Vengalil Krishanan Krishna Menon established a reputation as one of the most controversial and divisive figures in Indian and broader Cold War politics. Under Nehru’s patronage, Menon experienced a meteoric rise to political power. In 1947, he was appointed to the prestigious post of Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. However, his abrasive personality and readiness to listen to and, on occasions, publicly endorse, Soviet and Communist Chinese positions on a range of international questions ruffled feathers in London and Washington. In the United States, officials characterised the Indian diplomat as ‘venomous,’ ‘violently anti-American,’ and ‘an unpleasant mischief-maker’. Many British diplomats echoed such sentiments. This chapter examines the British government’s response to Krishna Menon’s appointment. It explores the nature of Menon’s relationship with the CPGB, the risk that communists working for him posed to British security, and the strategy that MI5 developed to meet it. It illustrates the Attlee government’s conviction that India, and more particularly, Krishna Menon, represented a weak link in the Commonwealth security and intelligence chain.

In 1979, the publication of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s memoir, A Dangerous Place, reignited debates in the subcontinent over CIA interference in India’s internal affairs. Four years later, in 1983, a vituperative assault on Henry Kissinger published by the American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, in his book, The Price of Power, further fanned flames surrounding the CIA’s activities in India. Hersh’s book claimed that the former Indian prime minister, Morarji Desai, had been a CIA asset and passed intelligence to the Agency at the time of the Indo-Pakistan hostilities in 1971. The accusation levelled by Hersh, which prompted Desai to sue in an American court, served as a cause celébère, and saw Kissinger forced to take to publicly testify on CIA operations in India. This chapter examines how perceptions of the CIA in India towards the end of the Cold War were influenced by memoirs, books, and articles ‘exposing’ Agency misdeeds. It analyses the motivations behind such works, their impact on the Agency’s reputation at home and abroad, and the effectiveness of strategies employed by actors in India and the United States to enhance and suppress their reach.

During the first two decades following India’s independence, the CIA had a complex, and often conflicted relationship with the ruling Congress party and the Indian media. Despite public and private criticisms levelled at the Agency by Jawaharlal Nehru, a number of CIA covert operations in the subcontinent were undertaken with the full knowledge and support of India’s intelligence service and senior figures within the Congress Party: In Kerala, in the late 1950s, the CIA worked with the Congress Party to destabilise a democratically elected communist administration; following an abortive Tibetan uprising in 1959, India’s Intelligence Bureau chose to ‘look the other way’ as CIA aircraft transited through Indian airspace in support of Agency sponsored resistance operations in Chinese-controlled Tibet; and CIA operatives spirited the Dalai Lama out of Lhasa and into northern India. This chapter probes the genesis and evolution of the CIA’s relationship with India during the Agency’s so-called ‘golden age’ in the long 1950s, when a series of major US covert operations were conducted across the globe, in places such as the Congo, Guatemala, Iran, Indonesia, and Tibet.

Spying in South Asia examines the misguided and self-defeating Cold War interventions undertaken by British and American intelligence and security agencies in post-colonial India. British and American policymakers mounted intelligence operations in the Indian subcontinent on the basis of questionable, and often conflicting assumptions: that covert action could steer Indian opinion in a pro-Western direction; that British and American intelligence agencies could be insulated from Indian antipathy for colonialism and neo-colonialism; that Western intelligence support would corrode India’s relations with the Soviet Union; that controversies surrounding American intelligence practice would not cut through with the Indian public; that the subcontinent’s politicians would not employ the CIA as a lightning rod for India’s domestic travails; and that secret intelligence activity could help to arrest a decline in British and American influence in India. Today, India’s emergence as an economic titan, renewed Sino-Indian tensions, and backwash from the ‘War on Terror’, keep the subcontinent in the global headlines.

In the late 1960s, a spotlight cast upon some of the CIA’s more questionable activities in the subcontinent had a profound and enduring impact on Indian perceptions of the United States’ government and its external intelligence service. In the wake of the Ramparts scandal, the CIA came to occupy a prominent place in mainstream Indo–U.S. cultural and political discourse. For the remainder of the twentieth-century, and beyond, anti-American elements in India drew repeatedly upon the spectre of CIA subversion as a means of undermining New Delhi’s relationship with Washington. The blanket exposure given by the world’s press to CIA indiscretions, exemplified by the international media circus surrounding Congressional probes into the U.S. intelligence community, made a deep psychological impression in South Asia. This chapter traces the socio-political impact of Indira Gandhi’s assertions that the malevolent hand of the CIA lay behind India’s problems, foreign and domestic. It recovers South Asian agency in intelligence terms by interrogating the utility of Gandhi’s policy of exploiting the CIA’s reputation as a socio-political malefactor to court popular legitimacy.

On 20 October 1962, a border dispute between India and the People’s Republic of China erupted into open warfare, leaving the Indian Army reeling and the country’s political leadership in a state of panic. A State of Emergency was declared, a National Defence Fund established, and recruiting stations for India’s armed forces were flooded with eager volunteers. This chapter dissects the impact of joint covert action operations undertaken by India and the United States in the wake of Sino-Indian hostilities. It examines how and why the CIA assisted the IB in equipping and training a clandestine warfare unit tasked with monitoring Chinese military supply routes into Tibet and oversaw the insertion of nuclear-powered surveillance equipment on two of India’s Himalayan peaks to collect data on Chinese atomic tests. Coming at a point when new mechanisms for the implementation of covert action where being introduced by Whitehall, including the Counter Subversion Committee and the Joint Action Committee, the chapter also analyses how the border war was approached by Whitehall as an opportunity to test new British covert capabilities and to roll-back communism in South Asia.

Spying in South Asia’s conclusion addresses the impact of the end of the Cold War, and the onset of a ‘war on terror’, on British and American intelligence relationships with India. It explores the rationale behind Indian governments’ softening of anti-CIA rhetoric from the mid-1980s, and the implications for New Delhi’s intelligence agencies of the precipitous collapse of the USSR, and the abrupt conclusion of the Cold War. It assesses factors underlying the post-Cold War recovery of Western secret services from the position of public pariahs in India to that of New Delhi’s principal partners in intelligence and security matters. In 1947, as the Cold War dawned and the newly independent subcontinent confronted formidable threats to its stability and security, New Delhi turned to London and Washington for covert support. Some half-a-century later, after decades of what might best be described as circumscribed cooperation compromised by conflict and conspiracism, the intelligence services of India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, once more found compelling reasons to put their differences aside, and work together as close partners in a new secret war.

The conclusion argues that U.S. analysis on France reveals the complex relationship between intelligence and the formulation of American foreign policy in the early Cold War. It contends that a transnational and at times transimperial web of French factions and informants was largely responsible for shaping these views through their frequent informal and formal exchanges with American diplomats and intelligence officials, and they did so with their own political agendas and interests in mind. Through their U.S. contacts, they directly contested images of France, demonstrated legitimacy and outmaneuvered rivals, and played a fundamental role in shaping American perceptions and policy. This chapter also shows that the narrative of French weakness and communist intrigue began to unravel under the scrutiny of analysts who understood its provenance and questioned its basis. In fact, there were a myriad of other explanations for seemingly nefarious communist activity in France, ones for which emotionally driven and depleted observers failed to account.

During the 1960s, the effects of the Cuban Revolution – especially in terms of support for guerrilla warfare against U.S. allies – became all too evident, and the United States pursued interventionism with new vigor. This renewed use of power included economic and diplomatic pressures, veiled threats, covert operations, and even invasion. U.S. officials framed the Cold War as a valiant struggle to protect freedom in the hemisphere, and the cases of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Guatemala epitomized the lengths to which the United States would go to fight what it considered to be security threats. In Latin America, many elites supported U.S. policy, but a growing undercurrent of discontent also emerged, which pushed for negotiated conclusions to war and protested against the treatment of so many citizens caught in the middle. They did not share the notion that leftist or even Marxist governments necessarily constituted a threat to national security and global order. This chapter ends with a discussion of the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989.

This chapter examines the consolidation of Pahlavi rule after the removal of Reza Shah from power, especially after 1953, when the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was reestablished following a CIA-sponsored coup. The chapter explores the tenuous beginnings of the reign of the new Shah, the increasing legislative and policy-making significance of the Majles in the 1940s, and the era of oil nationalization, from 1951 to 1953. Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq was successful in getting the powers of the monarchy to be significantly reduced, but his overthrow was followed by the restoration of absolute monarchy built on a massive army and a feared secret service called SAVAK. Ultimately, however, the Pahlavi state failed to incorporate within its orbit and its social base remained weak. As the oil revenues began to lag, and the state was forced into making “housecleaning” concessions, it began to crumble under the weight of the gathering storm.

The Kennedy assassination traumatized a nation, and the official investigation conducted by the Warren Commission (1963–64) contained discrepancies that invited conspiratorial speculation. Subsequent investigations by the Church Committee (1975–76) and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1976–79) raised questions regarding the covert activities of the CIA, particularly the enlistment of the Mafia to assassinate Castro, which reframed the entire Kennedy assassination. Skepticism regarding the findings of the Warren Commission and revelations from the Church Committee fueled a cultural paranoia that pervades the work of Don DeLillo, particularly in a run of novels from Players (1977) and Running Dog (1978) through The Names (1982) and Libra (1988). Deeply indebted to the findings of these three flawed investigations, DeLillo’s fictionalization of the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, Libra, mines this paranoia, but also contextualizes the JFK assassination within an American social totality marked by contradictions and antagonisms. By exploring historical trauma in a way that calls into question official history, Libra represents an exemplary work of what Linda Hutcheon calls historiographic metafiction.

The Introduction sets the stage for the book by explaining the impact of Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 had on America’s role in the world. Without the perils posed by the USSR, the United States behaved as a liberal hegemon with little constraint. Inspired by Wilsonian idealism and its own post–World War II success, America tried to make the world a better place by militarily invading in a host of nations beset with civil wars, ethnic cleansing, brutal dictators, or devastating humanitarian conditions. It installed democracy and promoted human rights by force of arms for peace and US security interests. So, interventions, regimes, and insurgencies characterized the post–Cold War era. The 9/11 terrorism led America into large-scale incursions and occupations to secure its safety from further assaults by al Qaeda in Afghanistan and from phantom nuclear arms in Iraq. One difference between Cold War era and its immediate aftermath stemmed from the means used by Washington to rid itself of pesky dictators. Before the Berlin Wall disappeared the United States did not want to face a direct confrontation with a nuclear armed Soviet Union. So it turned to the CIA to remove anti-American strongmen in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile with covert operations. When CIA efforts failed to oust dictators after Soviet disappearance, Washington turned to military invasions.

In Chapter 4, I investigate the emergence and evolution of the USA’s targeted killing programme, focusing mainly on its origins within the CIA and its transformation from a limited, ad hoc method to a systematic and institutionalised form of militarised counterterrorism. I question whether it represents the erosion of international and domestic prohibitions on assassination and find that it does not; those prohibitions continue to exist and play a normative role in shaping how force is used, but they have changed in content – they refer to something different than before. Central to this process were legal arguments and bureaucratic politics designed to adjust the delegation of authorities across the agencies of the US security apparatus, facilitated by the development of armed unmanned aerial vehicles, which supplied an essential means, and by pressure from the Bush and Obama administrations.

In Chapter 5, I investigate the emergence, institutionalisation, and cessation of the US use of torture during interrogation, in the form of ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’ developed for the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme. I question whether this represents the erosion of international and domestic prohibitions on torture and find that it does not; they too continue to exist, but temporarily transformed, before reverting back to their earlier form. This process occurred because the CIA developed a new ‘science’ of interrogation and placed it at the centre of new institutional capacities to detain and interrogate ‘high-value’ prisoners, which they justified on the basis of its scientific validity and efficacy. Their legal and scientific arguments revolved around distinguishing their activities from torture, which they never claimed was appropriate but also never admitted to using. As these justifications increasingly failed, the use of EITs stopped and was again prohibited.

In the winter of 2016 I partook in a tour of the front lines facing the Dawla al Islamia, the Islamic State, in northern Iraq. Two years earlier ISIS had burst on to the world stage and conquered vast swathes of territory in a now borderless region known as ‘Syraq’. In 2014, Iraq alone suffered a third of the world’s terrorism fatalities. But not all these deaths came at the hands of ISIS or its predecessor ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’. With Sunni ISIS garnering attention as the world’s most deadly terrorist group, less attention has been paid to the terror campaign carried out by Shiite groups that was launched, in part, as a response to the terror campaign by Sunni Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and ISIS. Many observers who commented on this wave of terrorism described the spectacular rise of ISIS in 2012–14 and emergence of Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite terrorist groups as coming ‘out of the blue’. But there was a long and rarely studied prehistory to the rise of terrorism in this land that begins with the 2003 US–British invasion of this secular, Baathist-dominated country that had previously served as ‘firewall’ against both Shiite and Sunni sectarian radicalism. An understanding of this background history and the role of 2003’s Operation Iraqi Freedom in opening the Pandora’s box of sect-based terrorism in Iraq is crucial to explaining the origins, goals, tactics and local and global impact of the terrorists operating in this land.

In several respects, history is at the forefront of terrorism scholarship through challenging the domination of the social sciences and conventional wisdoms of the present that do not hold up to scrutiny once historicised. Moreover, historical research frequently accomplishes this by accessing a rich supply of primary source material that is more readily available than contemporary records because the passage of time has rendered it less sensitive. Despite these factors, there remains a broader impression, especially among governments, that terrorism’s past has little relevance to its present, hence the placing of resources into contemporary social science research instead of into the historicising of terrorism. As with terrorism, counterterrorism is not solely a phenomenon of the present day. It has a history as long as that of terrorism. Whether it is in the form of counterterrorism methods, such as the reliance on human intelligence, the difficulty in striking a balance between civil liberties, human rights and security or how to define the threat needing to be countered, the issues of the twenty-first century are, to varying extents, re-emergent, not nascent. As scholars make increasing inroads into excavating the difficult and convoluted history of terrorism, the need to exhume another inherent element of the complex equation, counterterrorism responses in both the micro and macro, grows ever greater.

After several months of fighting, it became clear to outside observers that Habré’s forces had gained the upper hand. Goukouni then asked Gaddafi to formalize and escalate the support he had received over the past several months. This culminated in a friendship treaty and a meticulously organized Libyan ground invasion of Chad in December 1980. This forced Habré to disengage from N’Djamena, and flee the country. Most of his forces managed to regroup and withdrawal into neighboring Sudan, from which Habré soon began conducting guerilla operations. In early 1981, Gaddafi and Goukouni announced the “merger” of Chad and Libya. This chapter narrates these events, and questions how French policy failed to prevent the kind of nightmare scenario which had haunted French officials over the previous three years. It also discusses the origins of a growing American role in support of Habré. The chapter further introduces the early approach of Mitterrand's presidency towards Chad and assesses the gradual shift in French policy which helped to encourage Goukouni to expel Libyan forces from Chad.

This chapter examines French policy toward's Chad following Libya's withdrawal in November 1981. It focuses on French efforts to facilitate the deployment of an OAU peacekeeping force, and its renewed engagement with the government in N'Djamena. It also examines the role of regional powers and the United States in the OAU deployment and Habré's consquent loss of foreign support. The chapter analyzes the OAU's failure to stabilize the Chadian political scene, and growing French indifference to the outcome of the war between Habré and the N'Djamena government. It concludes with Habré's seizure of power and his initial efforts to consolidate his rule.