Nanda Devi Plutonium Mission

The Nanda Devi Plutonium Mission was a joint operation by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB) to spy on the nuclear developments being conducted in the Xinjiang Province of China. The agencies cooperated in October 1965 to install a nuclear-powered remote sensing station on the peak of Nanda Devi in the Uttarakhand Garhwal Himalayas.^[1]

Nanda Devi Plutonium Mission
Type	Spy Mission
Location	Nanda Devi
Planned	1965
Planned by	Central Intelligence Agency and Intelligence Bureau
Date	October 1965
Executed by	Central Intelligence Agency
Outcome	Mission failed Plutonium Generator lost

The mission failed after the plutonium powered Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator was lost in the mountains because of a strong snowstorm.^[2]

The mission

In 1965, the Pentagon and the CIA were worried about the Chinese Nuclear Developments. The Vietnam War was ramping up and the United States had no intelligence data to counter any Chinese threat. The Chinese were conducting nuclear tests in secretive facilities.^[3]

Two years prior, a top US air force officer led a successful expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. He suggested that the Pentagon should recruit the hardy Sherpas to install a remote sensing station on the summit. But this idea ran into some problem as Mount Everest also bordered China. After consultations with the Indian authorities, the Pentagon arrived at a plan to install a remote sensing station on the summit of Nanda Devi within Indian territory at an altitude of 25,645 feet (7,817 m).^[4]

The members of the CIA / Indian Intelligence Bureau mission were tasked with installing an 8–10 feet high antenna, two transceiver sets, and the plutonium-powered Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator and its seven plutonium capsules.^[5]

Team members

Manmohan Singh Kohli was the team leader. Kohli recruited the Indian mountaineers for the mission, they included three who had summited Everest during the successful 1965 Indian Everest Expedition which he had led just a few months earlier, they were Sonam Gyatso, Harish Rawat and Sonam Wangyal, (all officers in the ITBP), others from the same Everest expedition were Gurcharan Singh Bhangu (also an officer in the ITBP) and the Sherpa Phu Dorjee Sherpa. About fourteen other sherpas were recruited, including Pasang Dawa Lama, several were 'later absorbed in Indian para-military organisations'.^[6]

Barry Bishop recruited the American mountaineers who joined the team on Nanda Devi or Nanda Kot.^[7] several of them had been members of the 1963 American Mount Everest expedition along with Bishop: Lute Jerstad, Barry Prather, Barry Corbet and Dave Dingman, the other three were Tom Frost, Robert Schaller and Sandy Bill. Bishop himself wasn't part of the team on the mountain^[7][6] but he was one of the people who met the Indian team when they travelled to the US for training on Denali in summer 1965.^[8][9]

Initial timeline

In July 1965 Kohli and the team members from India flew to the US to undertake training and familiarisation on Denali.^[9] They returned to India in August and by mid-September 1965 they were at the base-camp on Nanda Devi with the American climbers Lute Jerstad, Tom Frost and Sandy Bill (Schaller had to pull out due to an injury).^[9][7] A series of camps were established and stocked in the face of changeable weather. The plan was for a team of Sherpas to deliver the cargo to the summit from the fourth camp, they would then return and a second team, with two Indian and two American climbers, would ascend to the summit and assemble the device.^[8] It was 300 metres from the fourth camp to the summit. When the mission reached camp IV, a blizzard hit, and on 16 October 1965 Kohli decided the team should turn back.^[9] The device was hooked in a crevice and anchored, the climbers headed back to the base. No more progress was possible that season.^[5][10]

Follow up on Nanda Devi

In the spring of May 1966, a follow-up Indian expedition was sent to Camp IV to recover the device and its plutonium capsules. The expedition failed to find any signs of the generator and its capsules.^[11] Later, an American team of mountaineers (Frost, Dingman and Schaller)^[7] joined those attempting to recover the device. One of the members of the team, Dingman,^[7] said that they had scanned the area of Nanda Devi with neutron detectors but no evidence of plutonium was found. The team concluded that the device and its capsules were carried downhill by a landslide.^[12]

Two ascents of Nanda Devi were made during the search operation. On 8th June Gurcharan Bhangu reached the summit with Sherpa Tashi and on 20 August Rob Schaller made a solo ascent of the peak.^[9][7]

Nanda Kot

In the light of the problems which had arisen when attempting to install the equipment on Nanda Devi, an alterntive plan was devised which involved placing a device on the nearby Nanda Kot.^[9] In 1967 the Americans Frost, Prather, Schaller, Corbet and Curry, working with an Indian team comprising Wangyal, Rawat and Bhangu, installed a nuclear-powered signal device about 500 feet from the summit, at c. 22,000 ft (6,700 m).^[9] The device worked for a few months and confirmed that the Chinese did not, at that time, possess a long-range nuclear bomb.^[1]

After the device on Nanda Kot failed a small team under Rawat was sent to Nanda Kot in the summer of 1968 to retrieve the sensor equipment. When they reached the site there was no sign of the equipment so they dug a few feet and discovered a semi-spherical cave with the hot generator at the centre. The heat from the generator had melted the snow up to eight feet in all directions.^[9]

Political exposure of the mission

In 1978 news of the mission started to leak out in America, in April of that year questions were asked in Congress.^[13] Less than a week later Indian parliamentarians raised the matter in the Indian Parliment forcing Prime Minister Morarji Desai to provide a formal account of the affair.^[14]

Desai appointed a scientific committee to "study and assess the problem with the help of all possible expert advice, to recommend such further actionas may be considered necessary to safeguard against future hazards to the environment and to the people".^[14] The six committee members were Dr Atma Ram, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Indian PM, Homi Sethna, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Prof MGK Menon, the Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister and Director General of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Dr Raja Ramanna, the director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), who also designed and installed several of India’s nuclear reactors, Dr V Ramalingaswami, the Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research and Dr AK Saha of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics.^[8] The Atma Ram committee reported in 1978 and their principle recommendations were i) periodic monitoring of the environment near Nanda Devi to detect any radioactive radiation in the air, water and soil, ii) the development of new techniques for locating the device.

Claims and beliefs

Broughton Coburn, author of the book The Vast Unknown: America's First Ascent of Everest, claims that the Indian intelligence had secretly hiked up there before that spring mission and retrieved the device, presumably in order to study it and possibly gather the plutonium.^[15]

The local inhabitants of the region claim that due to the presence of the nuclear capsule there has been an increased number of floods and ice calving.^[16][17]