Was Indira Gandhi's cabinet rigged by a mole during 1971 War?

This famous CIA cable was sent December 6, 1971, and purports to be from a source close to Indira Gandhi's cabinet briefing that day.

It lists India's war aims. It has created an enduring mystery as to the mole's identity. Seymour Hersh, the American journalist, citing a CIA source, defamed Morarji Desai as the mole.

That Desai was not in the cabinet seems not to have bothered Hersh or his source. Did Hersh hear wrong or did his source deliberately misinform? I'm in no position to state the truth.

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Nonetheless, I was in India in 1977 when Desai became prime minister and ordered the CIA out of India.

That would be the declared assets working with India. The undeclared assets, including those attached to the US embassy, would obviously not be withdrawn since in theory they were just diplomats posted to India, a process that required Indian consent on an individual by individual basis.

Could Desai's son, to whom the CIA paid money, been using his father's name to pass on news and information? Yes, yet the cable could not have used Desai. Could it be misdirection?

Perhaps, but Hersh's source need not have named anyone. Why name Desai, who could not be the source, unless the intent was slander to discredit him?

It is no secret that both Nehru and Indira Gandhi permitted the CIA to work in India. This doesn't make them "agents" because both prime ministers were simply doing their duty to their country by getting intelligence on China.

Later, well-known journalist Vinod Mehta thought Maharashtra CM YB Chavan was the mole. May I respectfully suggest that if there was a mole, it is more likely he was a confidential secretary to one of the ministers than a minister?

In part my belief is based on seeing copies of such documents in Delhi. Also, during the "license raj" a minister wanting money could have annually made several times as much without becoming.

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But why am I saying "if there was a mole"? Don't the CIA cables prove there was? Actually, one particular cable, the one dated December 1971 strongly suggests the person giving information to the CIA may not even have been Indian.

The cable, reproduced in US state department archives as Document 246 Paragraph 6B says: "The incorporation into India of the southern part of Azad Kashmir for strategic rather than territorial reasons, (because India has no desire to occupy any West Pakistan territory)".

First, "Azad Kashmir" is a term that would never be used by India. Azad (free) Kashmir is what Pakistan calls its part of Kashmir. The Indian term is always "Pakistan Occupied Kashmir".

Second, India would never say "for strategic rather than territorial reasons, (because India has no desire to occupy and West Pakistan territory)" because Kashmir is Indian territory under illegal occupation of Pakistan. You cannot "occupy" or "incorporate" your own recovered territory. Pakistan, of course, would call POK "Azad Kashmir".

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Did we have such a three-point plan? Of course, we did.

Nonetheless, it is not my intent to make the case here of an impending Indian offensive in the west on December 3 or 4. I am not a historian, simply a military analyst.

While I know of the plan, I saw no reason to research the matter. My intent is simply to note that the key cable, from which the assumption has been made that Indira Gandhi's cabinet had a high-level mole, cannot be considered authentic. Anyone can reach the same conclusion just by reading Document 246.

Until the other day, while reading Srinath Raghavan's most excellent 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, I did not know about the existence of the cable.

Professor Raghavan is to be found at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. He belongs to the new generation of Indian historians that researches and analyses documents with great persistence and care, and who writes to the highest Western standards of scholarship.