Considering foreign intelligence threats to the United States, Russia and China steal the spotlight, Iran gets a sideshow listing on the playbill. What about India?
“You mean the people who gave us curry and incense, yoga and Gandhi?” Yes, and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), New Delhi’s version of the CIA, which operates in our country. “Huh?”
The Justice Department’s indictment last October of a former R&AW officer for plotting to assassinate a Sikh activist in New York resulted in the expulsion of the R&AW chief posted to India’s consulate in San Francisco. As early as 2020, an Indian intelligence covert influence operation platform in New Delhi, Disinfo Lab, virtually reached inside our borders to attack U.S.-based critics of Indian Prime Minister Modi, including U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and influence Indian-American voters.
What about in Hawaii? Public information is quiet on the issue, but New Delhi spymasters would be negligent to ignore us. The “Indo” in Indo-Pacom surely has their attention. Asia-facing NSA Hawaii is likely of interest. Then there’s Tulsi.
Hawaii native and Director of National Intelligence Gabbard is oft-characterized as an Indiaphile and staunch supporter of Modi, who sent a representative to her 2015 traditional Vedic wedding ceremony in Kahaluu — Ram Madhav, then secretary general of India’s currently ruling Hindu nationalist party. She claims she “feels at home” when visiting India, which she did as one of her first foreign stops as DNI in March.
While there, she personally addressed a conference hosted by India’s foreign ministry and Observer Research Foundation, a think tank that openly employs former R&AW director Vikram Sood. (If she is not the subject of a R&AW leadership analysis or operational targeting report, it would reflect poorly on the service’s professionalism.)
Why else should we care?
In counterespionage work, we often see intelligence services target and exploit, among others, people who share ethnic, cultural, religious and ideological affinities with the agency’s home country. Indeed, spies’ use of expatriates and their descendants is so common as to be cliche.
The Israeli Mossad even has a special name for members of the Jewish diaspora who support its covert operations, from planning to logistics to “other activities”—the sayanim (“helpers”). Beijing’s Ministry of State Security in the past few years coopted several Chinese Americans with sensitive positions — CIA and FBI employees, U.S. naval personnel, a governor’s aid.
Is New Delhi’s service any different? On the overt side, Modi speaks of Indians in the U.S. as “brand ambassadors” for his nation. What must R&AW refer to them as?
Unclassified reporting on this matter in the homeland is mute, but look at our northern neighbor. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service last year announced that New Delhi in 2019 and 2021 tried to interfere in its elections through “clandestine activities” that targeted select politicians. One Indian-Canadian parliamentarian in March this year was disqualified from further elections for unreported contact with the Indian government and susceptibility to foreign influence.
I view this issue through a lens of personal professional experience. If I were a R&AW officer assigned to the U.S. account, I would pursue the rich pool of potential targets in the Indian workforce in sensitive positions in Silicon Valley, defense contracting companies, the national labs, and the current administration, as well as political players on both sides of the aisle.
I would study my service’s records and open source information on FBI Director Kash Patel (whose ties to his ancestral homeland are well reported and who this month announced a joint counternarcotics project with India’s government), Second Lady Usha Vance (whose marriage to the vice president was blessed by a Hindu priest) and Vance himself (who visited Modi in Delhi as one of his first foreign stops as VP), former DOGE co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy, political influencer Dinesh D’Souza, Nikki Haley, Kamala Harris and our six Indian American congresspersons. That’s what HUMINT collectors do.
“Are these Americans suspect due to lineage or religion?” Absolutely not. In the CIA, I supervised officers of many faiths and heritages, Indian among them, all considered equally loyal to Uncle Sam. (Besides, our most damaging modern turncoats were a Caucasian native of the Union — CIA’s Ames — and a professing Christian — FBI’s Hanssen.)
The only counterespionage case involving an Indian American that I recall is that of former Maui resident and disgruntled engineer Noshir Gawadia, convicted in 2010 for selling classified details of our B-2 stealth bomber to … Beijing.
I’ll close with different questions for you to ponder. Are these prominent Americans aware of potential R&AW interest in them? Have they received related counterintelligence briefings? Do Gabbard and Patel have the defensive security training and espionage field experience commensurate with that of seasoned world spymasters to alleviate concern in their cases?
Let me know when you find answers.
J.P. Atwell is a former senior CIA operations officer. His two-decade career began as an intelligence analyst and took him to every continent, save Antarctica. He now calls Hawaii Island home. He welcomes your comments at island.intelligencer@gmail.com.
