CIA, FREE CEYLON & SWRD

CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] of U.S. A. part 1

AN ACCIDENTAL SPY
by Phillip Knightley

                           Who assassinated President  John F. Kennedy?

Twenty years later I was in Washington working on a documentary film about the exploits of the notorious British traitor Kim Philby, the British Secret Intelligence Service officer who was, all along, an agent of the KGB. The film crew and I had traveled to Virginia to have lunch with Harry Rositzke, former head of the Soviet Bloc division of the CIA. Rositzke was sitting at the head of the table, and I was on his right. I became aware that down at the other end of the table, Mrs.Rositzke was talking about India with the production assistant.

I said casually to Rositzke, ‘Were you and Mrs. Rosizke in India at some stage?” He said, ‘1960 to 1964. I was at the embassy.’ I said, ‘Oh, What were you doing?” He looked at me, a bit puzzled, presumably because he thought I would have researched his carrier before coming to see him. ‘CIA station chief,’ he said. ‘We were very interested in India in those days. Delhi was friendly but in bed with Moscow, and that made India one of the few places in the world where we had any interface with the Soviets.’ I told him that I too had been in India in the early Sixties.

‘Yes?’ Rositzke said. “And what were you doing?’ I said, ‘I was with a little magazine in Bombay, a literary magazine called Imprint.’ Rositzke grinned. “I knew it well, ‘the said. ‘It was one of my little operations. Shake hands with your ex-boss.’ I must have turned pale, because he added with some concern, ‘Didn’t you know?’ And then he explained it all to me.

The CIA had become concerned about Soviet influence in India in the early 1960s. Not only was the government friendly with Moscow, but the bazaars of India were being flooded with cheap but beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated children’s books about Soviet folk heroes, published not only in English but in many of the regional languages. ‘A whole generation of Indian kids was growing up to believe that the only heroes in the world were Russian ones.’ Rositzke said, ‘We had to get in there with some American folk heroes.’ The obvious answer would have been to have published the books in America and then shipped them to India. But the CIA did not work like that. Since-as is usually the case with intelligence operations-money did not matter, the CIA decided to set up a whole publishing operation in India to produce the books. Once that was agreed, the idea just grew. Why not also publish a magazine with a subtle pro-American slant?

The spin-offs from having a genuine publishing house in Bombay clinched it- a legitimate bank account which could provide funds for covert activities; a safe house for visiting officers and agents; a listening post for all the snippets of political and social gossip that go to make up raw intelligence. I suppose that, as intelligence operations go, it was one of the more benign ones, but it was still something of a shock to learn that, however unwittingly, I had been employed by the CIA.

Now Igor’s attempt to recruit me made sense. He was not after an Australian itinerant journalist who was passing through Bombay; he was after an employee of the CIA front. He must have known. It could not have been coincidence that the KGB’s front operation in Bombay. Sovexport Film, was right next door to the CIA’s front operation in Bombay: Imprint

What a joke it all was. What a waste of time, money and talent. Or was it? Indian film-goers got to see some Russian masterpieces thanks to Sovexport Film. Thirty thousand Indian subscribers got to read a few good books that they could not otherwise have afforded thanks to Imprint. And I got to spend two years in Bombay, one of the great cities of the world.

Above is a gleaning from the article titled Imprint” written by Phillip Knightly to the Spring 1997 issue of the literary periodical GRANTA. Granta 57: India, the Golden Jubilee.

Phillip Knightley’s work for the London Sunday Times, for which he was twice named Journalist of the Year In the British press Awards, included investigations of Kim Philby, Robert Maxwell and the Thalidomide affair. His books include The First Casualty, on war correspondents, and The Second Oldest Profession, about intelligence agencies. ‘The Accidental Spy’ is an extract from his autobiography, a hack’s Progress.

Footnotes by My Sri Lanka Holidays bunpeiris

Who assassinated the supreme leader of Free Ceylon, the nationalist Prime Minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike?

ABOVE IMAGE: Indian President Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan paid a courtesy visit to Sri Palee College. He is seen with the distinguished visitors participating in the special Upasana (Assembly) to mark his visit. From left to right Sagara Palansuriya, poet and MP for Horana, Minister A.P. Jayasuriya, Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, Wilmot A. Perera (Founder) and Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, President of India. (He visited Sri Palee)

While I was studying in grade 7, I collected a whole heap of American books for the kids on History, geography, science and astronomy from a pavement vender at Bambalapitiya, Colombo. That was while going to Meteorological Department at Buller’s Road, where my father worked. All the lovely colorful books were stamped with “Asia Foundation”. When I asked my father what was Asia Foundation, he simply said it was a front organization for CIA. He knew I had already begun to read the past issues of Readers Digest, hundreds of them that belonged to him: during those long cold war years, the issues of Readers Digest carried espionage stories, of course, in a western perspective, of KGB spymasters in USA and Europe. However, since My father had already told me who was the real assassin and who gave the timing for the assassination of the supreme leader of Free Ceylon, the nationalist Prime Minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike, in spite of the pro-western stance of the narrations, it wasn’t much difficult for me stay straight. There was no doubt, that not all of the Indian subscribers would get swayed by the pro-western breeze of the “Imprint”.

1956 Silver bell of Asia, Oxford educated S.W.R.D Bandaranaike, stormed into office of Prime Minister promising administration in Sinhala. Sinhalese had been disappointed that in spite of the independence, in spite of being relieved from the suffering under the jack boot of colonialist masters, still being administrated in English language by the English educated Ceylonese elite. Leonard Wolfe, a British civil servant of Ceylon (husband of Virgina Wolf) vividly depicted the suffering of natives under English language administration in his famous book "A village in the Jungle" True to his promises, Sinhala, language of 72% of population was made the official language of Ceylon, by Bandaranaike.