BEWARE IF SPIES, SABOTEURS
AND SLANDER MONGERS
 

The Mitorkhin Archives-II as projected by a semi-historian scholar Christopher Andrew of Britain, once again use the so-called KGB archives, acquired from a double agent Vasili Mitrokhin for cheap muck-rafring. Among many Asian leaders, they have singled out some of he great Indian leaders as targets of a slander campaign. The spies, saboteurs and slander mongers from both the Western world and the now nearly dead Communist world, have been at this game before and after India’s Independence.

There is nothing surprising in this continuous misinformation war against the largest democracy in the world. Both the so-called socialist world and the powerful capitalist world, sought to turn India into a client state, to be gradually and conveniently turned into an economic colony, but failed.

Espionage, like prostitution, is one of the oldest shady professions in the world but more pitiable are those who take the words of known spies and prostitutes as deliverers of moral judgment on those who refused to bow to their malicious string pullers. No doubt many of these indomitable leaders of countries like India had to pay the price through political assassinations. The violent deaths of many Indian leaders, belonging to different schools of ideology, remained shrouded in mystery despite much political furors and setting up of commissions of inquiry to get to the truth of the assassinations and the real identity of the assassins.

It has to be remembered that books of slander, mostly brought out from the Western countries as pseudo histories, based in reality on forged and doctored information, have only one purpose they try to cover up the assassins and saboteurs and malign carefully chosen leaders of target nations, who are no more and cannot defend themselves.

The preliminary statement of this investigatory story by the DANFES is necessary to put it in correct perspective for further debate and discussions and provoking those who consider their temporary political gain and loyalties above the permanent truths to think again about their hysteric reactions to the creations of the sick minds from the countries of the West. They were also the mother countries of the competing 20th Century espionage systems, through which they sought to maintain their domination of the Asian and African countries in particular form where the nationalist struggles and the wheels of history had forced them to relinquish their colonial strangleholds.

One has to understand that after the end of World War-II in particular, and during and after the cold war, the super-powers and their allies and protégés continued to conduct their spy wars as precursors to proxy wars, limited wars, invasions of smaller and weaker countries and the more dreaded instant wars under the banner of terrorism of all varieties and colours.

The Soviet Union, China, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Israel and nearest home India’s nearest neighbour Pakistan have acquired a special place on the world espionage map. They are countries which have made sabotage, disinformation wars and terrorism as instruments of their policy of threat, blackmail and sabotage against countries whose lands or loyalty they seek to acquire by force.

Of course, there is no country, especially in Asia and Africa, which is not constantly the target of the CIA, KGB, Mossad and ISI like spy agencies. In India, all such agencies, including the Chinese and some East European spy networks, had been active, long before the country’s Independence. Just on the eve of the breaking out of World War-II, when India was still a part of the British empire, there were countywide raids here to arrest German nationals who had been residing in this country for years. They were spies planted in India by Hitler’s Germany, long before the war started.

It was also a well known fact that the mother of the CIA was also originally born in India in the jungles of Assam during the world War-II under the aegis of the South-East Asia Command, led by British and American intelligence agents as OSS, to spy on the Japanese and the Indian National Army, both then on the side of the Axis powers led by Germany against the Allied powers led by Great Britain.

At that point of the beginning of world War-II, the Soviet Union was part of the military alliance of the Axis powers to begin with, before Hitler turned on the Soviet Union itself.

At that point, for strategic information, which flowed earlier to Moscow through the German, Japanese and Italian spies of the Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo regimes of militarists, the soviet Union had to quickly shift gears and both the KGB and the fraternal communist parties around Europe and the world had to join the “war effort” which originally was considered by many of them, including the communist party in India, “not their war.”

The historical fact had to be taken note of that then the war on the side of the Allies finally acquired the character of non-fascist forces, including the Soviet Union, fighting against the fascists, including Germany, Italy, Japan and several Quislings, fascist spies and agents who had turned into rulers of puppet regimes set up by Hitler to subvert their nationalism and democratic structures.

Then it turned into a “peoples’ war” for the Communist movement all over the world. It must also be remembered that the Comintern and the Communist movement led by Lenin and Stalin was an internationalist doctrine in which geo-political boundaries of nations did not matter at all while going ahead with the establishment of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Therefore, the Communists all over the world were expected to come to the aid of Moscow in every way, including the supply of strategic information.

The Indian Communists had to change from neutrals to supporters of the “people’s war” after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. When the Axis powers were finally defeated and the Allies, now including the Soviet Union too, came out triumphant, the espionage networks of the powerful Allies leaders, and the very special strategic information relationship between the Communist parties around the world emerged.

These circumstances, eventually, resulted in the KGB and the OSS successor, the CIA, steadily emerging as the world’s great spy networks. The position had been earlier occupied by the British MI-6 and other UK secret services, set up by Britain over the years to pursue its Imperial policy of divide-and-rule all over its great sprawling empire in Asia, Africa, North America and Australia.

And then the world became the happy hunting ground of the three great Spy mothers, the KGB the CIA and the MI-6. The three witches, between themselves, steadily built up their own governments within their sponsoring governments and carved up the world into their sometimes collaborating and sometimes clashing evil empires of espionage and sabotage.

Not only India, but all the former colonial nations struggling for freedom from the colonial powers in Asia, Africa and America, were the victims of he machinations of these evil empires which divided countries, tried to destroy the images of their new leaders and srwed the seeds of violence and prejudice among the nationalities whose coming together would be a challenge to their economic domination in future.

That was the scenario of the swift rise of the CIA, the KGB and of course the MI-6 in the cold war era when battles were fought through cunning, crookery and Quislings, secretly and maliciously to sow instability and conflict in the target nations.

Time Bomb Explodes

Spy exposes and exposures by foreign agencies and their masters and servants are not new to India. Since the days of Jawaharlal Nehru, there were efforts by many countries of the Left and the Right to plant spies, pliable media persons and gullible politicians to malign and discredit Indian leaders of almost every political party from the Indian National Congress, the Jana Sangh, its successor the BJP, the Socialist Party of India in its various forms and finally the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) themselves.

What was always interesting was the timing of such exposures. The motive was always obvious. These time bombs were targeted against the “enemy parties” to favour “fraternal parties” to gain control of India and pave the way for one or another kind of foreign intervention. The old colonial powers were sore that the unity and determination of India under the nationalist movement called the Indian National Congress had compelled them to give up their colonial stranglehold of India.

The Soviets were sore that the non-aligned movement had failed to help spread their unequivocal domination of the non capitalist world and the Chinese, who emerged as fast growing super power in their own right, perceived India moving into the capitalist camp.

Most of these perceptions were erroneous and were based on a crass failure to really understand the intrinsic democratic values and the power of the Indian people to face challenges and despite some of its weakling and power-crazy politicians, to sustain themselves and ensure India’s steady march towards democratic political and economic progress.

Whenever India was about to embark on important steps ahead, such exposes suddenly exploded, generally from London, New York and sometimes even from Beijing where once Li Shao Chih had called “Nehru, Nasser and Tito… the Biggest Enemies of Communism.”

This time the Mitrokhin Archive II was also planned right in the wake of the planned leaks from the similar expose work by Gauhar Ayub Khan of Pakistan, the son of the late Pak dictator Ayub Khan, mud-slinging on Indian Army and political leaders. These came on the eve of India’s breakthroughs in economic and international relations and ahead of the series of important state elections.

The hysteric sections of some of the Indian political parties need to take these so called merchants of truths manufactured in the KGB and CIA factories, not just with a pinch of salt, but with at least a grain of grey matter.

So, in this investigation, it is important to know what is the salt and pepper in the KGB dirty bomb, thrown at India by the dead Vasili Mitrokhin and by living Chriszopher Andrew, his successor. Perhaps the most detailed introduction to Mitrokhin Archive II was presented by the Pioneer in its September 25 issue. Courtesy the Pioneer, we present experts from that report as it was published in that newspaper, before presenting the Indian reactions to them. This is followed by two reports on Spies in the Himalayas, a CIA expose published in 2003 with a view to promoting a balanced approach to the subject. Of course the reactions, to be presented later, of the various political sections were along the expected lines of one-up-manship and would come later in this investigation.

India was up for sale, says a sensational book based on classified documents smuggled out of Soviet Union by KGB agent Vasili Mitrokhin in 1992. The book, slated to be released in India on October 12, shows up Indira Gandhi’s India as the most penetrated nation by any foreign agency, with everyone from Ministers to influential journalists to her all-time ally CPI being on the payroll of Soviet Intelligence. Secret funds amounting to millions, forged CIA conspiracy documents reaching PMO, covertly funded mass demonstrations and mid-road handover of currency suitcases, the KGB never had it so good in any other NATO nation.

How the story unfolded

Vasili Mitrokhin is the legendry KGB defector to Britain who gave the world “unprecedented and unrestricted” access to one of the World’s most secret and intensely guarded archives-that of the foreign Intelligence arm of the KGB-the First Chief Director (FCD). The FBI calls the material brought out of Soviet Union by Mitrokhin in 1992 “the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source.”

Mitrokhin and his family was exfiltrated by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SSI) from Russia in 1992. Details of the operations are not known as they are classified. But, along with him came a mine of information for the West in six Suitcases containing conscious notes the man had taken daily for 12 years-of top-secret KGB files going as far back as 1918.

Mitrokhin’s documents contain KGB’s operation all over the world, including the US, Europe, Asia, Africa and Middle-East, not to mention unforgivable details of its Afghanistan operations.

Over a decade later, Intelligence agencies around the world are still pursuing leads from his archive. The papers contain material from KGB files which Russian foreign intelligence is still anxious to keep from public view. The archive covers almost the whole of the Cold War, most of it still highly classified in Moscow. The originals of some files transcribed by Mitrokhin may no longer exit. In 1989, most of the huge multi-volume file on dissident Andrei Sakharov, earlier branded Public Enemy No. 1 by KGB, was destroyed. Soon afterwards, Kryuchkov shredded all files on other dissidents. Mitrokhin’s notes on them may now be all that survives.

Born in 1922, Mitrokhin began his career as a foreign intelligence officer in 1948. He grew up on conspiracy theories floated by Stalin, the cultural barbarism of his successor Khruschev, the persecution of the likes of Boris Pasternak, Nobel Laureate and author of the all-time great Dr. Zhivago, the bloodhunt of dissidents by Stalin’s brutal security chief Pavlovich Beria who, incidentally, was the third KGB chief to be put to the gallows though not for being a serial rapist of underage girls as this would have tarnished the KGB reputation worldwide.

After the Soviets compelled Pasternak to return the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mitrokhin was so outraged that he sent an anonymous letter of protest to the Literaturanaya Gazeta. Though he wrote this letter with his left hand to disguise his handwriting, he remained anxious as he knew how the KGB deployed its resources to track down anonymous letter-writers. He was even worried that by licking the gum on the back of the envelope before sealing it, he had made it possible for his saliva to be identified by a KGB Laboratory.

Mitrokhin’s Disenchantment with the Soviet regime had another stop that he termed a “personal affront.” As an ardent fan of the famous Kirov Ballet, he was outraged to discover that the FCD planned to maim the ballet’s star dancer and defector, Rudolf Nureyev. Though this plan could not be put into action and Nureyev died due to AIDS, Mitrokhin could never forget how a Soviet jewel would have been injured beyond repair by a dissidence-obsessed KGB.

Other than this, Mitrokhin worked and saw the KGB at close quarters under Beria, Shelepin, Semichastney and Yuri Andropov, all of whom where highly ambitious, mostly unscrupulous and largely ruthless in their running of the organization. The brutal crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968 and the outrageous secret files he stumbled upon on the Afghanistan War, moulded Mitrokhin’s viewpoint that Soviet Union was on an irreparable path of no-return.

His opportunity to document the iniquities of the Soviet system came in June 1972 when the FCD headquarters was moved from Lubyanka to Yasenevo. For the next 12 years, his assignment was to check and seal around 3,00,000 files in the FCD archives prior to their transfer to the new headquarters. It was a mine of classified information he became privy to. As the co-author of Mitrokhin Archives, Christopher Andrew puts it: “Few KGB officers apart from Mitrokhin spent as much time reading, let alone nothing, foreign intelligence files. Outside the FCD archives, only the most senior officers shared his unrestricted access and none had the time to read more than a fraction of the material noted down by him.”

Mitrokhin spent every Monday, Tuesday and Friday in his Yasenevo office. On Wednesdays, he went to Lubyanka to work on FCD’s secret files, those of Directorate S which ran illegals – KGB officers an agents, most of Soviet nationality, working under deep cover abroad disguised as foreign  citizens. Once reviewed by Mitrokhin, each batch of files was placed in sealed containers transported to Yasenevo on Thursday morning, accompanied by Mitrokhin who checked them on arrival.

When Mitrokhin set out to compile his forbidden FCD archives, he was paranoid. For weeks, he tried to commit names, codenames and key facts from the files to memory and transcribe them every evening at home. Abandoning it as too slow, he began taking notes in minuscule handwriting on scraps, which he crumpled up and threw into his wastepaper basket. Each evening, he retrieved these notes and smuggled them out concealed in his shoes. With the Yasenevo guards limiting searches to occasional inspections of briefcases, he became confident enough to take out notes in his jacket and trouser pockets. Not once in the 12 years was Mitrokhin frisked.

He hid these papers every night under his mattress at his Moscow flat. On weekends, he took them to his dacha 36 km from Moscow and typed as many as possible. He hid the typescripts in a milk-churn which he buried below the floor.

The dacha sat on raised foundations, giving Mitrokhin room to crawl beneath the floorboard, dig a hole with a short-handled spade and deposit his papers there in his milk churn. He frequently crawled through dog and cat feces and, sometimes, disturbed rats while digging. When the milk churn was full, he began concealing his typescripts in a tin clothes-boiler. Eventually, his archive filled two tin trunks and two aluminum cases, all buried under the dacha.

Mitrokhin’s most anxious moment came when he once arrived at his dacha to find a stranger hiding in the attic. He was reminded how a friend of writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who had called unexpectedly at his dacha while he was away and surprised two KGB officers in the attic searching for subversive manuscripts, was beaten up. To his relief, however, the intruder in his attic turned out to be a squatter.

During summer holidays Mitrokhin worked at a second family dacha near Penza, carrying his notes in a haversack and dressing up as a peasant so as to not attract attention.

Despite Gorbachev’s call for glasnost in 1985, Mitrokhin knew that the Soviet system would never allow the truth to come out. So, he began thinking of ways of transporting his archive to the West.

     First he thought of, but soon abandoned the idea, of flying out in a micro light aircraft from a KGB sports club, much like the West German Matthias Rust had done by crossing the Finnish border into Soviet airspace and flying undetected for 450 miles before landing in Red Square.

He also considered getting a position on the local Party committee that issued permits for foreign travel and book himself and family on a cruise from Leningrad to Odessa in the Black Sea. He abandoned this idea because of the difficulty of separating himself from the Soviet tour group.

Finally, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, in March 1992, Mitrokhin boarded a train from Moscow to newly independent Baltic republic. With him, he took a case on wheels, containing bread, sausages and drinks on top, clothes underneath, and at the bottom, a sample of his notes. The next day he arrived unannounced at the British embassy and asked for “someone in authority.”

A young woman diplomat received him. Mitrokhin was impressed by her fluency in Russian and the warm English tea she offered him while going through his files. Mitrokhin told her they were a small part of a big personal collection, which included material on KGB operations in Britain.

On his next trip to the embassy on April 9, Mitrokhin brought 2,000 typed pages that he had removed from the hiding place beneath his dacha. Showing his Communist Party card and KGB pension certificate as identity proof, he handed over his bulky consignment to secret service agents and spent the day answering queries about himself, his archive and how he had compiled it. It was decided that he would return to the embassy two months later to discuss arrangements for a visit to Britain. Early May, the Moscow SIS reported to London that Mitrokhin would leave Moscow on an overnight train on June 10. On June 11, he arrived in the Baltic capital carrying a rucksack containing more material. Most of his day with SIS officers was spent discussing plans for him to be debriefed in Britain.

On September 7, escorted by SIS, Mitrokhin arrived in England for the first time. While being debriefed at anonymous houses in London and the countryside, Mitrokhin took the final decision to leave Russia for Britain, and agreed with SIS on arrangements to exfiltrate him, his family and his archive.

On October 13, he was infiltrated back into Russia to make final arrangements for his departure. On November 7, 1992, the 75th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Mitrokhin arrived with his family in the Baltic capital. A few days later, he arrived in London to begin a new life in Britain. “It was a bittersweet moment. Mitrokhin was safe and secure for the first time since he had begun assembling his secret archive eighteen years previously, but at the same time he felt a sense of bereavement at separation from a homeland he knew he would probably never see again. The bereavement passed, though his attachment to Russia remained,” writes Andrew.

Mitrokhin continued to be a British citizen till his death on January 24, 2004. For most of his life in Britain, he remained publicity shy and refused to come to the forefront though his wine parties for friends were quite popular. Using his senior citizen’s rail card to travel the length and breadth of the country, he saw more of Britain than most natives.

Since 1992 till his death on January 24, 2004, he spent several days a week working on his archive, typing up the remaining handwritten notes, and responding to questions about his archive from Intelligence services from five continents.

When one Mr. Vasili Mitrokhin walked out of Russia along with his family and a six-carriage cache full of classified documents that Russian Intelligence is still cagey about, little did the Congress or the Leftists in India realize how this predominantly West triumph over the Red Dragon’s covert trans-continental penetration would put them on the mat.

Thirteen years later, as the Mitrokhin archives tell you in a sequel book co-authored by Christopher Andrew, the KGB spent unprecedented time, roubles an agents on funding the Communist Party of India, propelling it to align with Indira Gandhi through her good, bad and ugly days and how the left took instructions from the KGB on the best ways to strategies their stay in the power portals of India – right from the time of Jawaharlal Nehru to that of Rajiv Gandhi.

According to the book, the first man the KGB’s well-entrenched network picked up to be worked upon was none other than Nehru’s Defence Minster Krishna Menon, a firebrand leftists. Agents in New Delhi were specifically instructed to engage in intense operations to strengthen Menon’s profile in India and work upon his personal popularity. The “work” paid dividends when the Defence Minster switched to buying Soviet wares and flying machines for the Armed Forces instead of going on shopping expeditions to America.

However, the Soviet hopes that Menon would succeed Nehru were dashed when he resigned in the wake of the Chinese invasion and soon got eclipsed on the political firmament.

After toying with managing Gulzarilal Nanda and Lal Bahadur Shastri as foils to the right-wing Morarji Desai’s possible ascendance to the top slot, the Soviets finally homed in on Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi when Congress leaders chose her as Shastri’s successor after his sudden death in 1966.

Indira was codenamed VANO by the KGB and a multi-pronged strategy was put in place to serenade her whenever possible, to feed her on CIA conspiracy theories, l manage and create her political allies, like the CPI, and even fund her election candidates.

It was during the Indira regime that the KGB best flowered and without an exaggeration ran as a covert, parallel power centre.

The book tells you that the KGB not just penetrated the PMO but also the Press, the CPI, the bureaucracy and even the Congress party functionaries.

A leading KGB mole in the Indian media was an influential journalist codenamed NOK who not only routinely published material favorable to Soviet Union but also provided inside information on Mrs Gandhi’s plans and her powerful men. The link was abandoned in 1980 after this Journalist’s health started falling.

After Indira won a landslide victory in 1971, the politburo established a secret fund of 2.5 million convertible roubles (Codenamed DEPO) to fund active-measures in India for four years. KGB also claimed to have helped the success of Congress (R) in Assembly poll.

In the 1967 election, KGB subsidized the CPI campaign and also heavily funded several agents and confidential contacts within the Congress. The most senior agent identified in the files noted by Mitrokhin was a Minister codenamed ABAD, regarded by the KGB as ‘extremely influential.’

During 1965-1968 there was series of seven mountaineering expeditions — four to Nanda Devi and three to Nanda Kot – as part of the most exotic and hazardous intelligence operations of the cold war, backed by the CIA. During this most unusual mountaineering venture a group of eminent Sherpas was subjected to tremendous strain, establishing beyond any doubt that they can stretch themselves to any limit if they worked under the right leaders.

According to Capt. M. S. Kohli: immediately after the return of the 1965 Indian Everest Expedition to New Delhi on June 23, I was asked to lead a covert Himalyan expedition to Nanda Devi involving leading mountaineers, intelligence officials, nuclear scientists and dare-devil pilots, drawn from both USA and India.

Our India team included Sonam Gyatso, Harish Rawat, Sonam Wangyal and G.S. Bhangu – all Everesters. The Americans were represented by Lute Jerstad, Tom frost, Robert Schaller, Barry Corbet and a Barry Prather.

After establishing the Base Camp in the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, and positioning all Indian members and Sherpas, as well as stores by the middle of September, I gave the green signal to the Americans to join us. On September 18 the American team arrived in Delhi on a special flight, carrying sophisticated mountaineering equipment. Certain items used in space missions, such as space blankets weighing hardly a few ounces, were being used in a mountaineering expedition for the first time.

On September 20 there were four helicopter sorties to the Sanctuary. There were eight more stories during the next three days. Immediately after their arrival, we started moving up the mountain.

On October 7, the most delicate operation was performed at the Base Camp. The box containing radioactive fuel rods was opened and inserted into the generator which along with four other items of the sensor equipment was to be carried to the summit of Nanda Devi and installed. The objective was to track the Chinese nuclear capabilities which were of great concern to both India and the USA.

The nuclear-powered generator was quite hot and would remain so for nearly 100 years. While the members scared of the radio contamination kept some distance, the Sherpas snuggled up to the device, warming their hands and patting their faces.

To monitor any radiation, the Sherpas used to Tiger Badges, were given white badges to be pinned to the front of their wind-proof jackets. In the unlikely event of excessive radiation leakage, the badge would change colour. I advised the Sherpas not to carry this particular load for more than four hours at a stretch before passing it off to a colleague.

On October 13, bad weather struck us. There was heavy snowfall in all caps. Camp-III with 14 climbers and Sherpas lay inactive and under siege of falling snow. All upward and downward movement came to a standstill. Lute, Sandy and Tom tried to stir outside the camp but found it and impossible task, I advised them to stay back. The following day, however, the weather improved. Out of 14 persons in Camp-III, 13 carried loads to Camp-IV. Out of these, five stayed back at Camp-IV. They were Da Norbu, Dawa Nurbu, Lhakpa, Nima Dorjee and Kalden. Rawat, Wangyal, Wangyal II and Pasang Dawa Lama carried loads to Camp-III and returned to Camp II late at night. I was worried about their safety and was relieved to find that they were safe.

Our hopes were once again shattered when on October 15 there was heavy snowfall, pinning down climbers and Sherpas once again to their tents. Sonam Gyatso, who was frostbitten on his back on Everest, complained of pain on the same spot. I advised him to return to Camp-II and then move down to Base Camp. The Sherpas at Camp-IV started feeling miserable.

My diary of October 16 reads: “I spoke to Sherpas in the morning and persuaded them to stay at higher camps hoping that weather might improve the following day. Lute had moved up to Camp_II and spoke to me on the walkies-talkie. He expressed great danger in view of the continuing snowfall. Considering all aspects I asked all climbers and Sherpas to move down. Snow continued on the mountain that night, and conditions were becoming more and more dangerous. The attempt had to be called off”.

Before leaving, the nuclear equipment was properly secured at Camp-IV (23,500 feet). Bhangu, who supervised this difficult task, was certain that it would stay till the summer next when we would be back to complete the un-finished job.

The Nanda Devi operation had not succeeded. There were, however, no regrets as we had all done our best and could not have done any better. The weather gods had conspired to frustrate our first attempt to install the device on Nanda Devi.

In May 1966, I sent a four-member team of Harish Rawat (as the leader), Bhangu, Sonam Wangyal II and D.S. Sisodia to retrieve the equipment. I was asked to stay back at Delhi to keep an eye on the operations. The team’s brief was to retrieve the equipment and bring it to the Base Camp where an American expert would be flown to de fuel the generator before flying the equipment to Delhi. The Same team of Sherpas would join the second expedition to Nanda Devi.

Beginning its work in full earnest, the team made quick and satisfactory progress, at least during the initial stages. Camp I was set up during the next two days. Route to camp II and Camp III did not present much difficulty. By the end of May, Camp III was also occupied. Weather remained good, and the ferries were going as planned.

By June 1, G.S. Bhangu with six Sherpas, which included Da Norbu, Dorjee and Tashi, reached Camp IV at 1155 hours. Bhangu rushed to the rock with which he had secured the equipment in 1965. The rock ledge had broken down! There was no sign of the nuclear-powered generator. For a moment Bhangu stood stunned and motionless. He frantically looked around. During the winter tons of fresh snow must have fallen on Nanda Devi. Under its weight the device must have broken off the rock-ledge and gone down. To where?

This created tremendous concern to both USA and India. In the event of any leakage to the nuclear equipment millions of Indians could be affected through Rishi Ganga which drains the Nanda Devi massif.

The Nanda Devi slopes were soon scoured by the climbers and Sherpas trying to locate the abandoned device. The Sherpas had never been used for such work. They took it in this stride and went about this new task with great sincerity. After several days of strenuous work, they all drew a blank. The sad news of non-recovery was flashed to us in Delhi where some emergency meetings were held to take stock of the situation, and chalk out a further plan of action.

To rub salt on the wound, the weather gods too became angry. Frequent blizzards and spells of snowfall followed. Sherpas and porters were in miserable conditions. Bhangu, who had frustrating time in recruiting porters in Joshimath a month ago, had now once again found himself in a terrible mess, confronted with the task of persuading and motivating the Sherpas to continue. Rawat too was in a predicament and found himself helpless. Sherpas had reached the end of their limit but continued to work in misery reluctantly.

In the meanwhile Alfa meters and mine detectors were rushed to the Sanctuary to facilitate the search operations. Extensive search during the next few days yielded no clues about the generator. The climbers pondered over various possibilities. Their conclusion was that the generator had fallen down the mountain slope and probably came down to the snow fields below, to a height of about 18,000 feet.

After thoroughly searching the area between Camp III and Camp IV with the mine detectors, Rawat and party also carried out a mock exercise to recreate the scenario in the event of he generator having fallen down the mountain slopes. A partially consumed butane gas cylinder was dropped from camp IV on June 8. it was later found in the glacier, between the Sanctuary and the Base Camp.

On June 12, disappointed, the second expedition to Nanda Devi was called off.

After a few days of consultations with the CIA, it was decided to send a third expedition to Nanda Devi to search for the missing generator. ‘Operation Recovery’ continued right from the middle of July until the third week of October, 1966. During these three months our team made several trips to the mountain. Hundreds of ITBP men carried loads to the sanctuary from Tapovan.

“Operation Recovery” ended on October 23. Thus the entire 1966 year was spent in a fruitless and exacting operation, in difficult conditions. While the members kept shuttling between Delhi and the Sanctuary, the Sherpas continued facing the music. They had reached their limit.

After we gave up the search for the nuclear device at Nanda Devi, the Americans accepted my original proposal to sit up the monitoring device on the dome of Nanda Kot at a height of nearly 22,000 feet, i.e. 500 feet below the summit. Nanda Kot stood close to Nanda Devi. I had already climbed this peak in 1959 and knew the route as well. I was sure there would be no serious difficulty in reaching the Dome. Besides we could leisurely carry out the installation operation. Absolute secrecy was maintained for the secret Nanda Kot expedition. The American team which arrived in March 1967, consisted of two new climbers, both of the 1963 American Everest team. Tom Frost, Rob Shaller and Sham Curry of the Nanda Devi returned to join the team.

This expedition was extremely successful and despite several obstacles we were able to reach the Dome according to our plans and install the entire plutonium fuelled equipment on the summit on May 30. We got signals from Delhi that the tracking equipment was functioning well and that we could return. The Sherpas were now on two mountains. Those who were on Nanda Kot felt elated. They enjoyed climbing and were thrilled on the success of the Nanda Kot mission. And those who were still in Nanda Devi on their fourth expedition continued to work in misery.

Towards the end of August 1967, there was a setback. The monitoring device on Nanda Kot had stopped functioning. I mounted an expedition, the second one to Nanda Kot with a few members and by withdrawing some Sherpas from the nada Devi where the search operation was still continuing.

On reaching the Dome, we discovered the sensor equipment buried deep in the snow. After digging, we cleared the snow and the equipment started working once again. Like the May operations, the Sherpas who joined this operation once again like the missing generator. Like the Sherpas I too felt miserable.

During the entire 1966 Expedition, the extended tussle on Nanda Devi had put the Sherpas under severe pressure. On one occasion there were signs of mutiny. Though the altitude was not particularly high, and the weather was relatively warm, the constant hiking across the rocks was taking heavy toll on their mental and physical health.

Another problem was that the search was being haphazard manner. The progress, as a result, was all but impossible.

On the day of our planed evacuation, October 25, 1967 we were hit by heavy snow. Hunkering down for extra day we prayed for clear skies.

On October 26, however, weather cleared. In the early morning choppers started landing in the sanctuary and we were ion our way back home.

And that was not the end of the expedition. News was received that the sensor equipment on Nanda Kot had stopped functioning once again. The Sherpas, who were now looking forward to hard earned rest, ha to go Nanda Kot in the summer of 1967. It was decide to bring back the nuclear generator,

New satellite options were now becoming available. In May 1968, the sensor equipment was finally removed and handed over to the CIA. And thus ended the three year long mountaineering expedition.

The Sherpas, at the end of this mission, proved that their loyalty and dependability could go much beyond the normal limits of human endurance.

The moral of the story remained that intelligence is a necessary evil all modern states engage in. Its achievements and failures can be colossal and leave on nations red faced. The KGB’s most shameful failure, for example was when Stalin’s own daughterSuetlana, escaped from Moscow, stayed in India with the Raja of Kalahandar’s uncle and then happily left for a refuge in the United States. What were the master KGB spies Milonosinging doing? At that lime Exercise, they working for India, the US or for the Soviet Union, who knows.

The KGB Cache

Spies In The Himalayas