Date: 9/20/2005
Courtesy: UPI/// Congress Party denies KGB infiltration during 1970s /// NEW DELHI, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- India's ruling Congress Party has reacted angrily to a new book that claims the KGB infiltrated Indira Gandhi's government in the 1970s. /// Party spokesmen say the allegations in "The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World" -- excerpts of which were widely published in the Indian press Sunday -- are baseless and not worth commenting on./// In his book -- which was published posthumously -- former KGB official Vasili Mitrokhin wrote that the Soviet intelligence agency had an extensive network of contacts in Gandhi's government, the BBC reported Sunday. /// Mitrokhin's book claimed the KGB bribed Indian officials with millions of dollars and used agents to persuade Gandhi to declare a state of emergency in 1975. /// "We had scores of sources throughout the Indian government," the book quotes former KGB general Oleg Kalugin as saying. "It seemed like the entire country was for sale."/// Congress Party general secretary Ambika Soni told the BBC that Mitrokhin had no evidence for his claims and said his book showed he had not one iota of knowledge about India. /// The book follows "The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West," which was published in 1999. /// Courtesy: UPI /// Congress Party denies KGB infiltration during 1970s /// NEW DELHI, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- India's ruling Congress Party has reacted angrily to a new book that claims the KGB infiltrated Indira Gandhi's government in the 1970s. /// Party spokesmen say the allegations in "The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB and the World" -- excerpts of which were widely published in the Indian press Sunday -- are baseless and not worth commenting on./// In his book -- which was published posthumously -- former KGB official Vasili Mitrokhin wrote that the Soviet intelligence agency had an extensive network of contacts in Gandhi's government, the BBC reported Sunday. /// Mitrokhin's book claimed the KGB bribed Indian officials with millions of dollars and used agents to persuade Gandhi to declare a state of emergency in 1975. /// "We had scores of sources throughout the Indian government," the book quotes former KGB general Oleg Kalugin as saying. "It seemed like the entire country was for sale." /// Congress Party general secretary Ambika Soni told the BBC that Mitrokhin had no evidence for his claims and said his book showed he had not one iota of knowledge about India. /// The book follows "The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West," which was published in 1999./// ==================================== COMMENTED A BRAVE AND PATRIOTIC SIKH: /// And yet they claimed that it was the Sikhs who were disloyal to India - she was selling India like a pimp to the Soviet Union. /// Is it any wonder that a mind and woman as paranoid and full of conspiring corrupted snakes could meddle in Punjab and cause such terror and tragedy and horror? /// Indian politicians are the biggest traitors to India there has ever been - slowly the truth comes out about the rotteness at the heart of Indira Gandhi's rule. /// LONDON (Reuters) - Russia's feared KGB spy service penetrated all levels of the Indian government under Indira Gandhi in the 1970s and became a major cash backer of her Congress (R) party, according to a book published on Monday. /// The KGB operation in India during that period was its largest in the world outside the Soviet bloc and it even had to create a new department to handle it, according to The Mitrokhin Archive II based on the KGB's own secret files. /// "During 1975 a total of 10.6 million rubles was spent on active measures in India designed to strengthen support for Mrs Gandhi and undermine her political opponents," the book says. Suitcases of money were regularly taken into the prime minister's house to fund the party, and in the 1977 election that Gandhi lost, nine of her party's candidates were KGB agents, it adds. And when Gandhi returned to power in 1980, the KGB proceeded to influence Indian government policies by fuelling her paranoia of CIA plots through misinformation tactics backed by forged documents leaked to the press. /// When Gandhi's son Rajiv took over from her after she was assassinated in 1984, the KGB continued to both court and scare him through lavish receptions and more tales of CIA plots. The relationship only foundered when Rajiv lost power in 1989 and as the Soviet Union itself started to disintegrate. /// The book is the second volume detailing the Cold War activities of the KGB, based on top secret agency files stolen over more than two decades by archivist Vasili Mitrokhin and handed over in 1992 when he defected to Britain. /// It notes that as early as 1961 the KGB had decided that it would wage its war against the capitalist West on the battlefields of the Third World and not directly against the "Main Adversary", the United States. /// The book tells how the KGB funded and supported Chilean leader Salvador Allende -- who it gave the codename LEADER -- but then abandoned him as the Chilean economy collapsed and he was overthrown and killed in a coup. /// It details KGB operations in Iran and Iraq as it tried to exert influence in the Middle East after initially winning over Egypt's Gamel Abdel Nasser but then being rejected by his successor Anwar Sadat. /// It notes the agency's successes in Syria and Yemen but its abject failure to make serious inroads into Israel. /// The book examines the KGB's campaign to infiltrate apartheid South Africa through its backing of the African National Congress, and gives examples of some of its successful misinformation campaigns -- again using forged documents planted in the press -- implicating the CIA in supporting the regime. /// Mitrokhin died in January 2004 at his home in England. Christopher Andrew, author of both books and an expert on intelligence affairs, said that his archive -- some of which remains classified -- was one of the biggest ever intelligence coups. /// http://uk.news.yahoo.com/19092005/325/book-says-cold-war-kgb-major-foothold-india.html /// ......................000000000
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