CIA chief's visit to India

The new head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, was in India in the period March 18-20 and then went to Pakistan. During the course of his visit, he met home minister P Chidambaram. This has come in for some comment because the heads of US security agencies had, until recently, confined their contacts to their counterparts in India. In Pakistan, they have access to everybody including the President and the Prime Minister. But, then, India is not Pakistan- or so one would have thought.

B Raman, writing in Rediff, notes the changed equations:

The Indian intelligence has been having a liaison relationship with the CIA since the days of Jawaharlal Nehru. This was handled by the IB till September, 1968, and thereafter by the R&AW. Many CIA chiefs had visited India in the past. Their visits used to be graded as top secret. Their programme in New Delhi used to be restricted to professional discussions with the heads of the IB and the R&AW and a courtesy call on the prime minister.

This was for security and political reasons. Before international terrorism became a major source of concern, the security reasons mainly related to possible threats to the physical security of the visiting CIA chief from the intelligence agencies of the Communist countries. After the collapse of the USSR and other communist regimes in East Europe and after the normalisation of the US relations with China, this concern is no longer there.

But, since the late 1980s, terrorism has become a major source of concern. CIA officials responsible for the security of their director and their officials posted in India for liaison purposes used to prefer that the visits be kept secret. Indian agencies too preferred secrecy because they were rightly concerned that if the visits were open, jihadi terrorist threats to India and to US nationals and interests in India, including to the US diplomatic and consular missions in India, might increase.

This position started changing when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister. The visit of George Tenet, the then Director of the CIA, to India was kept a secret, but the visits of the No.2 to Tenet were publicised. L K Advani, the then home minister, came to be associated with the visits of CIA officials to New Delhi. Their programmes included a courtesy call on the home minister. Not only that, Advani too, during his visit to the US in 2002, reportedly called on Tenet in his office.