IIRC, until that incident, India was pretty close to the US, with both countries conducting joint spying operations against China on the Himalayas overlooking Tibet, and China.
Extract:
http://www.indiadefence.com/himalayas.htm
In Cold War parlance, post-1962 India was a frontline state and Indo-US interests converged. This sudden change in political alignments led to many material benefits. A few years ago I visited the frontline Indian Army positions in Arunachal Pradesh and was outfitted with a silk lined US Army great coat to protect me from the cold and howling winds. The coat has lasted long after the interests ceased to be convergent.
As can be well imagined there were more lethal benefits as well, of which India’s intelligence community too got its share having forged a close working relationship with the CIA. In fact this lasted long after the Chinese threat receded and even when India’s political relationship with the USA was once again headed back for its familiar rocky course.
The CIA’s relationship with our Intelligence Bureau (RAW came later) was forged soon after the 1962 war when India and the USA agreed to establish a 5,000 strong commando force of Tibetan fighters. This was the RAW’s Special Frontier Force (SFF), which while no longer an all-Tibetan unit is still as secretive as it was in the early 60’s. The SFF was headquartered in Chakrata near Dehra Dun and was then commanded by Major Gen. Sujan Singh Uban, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All through the 1960’s the Chinese used to complain about the depredations of Khampa tribesmen in Tibet, which tells you a little about what the SFF was up to.
http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/kohspi.html
Spies in the Himalayas
Secret Missions and Perilous Climbs
M. S. Kohli and Kenneth Conboy
March 2003
248 pages, 28 photographs, 8 maps, 6 x 9
Modern War Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-7006-1223-8, $29.95 (t)
In the towering mountains of northern India, a chilling chapter was written in the history of international espionage. After the Chinese detonated their first nuclear test in 1964, America and India, which had just fought a border war with its northern neighbor, were both justifiably concerned. The CIA knew it needed more information on China’s growing nuclear capability but had few ways of peeking behind the Bamboo Curtain. Because of the extreme remoteness of Chinese testing grounds, conventional surveillance in this pre-satellite era was next to impossible.
The solution to this intelligence dilemma was a joint American-Indian effort to plant a nuclear-powered sensing device on a high Himalayan peak in order to listen into China and monitor its missile launches. It was not a job that could be carried out by career spies, requiring instead the special skills possessed only by accomplished mountaineers. For this mission, cloaks and daggers were to be replaced by crampons and ice axes.
Spies in the Himalayas chronicles for the first time the details of these death-defying expeditions sanctioned by U.S. and Indian intelligence, telling the story of clandestine climbs and hair-raising exploits. Led by legendary Indian mountaineer Mohan S. Kohli, conqueror of Everest, the mission was beset by hazardous climbs, weather delays, aborted attempts, and even missing radioactive materials that may or may not still pose a contamination threat to Indian rivers.
Kept under wraps for over a decade, these operations came to light in 1978 and have been long rumored among mountaineers, but here are finally given book-length treatment. Spies in the Himalayas provides an inside look at a CIA mission from participants who weren’t agency employees, drawing on diaries from several of the climbers to offer impressions not usually recorded in covert operations. A host of photos and maps puts readers on the slopes as the team attempts repeatedly to plant the sensor on a Himalayan summit.
An adventure story as well as a new chapter in the history of espionage, this book should appeal to readers who enjoyed Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and to anyone who enjoys a great spy story.
“A riveting first-hand account of one of the darker moments of Cold War espionage, with plenty of James Bondian flourishes: a CIA-backed spy mission to the roof of the world . . . snowstorms and deadly frostbite . . . and a missing nuclear-powered eavesdropping device that threatens to leak lethal contamination into the Ganges. What a ride!”--Frank Snepp, former CIA agent and author of Decent Interval and Irreparable Harm
“A marvelously detailed account of one of the most exotic and hazardous intelligence operations of the Cold War. . . . A rare treat for anyone interested in mountaineering, secret intelligence, or tales of high adventure.”--William M. Leary, author of Project Coldfeet: Secret Mission to a Soviet Ice Station
“A lively and fascinating account that rivals Fleming and le Carré.”--David Rudgers, author of Creating the Secret State
M. S. KOHLI, India’s most eminent mountaineer, led the successful Everest Expedition of 1965 that put nine men on the summit—a world record that stood for seventeen years. His books include Mountaineering in India and The Himalayas.
KENNETH CONBOY is a former policy analyst and deputy director at the Heritage Foundation whose other books include The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet and Spies and Commandos:How America Lost the Secret War in North Vietnam.