NEW DELHI: Moles, nuclear secrets, espionage in high places are all essential ingredients for a racy spy thriller – but they have also ensured the memoirs of India’s former foreign minister will be a runaway publishing success.
In ‘A Call to Honour,’ published this week, soldier-statesmen Jaswant Singh claims one of India’s top civil servants was in the pay of the CIA and leaked secrets to the US about India’s nuclear programme in the early 1990s.
In a country where conspiracy theories abound about the penetration of the establishment by foreign intelligence services, the book is said to be on course to sell 50,000 copies – 10 times the normal level of a bestseller in India.
The memoirs have sparked furious denials from retired mandarins, and the country’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has asked Mr Singh to reveal the name of the mole.
It is all a far cry from Mr Singh’s days in power. Friendly with Bill Clinton and an admirer of Charles de Gaulle, he was seen as a tough nationalist who bargained hard with the Chinese.
In a seemingly deft display of public relations, the former minister has teased journalists with details of the mole’s identity. He was a civil servant “in such a high position that he was privy to a lot of information”.
Then it was revealed that he was no longer in office. Next that he lived abroad.
Retired intelligence officials say Mr Singh is right. “We know the Americans had somebody inside. They knew about plans to test nuclear weapons and stopped us in the early 90s,” said B Raman, who worked for the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external espionage agency, until 1994.
“The question is, was the American information from a paid informant or from an official who liked to talk too much?” During the 1971 war between India and Pakistan that culminated in the independence of Bangladesh it was claimed the CIA had a spy in the Indian cabinet.
In the past few weeks one of India’s former intelligence officials who ended up working for Microsoft has been arrested, prompting the departure of a senior US embassy official from Delhi.
However, some of Singh’s friends say he would be aghast to find himself at the centre of a spying scandal. – Guardian Newspapers Limited
