External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj might not have known the unwritten axiom in the “intelligence world” when she protested to the visiting US secretary of state John Kerry on July 31 that “friends don’t snoop on each other”. History reveals that “friendly spying” is mostly done when relations are cordial. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius had also similarly complained to John Kerry in Paris on October 22, 2013, when Edward Snowden, former systems administrator with the Central Intelligence Agency, revealed that the US’ National Security Agency (NSA) had monitored millions of French telephone conversations. Mr Kerry, who has become used to facing such “protests”, parried questions diplomatically. “We don’t discuss intelligence in public,” he told a TV channel in New Delhi.
It may be recalled that our external affairs ministry had summoned a top American diplomat on July 2, seeking explanation on the disclosures by Mr Snowden, who had also worked for NSA, that NSA was permitted to do surveillance on the Bharatiya Janata Party. India had termed it as “unacceptable” and sought an assurance that it would not happen again. Subsequently, a pro-BJP newspaper made a direct allegation on July 26 that the listening devices found in BJP minister Nitin Gadkari’s house were planted by a foreign agency since such sophisticated listening devices are used by Western intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and the NSA.
But Mr Fabius, who was the French Prime Minister from 1984 to 1986, must have known that this verbal duel was a diplomatic charade since it was the French who had started “friendly spying” on the US in 1958 when Charles de Gaulle instructed Gen. Paul Grossin, then heading the French foreign agency SDECE (Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage) to obtain technical and economic intelligence from the US. The first published incident was in 1964 when French spies broke into the hotel room of George Ball, US undersecretary of state, to photocopy his papers on America’s negotiating position at a meeting in France. Memoirs of French spy chiefs like Alexandre de Marenches and Pierre Marion contain vivid stories of their economic snooping.
India too has been subjected to spying by friends earlier. Despite Prime Minister Indira Gandhi initiating a new policy of defence purchases from Western countries, including France in 1980, French moles led by Yogesh Maneklal and Chittur Venkat Narayan (also known as Coomer Narain) broke into her office and stole classified files. Coomer Narain died in 2000 as an “undertrial”, while his co-conspirators from PMO and several other offices were convicted in 2002.
Interestingly, Milton Socolar from the US’ general accounting office (GAO) — something like our CAG — told the US House of Representatives Sub-Committee on Economic and Commercial law on April 29, 1992, that their aircraft manufacturers lost out on a $2 billion Indian jet fighter contract in 1985 when the “US company’s best and final offer during negotiations” with India was obtained by the French intelligence service and passed on to the French competitor.
The US was a late entrant to economic spying to aid their private sector. A Cato Institute paper (1992) says that in the summer of 1992, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee met with a group of top business leaders and intelligence experts to examine whether US intelligence should share intelligence with American businesses to give them an advantage in the global market. Opinion was divided. Some feared that it “could also lead to an unhealthy and potentially corrupt relationship between those agencies and American corporations”. The paper said that a consensus finally emerged favouring general economic espionage.
But who would have thought that Israel would spy on their closest ally, the US? A well-known case is of Jonathan Jay Pollard, a civilian librarian in Pentagon, who passed on a 10-volume US signals intelligence folder to Israel. Pollard pleaded guilty and was sentenced for life in 1987. Israel defended him and gave him citizenship in 1995. Successive Israeli leaders had been pleading with the US for his release since Pollard had contributed to Israel’s “defence”. In fact, the Jerusalem City Council even named an important square after him — the Jonathan Pollard Square.
In May 2000, Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv correspondent for the Sunday Times, reported about Mossad’s efforts to penetrate the White House since 1974. First it was to know US’ plans to sell Airborne Warning and Control Systems to Saudi Arabia, and later it was to target officials known to be anti-Israel in the Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations. He claimed that Mossad had successfully hacked President Clinton’s email account.
The strangest irony in the Snowden episode is that unlike WikiLeaks, no one has read the NSA surveillance files, yet everybody is protesting. The facts known so far are: In 2010, permission was given to NSA to “tap” 193 foreign governments and political parties. The Guardian said that NSA collected 97 billion pieces of information. The top five countries “tapped” were Iran (14 billion), Pakistan (13.5), Jordan (12.7), Egypt (7.6) and India (6.3). Mr Snowden, perched on a high moral ground, has said that he did not want to harm individuals or the US government, unlike CIA traitor spy Philip Agee who revealed names of undercover officers. Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald said last year that people to whom Mr Snowden had distributed his files cannot access them since they are encrypted, but the moment he is arrested, this massive surveillance information will be exposed to the public. It is a loaded gun pointed at the Obama administration.
It could also be an empty threat. Except hogging front-page news, no government has fallen after WikiLeaks exposed millions of documents. Only Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking 700,000 papers. The same could be the fate of Snowden files. So the BJP can relax in the knowledge that their foreign friends are listening and it may not amount to much.
The writer is a former special secretary, Cabinet Secretariat,
and member of the two-man 26/11enquiry committee
