Espionage Stories and Intelligence Operations

So this is an opportunity to ask you about a series of mysterious stories, one

of which is the story of infiltrations.

The infiltration of Baghdad by the Indian intelligence service.

In the mid-1980s. Of course, there are operations—

this is what intelligence agencies do in general.

Their primary mission is to try to infiltrate the other side,

recruiting people from the target

country, and Iraq was a target for many countries,

most notably Israel and the United

States, as well as regional countries, Turkey and others, that were

trying to target Iraq. So at that time, Iraq used to

identify its enemies, meaning who its main adversaries and enemies were:

Israel, because Israel targeted the Iraqi nuclear reactor, the Tammuz reactor,

and the United States, Britain as well, and a number of other

countries that Iraq believed were adversaries to Iraq. So

the focus was on these countries and their embassies in Iraq, because usually

embassies are where intelligence agencies conduct their activities.

because it provides diplomatic cover for male and female officers

of various intelligence agencies, so

India was considered a friendly country; Iraq had at that time

about 1.2 million Indians, meaning

working in Iraq in various professions,

and, as he says, the intelligence service put India at the bottom

of the list in...

It was not focused on it.

It wasn't focused on it,

and a high-ranking officer tells me

in the counterintelligence department that,

after working on the embassies for a while,

he says they were working on all embassies in Iraq without

exception, regardless, but there was a list

of priorities, and they opened the mail, the diplomatic

mail, which also contained mail from the Indian intelligence

agency or station, and they found that

India had a large number of informants and spies

among the community working in Iraq then, for example,

in medical care at airbases, military bases,

cleaners gathering information on aircraft,

Aircraft types, even the type of concrete that was

used for runways, the thickness of the doors

behind which Iraq kept its aircraft,

the sub-identities of our officers, their sectarian identities,

their ethnic identities, their proximity to and distance from

the president, and so on.

So it was quite a shock.

It was a major breach.

A very major breach.

Right, and what does India gain from this information?

Naturally, this was the question on the officer's mind, so they formed

a committee and worked to find out what the main objective was. He tells

me that he immediately knew that

Israel and the United States were behind this operation.

Meaning India gives the information to Israel.

So they began investigating further to verify

where this information was going, and to explain

why India was doing this. India is a friendly country, so there was no logical

reason driving India to spy on

Iraq, especially on such a scale. They found that India was

seeking to obtain Israeli military technology.

trying, you know, to give it a lead and an advantage

over its historic adversary, Pakistan.

So that was the main goal, and there was no— you know, "business is business,"

as they say in English, there was nothing personal.

And of course, the Iraqi government dealt with that

in a way that I think was wise at the time,

in.