Author: Aziz Haniffa
Publication: The Times of India
(web edition)
Date: March 20, 2001
The US Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) has created a special cell to "aggressively recruit" agents to penetrate
the nuclear weapons establishments of India and Pakistan so that it will
not be caught napping as it was when New Delhi carried out the Pokhran
nuclear tests in May 1998.
The CIA would also employ some of
the most sophisticated satellites to keep a close watch on the nuclear
weapons and ballistic missiles programs of the two countries, intelligence
sources said. The CIA has not forgotten how it had been made a laughing
stock because of its failure to detect the Indian tests and the agency
suffered untold humiliation with late night comedians like Jay Leno saying
CIA stood for "Can't Identify Anything," and lawmakers like Rep. John Traficant,
Ohio Democrat, saying the billions of dollars given to the CIA each year
by Congress would be better spent if it were provided to CNN, because this
news network caught the tests before the CIA did.
Reeling from the ignominy, the sources
said CIA director George Tenet was determined to completely revamp the
intelligence capabilities of the agency, both by means of sophisticated
technology, as well as by "the old fashioned way" of recruiting agents
and posting its own agents in countries like India and Pakistan, where
in recent years, spying had ground to a halt.
The sources said the CIA had already
obtained the appropriation from Congress for the resurrection of these
covert activities in many nations, including India and Pakistan, by selling
the line that the weapons programs of these nations posed a threat to the
stability of the region and America's own national security interests.
The newly created special cell will
have special country officers for India and Pakistan and a team of specialists
to track perceived clandestine transfers from the two countries as well
as China, North Korea and Russia.
The sources said the cell would
come under the rubric of a unit that has been created by Tenet comprising
500 analysts, scientists and support personnel to focus on non-proliferation
and arms control issues. Called The Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation
and Arms Control Center, the unit is envisaged to bring three existing
CIA analytic staff together under Alan Foley, a veteran Soviet military
analyst, who as head of the Arms Control Intelligence Staff has spent the
last three years supporting arms control treaty negotiators.
Last week, in announcing the creation
of the Weapons Intelligence, Non-proliferation and Arms Control Center,
Tenet said he was striving for "increased synergy on key missile and nuclear
issues as well as better integration between payload and delivery systems
analyses."
According to the sources, a conscious
decision had been taken by Tenet and several other senior agency officials
-many of whom remained Cold War warriors that the CIA should have it own
agenda and not be influenced by any of the non-proliferation and security
diplomatic track being conducted with India and Pakistan by State Department
and White House officials.
Last month, Rumsfeld shocked the
pro-India lobby here and undoubtedly the powers that be in New Delhi when
appearing on the much respected PBS new program, the Jim Lehrer News Hour,
that the sales of weapons technologies to the likes of India, North Korea
and Iran was a major proliferation problem the Bush administration would
have to deal with. Rumsfeld warned that these technologies in the hands
of India, North Korea and Iran "are threatening other people including
the US, Western Europe and countries in West Asia."
