India’s spies infiltrated West long before Canada’s murder claim

A India flag waves in the wind at the High Commission of India in in Ottawa, Canada on October 3, 2023. (REUTERS)
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Updated 04 October 2023
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India’s spies infiltrated West long before Canada’s murder claim

  • RAW was created under a government order with no formal constitutional backing and is exempt from legislative oversight
  • The Indian agency expanded its reach in Western nations after 2008 Mumbai attack and was emboldened by Modi administration

NEW DELHI: India’s external intelligence service is a feared foe in its neighborhood: Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal have all accused it of political meddling and involvement with outlawed groups that have perpetrated acts of violence.

Now, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegation last month that Indian government agents were involved in the June killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in a Vancouver suburb has thrust Delhi’s secretive Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) into the global spotlight.

India angrily denied the allegations and demanded that Canada — which expelled RAW’s station chief — furnish evidence. Ottawa said it shared proof with allies, but will not release it publicly.

Reuters spoke to four retired and two serving Indian security and intelligence officials familiar with RAW who said the agency was galvanized to play a more assertive international role after the 2008 Mumbai attacks that left 166 people dead. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Four officials said that RAW expanded its reach in Western nations gradually after 2008. One current official cited India’s failure to secure the extradition of a US citizen convicted of involvement in the Mumbai attack as a key motivation for RAW to increase its sway in the West.

While in its immediate neighborhood RAW has advanced signal and technical intelligence capabilities, in the West the agency remains largely dependent on human intelligence for its operations, according to one serving and one former official.

RAW, like other arms of India’s national security apparatus, has been emboldened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has bolstered India’s defense capabilities since his 2014 election and built a strongman image, five of the officials said.

Modi’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

RAW Chief Ravi Sinha, the only serving official publicly affiliated with the agency, did not return messages seeking comment. Sinha reports to Modi’s office through the powerful National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who also did not return a request for comment.

All six officials denied that RAW engages in targeted killings, noting that the agency has no mandate for such operations.

Fallout from the Vancouver incident has also raised concerns that RAW will come under greater global monitoring, Indian intelligence officials and analysts said.

“The current developments have undoubtedly increased global curiosity about RAW,” said Dheeraj Paramesha Chaya, an expert on Indian intelligence at Britain’s Hull University. He said that greater Western scrutiny of RAW’s activities might also bring a closer understanding of Delhi’s security concerns.

The West has expanded military and intelligence cooperation with Delhi as tensions with China have grown, with Washington agreeing in 2020 to share sensitive mapping and satellite data with India.

In the short term, Canada’s assertion might make it harder for Western countries to trust RAW, one of the officials said.

Ottawa and Delhi have been in a diplomatic standoff since Trudeau made his allegations in public. India has suspended the issuance of new visas to Canadian citizens and demanded that Ottawa reduce its diplomatic presence.

Canada had unsuccessfully pushed allies such as the US to issue a joint statement condemning India, the Washington Post reported.

EXPANDING PRESENCE POST-MUMBAI

RAW has long been identified as an arch-rival by Pakistani security leaders. Most recently, Islamabad — without providing evidence — blamed RAW for a suicide blast near a mosque on Friday that killed over 50 people. An Indian Foreign Ministry spokesperson did not return a request for comment on the accusation.

The Indian government publicly blamed Islamabad for the 2008 Mumbai attacks — widely seen by policymakers in Delhi as RAW’s most recent major failure — which Delhi says were carried out by Pakistan-based militants.

Islamabad denied that its agents were involved.

The agency enhanced its intelligence gathering operations in the West, including North America, due to the role of US citizen David Headley, now serving a 35-year prison sentence in Chicago on charges that included scouting locations for the Mumbai attacks, one of the officials said.

American law enforcement was warned before the attack that Headley had terrorism ties, according to US media reports. Top Indian policymakers have publicly suggested that he was a US “double agent,” and Delhi’s failure to secure his extradition frustrated RAW, the official said.

The United States, which gave India access to Headley, has denied he was a double agent. The American Embassy in Delhi did not return a request for comment.

RAW has had a small Western presence since its inception in the 1960s, when it inherited the London station of the Intelligence Bureau, a colonial-era agency that now focuses on domestic security, according to Chaya, the Hull professor.

The large Indian diaspora in countries like the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia is an asset, two officials said.

But the risk of Indian agents coming under surveillance in their host nations means they are used for political influence campaigns rather than security operations, they said.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported in 2020, citing government and intelligence sources, that the country’s security services were monitoring the possibility of India and China using their diaspora to influence candidates in that year’s federal election.

“Our footprint is growing in parts of the world which were not important earlier,” a recently retired senior RAW official said, without providing specifics.

RAW has “long been associated with direct action ... including targeted killings and disappearances” in its immediate neighborhood, said Adrian Levy, co-author of a book on South Asian spy agencies, adding that such actions were arranged via proxies, which gave India deniability.

Delhi has generally not seen a need for covert operations outside South Asia because it has friendly relations with many countries that enable it to secure aims such as extradition and getting access to people of interest, one official said.

The agency has been “super careful” about its operations in the West, said Levy. While RAW has arranged the movement of cash, weapons and men to other locations from Europe, “direct action was reserved for South Asia and Southeast Asia,” he said.

POLITICAL SUPPORT

RAW operates from a drab office complex with no signage in central Delhi. Reuters was unable to determine specifics about the agency’s operations, such as its budget and its size.

It split off from the Intelligence Bureau in 1968 and was initially tasked with keeping a keen eye on China after Delhi’s humiliation in their brief 1962 war. RAW had close links to Israel’s Mossad and the CIA since its inception, according to a 2008 report by the US Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank that tracks Indian foreign and security policies.

One serving and one retired official told Reuters that RAW’s political masters in the Modi government demanded that it expand its “presence, significance and capabilities.”

“What they have done is to give confidence to the organization,” one of the officials said.

Two serving and one retired RAW agents told Reuters that some previous governments did not offer sufficient resources and political support.

Under Modi, India’s national security community “has become far more proactive, in terms of diplomacy (and) deal making but also direct action, analog and digital,” said Levy, the intelligence writer.

But as Indian intelligence services have gained more capabilities and far greater reach, the legal framework they operate in has not kept pace with how modern democracies manage espionage operations, he said.

RAW was created under a government order with no formal parliamentary or constitutional backing and is exempt from legislative oversight, according to PRS, a research group that studies India’s federal and state legislatures.

“This means there is less oversight, and fewer legal hurdles ... as real command and control is centralized” with the prime minister, Levy said.


Pentagon draws up rules on possible use of force by Marines deployed to LA protests

Updated 7 sec ago
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Pentagon draws up rules on possible use of force by Marines deployed to LA protests

  • 700 Marines will augment about 4,100 National Guard members already in LA
  • President George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to respond to riots in LA in 1992

WASHINGTON: The US Department of Defense was scrambling Monday to establish rules to guide Marines who could be faced with the rare and difficult prospect of using force against citizens on American soil, now that the Trump administration is deploying active duty troops to the immigration raid protests in Los Angeles.
US Northern Command said it is sending 700 Marines into the Los Angeles area to protect federal property and personnel, including federal immigration agents. The 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines are coming from Twentynine Palms, California, and will augment about 4,100 National Guard members already in LA or authorized to be deployed there to respond to the protests.
The forces have been trained in de-escalation, crowd control and standing rules for the use of force, Northern Command said.
But the use of the active duty forces still raises difficult questions.
The Marines are highly trained in combat and crisis response, with time in conflict zones like Syria and Afghanistan. But that is starkly different from the role they will face now: They could potentially be hit by protesters carrying gas canisters and have to quickly decide how to respond or face decisions about protecting an immigration enforcement agent from crowds.
According to a US official, troops will be armed with their normal service weapons but will not be carrying tear gas. They also will have protective equipment such as helmets, shields and gas masks.
When troops are overseas, how they can respond to threats is outlined by the rules of engagement. At home, they are guided by standing rules for the use of force, which have to be set and agreed to by Northern Command, and then each Marine should receive a card explaining what they can and cannot do, another US official said.
For example, warning shots would be prohibited, according to use-of-force draft documents viewed by The Associated Press. Marines are directed to de-escalate a situation whenever possible but also are authorized to act in self-defense, the documents say.
The AP reviewed documents and interviewed nine US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet public, about the guidance being determined for the Marines.
The Pentagon also is working on a memo with clarifying language for the Marines that will lay out the steps they can take to protect federal personnel and property. Those guidelines also will include specifics on the possibility that they could temporarily detain civilians if troops are under assault or to prevent harm, the first US official said.
Those measures could involve detaining civilians until they can be turned over to law enforcement.
Having the Marines deploy to protect federal buildings allows them to be used without invoking the Insurrection Act, one US official said.
The Insurrection Act allows the president to direct federal troops to conduct law enforcement functions in national emergencies. But the use of that act is extremely rare. Officials said that has not yet been done in this case and that it’s not clear it will be done.
President George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to respond to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of white police officers who were videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King.
If their role expands if the violence escalates, it is not clear under what legal authority they would be able to engage, said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.
“If in fact those Marines are laying hands on civilians, doing searches, then you have pretty powerful legal concerns,” Goitein said. “No statutory authority Trump has invoked so far permits this.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted late Saturday that he was considering deploying the Marines to respond to the unrest after getting advice earlier in the day from Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to one of the US officials.
Still, the tweet, which was posted to Hegseth’s personal X account and not to his official government account, caught many inside the Pentagon by surprise. As late as Monday, the military’s highest offices were still considering the potential ramifications.
But the Marine Corps were asking broader questions, too: Do they send more senior, experienced personnel so as not to put newer, less experienced troops at risk of potentially making a judgment call on whether to use force against a civilian?
What’s lawful under a domestic deployment — where troops may end up in a policing role — is governed by the Fourth Amendment in the US Constitution, which forbids seizure of persons, including temporarily restraining them, unless it could be considered reasonable under the circumstances.
Troops under federal authorities are in general prohibited from conducting law enforcement on US soil under the Posse Comitatus Act.


US deploys Marines to Los Angeles as police break up fourth day of protests

Updated 12 min 23 sec ago
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US deploys Marines to Los Angeles as police break up fourth day of protests

  • Military forces previously deployed domestically for major disasters
  • California files lawsuit to block National Guard deployment *

LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON: The US military will temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to Los Angeles until more National Guard troops can arrive, marking another escalation in President Donald Trump’s response to street protests over his aggressive immigration policies.
Tensions have been rising since Trump activated the National Guard on Saturday after street protests erupted in response to immigration raids in Southern California. It is the biggest flashpoint yet in the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to deport migrants living in the country illegally.
The announcement that marines would be deployed was made on the fourth straight day of protests. Late on Monday police began to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who gathered outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles where immigrants have been held.

National Guard forces had formed a human barricade to keep people out of the building. Then a phalanx of Los Angeles police moved up the street, starting to push people from the scene and firing “less lethal” munitions such as gas canisters. Police had used similar tactics since Friday.
The LAPD said late on Monday afternoon that some protesters had started throwing objects at officers and the use of less lethal munitions had been authorized, adding in an X post: “Less lethal munitions may cause pain and discomfort.”
California sued the Trump administration to block deployment of the National Guard and the Marines on Monday, arguing that it violates federal law and state sovereignty.

US Marines have been deployed domestically for major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the September 11, 2001, attacks, but it is extremely rare for US military troops to be used for domestic policing.
For now, the Trump administration was not invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow troops to directly participate in civilian law enforcement, according to a US official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon confirmed on Monday that a contingent of 2,000 National Guard troops would be doubled to 4,000. Trump said on Monday he felt he had no choice but to increase the level of force to prevent violence from spiraling out of control.
Trump also said he supported a suggestion by his border czar Tom Homan that California Governor Gavin Newsom should be arrested over possible obstruction of his administration’s immigration enforcement measures. “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great,” Trump told reporters.

Democrats said Trump’s decision to deploy military force to handle the protests amounts to an abuse of presidential power, and California’s lawsuit claimed it was illegal.
“The level of escalation is completely unwarranted, uncalled for, and unprecedented,” Newsom’s press office said on X.
Four days of protests
The protests so far have resulted in a few dozen arrests and some property damage, including some self-driving Waymo vehicles that were set ablaze on Sunday evening. The Los Angeles Police Department said five officers sustained minor injuries on Saturday and Sunday, as did five police horses used in crowd control.
Before the police intervention on Monday, several hundred protesters chanted “free them all” outside the Los Angeles federal detention facility where immigrants have been held.
“What is happening effects every American, everyone who wants to live free, regardless of how long their family has lived here,” said Marzita Cerrato, 42, a first-generation immigrant whose parents are from Mexico and Honduras.
Some in the crowd punched and tossed eggs at a Trump supporter at the event, while others fired paintballs from a car at the federal building.

Protests also sprang up in at least nine other US cities on Monday, including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, according to local news outlets.
The Trump administration has argued that Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration allowed far too many immigrants to enter the country and that Democratic-run cities such as Los Angeles are improperly interfering with efforts to deport them. Trump has pledged to deport record numbers of people who are in the country illegally and to lock down the US-Mexico border, setting a goal of at least 3,000 daily arrests.
Trump can deploy Marines under certain conditions of law or under his authority as commander in chief.
The last time the military was used for direct police action under the Insurrection Act was in 1992, when the California governor at the time asked President George H.W. Bush to help respond to Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King.
More than 50 people were killed in the 1992 riots, which also caused some $1 billion in damage over six days.
Federal law allows the president to deploy the National Guard if the nation is invaded, if there is “rebellion or danger of rebellion,” or the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”


RFK Jr. ousts entire US vaccine panel over alleged conflicts

Updated 10 June 2025
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RFK Jr. ousts entire US vaccine panel over alleged conflicts

  • Kennedy, known for promoting vaccine misinformation, claims the committee had been compromised by financial ties to pharmaceutical companies
  • Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor, fears Kennedy would pack the panel with "people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion"

WASHINGTON: US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday announced he was dismissing all current members of a key federal vaccine advisory panel, accusing them of conflicts of interest — his latest salvo against the nation’s immunization policies.
The removal of all 17 experts of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was revealed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed and an official press release.
Kennedy, who has spent two decades promoting vaccine misinformation, cast the move as essential to restoring public trust, claiming the committee had been compromised by financial ties to pharmaceutical companies.
“Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” he said in a statement from the Department of Health and Human Services.
“The public must know that unbiased science — evaluated through a transparent process and insulated from conflicts of interest — guides the recommendations of our health agencies.”
In his op-ed, Kennedy claimed the panel was “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and had become “little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”
He added that new members were being considered to replace those ousted — all of whom were appointed under former president Joe Biden.
ACIP members are chosen for their recognized expertise and are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest.
“RFK Jr. and the Trump administration are taking a wrecking ball to the programs that keep Americans safe and healthy,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in response.
“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor who expressed concern about Kennedy’s track record during his Senate nomination but ultimately voted in his favor, wrote on X.
“I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

“Fixing a problem that doesn’t exist”
The decision drew sharp criticism from Paul Offit, a pediatrician and leading expert on virology and immunology who served on the panel from 1998 to 2003.
“He believes that anybody who speaks well of vaccines, or recommends vaccines, must be deeply in the pocket of industry,” Offit told AFP. “He’s fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.”
“We are witnessing an escalating effort by the Administration to silence independent medical expertise and stoke distrust in lifesaving vaccines,” added Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement.
Once a celebrated environmental lawyer, Kennedy pivoted from the mid-2000s to public health — chairing a nonprofit that discouraged routine childhood immunizations and amplified false claims, including the long-debunked theory that the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism.
Since taking office, he has curtailed access to Covid-19 shots and continued to raise fears around the MMR vaccine — even as the United States faces its worst measles outbreak in years, with three reported deaths and more than 1,100 confirmed cases.
Experts warn the true case count is likely far higher.
“How can this country have confidence that the people RFK Jr. wants on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices are people we can trust?” Offit asked.
He recalled that during US President Donald Trump’s first term, several states formed independent vaccine advisory panels after the administration pressured federal health agencies to prematurely approve Covid-19 vaccines ahead of the 2020 election.
That kind of fragmentation, Offit warned, could happen again.
ACIP is scheduled to hold its next meeting at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta from June 25 to June 27.
Vaccines for anthrax, Covid-19, human papillomavirus, influenza, Lyme disease, respiratory syncytial virus, and more are on the agenda.
 


Russia has plans to test NATO’s resolve, German intelligence chief warns

Updated 10 June 2025
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Russia has plans to test NATO’s resolve, German intelligence chief warns

  • Germany has pledged to step up its support further under the new government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, promising to help Ukraine develop new missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory

BERLIN: Russia is determined to test the resolve of the NATO alliance, including by extending its confrontation with the West beyond the borders of Ukraine, the Germany’s foreign intelligence chief told the Table Media news organization.
Bruno Kahl, head of the Federal Intelligence Service, said his agency had clear intelligence indications that Russian officials believed the collective defense obligations enshrined in the NATO treaty no longer had practical force.
“We are quite certain, and we have intelligence showing it, that Ukraine is only a step on the journey westward,” Kahl told Table Media in a podcast interview.
“That doesn’t mean we expect tank armies to roll westwards,” he added. “But we see that NATO’s collective defense promise is to be tested.”
Germany, already the second-largest provider of armaments and financial support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, has pledged to step up its support further under the new government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, promising to help Ukraine develop new missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory.
Without detailing the nature of his intelligence sources, Kahl said Russian officials were envisaging confrontations that fell short of a full military engagement that would test whether the US would really live up to its mutual aid obligations under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
“They don’t need to dispatch armies of tanks for that,” he said. “It’s enough to send little green men to Estonia to protect supposedly oppressed Russian minorities.”
Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea involved occupation of buildings and offices by Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms and civilian clothes, who came to be known as the “little green men” when Moscow initially denied their identity.
Kahl did not specify which officials in Moscow were thinking along these lines.
Merz, who visited Donald Trump in Washington last week, pushed back against the US president’s assertion that Ukraine and Russia were like two infants fighting, telling Trump that where Ukraine targeted Moscow’s military, Russia bombed Ukraine’s cities.
Kahl said his contacts with US counterparts had left him convinced they took the Russian threat seriously.
“They take it as seriously as us, thank God,” he said.


US State Dept resumes processing Harvard student visas after judge’s ruling

Updated 10 June 2025
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US State Dept resumes processing Harvard student visas after judge’s ruling

  • Under that order granted to Harvard late on Thursday, US District Judge Allison Burroughs blocked Trump’s proclamation from taking effect pending further litigation of the matter

WASHINGTON: The US State Department directed all US missions abroad and consular sections to resume processing Harvard University student and exchange visitor visas after a federal judge in Boston last week temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s ban on foreign students at the Ivy-League institution.
In a diplomatic cable sent on June 6 and signed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department cited parts of the judge’s decision, saying the fresh directive was “in accordance with” the temporary restraining order.
Under that order granted to Harvard late on Thursday, US District Judge Allison Burroughs blocked Trump’s proclamation from taking effect pending further litigation of the matter.
Trump had cited national security concerns as justification for barring international students from entering the United States to pursue studies at Harvard.
The Trump administration has launched a multi-pronged attack on the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges.
Harvard argues the administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the cable, the State Department added that all other guidance regarding student visas remained in effect, including enhanced social media vetting and the requirement to review the applicants’ online presence.