On Bofors

Rajiv Gandhi “unnecessarily” tied himself up in knots in trying to cover up the Bofors scandal, the book says. “He frantically mounted a cover-up operation and personally got involved in the cover-up exercise, thereby creating unnecessary and incorrect doubts in the minds of some people about his own integrity,” Raman writes. According to the book, Rajiv also encouraged officials close to him to create problems for VP Singh and the intelligence agencies vied with one another in giving him ideas on how to go about the cover-up.

Their moles, our mole

The book claims French intelligence had penetrated the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in the early 1980s. “It had access to a large number of top secret reports sent by the R&AW and the IB to the Prime Minister on their sensitive operations,” writes Raman, adding that the intelligence and documents it collected were shared with West European and US counterparts.

The CIA felts its own officers would be under close surveillance by the IB due to Indira Gandhi’s well-known distrust of the US. “It therefore operated through the intelligence agencies of other countries, which were not under similar surveillance till the detection of the penetration of the PMO by French intelligence,” Raman says.

But India had its own moles too, like the one in Yahya Khan’s office who provided a tip-off about a planned pre-emptive strike on the Western Air Command days before it was supposed to be carried out. The information meant that the strike failed, says the book.