while we are on the subject, i came across and interesting article and wanted to share:
CIA Caught Napping ... by Eric Margolis
Lugano, Switzerland - Spying is a thankless job. Success remains secret. Failure produces public humiliation. Every intelligence organization faces this cruel fact.
For the past decade, US intelligence agencies have had an unbroken string of failures, and painfully few successes. In spite of an annual budget of US $27 billion, the vast American intelligence network was totally surprised by modern history's most important events: The 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the 1979 Iranian revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia's breakup.
Worse, CIA was gravely penetrated by the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor service, the greatest security failure of our era. Attempts by CIA to overthrow Saddam Hussein ended in humiliating fiasco. Now comes the latest disaster, CIA's shocking failure to sound alarms over India's nuclear program.
Washington's utter surprise at Indian nuclear tests was inexcusable. India's relentless development of uranium and plutonium weapons has been an open secret. This column, for one, traced Delhi's nuclear program for the past decade. Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, provided CIA with volumes of detail on Indian nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
India's eleven military reactors and heavy water plants - little Chernobyls in waiting - were under US satellite surveillance.
Intelligence is only as good as the people who process it. America's intelligence community - CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, State Dept. Intelligence - was simply not focused on India. These agencies and the National Security Council, which is tasked with acting on intelligence data, were so obsessed with Iraq and Iran, they totally ignored South Asia. CIA was too busy trying to overthrow the governments of Libya, Iraq, Iran and Sudan, to watch India.
In Washington, India, touted as 'the world's largest democracy,' was regarded as a lucrative opportunity for American business. Good relations with Delhi were deemed necessary to promote commerce. CIA had a few sources within India's long- ruling Congress Party and felt confident India posed no threat to the Pax Americana. But CIA completely ignored and had no agents in the fast-rising Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party - in spite of BJP's public vows to bring India's nuclear program into the open, and adopt an aggressive foreign policy.
When an Indian-born CIA employee was caught delivering US satellite information to RAW, India's intelligence service, alarm bells should have gone off in Washington, but did not.
Instead, the US concentrated on thwarting Pakistan's smaller nuclear
program, created only to prevent nuclear blackmail by India. Under intense domestic political pressure, Washington embargoed and punished Pakistan to prevent its nuclear know-how being transferred to Islamic states hostile to Israel - even though Pakistan had repeatedly rejected
offers by Iran to pay Pakistan's entire defense budget for ten years in exchange for nuclear technology. Washington's embargo of weapons to Pakistan only encouraged Pakistan, outgunned 2:1 by India, to develop its nuclear deterrent. The US also applied intense pressure on China and Russia to cease limited nuclear aid to Pakistan and Iran.
For Washington's intelligence/security community, India was simply a non-issue. Fossilized by bureaucratic rigidity and timid group-think, America's intelligence services failed to see India's militant BJP would ignite an Asian nuclear arms race, and unsettle every nation from Japan to Egypt. Washington's policy makers and spies kept repeating their grave error of seeing the third world only through American eyes.
Analysts with unorthodox views that violated the intelligence party line were ignored, or fired. Domestic special interests too often shaped US intelligence policy.
Once again, lack of well-placed human sources - 'humint' in CIA talk - crippled US intelligence. For all its fancy satellites and electronic eavesdropping systems, Washington hadn't a clue what was going on inside India's new ruling party. Over-reliance on whiz-bang technology, and
poor leadership by inept careerists, are the Achilles Heel of US intelligence.
India was also encouraged to flex its nuclear muscles by the Clinton Administration's abject response to North Korea's nuclear program. After learning North Korea had nuclear weapons, and was developing missiles to deliver them, Washington sought to buy off Pyongyang by bribing it with offers of oil, food, and less threatening light-water reactors. Delhi watched and drew the obvious conclusion: the US would huff and puff, then back down.
The credulous US even supplied India with super-computers that greatly aided its nuclear program. Washington only seems serious about denying nuclear weapons to the Arabs and Iran.
China will react to India's challenge by beefing up its nuclear arsenal, forcing Japan and Taiwan to consider reactivating their dormant nuclear programs. Japan can produce nuclear weapons in three months. Arab nations and Iran are also clamoring for nuclear capability. Washington's double standard of blocking Islamic nation's nuclear programs, while
winking at those of India, North Korea, and Israel, fatally undermined the cause of nuclear non-proliferation.
This dangerous mess need not have occurred. Timely warning by US intelligence, and stern action by Washington, could have pressured India into keeping its nukes in the closet, and reaching a compromise with Pakistan over the explosive issue of Kashmir. Now, it's too late.
The US has the thankless but vital task of being the world's nuclear policeman. No other nation has the power. In the case of India, the policeman was sleeping on the job.
Copyright: E. Margolis June 1998 c/o Editorial Department The Toronto
Sun 333 King St. East Toronto Ontario Canada M5A 3X5.