gandhi, which was attended by a very small number of senior officers. One was told that enquiries by the IB on her orders gave strong grounds for suspicion that the leakage had probably occurred from a senior officer of the Army, who had attended this meeting. This came in the way of his promotion and affected his chances of rising to the top despite his reputation as an excellent professional.

Girish Chandra Saxena, popularly known as Gary, took over as the head of the R&AW in the first week of April, 1983, after Suntook returned from his top secret foreign trip. He was the last of the “Gentlemen Professionals” of the R&AW---- the others being Kao himself, Sankaran Nair and Suntook. They were not only brilliant professionals, but also lovable individuals with endearing personal qualities. There was nothing small or mean about them. They did wonders and were very close to the Prime Minister of the day. Their role in influencing government policy on national security matters was phenomenal. They had a wide network of contacts in the international intelligence community at the highest levels. They imparted a sense of pride to the R&AW officers. They never bragged about themselves and their role and contacts.

Saxena, an IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, came to the R&AW at its very inception from the UP and was appointed as the head of the analysis division dealing with Pakistan and the rest of the

Islamic world. In the initial years of his career in the R&AW, he turned out to be an excellent analyst. In the months leading up to the 1971 war, his assessment of the political developments in West and East Pakistan and his predictions for the future turned out to be uncannily correct. He was one of the legendary Kaoboys. After the liberation of Bangladesh, he was posted out as the head of the R&AW station in Rangoon. After completing his tenure, he came back to headquarters and took over the responsibility for analysis as well as operations relating to Pakistan. Suntook posted him to London, where he was responsible for liaison with the British intelligence. During his posting there, co- operation in counter-terrorism had not assumed the kind of importance in the liaison relationship as it did after 1985. The focus was more on exchange of intelligence on China, Pakistan and other countries of common interest and concern to India and the UK.

Suntook recalled him from London in 1980 before he completed his three-year tenure so that he could take over as No.2 in the place of Shiv Raj Bahadur, who was removed from the organization by Indira Gandhi. Saxena supervised and co-ordinated on behalf of Suntook the working of all administrative, analysis and operational divisions. He devoted special attention to the analysis and operational divisions covering Pakistan and once again laid the foundation for an effective covert action capability.

Kao’s tenure as the Senior Adviser saw the beginning of an activist policy by India in Sri Lanka. Indira Gandhi’s close interest in Sri Lanka and concerns about it went back to 1971, when, to her annoyance, the then Sri Lankan Government allowed planes of the Pakistan Air Force to re-fuel at the Katunayake airport while on their way to and from East Pakistan after she had banned their flights through the Indian air space. Her strong expression of unhappiness over the Sri Lankan action led to a discontinuance of the re-fuelling. Despite her cordial relations with Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Indira Gandhi did not close her eyes to the threats that could be posed to India’s security by Sri Lanka’s close relations with China. However, her unhappiness over Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s flirting with the Chinese did not inhibit Indira Gandhi from promptly responding in April, 1971, to an SOS from the Sri Lankan leader for Indian assistance when the then ultra-Marxist Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) launched simultaneous attacks in many places and came very near to capturing power. On the instructions of Indira Gandhi, Kao, who was then heading the R&AW, rushed to Colombo an IPS