HVK Archives: N-tests baffle CIA officials
N-tests baffle CIA officials - The Times of India
Ramesh Chandran
()
May 13, 1998
Title: N-tests baffle CIA officials
Author: Ramesh Chandran
Publication: The Times of India
Date: May 13, 1998
U.S. administration officials are still pondering over why the
World's greatest intelligence network failed to detect activity
in Pokhran prior to the nuclear tests. When questions were posed
to the Central Intelligence Agency, its official spokesman
refused to comment. However, John Pike, a technical intelligence
specialist with the Federation of American Scientists, described
the lapse as the "the intelligence failure of the decade".
Spokespersons representing the White House and the state
department besides President Bill Clinton's national security
advisor have all tried to handle with a degree of discomfort
persistent queries whether they had any "clue" that the Indians
were preparing for nuclear tests. One source told The Times of
India that deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott informed the
CIAs number three man -James Gordon -about the tests on Monday
morning local time.
Experts here analysing the tests felt they were baffled that it
took the Clinton administration by surprise. Especially when the
so-called transgressions on nuclear and missile technology are
routinely leaked to the press. Last year The New York Times had
front-paged a story that India was poised to conduct a test and
subsequently media reports here claimed that senior
administration officials had dissuaded India from staging the
test.
Following Monday's tests, anonymous officials were being quoted
as saying that the "Indians engaged in denial and deception" of
U.S. satellites and other spying in the three weeks leading up to
the tests. When senior Clinton administration officials met with
their counterparts -ambassador Bill Richardson, Karl Inderfurth
and Bruce Riedel in Delhi -and foreign secretary K. Raghunath's
meetings with Mr Talbott, national security advisor Sandy Berger
the arms control & disarmament agency's John Holum and under-
secretary Tom Pickering -the Indian side had apparently assured
that there would be no violations on its part or reactions to the
Pakistan missile test.
In fact, Mr Berger as well as Mike McCurry and state department's
Jamie Rubin all of them referred to this point on Monday that the
Indians had initially shown reat restraint and that Mr
Richardson had praised New Delhi.
However, one school of skeptical doubters have also offered the
theory that perhaps the Americans may have been tipped off in
these meetings with the assurance that New Delhi might be
willing, to make a serious effort to sign the CTBT - once it
carried out a series of tests like the French and the Chinese.
For the moment, there are not too many takers for this beguiling
theory.
None of the three tests were detected by the agencies responsible
for doing so - the electronic and photographic surveillance are
apparently done by the national security agency and the national
reconnaissance office, which according to The Washington Times,
use overhead spy satellites. Indian scientists also apparently
succeeded in effectively obscuring the excessive personnel and
vice activity prior to the tests.
The first that American intelligence agencies detected the tests
were through seismic monitoring -the largest of the blasts had an
estimated yield of between 20 and 30 kilotons (a kiloton is equal
to about 1,000 tons of TNT).
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