A few days before the departure of Mr S.M.Krishna, our Minister For External Affairs, to Islamabad for his July 15 meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Mr Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Mr G.K.Pillai, our Home Secretary, told the Indian Express, New Delhi, about the admission made by Headley regarding the involvement of the ISI "from the beginning till the end." His disclosure to the media reportedly vitiated the atmosphere during and after the meeting of the two Foreign Ministers and created avoidable embarrassment for Mr Krishna, who has expressed his disapproval of the action of Mr Pillai in two interviews to Indian media on July 21. His objection seems to be to Mr Pillai's prematurely disclosing it to the media before the Foreign Ministers' meeting, instead of waiting till the meeting was over.
Mr Pillai's action raises two issues. Firstly, the professional wisdom of his action in disclosing to the media sensitive details of the interrogation of a conspirator when the facts relating to the ISI involvement are still under investigation. Secondly, the procedural appropriateness of his action in disclosing Headley's admission to the media without examining the diplomatic implications of his action in consultation with the Foreign Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary.
Interrogations of sensitive suspects give rise to the question whether what they have stated should be disclosed to the media before follow-up enquiries into their disclosure have been completed. In August 1994, the MHA told the media details of the ISI involvement in the Mumbai blasts of March 1993 as disclosed to Indian interrogators by some members of the Memon family of Mumbai, who had allegedly played an active role in helping Dawood Ibrahim in carrying out the blasts. When Narasimha Rao, the then Prime Minister, read about it in the media, he was very unhappy. At an inter-departmental meeting at which I was present, Rao told S.B.Chavan, the then Home Minister: "Dawood Ibrahim and the ISI must be frantically trying to find out what the Memon family members are telling their interrogators. We have made their job easy and helped them by disclosing these details of the interrogation to the media."
By disclosing details of Headley's interrogation by the NIA, have we similarly unwittingly helped the ISI and the LET to cover up their tracks? This is a very important question, which does not appear to have been addressed.
The Home Secretary's disclosure also has diplomatic implications. Firstly, the US would be unhappy that the details have been disclosed to the media at a time when their court is still to pronounce judgement on the plea bargain. Secondly, since there was a danger of its vitiating the atmosphere during the Foreign Ministers' meeting, if the Home Secretary strongly felt that the media should be informed even before the meeting, he should have referred the matter to the collective wisdom of the Secretaries' Committee instead of acting on his own. If the Secretaries' Committee agreed that the media sould be informed, the follow-up action should have been taken by the Foreign Secretary.
Previously, national security problems used to arise due to lack of coordination at the level of intelligence and physical security agencies. In the Government of Dr Manmohan Singh, such problems are arising due to lack of co-ordination at much higher levels such as those of the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary. This dos not bode well for our national security management.
This episode does not speak well of the sense of propriety and professional leadership of Mr Krishna. At the joint press conference at Islamabad, Mr Krishna failed to rebuke the Pakistani Foreign Minister when he compared the Home Secretary's disclosure to the media to the instigatory statements of the Amir of the LET. Mr Krishna is now trying to cover up his confused and over-awed silence on grounds of good manners. This is ridiculous.
His publicly blaming the Home Secretary in two media interviews is totally in violation of the rules of ministerial etiquette under which a Minister should not pull up his senior officers in public. Any rebuke must be administered in private and not in public. Mr Krishna's unwise action mightl affect the stature of the Home Secretary in the eyes of his own staff. The correct thing for Mr Krishna would have been to convey his unhappiness to Mr Chidambaram and let him decide how to deal with the matter. Moreover, by publicly expressing his disapproval of the action of the Home Secretary, Mr Krishna has enabled his Pakistani counterpart to justify his raising the issue of the Home Secretary's disclosure to the media in the obnoxious manner he did.