Nuke spooks unfold hair-raising tales

Times of India ^ | 7/6/02 | Nuke spooks unfold hair-raising tales

[Ranger]

MUMBAI: Just weeks after the subcontinent seemed a hair’s breadth away from nuclear war, it turns out that sweepings off the floor of Pakistani barber shops near the Kahuta nuclear facility gave Indian intelligence agencies the first proof that Islamabad had the capability of making nuclear weapons.

 

In the 1980s, the Indian department of atomic energy asked spooks to obtain samples of hair from workers at Kahuta in order to check the chemical composition, says a recently-released book, Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security by defence analyst Bharat Karnad,who played a key role in framing India’s nuclear doctrine. The samples,which Indian intelligence agencies managed to get from barber shops in the township adjoining the plant, were then irradiated at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.

 

This showed that Pakistan had managed to enrich uranium to weapons-grade. The information was passed on to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. In an interview to an American newspaper, Mr Gandhi had announced that India had “very hard information, physical information that Pakistanis have highly enriched uranium, easily capable of being used in nuclear weapons’’.

 

However, the outcome of this operation was that Pakistani counterintelligence agencies were alerted. “Consequently, when another hair sample was requested, RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) discovered that their agent who had fetched the earlier items had disappeared,’’ the book states. The book also says that in 1983, the then prime minister Indira Gandhi had asked former air chief marshal Dilbaugh Singh to prepare for a strike operation against Pakistani nuclear facilities.

 

“The directorate of operations (offensive) at the air force headquarters drew up plans for a pre-emptive, surgical strike on the centrifuge cascades producing enriched uranium, and other nearby facilities concerned with the Pakistani bomb project,’’ the book says. Select squadrons of Indian Air Force Jaguar fighters began practising for the mission. US intelligence agencies discovered the Indian plan and tipped off Pakistan. Indian signal intelligence then picked up information that thePakistani air force was preparing to strike Barc, and Ms Gandhi called off the plan to attack Pakistan’s nuclear establishments.

 

The book adds that it was a Russian spy satellite that in May 1998 alerted India to Pakistani preparations for a 20-kiloton nuclearweapons test in the Ras Koh hills of Baluchistan. Based on this data, Prime Minister Vajpayee and his adviser Brajesh Mishra decided that India should beat Pakistan in the weapons test.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[habaes corpussel]

"US intelligence agencies discovered the Indian plan and tipped off Pakistan."

If this is true, we just don't learn! The ISI is laughing all the way to the bank!