NEW DELHI: Would you appoint as your spy chief a man described as “serially paranoid”, a “walking-talking disaster”, or a “washout”? National Security Advisor M K Narayanan did when in 2005 he allowed Ashok Chaturvedi to become the Research and Analysis Wing chief, proving that the NSA had an agenda and did not care about the RAW leadership’s quality.
Chaturvedi, who RAW insiders say was related to the then cabinet secretary, B K Chaturvedi, was incoherent – and it did not matter whether he was chewing paan or not. His gaffes were too many to be listed here, except one.
Chaturvedi’s wife, say RAW sources, got a diplomatic passport (D1027182, issued in New Delhi on 15/2/2008; lapsed on 28/2/2009; renewed till 13/9/2009) on which she traipsed around the world, contravening rules. This was unheard of. If it was the UK in April 2008, it was the US in June, Algeria in July… you get the picture. “Mrs Chaturvedi was everywhere,” said a source.
Chaturvedi was vindictive. He set about destroying careers of those who he imagined were against him in the RAW. “There were groups, factions, bitterness and rampant favouritism,” said a senior RAW hand. Chaturvedi demanded only loyalty of his cronies, not competency. He stopped short of daily loyalty oaths.
Narayanan exploited the situation, encouraging people to rat on one another.
This affected the RAW’s functioning across the entire spectrum of its activities, even operations. A RAW officer said: “When you start victimizing on such a large scale, there is naturally no useful work going on.” During Chaturvedi’s watch, the entire RAW team in Nepal was exposed in the local media, severely setting back operations.
Narayanan personally took care of the rest of the neighbourhood: he began to review operational activities and to prune operations on the pretext that RAW was duplicating the Intelligence Bureau’s and foreign ministry’s work. RAW insiders say this has led to deterioration in the RAW’s Kashmir and Pakistan operations and capabilities: “What had taken years to assiduously build was dismantled in a few cursory meetings”.
Departmental operational meetings made three things obvious to the top RAW echelons. Narayanan was killing initiative taken by the very chiefs he had an integral part in appointing; Narayanan had no confidence in those people; and most importantly, he was interested only in trimming the RAW’s profile and footprint.
Yet that was only part of his agenda.
A RAW hand put it bluntly: “The administration has been buggered, operational capabilities stunted, and expertise destroyed systematically”.
As a result, there is a void in areas of critical importance to the RAW, like China and Pakistan. Chaturvedi’s final disfavor to the RAW was allowing A B Mathur back.
Also read:
Part 3: The burial of an enquiry into a double agent
Part 2: Mathur's free run in Pakistan
Part 1: Morale is low and expertise even lower