Intelligence agencies could have "averted national tragedy"

The report says: “After the Padmanabha killing, if a strong vigil of the coastal areas had been undertaken, more particularly of the landing points, the movements of Sivarasan and others could have been noticed and they could have beenapprehended.”

The commission was given transcripts of coded messages of the LTTE intercepted by naval intelligence barely a month before its term ended. The codes of another batch of wireless messages intercepted by the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (SIB), Madras, were decoded at the Jain Commission — seven years after they were intercepted.

The section on the wireless intercepts is the most revealing portion of the nine-volume final report, since this evidence was left untouched in the interim report. The SIB, Madras, intercepted the messages between August 1990 and March 1991 and handed them over to the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). Jain says: “What is the good of intercepting messages which cannot be decoded by the agencies intercepting them? If timely decoding would have taken place, such a national tragedy could have been averted…”

The contents of the messages decoded by technical experts from the RAW came closest to hinting at a CIA link in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The reportdiscusses a batch of five messages exchanged between LTTE chief V. Prabhakaran, stationed in Jaffna, and Kumaran Padmanabha (KP), the group’s main arms-purchaser who moves from Paris to London to Cyprus. Then there is another message sent by KP to Kandaswamy, an LTTE operative in Chennai, asking him not to move out of Tamil Nadu since the group was proposing to assassinate “an important” Indian leader.

The transcripts show that Prabhakaran first asked KP to contact Kittu, their London-based publicity chief, and asked him to talk to their “CIA friend”. KP says the “CIA friend” preferred to talk to him (since Kittu was known the world over) and had called him to the US to discuss the “mutually beneficial project”.

In another message, KP tells Prabhakaran that he had been asked to get in touch with a group of Europe-based arms dealers and would be negotiating for arms for the LTTE militants. Prabhakaran advises KP to negotiate for anti-aircraft guns.

After the messages had been decoded, thecommission asked for assistance from RAW to trace the antecedents of the arms-dealers contacted by the LTTE. The commission also made independent inquiries about their background.

Shortly before the final report was submitted, RAW reported to the commission that some of the arms-dealers had links with the CIA and, at least one of them, was dealing with Adnan Khashoggi.

The report says that when these developments were taking place in Europe (March 1991), Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) had told Rajiv Gandhi that he had heard from some “contacts” in Europe that a plan was being hatched to kill him. Jain has asked for a further “inquiry, investigation and probe” into the versions of Arafat as well as that of another key witness, the Pheruman Akali Dal Chief, Mahant Sewa Dass.

The other major intelligence goof-up discussed in the report concerns LTTE messages intercepted by naval intelligence in 1988. Volume Seven of the report analyses transcripts of some ofthem, submitted to the commission on February 2, 1989. Other transcripts and tapes, officials from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) admitted during depositions, were destroyed in accordance with Government “procedure”. Only the signal of the messages remained intact.

Jain remarks: “Soon after the assassination, inquiries had begun and the commissions were constituted. Records having any bearing on the inquiries and investigations should not have been destroyed.”

Jain complains that during early hearings, several witnesses said they were oblivious about the existence of the naval intercepts. He only got confirmation from former cabinet secretary Zafar Saifullah, who told the commission that some intercepts had mentioned Chandraswami and the CIA. “Zafar Saifullah cannot be lying” Jain asserts. “No consideration has to come in the inquiry and no material information should be deliberately withheld.”

The text of the intercepts show that the government had been warned about an LTTE attack on RajivGandhi — in Tamil Nadu — almost three years before the Sriperumbudur incident. One message, sent from a wireless station in Sri Lanka to Dixon, an LTTE communication expert (later killed), in Madras establishes the fact that the LTTE was getting advance information about Rajiv Gandhi’s tour programmes. The message, intercepted on May 29, 1988, said, “We will prepare a garland of bullets for the reception of Rajiv Gandhi on 18.6.88.”

The decoding of the messages had apparently led to a lot of activity in South Block initially but later, it petered out. The DG, Military Intelligence, sent a note to the defence secretary which pointed out that while information about the prime minister’s programmes was withheld from everyone till 48 hours before his departure, the LTTE obviously got intimation six to 20 days in advance.

Another note on the subject from the DG, Military Intelligence, dated June 1, 1988, makes a categorical statement about the threat to the prime minister. It reads: “The LTTEInternational continues to indicate (an interest) in making an attempt on the life of our prime minister during his visits to Tamil Nadu.”

There is proof that besides the intercepts, some warnings about strikes from the LTTE had also reached New Delhi. One message was received by a police van on December 21, 1989, from a person calling himself Prabhakaran. The caller said 240 LTTE cadres had infiltrated into India and that if the IPKF was not withdrawn from Sri Lanka, they would detonate bombs in several metropolitan cities. Then, there were calls made to the Ministry of Home Affairs, about similar action by the LTTE.

Jain is highly critical of the manner in which the IB handled these warnings. Following these developments, Dixon had been picked up for questioning but was let off because he denied the allegations. Jain says that the IB should have doubted the veracity of Dixon’s statements. The threats, he feels, should have been seen by them in the light of the operations of the IPKF.

Jain says thatwhile intelligence agencies like the IB, RAW and the intelligence wings of the three defence services were supposed to “pool” their intelligence, this was obviously not happening. “The need of the time,” Jain says, “is that at least there should be one agency fully equipped with sophisticated gadgetry and skilled manpower so that all other agencies and ministries can take help.”