George B. Griffin was the political officer in the US Consulate in Calcutta in 1971. On 30 April 2002 he was interviewed by Stuart Charles Kennedy and in the course of this he recalled those difficult days when he was to act as messenger and reporter and try to resolve tensions between the US embassies in New Delhi and Islamabad. The interview has been released by the US Department of state ('Teaching of Diplomats') recently. Given below is an excerpt from that interview in which he speaks about his interaction with me, and specially regarding the evening when he came to my house for dinner.
GRIFFIN: From our perspective, the Department, Embassy New Delhi, and Embassy Islamabad were squabbling about what our stance should be. In particular, Ambassadors Farland (in Islamabad) and ex-senator Kenneth Keating (in New Delhi) seemed to us to be snarling at each other. We kept adding free advice to our reports that we should all cooperate, as we're on the same team ... One evening my wife and I were invited to supper a trois by the deputy commandant of Eastern Command, a fascinating gentleman named Major General J.F.R. Jacob. After the war he was promoted, and became the highest ranking Jew ever in the indian Army, something he is rightly proud of ... Jackie and I got to be pretty thick after a couple of false starts. At supper that night he showed us some of his prized Chinese artifacts, and we talked a lot about art. Finally, he said, 'Don't you have to go to the bathroom? Go through the bedroom.' It took me a few moments to understand, but once in his bedroom I found a huge map of the region on his wall!
Q: A large map, yes.
GRIFFIN: ... on which all of the Indian military formations were carefully plotted; all of them. I didn't have a camera, but I had a pretty good memory. I studied the map for as long as I dared, then raced to the Consulate and filed the news that there were troops where we didn't know there were troops, and many more than we had thought. Jacob was a disciple of the storied German General Heinz Guderian, who revolutionized armored warfare in World War II, and what the Indians did was rather remarkable. They took over East Pakistan almost without firing a shot. They did it by transporting an entire division across the Brahmaputra River by tank. Tanks that could swim. soviet tanks. They did it covertly. Nobody tracked them. I guess we didn't have good real-time satellite imagery in those days, and didn't pick it up until I saw his map. It showed a whole division east of the Brahmaputra River that we didn't know about. They just rolled into Dacca one day, and that was it. The Pakistanis surrendered or fled in various ways. The Indians let some of them go without shooting them, but most were sent back to the West Wing, as it had been called before, by ship and plane.
Let me give my side of the incident now. Griffin was an affable and friendly person. I got close to him though I knew he would have to act on behalf of his bosses in the state Department. He knew the Calcutta police were keeping tabs on him but he remained friendly terms with many people in the Indian establishment. I wa, however aware that George Griffin would have pass on information to his bosses and they to their friends in Pakistan.
Things were moving rapidly in November 1971 and war with Pakistan seemed imminent. I invited Griffin and his wife for dinner at my residence. I wanted false information regarding our deployments to be sent to Pakistan. The dispositions on the map in my bedroom were accordingly altered. This I intended to be conveyed to Pakistan; the scenario was accordingly set up. Griffin accepted my dinner invitation. Griffin was most reluctant to go the bathroom. I encouraged him to go there through my bedroom where a suitably-marked map was placed there for him to see. The deception worked. He took it in hook, line and sinker. There was no division with tanks east of the Brahmaputra river. The other dispositions were also suitably entered. These were presumably conveyed by Griffin to his American bosses, and by them to their friends the Pakistanis. There were no tanks across the Brahmaputra to swim across the Brahmaputra nor were any of our tanks capable of doing so. I used Griffin, not he me. Intelligence as you well know is a many-faceted and not very pleasant business. I found Griffin to be a friendly, likable, and a cooperative. The Government of India later refused to accept his credentials in Delhi on the grounds that he was a CIA individual agent, which he was not; he was from state department. I tried to explain this to the MEA with no success [the CIA operative in Calcutta was a person called Turco].