In 1965, the CIA and the Indian Intelligence Bureau attempted to place a nuclear-powered surveillance device atop Nanda Devi`to spy on China's nuclear capabilities.
But the device was lost, and despite repeated search attempts and investigations, remains missing 60 years later.
The CIA covered up the mishap and directed the IB to keep it hidden from the Indian government. The truth only came out years later.
In 1965, the CIA launched a covert mission in the Indian Himalayas. With help from the Indian Intelligence Bureau, the agency sent a team of mountaineers to scale Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak. The team was to install a nuclear-powered surveillance device on the summit of the mountain, in order to spy on China’s nuclear capabilities.
But chaos ensued. 300 meters from the top, a blizzard struck, forcing the team to halt operations. They stashed the device in a crevice and headed back to base camp. The next year, when the team returned to complete their mission, they discovered that the device had vanished.
Despite tracking attempts and recovery missions, the device remains lost. The CIA could not admit to its failure – the mission was high-stakes and top secret, and the mistake costly. They covered it up, keeping it a secret from the public and the Indian government too. The truth only came out years later.
But a burning question remains: where is the device and what threat does it pose?
In 1964, the Cold War was at its peak, and the Vietnam War was beginning to escalate. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, a ‘Red Scare’ was creeping across the USA. So, when The People’s Republic of China conducted its first nuclear test in October 1964, the US government was naturally worried.
Having been preoccupied with the USSR and Vietnam, US intelligence on China was limited. Avenues for surveillance at the time were limited too. Satellites were not advanced enough, and the few the US did have at the time were all positioned over the USSR. Ground based sensors were ineffective too – China’s test was conducted at a secretive facility in the Xinjiang Province, located on the Tibetan plateau beyond the Himalayas. This left the US with few options.
The plan for the Nanda Devi expedition was conceived, allegedly, at a cocktail party in Washington DC. Barry Bishop, a member of the 1963 American Mount Everest expedition, was talking to US Air Force Chief-of-Staff, Curtis LeMay, when he mentioned that the Himalayan mountains provided a clear view of Chinese-occupied Tibet. At the time, the US Air Force was in charge of keeping tabs on the nuclear capabilities of US rivals. LeMay was intrigued.
It was decided that a team would trek to the summit of Nanda Devi, 7,187m high, and plant a Remote Sensing Data Collection Unit there – a first team would deposit the materials, and a second would return to assemble them. The device would be powered by a 57kg nuclear generator, which would require 4kg of plutonium as fuel – 1kg less than was used to bomb Nagasaki. Signals would be transmitted back to a camp, where a telemetry expert would decode them. The signals would, in theory, convey enough information about China’s nuclear facilities for the CIA to estimate their capabilities. The mission was codenamed Operation HAT.
LeMay convinced the CIA to take on the mission, which contacted its Indian counterpart – the Intelligence Bureau (IB) – for assistance. At the time, in 1965, the two agencies shared a close relationship. Relations had developed ever since India’s defeat in the Sino-Indian War, following which Nehru had turned to the American agency to improve its security and intelligence capabilities. The defeat also put the nation’s defence agencies on guard against its neighbour, making them all the more eager to take up the mission.
The CIA mustered up a team of atomic experts and American mountaineers, many of whom had taken part in the American Mount Everest mission. Bishop, meanwhile, flew out to India to enlist an Indian team to assist them.
That same year, India had undertaken its first successful mission to the summit of Mount Everest. Leading them was Manmohan Singh Kohli, a Navy Captain assigned to the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). Bishop approached Kohli, asking him to lead the mission. Though reluctant at first, Kohli accepted the call. He later said about the mission, “Look, we weren’t spies, but adventure men. For us, it was a mountaineering expedition with a special purpose.” Kohli mustered a group of Indian mountaineers, many of whom had taken part in the Everest expedition with him. None of them knew the true details of the operation.
A final team was prepared: two teams of mountaineers, two sets of intelligence officers, a group of atomic and mechanical experts, a line of sherpas, and an army of porters. In the end, the mission turned out to be the largest joint intelligence operation ever undertaken – and though it was not known at the time, it would also be the longest.
In July 1965, the Indian mountaineering team was flown out to the US for training and debriefing. Here they met their American counterparts, and both teams were taken on a test session to Alaska. They were to climb Denali, the tallest peak in the US, standing at 6,190m, but never made it to the top. The mountaineers had to turn back halfway when bad weather struck – foreshadowing their later fate.
Kohli and the rest of the crew returned to India in August 1965, and by September the operation was set in motion. They were all flown to the Nanda Devi base camp – from there onwards, Kohli’s team, the sherpas, and the porters were on their own. The American climbers and intelligence officers stayed back at the camp. Bishop directed the mission from base.
The payload, along with the rest of the equipment, was strapped to the porters, who, unaware of the contents, clung to its warmth amid the freezing winds. The sherpas led the way, followed by the mountaineers, then the porters.
Kohli described the trek up years later in his book, Spies in the Himalayas: “For generations, expeditions have attempted to navigate up the Rishi Ganga. This meant overcoming expansive stretches of downward sloping rock slabs, followed by a narrow staircase of stones, naturally cut across a huge wall. The latter is aptly dubbed as ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by the locals. If you are successful in traversing this feature, you can see the heavenly grandeur of the sacred Nanda Devi. One misstep and you plummet thousands of feet into the gorge, reaching heaven via a more direct route.”
Four camps were setup along the chosen path and stocked with rations in case of bad weather. By October 1965, the crew had made it as far as the fourth camp, 300m shy of the summit, when the blizzard struck. Kohli decided to prioritise the safety of his men and ordered a retreat. Not wanting to ruin the progress they had made, the team stashed the payload – the generator and the fuel cells – in a crevice near the camp. They anchored it and headed back down.
The weather that season prevented them from returning to complete the mission. The expedition was postponed till next year. They set out once again in May 1966. When they returned to the fourth camp in early June, they saw that the mountain had transformed. The ledge was gone, swept away by landslides, snow slides, and shifting ice, and the device along with it.
An Indian climber and a sherpa summited Nanda Devi as part of the operation but found no trace of the missing equipment. Later that summer, in August 1966, an American mountaineer also made a solo ascent of Nanda Devi, but to no avail. Search teams combed the slopes using Geiger counters and visual scans to locate the generator. They concluded the device had likely been swept away by a landslide or avalanche.
In 1967, after repeated failed recovery attempts, the CIA and the IB launched a second joint expedition. This time, they shifted focus to the nearby peak of Nanda Kot, standing at 6,861m tall.
The team, which included many of the same climbers from the original mission, successfully installed a similar surveillance device about 150m below the summit. For several months, it transmitted data confirming that China’s long range nuclear programme was still limited. The transmissions eventually stopped.
In 1968, an expedition was mounted to inspect the problem. When the mountaineers returned to the site, they discovered that the generator’s heat had melted the surrounding ice 8ft in each direction, creating a hollow cavity, trapping the signal. The search for the missing device was halted.
The original device on Nanda Devi was never located. Experts believe it was carried away by an avalanche or encased within a glacier that feeds the Rishi Ganga. As the glacier continues to recede under warming temperatures, there are concerns that radioactive material could one day resurface.
The isotopes of plutonium in the lost fuel cells have a half-life of around 500 years, posing a long-term risk to people living downstream of the mountain. Though it was encased in an anti-corrosive container, pressure from the glacier could lead to exposure at any time. A potential leak would contaminate everything downstream – anyone drinking the runoff or eating poisoned fish would face severe, even fatal, consequences.
The CIA, aware of the diplomatic implications, instructed the IB to keep the matter classified and avoid briefing the Indira Gandhi government. For over a decade, the failed mission remained one of the best kept secrets of the Cold War.
It was only in 1978, when an article detailing the incident was published in Outside magazine, that the truth came out. The US Congress raised questions on the operation, demanding an investigation and that details of the mission be made public. India’s Parliament soon took notice.
Prime Minister Morarji Desai confirmed the collaboration and appointed a scientific committee led by Dr. Atma Ram, Principal Scientific Advisor to the PM, to assess possible contamination risks. The committee consisted of experts and officials from top institutions like the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The panel recommended regular monitoring of air, soil and water near Nanda Devi, and the development of new detection techniques.
But nearly six decades after the CIA lost a nuclear generator in the Himalayas, the mystery remains unsolved. The issue has been brought up several times over the years, especially recently, as flash floods have become an annual phenomenon in Uttarakhand. Scientists say it is likely buried deep within the glacier. Yet as climate change accelerates Himalayan ice melt, the fear of what might one day emerge continues to linger - a Cold War legacy frozen beneath one of India’s holiest mountains. [Rh/DS]
