The first lecture was delivered by Shashi Tharoor, whose selection had surprised many and disliked by some. Tharoor spoke, inter alia, on the need for greater transparency in the work of the R&AW.
A 290-page book, due to hit bookshelves next week, could set the cat among the pigeons of India's intelligence and political communities.
'Mansoor Ijaz is a smooth operator. I am not surprised he has fooled us or anybody, says former R&AW chief A S Dulat in conversation with Sheela Bhatt.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a corruption case against unknown officials of the Cabinet Secretariat, a specialised covert unit of Research and Analysis Wing and private businessmen for alleged irregularities in the purchase of tents worth Rs 22 crore, official sources said in New Delhi.
'The response to terror is not always reciprocal terror, nor is launching a conventional response the best response.' 'The best response is to make the sponsor pay a price he cannot afford,' says former RA&W chief Vikram Sood.
Sources in the security establishment claim the ongoing opposition in the Research and Analysis Wing to Avdhesh Bihari Mathur's promotion is due to a corporate angle attached to it.
Join A S Dulat on the Rediff Chat on July 8, 2015, at 11.30 am IST!
In an embarrassment, the Central Bureau of Investigation has informed a Delhi court that it was yet to go through the book written by former a R&AW official.
'Journalists and intelligence officials do a similar job -- collect information.' Three former RAW officials tell Vicky Nanjappa/Rediff.com that they see nothing wrong in Ved Prakash Vaidik meeting Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorist Muhammad Saeed.
Both the officers will have a tenure of two years.
The development comes as a surprise, as it was earlier believed that the competition to head India's external intelligence agency after its current chief Ashok Chaturvedi retires on January 30 was between P V Kumar, the senior-most officer of the organisation after Chaturvedi, and Sanjeev Tripathi, another senior officer.
Successive R&AW chiefs and other senior officers have been living in an ivory tower of their own, inaccessible to junior officers and unsympathetic to their problems and grievances. Junior officers of the R&AW call this the 11th floor mentality.
"The government of India did not do anything to secure my release. But for my elder brother Anand Vir, advocate Arvind Kumar Singh and the honourable Supreme court of India, I would have still be rotting in Pakistani jails. The agencies, which hire you, disown you the moment you are arrested. The Indian high commission in Pakistan did not help either. They took their own sweet time for giving me temporary travel documents," he said.
R&AW Special Secretary (retd) Amar Bhushan's upcoming book won't be just a 'semi-fictional' story but will throw welcome light on a sad chapter in the history of Indian intelligence, notes B Raman.
