Before Sanctioning R&AW, US Must Peep Into Its Shady CIA: Lecture With Own Hands Dirty

The United States of America(USA) had a chequered history of complicating the geopolitical landscape, beginning with the Cold War. The presidency of Reagan and Nixon showed the muscle and unchecked power of its shady intelligence agency, the CIA. Under President Nixon, the agency got almost policy backing from the administration under the garb of the Nixon doctrine(a policy to support weak states through economic and military aid). Vietnam is a classic example of this doctrine.

The Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) began a series of controversial actions to counter the Soviet's KGB. Top sources in the Intelligence establishment say that the Soviets had impressively beaten the CIA in the beginning years of the Cold War when the KGB successfully conducted psychological and propaganda operations in the US by running disinformation campaigns. Sources add that one such operation was Operation Denver, under which Soviet media spread false news that HIV/AIDS was a biological weapon in the US; the goal was to divert US attention from the Soviets's plan of developing biological weapons.

Similarly, the Soviets were successful in sowing seeds of mistrust by infiltrating the famous spy ring known as Cambridge Five, which led to a deepening of mistrust among Western intelligence agencies and the US CIA, a top source said. Such operations during 1950 led to intelligence anxiety among the CIA, and hell broke loose in Langley.

Desperate CIA went on serious Intelligence misadventures leading to massive failures, the failure of Vietnam and  the Bay of Priggs Invasion, A Top source said the CIA's dangerous mind programme MK Ultra illegally conducted human experiments aimed at developing procedures and identifying drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture." 

CIA Double Standards 

In 1975, the Senate Church Committee released a report titled 'Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders,' substantiating eight attempts by the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro between 1960-1965. The CIA's long history of targeted killings, from aerial bombings of leaders like Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 1986, Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic in 1999, and Iraq's Saddam Hussein in 2003. The CIA had a chequered history of employing 'dirty sources' for hit and illegal business during the 1990s, including drug cartels and criminal organizations, that led to a Congress Inquiry on the CIA, a top source said.

As far as assessment failures, the CIA's assessment failed  in Guayana elections CIA planned an illegal election interference in Guyana to overthrow the pro-Soviet regime, which involved funding opposition parties and spreading propaganda, this led huge financial loss for the agency, a top source in the Intelligence establishment said.

The Sanction Politics and Intelligence Relationship

Though the Trump Administration will not accept the USCIRF report as it is non-binding, a reasonable question still arises that the US agency, the CIA, became a troubled entity for its own administration and caused some irreparable damage to the US geopolitical reputation. How far is it viable to lecture others on cleanness if your hands are "dirty", a senior officer in the Intelligence establishment said. A top source said such statements are "biased and ironic" and can interfere with Intelligence cooperation and impact trust between two Intelligence agencies."

The present R&AW Chief Ravi Sinha, known for his expertise in tech and collective intelligence operations, has the opportunity to iron out differences at the agency level to counter new security challenges, a source said A top source added that the new administration in the US will surely increase this cooperation. Still, such disrupting and friction-causing developments should not cause unease in smooth agency-level relationships after the new regime in charge with a vision of an upward trajectory of Indo-US Relationship,