Honey traps and Intelligence

Historically, from time immemorial sex has been used to entice enemies not only to shed their clothes but also to part with hidden state secrets

by Co. R. Hariharan

(July 04, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian)THREE decades ago, Michael J Barrett, assistant general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), called espionage “the world’s second oldest profession and just as honourable as the first”. This remains true even in this age of permissiveness, and sex continues to be an effective weapon in the armoury of intelligence agencies.

The Old Testament tells us how Philistine spy Delilah used her charms to lure Samson and render him powerless. Our own history has rich tales of spies. Chanakya, the strategic counselor of emperors, considered spying part of state craft. Akbar was credited with having 5,000 spies working for him. They all used courtesans regularly to lure and kill victims, including foreign spies.

Intelligence agencies use three major human weaknesses – wine, women, and money/power – to make those with access to secrets part with information. The use of sex to lure the victim, known in intelligence parlance as a honey trap, is common among intelligence agencies. Particularly after World War II, when Europe had fewer eligible men, use of sex in intelligence gathering operations gained prominence. And the dreaded Soviet secret service, KGB, used honey traps regularly.

The Profumo affair, involving John Profumo, Secretary of State for War in the Macmillan government in Britain, and Christine Keeler, the British showgirl, is probably the most publicized honey trap case. Keeler’s lover, Yevgeni Ivanov, naval attaché at the Soviet embassy in London, probably used her cleverly to get at Profumo and access state secrets though this was never proved. When the scandal broke in 1963, it cost Profumo his job.

The KGB used not only women but also men. It used the homosexual inclinations of William John Vassall, a clerk in the British naval attaché’s office in Moscow. It trapped him with his male partners and threatened to expose the homosexual liaisons, forcing him to work for the Soviet spy agency.

So it is not surprising that, in our own neighbourhood, women have frequently been used as tools for spying. The recent arrest of Madhuri Gupta (53), Second Secretary in the Press and Information Wing of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, is a case in point. According to the media, the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau used her occupational grievance against the Ministry of External Affairs to turn her into a spy for Pakistani intelligence. Perhaps sex was also used as icing on the grievance cake as she had an affair with her Pakistani intelligence pointsman, Jamshed. If the media is to be believed, Jamshed, though a member of the “second oldest profession”, had some honour left as he offered to marry her!

Gupta’s case came close on the heels of another possible honey trap involving Commodore Sukhjinder Singh. The naval officer headed the Indian team overseeing the refit of Admiral Gorshkov, the aircraft carrier the Indian Navy is procuring from Russia. The Commodore is now facing an inquiry on whether his liaison with a Russian woman in 2005-07 in Russia had any connections with the Gorshkov deal, which suffered a steep cost hike.

Chinese and US intelligence agencies have also used honey traps to lure Indian officials. Manmohan Sharma, an officer of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), was dismissed from service after it was discovered that he fell for the charms of his Chinese language teacher during his tenure in Beijing in 2008. The woman was suspected to be an informant of the Chinese government. Three decades ago, there was the notorious case of KV Unnikrishnan, another RAW functionary, who leaked official secrets of India’s role in Sri Lanka to the CIA. His liaison with an American woman was said to have played a part.

GOVERNMENTS in the Indian subcontinent operate with a comparatively low level of technology orientation. This imposes limitations on intelligence agencies in the use of sophisticated electronic gadgetry to collect information. Espionage using human sources, rather than technology tools, will continue to be a preferred option to gather state secrets in South Asia. Sex is a major human weakness, making its use in intelligence gathering indispensable. We can expect Pakistani intelligence to continue to exploit all weaknesses in their potential sources to unravel state secrets just as their Indian counterparts do. So use of human intelligence sources continues to have primacy, as Americans are discovering in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But use of sex for espionage continues to bug the West also. Last year, MI-5, the British counterintelligence agency, distributed a booklet among business and financial institutions on Chinese efforts to use sexual blackmail to unravel business and trade secrets from Western businessmen. It cautioned them about Chinese intelligence services trying to cultivate “long-term relationships” to exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships to force individuals to cooperate with them.

Human intelligence in active military operations has its limitations. As US operations in Afghanistan show, it is being replaced by technology intelligence tools like the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to provide actionable intelligence in real time. UAVs were extensively used in Sri Lanka’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Coupled with other battlefield sensors and communication intelligence, such tools play an important role in our own operational theatres, including Jammu and Kashmir.

However, human intelligence will continue to be an indispensable tool of state craft. It is also necessary not only to validate technology intelligence but also probe tools of technology intelligence even when they are still on the drawing board. And the use of sex in espionage and counterintelligence operations will probably continue forever.

( Courtesy: G-files)