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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Reporting & Essays |
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Reportage |
River Deep Mountain High
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| Forty-five years ago, a joint Indo-US espionage mission lost five kilograms of plutonium in the Himalayas. It’s still missing—but the government has decided to ignore the ongoing threat. |
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Published : 1 December 2010 |
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Nanda Devi, India's second-highest peak.
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NE MORNING IN EARLY AUGUST, in a tiny village in the upper Himalayas, Karthik Rana heard a warning come over All India Radio—heavy rains were on the way. The 80-year-old shouted at his wife, daughters, daughters-in-law and grandchildren: "Get the sheep home! The clouds are going to open!"
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I had arrived at Lata Kharak earlier that morning, a few hours before heavy rains and avalanches descended on the Himalayas. A few hundred miles to the north, in Leh, 200 people were killed in a massive cloudburst; across the mountains, in China, landslides claimed 1,000 lives.
The sound of thunder atop Lata Kharak, 2,370 metres above sea level, set heartbeats racing: in a matter of seconds, sheep, cows and naked toddlers emerged from the bushes, frantically running for shelter.
Two villages, Lata and Reini, are the highest inhabited points on Lata Kharak; above them no human beings or tamed animals are to be found. Further still lies the mighty Nanda Devi, India’s second highest peak, towering overhead at 7,816 metres above sea level.
| BRUCE DALE / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC / GETTY IMAGES |
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| General Curtis LeMay, the US Air Force chief of staff from 1961 to 1965, who helped conceive the Nanda Devi spy mission. |
Karthik Rana, a short, toothless man with an athletic body, boyish enthusiasm and a very sharp mind, belongs to a nomadic shepherd tribe of Tibetan origin, the Jad Bhotia. When British surveyors, anthropologists and mountaineers began exploring these hills a century ago, they turned to the men of the tribe to work as porters. Today, Rana is among the oldest porters in Reini—old enough to remember the details of a fateful expedition on Nanda Devi 45 years ago.
On 1 September 1965, two junior officers from India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) came to Lata to recruit porters for a joint Indian-American espionage mission on the mountain. "Luckily," Rana said, "in the early summer of 1965, I was hired by Japanese mountaineers to climb another peak, Trisul, so I missed out when Indian saabs came calling."
The mission was to scale Nanda Devi and install a terrestrial communication interpreter, powered by a nuclear electrical generator, at the summit. In 1964, China had conducted its first nuclear tests in the western province of Xinjiang, stunning American intelligence agencies, who thought the Chinese were still years away from nuclear capability. The remote sensing device atop Nanda Devi was intended to gather information about any future Chinese atomic tests.
The first major joint operation conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the IB was facilitated by the tense geopolitical developments of the period: only three years earlier, India had faced a humiliating defeat in its war with China, which erased Jawaharlal Nehru’s unadulterated faith in the communist bloc—until then, slogans like ‘Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai’ had sounded a promising post-colonial world order. The Americans, for their part, were anxiously waging military and ideological wars against communism. Over the course of 1965, 200,000 US soldiers were sent to fight a futile and costly war in Vietnam.
China’s sudden emergence as an atomic power represented a serious new threat to the Americans, who hatched a plan to install a spying device in the Himalayas to monitor Chinese nuclear tests. But the Americans were convinced that the mission could not succeed without the help of Indian climbers and the country’s defence and intelligence agencies. Beginning in early 1965, American officials devoted all their energy to enlisting the co-operation of their Indian counterparts. By the time the IB men arrived in Lata, the most difficult work was already done. All that remained was to hire and train a team of porters to carry the payload.
Thirty-three Bhotia men from Lata and Reini were hired for the expedition; nine Sherpas, members of a tribe of elite mountaineers, were brought from Sikkim for their expertise in climbing glaciers. The mission would be led by some of India’s most legendary mountaineers—drawn from a team of climbers who had scaled Everest earlier that year.
Manmohan Singh Kohli, a Navy commander assigned to the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), was the expedition’s leader. With him were four officers from the IB: Harish Rawat, Sonam Wangyal, Gurcharan Singh Bhangu and Sonam Gyatso—all were well-trained mountaineers, and winners of the Arjuna award, India’s highest recognition in sports.
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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Amarjeet Singh Marwaha
7 April 2012
04:42 PM
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Our politicians should come forward and sieze this opportunity to clean the Himalayas (read national treasury) by way of a multi-trillion dollar contract.
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WLVRN
5 March 2012
11:57 PM
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i'd say it was no more than an elaborate "and damn the expense" ploy of englais america to aquire a "personal surity" in the form of a non-government sanctioned nuclear device, an "off the record" bomb made from the "explained" loss of such rigorously accounted for material as plutonium.
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Tanmay
2 March 2012
08:41 PM
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In hindsight, the whole plan seems batshit insane. But then again, this was the 60s when the americans were aiming for the moon - shit like this was normal.
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Rohin
12 October 2011
04:37 AM
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It is clear that there was no risk assessment done before planing to put the "device" on top. How could one exclude the possibility of the device going missing, while installed and operational.
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Sumit
19 August 2011
05:14 PM
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Fantastic account of a mission gone wrong and the apathy of the government to wake up to the potential dangers of it. It really should be turned into a documentary!
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Michael Hickson
4 July 2011
07:41 PM
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This story would make a really good documentary program. Has everything. But seriously, it is worrying.
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Karthick
12 May 2011
12:10 PM
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As always Caravan Mag is brilliant. Great research done on one of the most important incident in Indian history. Some initiative should be taken to make our government to work on this missing material.
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Chanpreet Singh
31 January 2011
05:35 PM
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This is great article. Kudos to Caravan and brilliantly investigated.I was glued to my laptop screen from First Chapter to last Chapter.
Since the technology today is relatively advanced, either Indian or US govt should take initiative to retrieve the lost plutonium.
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kuldeep adhikari
17 January 2011
05:53 PM
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What shall I Say !!! I'm speechless, firstly I would like to say gr8 work done by author, and whoever participated for such a detailed analysis on this issue. A great appreciable work, The second thing is Government really needs to look on this side, Can we raise this issue and see of Government listens to it, because it is about our citizens.
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Anjan Dasgupta
31 December 2010
03:01 PM
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Very very interesting, should be circulated through e-mail as much as possible. We have the right to know. Possible that such missions are being carried out even today without our knowledge. Many thanks for such an investigation.
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V.B.N.Ram
30 December 2010
12:08 PM
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Painstaking research . Such revelations are as much a challenge to the extent to which a writer can think of interesting topics, as the security concerns they bring about.
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Ravindra Shanbagh
29 December 2010
12:28 PM
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Re Vijay Krishna- It is actually Mr. Kao himself. I'd dealt with him in multiple occasions between 81 and 82.
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jjoseph
22 December 2010
12:04 PM
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Vinod's Spirit of enquiry and concern for the humanity, which is not a priority of our governing bodies,
is really worthy of appreciation.
Cannot hope an action leniant towards humanity from a prime-minister and team that has become puppets of the US.
Can just hope,long/pray " let this story, atleast, open our 'masters' eyes to this serious issue of concern.
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Ashok
19 December 2010
06:42 AM
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My suspicion is that someone in the know removed it - either one of the sponsors of the project (the joint US India team), or China, which also has a very good intelligence set up. If the US government had found another way to gather nuclear data on China, then they would have removed the device for fear of theft. If China knew of the project, they would have it for themselves to scientifically examine the measuring and intelligence gathering device. Another scenario may have been one of the porters turning informant for extra cash - and selling the plutonium device or its location to either China or the Soviet Union. Not finding the device and not being able to track it for this long leads to serious questions.
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Parag
18 December 2010
08:26 PM
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A important piece of information, which our generation must be aware of. As it appears that the repercussions can be colossal, it is high time to delve into preventive action. Another example of Uncle Sam's habitual messy behaviour, which will potentially affect other countries. Hope this doesn't turns into second Bhopal tragedy.
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