Do
Not Sell Your Soul
One can understand, though not condone, freelance biographers and
journalists indulging in mud slinging and character assassination to make a
quick buck but not officers holding very senior positions in intelligence and
investigation agencies. It amounts to ‘selling’
the secrets as the compelling motive is lure of the lucre compounded with self-glorification
and instant publicity. Unfortunately more and more of them can be seen succumbing
to this temptation.
Those connected with CBI,
Intelligence Bureau and RAW have been the worst culprits. Some books that come
to mind readily are Inside CBI by its
former Director Joginder Singh; Open
Secrets: India’s Intelligence Unveiled by Maloy Krishna Dhar, a former
Joint Director of IB; India’s External
Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing by Maj Gen V.K. Singh;
and the latest scoop Kaoboys of R&AW
– Down the memory lane by B. Raman, a former Additional Secretary of RAW The authors may claim that they are merely
bringing out into the open the anomalies in their respective organisations’s
lack of accountability, transparency and effective leadership. What comes out
is their lack of objectivity, their own hurt and bruised ego.
Joginder Singh writes that pressure was exerted on him
to register a case against Ms Jayalalitha and to block
Laloo Prasad Yadav's arrest in the notorious fodder scam case. Among his other
‘disclosures’ Maj Gen V.K.Singh has zeroed in on the well publicised release of Kargil tapes by the NDA govt to
the then Pak Premier Nawaz Sharif and
has questioned the ethics, wisdom and legality of this action. He attacks RAW with
no holds barred.
Maloy Dhar blatantly vents his ire against the then Director IB who is presently the National Security Advisor and the reference is not veiled. Dhar calling his former boss spineless and self-serving is in poor taste and smacks of nursing a personal grudge. He refers to some instances of phone tapping. He writes about much else which is either in bad taste or violation of the Official Secrets Act.
The latest to join
the race is B. Raman, a former Additional Secretary of RAW, and he surpasses
the others. Look at some snippets from his book. That RAW
should have been in touch with America 's
CIA , UK Pakistan
returned the compliment by fomenting trouble (insurgency) in Punjab
in collusion with CIA. Raman does drop a bombshell when he blames the domestic arm, the Intelligence Bureau, for ignoring a crucial input from German
intelligence which might have prevented Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.
Such books dish out salacious gossip and earn good money, besides
making the authors the darling of the media for a time. These are based on the
author’s personal knowledge or ‘classified’ documents access to which is not
permitted even under the Right To Information Act. Most of what has been said thus
remains beyond verification but the unsuspecting public laps it all up. The
contents have gone unchallenged by the persons directly or indirectly accused
in the book and by that amorphous body called government. There can be state
secrets and divulging them may jeopardise national security. It is for that
reason that the RTI Act has exempted the intelligence services from its
purview. At times these also relate to the conduct of prominent public figures
and it is questionable whether washing their dirty linen in public is going to
help the society, apart from besmearing their reputation. That our intelligence
agencies – be it CBI, IB or RAW – are used as a political tool is an open
secret but an insider’s account of factionalism within these organisations or
the ongoing turf war between our
internal and external intelligence agencies is likely to undermine people’s
faith in them.
Books such as these raise issues of ethics, conduct rules and law.
The sleuth is expected to be anonymous, with lips sealed but eyes and ears
open. All of us who have served in such positions are repositories of state
secrets. We swore not to let them out, much less sell them. We held that kind
of information in trust and to make it public is downright unethical and a
breach of trust. It is not understood why the government shies away from
invoking the Official Secrets Act and prosecute such offenders. If they have
also violated the Conduct Rules, their pension may be forfeited. If necessary,
the OS Act and the conduct rules should be amended to make them more
comprehensive and stringent. There is a rule prohibiting government servants
from accepting private employment within two years of their retirement. Why
can’t there be a rule that an employee cannot publish accounts of his service
days till, say, ten years of hanging up his boots? Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
stipulated that some pages from his book India
Wins Freedom could be published not before thirty years after his death. Too
much secrecy can be counterproductive and some degree of public accountability
can be achieved by having a parliamentary committee oversee the performance of
our intelligence agencies, like in US and UK
(Sudhir Kumar Jha)
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