ESPIONAGE

From times immemorial spying has been an important ingredient of war. Artifice and deception have been employed to win battles emphasizing that ‘All is fair in love and war’. From the Trojan horse in Troy to our own Rama while assisting Sugreevan, unfair means have been employed. Even in today’s increasingly shrinking world, having information about one’s enemies is as important as it was eons ago. Though the modus operandi might have changed, spying is still an important strategic weapon in a county’s arsenal. Different countries have their own intelligence agencies that carry out these covert tasks. These agencies even have a counter intelligence department to weed out itself of turncoats.

First let us get acquainted with some espionage parlance. ‘ELINT’ stands for electronic intelligence sometimes also called signals intelligence or ‘SIGNINT’. ‘HUMINT’ stands for human intelligence. Any spy in unfriendly territory is called an ‘agent’ or ‘asset’. Documents are classified as ‘Eyes only’ meaning they cannot be copied and ‘Ears only’ meaning it is too sensitive even to be written down. ‘Dead drop’ is a place where an agent can drop some material to pass onto the agency. It can be any place that is not suspicious like under a loose slab in a cemetery or in a deserted house. And the drop can be intimated to the agency by some innocuous chalk mark in some other pre agreed place or some obituary ad in the newspaper. When an agent is ‘neutralized’, it means he has been exposed and promptly executed. A ‘wet job’ means one which involves bloody duels. A ‘dry job’ means losing one’s tail(eyes following).

Spying is a job full of risks and uncertainties. Exposed agents are executed even without a courtroom trial. An eligible spy is one who has a sociable nature and can pass on as a local in his area of operation. There are two ways in which spies can be recruited. One way is by finding an eligible person, briefing him and then sending him into hostile territory under cover as some innocent tourist or businessman. The second way is to recruit a person already working in the enemy regime in some influential position. Usually such people have three reasons to turn traitors. The first reason can be money. Or secondly they can turn traitors due to sheer frustration on their own rulers. The third motive is the most bizarre one and any agency’s nightmare. The traitors may be psychopaths who do not show any clear motive and the agency has to risk itself in believing such data sources. Recruiting spies to work for another country has become a major HR exercise and the recruiters look for some discontentment in their potential interviewees.

Espionage involves cutting edge technology. Planting bugs and cams, tapping telephone lines and satellite reconnaissance are some of the fruitions of technology. For example the Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle of the U.S can fly at a height of 36,000 feet and carry on both reconnaissance and attacking roles. It has powerful cameras including IR imaging (for lowlight and night vision) and synthetic aperture radar( for haze or fog removal). It carries hellfire missiles and can do a 24 hour sortie fully loaded. The commands for navigation and combat are transmitted by a control station miles away over a C band Line Of Sight data link or through Ku band when LOS is not possible. Such advanced military expertise help in reducing casualties for the side employing it and it tilts the balance in their favor. Even with such tools, there can be no substitute for HUMINT.

Now let us take a look at a few intelligence agencies around the world and their past activities. Uncle Sam’s is the CIA(Central Investigative Agency). The CIA shot into prominence because of its activities during the cold war. Among their many missions, one of them having repercussions even now was the recruitment of Islam radicals to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The recruits had one Osama Bin Laden. The CIA provided them with weapons and training to stop the Reds. Most of the CIA operations were Soviet centric. The equivalent Soviet agency was the KGB, no longer in existence because of its involvement in the attempted coup to overthrow the Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev in 1992. The KGB relied more on HUMINT than SIGNINT. It had moles(agents) operating in CIA and MI-5(Brits intelligence).

The most notorious of the intelligence agencies is the Israeli Mossad. It has been alleged to be involved in many kidnappings, assassinations and passport forgery. One famous incident involving the Mossad is the audio surveillance of Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech denouncing Stalin. The Mossad which had obtained the audio by some means from a politburo meeting handed it over to the CIA. One another interesting event involving Mossad was the assassination of Gerald Vincent Bull, a Canadian engineer. He was a pioneer in rocket technology and was involved in building mammoth guns that could fire rockets into very high altitudes with much less expense compared to conventional technology. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein decided to use this technology to launch missiles with nuclear warheads during the Kuwaiti invasion. He tricked Bull to work with the Iraqi satellite program. The supergun constructed then was called Project Babylon and was deceptively hidden within a hill to avoid US spy planes and satellites. While Bull was working on the new nose cones for higher reentry speeds and temperatures, he was shot dead. Although Mossad has publicly taken credit for this operation, the hand of CIA is suspected because Bull had blackmailed CIA to give him a Presidential pardon and also money to keep mum about the CIA’s illegal activities which he was aware of. In spite of his death, Saddam completed project Babylon. However because of a traitor within the Rais(as Saddam is respectfully called) circle, the location of the gun was given to CIA, which readily pulverized it.

The Indian intelligence agency is called RAW(Research & Analysis Wing). It works under the PM and the parliament does not know about its operations. It has a budget of more than 2000 crore rupees. The main focus of RAW is on China and Pakistan. Among its notable operations is its support of Bangladeshi freedom fighters with arms and training and also the LTTE for a while with some of the tigers being on its payroll.

The Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan has in the past had joint operations with CIA involving the Middle East. Also it is an open secret that ISI harbors terrorist operations in the Kashmir Valley.

Spying, as an art of war is going to be immortal and in the future will dictate many decisions to be made. Spying skills from lock picking to ELINT are going to be used not only in Bond movies, but in real life situations. Any advanced strategy game (PS2 or Xbox) cannot give you the thrills that a spy experiences during his missions.