Smith, John D. I Was a CIA Agent in India. New Delhi: New Age Printing,
1967. Pamphlet No.5, 36 pages. (Compiled from three articles in the Moscow
weekly "Literaturnaya Gazeta" in 1967, and published by D.P. Sinha for the
Communist Party of India.)
John Discoe Smith joined the State Department as a communications code
clerk in 1950. This memoir details his involvement in CIA operations in
India from 1954-1959. In 1955 he married Mary London, whom he names as a
CIA employee based in New Delhi. This link lured Smith into a variety of
operations. He goes on to name numerous CIA officers and Indian agents, and
briefly describes their activities. One disturbing reference is the bombing
of the Air India plane carrying the Chinese delegation to the Bandung
Conference in 1955. Smith is asked by Jack Curran, his wife's boss, to
deliver a bag to a KMT agent in New Delhi, and is told later by his wife
that it contained the bomb which destroyed the plane. (This may have been
one of the CIA's plots to kill Zhou En-lai, who was scheduled to be on the
flight; see New York Times, 1967-11-22, p.23). In 1960 Smith resigned and
wandered around Europe. He later defected to the Soviet Union and emerged
with his story. Smith states that he sent a letter to Indian officials
detailing CIA activities, which may have helped lead to the expulsion of
CIA station chief Harry Rositzke. Despite the obvious propaganda jargon,
this booklet appears to be a reliable account of CIA activities in India
in the 1950s. -- Wendell Minnick
ISBN unavailable
Extract the names from this source
Back to search page