Those Nuclear Ice Spies

B. Raman April 28, 2003 00:00 IST Those Nuclear Ice Spies -0001-11-30T00:00:00+05:53

This book, written jointly by legendary mountaineer and former Indo-Tibetan Border Police officer M.S. Kohli and Kenneth Conboy, deputy director of the Heritage Foundation, Washington DC, provides an absorbing and authentic account of a top secret operation undertaken by the intelligence communities of India and the US after the Sino-Indian war of 1962.

The objective of the operation was to have a sensor with a nuclear-fuelled generator planted in the Himalayas by a team of Indo-US mountaineers to monitor nuclear and missile developments in China. While practically all the mountaineers selected from the Indian side came from the Intelligence Bureau and its allied agencies, those from the US were private climbers, with the CIA providing the leadership.

The first attempt to plant the device on Nanda Devi in 1965 was beaten back by bad weather. Instead of bringing the device back, the team, with the clearance of the IB and the Aviation Research Centre (ARC) HQ in New Delhi, left it cached on the mountain, planning to return the next year to retrieve it. When the team...