Clinton learnt of Pokhran test from CNN 25-08-2004
WASHINGTON: The Central Intelligence Agency’s already tarnished reputation undergoes further disfigurement with the disclosure that President Bill Clinton learnt of the Indian nuclear test at Pokhran in 1998 not from the CIA but the Cable News Network (CNN).
Strobe Talbot, who was deputy secretary of state under Clinton, writes in his just-released book – Engaging India: diplomacy, democracy and the bomb – that if New Delhi had conducted the nuclear test in order to force Washington to pay serious and sustained attention to India, the ploy worked. He discloses that just a month before Pokhran, Indian Foreign Secretary Krishnan Raghunath assured Washington that there would be no such surprises and India would exercise nuclear restraint. However, he adds, this could be because the official like the defence minister was “out of the loop” on this one.
Contrary to American expectations, India shrugged off both international condemnation and sanctions that followed the test. The latter began to unravel in the next six months and increasingly France and other countries began to feel, to Washington’s dismay, that not doing business with India was not a practical option…
Daily Times
Have the Infallible CIA and the Infallible American Governments since the end of the Cold-War been sleeping all this time?
Re: Clinton Learnt Of Pokhran Test From CNN
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*Originally posted by PakistaniDragon: *
..Have the Infallible CIA and the Infallible American Governments since the end of the Cold-War been sleeping all this time?
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Yes! Under leftie Clinton administration USA did suffer from smoking cigars. Clinton was unable to convince American people and the world that *MnM terrorists * were hell bent on destruction. He let that cancer spread its tentacles and the result my friend was "9-11".
While Pak and US intelligence services were going horse warning about the impending booms, Clinton was more than happy to accept mischievous Raghunath's assurances.
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*Originally posted by PakistaniDragon: *
....India shrugged off both international condemnation and sanctions that followed the test.......
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No big deal! Cuba have been "shrugging off" sanctions for a lot longer.
However Baha-Rat caved in as soon as Bush government hit it where it hurts. Baja-pipe was on his ankles (his knees as you know were out of order) as soon as Powell slapped Baha-Rat with travel warnings. 60K US citizens were ordered out and NASSCOM with other Banias went from pillar to post and got the Baha-Rat-i army into retreat. Tom Friedman in his column "General Electric ...." gives a vivid picture.
Khuda Hafiz.
P.S. I haven't read the book but thanks for posting DT link. I respect Talbot but he is is playing partisan as per Khalid Hasan's book review.
P.P.S. Time to kick those MnM terrorists