CIA Declassifies War Documents

The generation that witnessed the Sino-Indian conflict is no more at the center stage of the Indian politics, not to speak of the present generation. But as several new incidents make the old memories fresh, this time it is the turn of the War of 1962 between the two mighty powers of Asia. Thanks to the initiative of the declassified CIA documents released this week the new revelations are in a position to inject distrust between the two nations and their initiative to solve the controversial border issue.

It has been confirmed that three sets of documents on the Sino-Indian conflict has been declassified by the CIA hitherto as an inseparable part of their innovative transparency efforts, christened as "family jewels." According to the sources, there is a set of documents called the Caesar-Polo-Esau papers that contain specimens of the meticulous research on the several communist regimes of the erstwhile Soviet Union and China, along with the American point of view and assessment of those policies. It has also been learnt that there are three chapters dealing minutely with the India-China border confrontations, containing the assessment of the CIA analysts that Beijing and its premier Zhou and his compatriots from before the commencement of the war went on fooling both Nehru and the rest of India through procrastination and dissembling. There happens to be a special mention of the constant bid of Zhou terming the border clash as a mere trivial one to gain an upper hand in the ensuing war. Last but not the least, there is also a full-fledged account of the personal trait of the Indian Prime Minister. To the assessment, Nehru was a naïve and romantic statesman who could be fooled by his Chinese counterpart.

Speaking to this correspondent an eminent CIA analyst says, "The Chinese diplomatic effort was a five year masterpiece of guile, executed -- and probably planned in large part by Chou en Lai. Chou played on Nehru's Asian, anti-imperialist mental attitude, his proclivity to temporize, and his sincere desire for an amicable Sino-Indian relationship."