Soon after China detonated its first atom bomb in 1964, the CIA tried to plant a nuclear-powered surveillance device atop Nanda Devi to spy on the communist nation. Though the secret mission failed and the device was lost there, it created ripples in the Indian establishment 12 years later. The espionage mission remained top secret till April 1978 when a news report published in a US magazine Outside claimed that the US intelligence agency had sent a team to set up a remote sensing device atop the 25,645-foot mountain in the Himalayas in 1965.
But bad weather halted them 2,000-feet short of the summit and forced them to abandon the 125-pound device containing plutonium 238 that can remain radioactive for about 500 years. When the team returned to the site a year later, the device could not be located.
After a short-term “feckless effort”, the US government gave up its search for the device. Instead, the CIA covertly placed a second snap generator on another mountain, Nanda Kot, in 1967. After serving the agency’s purposes, it was also abandoned a year later, the report had claimed. The revelations sparked a huge uproar in the country and even forced then foreign minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to say the episode might damage the “recently improving” ties between the two countries, according to recently declassified external affairs ministry documents.
The documents, available with National Archives, show how the Indian embassies abroad, especially in the US, had become active and kept on sending notes explaining how the issue was being played up by the media there.
At the time of this disclosure, foreign ministry officials here were apparently unaware of the fact that the Nanda Devi mission was actually a joint collaboration between India and the US, according to the declassified documents.