Author: Arvind Lavakare
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: April 4, 2001
Almost every journalist worth the
name has finished doffing his hat or blowing her kiss to the Tehelka team's
work that's now baptised as "cowboy journalism". Almost every Opposition
party has finished salivating with the servings of Tehelka's turkey, laced
though it was with venom from two parts of the Indian Penal Code, vintage
1860. And after the commoner has finished being shocked and then confused
before being bored once again -- till another sensational story will be
told by the nation's oh-so honest and honourable vigilante -- the media...
It was at that moment, when the
Tehelka orgasm had just about expended itself, that there came some words
of sobriety and sagacity, of elderly advice, alarm almost, about the whole
affair. They were provided by M K Narayanan, a former chief of the country's
Intelligence Bureau. In his column of March 26, 2001 in The Asian Age,
Narayanan first dropped several hints of the "Take care" variety before
proclaiming "Beware" loud and clear. Thus, he wrote:-
1. "Between 'snaring ' or 'tempting'
people into accepting 'gifts' or 'bribes', where a cause of action does
not exist, and exposing corruption regarding specific deals, a vast gulf
exists. Not to recognise the significance of this difference would be a
grievous mistake.
2. ". we have the 'R K Jains' and
the 'R K Guptas' indulging in cant and making the most outrageous of statements
and claims. . what the 'Tehelka exposure' has done is to crassly exploit
and expose to public gaze, the character flaws of individuals who were
unaware that their every action and every word was being secretly taped.
3. "No one has shown any concern
about the ethics of the operation and whether stilted 'exposure' of this
kind can improve the system or will damage it further. The motivation of
those responsible for the 'sting' has been accepted without question and
a gullible public has not explored whether a hidden game plan exists in
all this.
4. "Furthermore, sowing doubts leading
to a rigor mortis in decision-making regarding ongoing or future defence
negotiations and purchases can endanger the nation's security even as China
and Pakistan engage in modernising their arsenals.
5. "Most see it as the stuff of
investigative journalism. Hardly any sees it as a potential time bomb.
6. "Sting journalism is an offence
in countries like the United States but here it is being hailed as an opportunity
for virtue to triumph over the forces of evil. Therein lurks the danger."
And what is that danger? Narayanan's
answer is that "Many foreign intelligence agencies are now adept at employing
'active measures'. Destabilisation of states and government has become
both big business and also a conscious policy." Readers -- and Indian patrons
of cowboy journalism -- should not snigger at that opinion as a mere old
man's imagined fear. Evidence of Narayanan's assessment can be actually
found in the news report by Aziz Haniffa in The Times of India web edition
of March 20, 2001. We are told there that America's CIA is to "aggressively
recruit" special country officers for India and Pakistan to penetrate the
new weapons establishments by selling the line that the weapons programmes
of the two nations posed a threat to the stability of the region.
Just how much depth and wisdom Narayanan
displays can be seen by anyone who cares to look up an article on the Internet
posted by B Raman, retired additional secretary, cabinet secretariat, Government
of India, and presently director, Institute of Topical Studies, Chennai.
The focus of that article is on the developments in the USA accompanying
the use there of covert audio-visual equipment. Among those developments
that need the strongest reiteration at India's Tehelka juncture are:
1. There have been complaints from
human rights organisations that, apart from causing serious harm to innocent
citizens, an even bigger risk associated with sting operations aimed at
public corruption is the destruction of the public's confidence in government
institutions.
2. After a four-year investigation
of stings, a 1984 report by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and
Constitutional Rights said "While investigations of public corruption may
be intended to restore the public's faith in the integrity of the affected
institutions, ill-conceived and poorly managed undercover operations are
likely to have precisely the opposite effect."
3. Writing in the Foreign Policy
(Fall 1997), John Deutch, Director of CIA, referred to the dangers of morphed
images and messages being introduced into a country's radio and television
systems, spreading lies and inciting the public to violence.
Now the USA is a country where liberty
is most zealously sought and fought for. It is where only a couple of years
ago the country's chief executive was brought live on television to answer
questions on his alleged oral sex in the Oval office. It was there that
in May 1974 the country's president had to resign in disgrace for trying
to have a recording equipment clandestinely fixed inside the meeting venue
of his adversary political party. Indeed, "freedom" is one of the most
sacred words in the American consciousness. And yet, Raman writes, the
US permits a sting operation only to the Federal Bureau of Investigation;
no private individual, not even a journalist, has the freedom to do so.
Even the FBI's sting operations,
he says, are subject to strict ground rules laid down over the years by
departmental instructions and rulings of the judiciary. Four such major
rules are:
1. Sting operations are to be mounted
only on persons against whom some evidence of criminality exists and a
sting operation is considered necessary for getting conclusive evidence.
(An aside: would the past record of Maj Gen Choudhury, Jay Jaitly and Bangaru
Laxman have warranted a sting in the USA?)
2. Permission for sting operations
must be obtained from appropriate courts or the attorney general. This
safeguard has been laid down since those who mount a sting operation themselves
commit the offence of impersonation, criminal trespass and making a person
commit an offence. (Emphasis added in view of Sections 415 and 417 of the
Indian Penal Code)
3. Where there is evidence of editing
of tapes and films, there is an automatic presumption that the recording
is probably not authentic. (Aside: Are Tehelka's tapes unedited?)
4. There must be a concurrent record
in writing of the various stages of the sting operation. (Aside: Has Tehelka
maintained such a record for the public to see?)
Strange as it may seem to the currently
cock-a-hoop media, the US supreme court's sting guideline that ".an inducement
to commit a crime should not be offered unless." was issued as long ago
as December 31, 1980.
In many judgements, the US supreme
court has condemned some FBI sting operations for taking advantage of the
naivety, carelessness and negligence of the possibly innocent in order
to make them possibly guilty.
It may also be news to our cowboy
journalists that Privacy International, a Washington-based NGO, has since
1989 been drawing attention to the dangers of an uncontrolled use of clandestine
video and audio equipment and closed circuit television. Privacy International
says, "In a very short time, the systems have challenged some fundamental
tenets of justice and created a threat of a surveillance society."
"Challenge to fundamental tenets
of justice and threat of a surveillance society" -- those are the dangers
that the Indian nation must beware as it lies in the midst of the Tehelka
tempest.
That is why Narayanan believes that
it is essential for our country's intelligence agencies to be freed from
the considerable emasculation brought on them by cascading judicial pronouncements
and systematic onslaught of civil libertarians and so-called "human rights
activists". He wants these national intelligence agencies be allowed to
play their earlier watchdog role, employ sophisticated technology for this
purpose and use human assets to track clandestine activities rather than
permit this space to be occupied by "self-serving" individuals.
That is also why Privacy International
had wanted appropriate legislation over the industry of miniaturised audio-visual
technology.
Rajiv Gandhi withdrew Congress support
to Chandra Shekhar's government in 1991 because of two Haryana constables
stationed outside his home. Ramakrishna Hegde lost his chief minister's
status in Karnataka because of allegations that he allowed the tapping
of phones of politicians. Will the current batch of politicians in the
Rajya Sabha then permit mature legislation on the use of clandestine cameras
and sundry? Certainly not -- not until they move from the Opposition to
the Treasury benches!
Will our cowboy journalists and
their cheerleaders support such legislation? Unlikely .until another Emergency
induces another "crawl"! And most certainly not till they accept that,
contrary to what a Star News anchor said on the idiot box, the freedom
of speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) is not exclusively
for the media, but for every citizen of India.
Without laws and regulations, human
society would be akin to jungle life. If a law is bad, get rid of it, but
legally. And as long as it remains a law of the land, it is a law for all
unless exceptions are provided in the law itself. Human rights are not
only for sex workers and AIDS victims, for tribals and their anti-dam activists,
for cops and convicts, but also for politicians, bureaucrats and defence
personnel as well. Timid journalists may claim the right to label terrorists
as militants, but do the intrepid among them have the divine, absolutely
unfettered, right to endanger citizens' rights as well as national security?
That, really, is the fundamental
issue which we must address today. Jaitly, Laxman & Co can roast in
hell, for all one cares. Drive away Vajpayee, Fernandes & Co to oblivion,
for all one cares. But anything ugly that casts the slightest shadow on
the security of our 1.02 billion people -- that must be rooted out with
the same passion with which America protects its citizens' freedom.
