Corruption Watch

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>BJP must seek KGB papers</b>
Ashok Malik
pioneer.com
In arguing that an investigation into Indian slush funds in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and other secret banking havens should be a priority for the next Government, the BJP has made a noteworthy recommendation. The quantum of Indian-origin money — political bribes, contractual paybacks, receipts against contraband taken out of the country, corporate embezzlement and so on — may be speculated upon. The modalities of finding it and claiming it on behalf of the law may be debated. Yet, the principle is unexceptionable.

There is, however, one other inquiry with international ramifications that the BJP must commit itself to, should it come to power on May 16. Indeed, it is the only party without the baggage and with the positioning to do this — to study the Indian links in the Mitrokhin Archive.

As is well known, the Mitrokhin papers are the largest repository of KGB documents ever removed from the Soviet Union/Russia. In 1992, Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior archivist at the KGB who had copied and pilfered thousands of top-secret files over the years, defected to the United Kingdom with his treasure.

The Mitrokhin Archive is in the custody of MI-6, the British external intelligence agency. A small, extremely sanitised portion of the KGB papers was published after vetting by London’s intelligence and political establishment as the Mitrokhin Archive I (1999) and the Mitrokhin Archive II (2005).

The first book dealt with the KGB’s network of spies, agents and front organisations in Europe and the West. Volume II described the phenomenon in Asia, Latin America and Africa.<b> The second book devoted two chapters to India, which it called “the Third World country on which the KGB eventually concentrated most operational effort during the Cold War”.</b>

<b>The KGB, Mitrokhin Archive II alleged, routinely bribed Left and Congress politicians, including Ministers in Mrs Indira Gandhi’s Government. It bought secrets and paid retainers. The KGB funded election campaigns of chosen candidates and parties, including supporting the Congress in its years out of power (1977-79), and operated through a network of recruits in the intelligentsia, the media and the civil service, in addition to, of course, political proxies. </b>

The Mitrokhin books were careful not to mention too many proper nouns, largely restricting themselves to naming people who were dead, or referring to KGB code names and broad descriptions of individuals and institutions. However, the chapters on India offer tantalising clues and often mention some names in other contexts, as if pointing the reader in the right direction.

Take this extract: “<b>The Indian Embassy in Moscow was being penetrated by the KGB, using its usual varieties of the honey trap. The Indian diplomat PROKHOR was recruited, probably in the early 1950s, with the help of a female swallow, codenamed NEVEROVA, who presumably seduced him. The KGB was clearly pleased with the material which PROKHOR provided, which included on two occasions the Embassy codebook and deciphering tables, since in 1954 it increased his monthly payments from 1,000 to 4,000 rupees.” </b>

PROKHOR is not identified. However, a pro-Soviet Indian diplomat who rose to the highest positions in South Block is quoted in the book in an otherwise harmless sentence. Old timers in Delhi have put two and two together and concluded that the gentleman — now dead — may have been PROKHOR.

Mitrokhin Archive II was published in September 2005, and much of what it contained in reference to India was reported in the media. So why is it relevant today?

The fact is the book was only a teaser trailer, all that was allowed to be shared with lay readers. MI-6 and the British Foreign Office have made it clear that friendly countries and intelligence agencies are free to request access to the Mitrokhin papers, or at least to those sections and dossiers that concern them.

The foreword to Mitrokhin Archive II says, “A report by the all-party British Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) reveals that a series of other Western intelligence agencies have also proved ‘extremely grateful’ for the numerous CI (counter-intelligence) leads provided by Mitrokhin’s material.”

Aside from Britain, the United States, Germany and Italy are among the countries that have used the KGB papers to uncover spies and traitors among their own people, in their Government and security systems.

Consider the response in India. When the Mitrokhin details became public three-and-a-half years ago, the Congress, the CPI(M) and the CPI combined to disparage them. Parliamentary discussion was stonewalled. Mr Anand Sharma, then the Congress spokesperson and now the Minister of State for External Affairs, even said, “There has been no precedent when fictional accounts are discussed in Parliament.”

Together as allies in 2005 — as they were as fellow travellers in the 1970s — the Congress and the Left joined forces to bury the Mitrokhin scandal. Among the major democracies, India is perhaps the only one that has not formally requested access to the Mitrokhin Archive and not asked MI-6 if the papers could help authorities in New Delhi identify those who were passing on information to Moscow, in return for monetary or other benefit.

Some of these people are gone but many may still be alive, living as respectable citizens, perhaps still attempting to determine the course of Indian public policy and diplomatic choices. It is also possible that most of them are just too old and living a quiet retirement. Either way, India deserves to know the truth — not necessarily to send every one of these people to prison, but to arrive at a proper closure to a disquieting chapter in its modern history.

A start can only be made if the Government of India writes to its British counterpart, asking it be allowed to study the Mitrokhin papers. There is, however, a conspiracy of silence. For obvious reasons, the Congress and the Left will not do it. The gaggle of opportunistic socialist and regional parties that straddle the UPA and the NDA will not be interested either. Only the BJP represents a political philosophy that had nothing to do with the KGBisation of India’s polity in the Cold War years.

That is why the BJP must promise that, should it win the election, it will begin the process of unravelling the truth hidden in the Mitrokhin Archive.<b> Indian money needs to be redeemed from Swiss banks; so does Indian honour from KGB extension counters. </b>
(malikashok@gmail.com)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->