The Unbreakable Thread: How Covert Intelligence Bonds Weathered the Storms of India-US Diplomatic Winter 

Despite public diplomatic rancor, most notably during the 1971 Bangladesh crisis when President Nixon harbored severe animosity toward India and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the intelligence relationship between the U.S. CIA and India’s R&AW remained robust. This covert partnership, built on pragmatic shared interests like countering Chinese influence and a mutual need for strategic intelligence, thrived on secrecy, deniability, and the professional trust between spymasters.

This resilient backchannel of cooperation provided a critical, enduring foundation of trust that survived periods of overt political estrangement and ultimately became a cornerstone of the modern, overt strategic partnership between the two nations.

The Unbreakable Thread: How Covert Intelligence Bonds Weathered the Storms of India-US Diplomatic Winter 

The relationship between India and the United States has often been described as a dance of democracies—two vast, pluralistic nations destined for partnership but frequently out of step. History is littered with moments of profound estrangement: the 1971 Treaty of Friendship with the USSR, the nuclear tests of 1998, and the constant friction over Pakistan. Public pronouncements from capitals in Washington and New Delhi have often ranged from cool indifference to open hostility. Yet, beneath the turbulent surface of official diplomacy, a deeper, more resilient undercurrent has always flowed: the clandestine partnership between their intelligence services.

This is the story of how, even at the darkest hour, the silent men and women of the CIA and India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) kept a critical line of communication open, preserving a foundation upon which the modern strategic partnership could eventually be built. 

The Dragon’s Breath: Nixon’s Rage and the 1971 Crisis 

The scene in the Oval Office was one of unvarnished fury. British Prime Minister Edward Heath listened as U.S. President Richard Nixon, his anger “hot like a dragon’s breath,” unleashed a tirade against India and its Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. The immediate provocation was India’s support for the liberation of Bangladesh, which Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, viewed as a Soviet-backed move to humiliate their ally, Pakistan. 

Nixon’s words, now declassified, are staggering in their vitriol. India had given the U.S. “nothing except a kick in the teeth.” He dismissed Indians as “a slippery, treacherous people,” and reserved particularly misogynistic venom for PM Gandhi, labeling her a “b*tch” and an “old witch.” His worldview saw the crisis through a Cold War prism, where India’s actions were not those of a sovereign nation but a proxy for Moscow, intended to weaken Washington’s standing. 

The only voice of reason in the room came from British Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home. While conceding that the Indians were “intolerably high-minded,” he pointed to the strategic imperative that Nixon’s rage was obscuring: the paramount need to prevent “Soviet and Chinese domination” of the Indian subcontinent. This fundamental insight—that a strong, independent India was a vital geopolitical interest, even when it was being difficult—was a truth that the intelligence communities of both countries understood instinctively, even if their political masters did not. 

The Silent Dialogue: CIA and R&AW’s Unlikely Partnership 

While Nixon fumed and Kissinger plotted the infamous “tilt” toward Pakistan, a very different conversation was happening in the shadows. As historian Paul McGarr’s research reveals, the relationship between the CIA and India’s external intelligence agency, the R&AW (founded just a few years prior in 1968), remained not just functional but robust. 

This was no small feat. R&AW was established in part to reduce India’s dependence on Western intelligence, and its first director, the legendary spymaster Rameshwar Nath Kao, was a confidant of Indira Gandhi herself. Yet, Kao and PN Dhar, the head of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, recognized a critical reality: shared adversaries create strange bedfellows. 

The common enemy was China. Following the brutal Sino-Indian War of 1962 and China’s subsequent nuclear test in 1964, understanding Beijing’s capabilities and intentions became India’s foremost security concern. For the U.S., deep in its own confrontation with China and wary of its alliance with the USSR, having a listening post on the Himalayas was invaluable. This mutual need facilitated an unprecedented exchange. The CIA provided R&AW with critical technical intelligence and satellite imagery related to Chinese troop movements and nuclear developments—assets India desperately lacked. In return, India offered priceless human intelligence and on-the-ground analysis from a region that was often opaque to American operatives. 

This cooperation was so vital that in 1973, amidst the lingering diplomatic chill, Kao and Dhar successfully lobbied for CIA Director William Colby to make a quiet visit to New Delhi. This was a monumental event: the head of American intelligence meeting with the architects of India’s Pakistan policy just two years after the two countries had been on the brink of conflict. It signaled a profound trust at the operational level that completely belied the public discord. 

Why the Backchannel Thrived When Diplomacy Failed 

The resilience of this intelligence bridge can be attributed to several key factors that distinguish spycraft from statecraft: 

• Pragmatism Over Ideology: Intelligence agencies are, by nature, pragmatic. Their currency is threat assessment and national security, not diplomatic posturing or moral grandstanding. While politicians argued over non-alignment and spheres of influence, spies focused on the concrete: tracking Chinese missile deployments, monitoring Pakistani nuclear ambitions, and countering Soviet influence. Their mandate was survival, not sermonizing. 

• Secrecy and Deniability: Covert relationships can flourish precisely because they are secret. They are insulated from the outrage of the public, the pressure of the media, and the grandstanding of legislators. This allows for frank, unvarnished exchanges that would be impossible in formal diplomatic cables. A shared piece of intelligence doesn’t require a joint press conference. 

• The Personal Trust of Spymasters: The relationship was built on the professional respect between individuals like R.N. Kao and his CIA counterparts. These were men who understood the weight of their responsibilities and valued competence above all else. This personal trust created a layer of insulation, allowing cooperation to continue even when the political roof was falling in. 

From Covert Understanding to Overt Partnership 

The patterns established in those dark days of the 1970s have proven to be the blueprint for the modern India-US relationship. The intelligence cooperation that persisted through the Cold War provided the bedrock of trust necessary to navigate later crises. 

• The 1998 Nuclear Tests: When India shocked the world by conducting nuclear tests, triggering sweeping US sanctions, the intelligence dialogue did not cease. Behind the scenes, channels remained open to manage the fallout and prevent dangerous miscalculations, eventually paving the way for the groundbreaking Civil Nuclear Agreement. 

• The 2008 Mumbai Attacks: The response to 26/11 was a testament to how far the relationship had come. Unlike in the past, intelligence sharing was immediate, deep, and operational. US agencies provided crucial data that helped India piece together the plot and its origins in Pakistan, marking a transition from a hesitant partnership to a counterterrorism alliance. 

• The Contemporary China Challenge: Today, as both nations view an assertive China as their primary strategic challenge, intelligence sharing has become more integrated than ever. From maritime domain awareness in the Indian Ocean to monitoring tensions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the silent cooperation born in the 1970s has now matured into a key pillar of the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) and other multilateral frameworks. 

The Enduring Lesson: A Relationship Built on Substance 

The infamous recording of Nixon’s rage is a stark reminder of how fragile diplomatic relationships can be, subject to the whims and prejudices of individuals in power. Yet, the simultaneous, secret diplomacy of intelligence agencies reveals a more enduring truth: when national interests are truly aligned, they will find a way to express themselves, even if they must do so in the shadows. 

The India-US story is not just one of changing political winds. It is a story of a slow, steady, and silent accumulation of trust between their security establishments—a trust forged in the fires of mutual necessity during a diplomatic winter. It proves that the strongest partnerships are not those announced at flashy summits, but those built brick by brick in the backrooms of intelligence agencies, where pragmatism, shared threats, and professional respect forever bind nations together, long before their politicians catch up. This unbreakable thread of intelligence, tested in the darkest times, is what ultimately ensured the relationship could not just survive, but eventually thrive