Spies In The Himalayas Secret Missions And Perilous Climbs Ms Kohli by M.s. Kohli, Kenneth J. Conboy 9780700612239, 0700612238 instant download after payment.

In the towering mountains of northern India, a chilling chapter was
written in the history of international espionage. After the Chinese
detonated their first nuclear test in 1964, America and India, which had
just fought a border war with its northern neighbour, were both
concerned. The CIA knew it needed more information on China's growing
nuclear capability but had few ways of peeking behind the ""Bamboo
Curtain"". Because of the extreme remoteness of Chinese testing grounds,
conventional surveillance in this pre-satellite era was next to
impossible. The solution to this intelligence dilemma was a joint
American-Indian effort to plant a nuclear-powered sensing device on a
high Himalayan peak in order to listen into China and monitor its
missile launches. It was not a job that could be carried out by career
spies, requiring instead the special skills possessed only by
accomplished mountaineers. For this mission, cloaks and daggers were to
be replaced by crampons and ice axes. This text chronicles the details
of these death-defying expeditions sanctioned by US and Indian
intelligence, telling the story of clandestine climbs and hair-raising
exploits. Led by Indian mountaineer Mohan S. Kohli, conqueror of
Everest, the mission was beset by hazardous climbs, weather delays,
aborted attempts and even missing radioactive materials that may or may
not still pose a contamination threat to Indian rivers. Kept under wraps
for over a decade, these operations came to light in 1978 and have been
long rumoured among mountaineers. ""Spies in the Himalayas"" provides
an inside look at a CIA mission from participants who weren't agency
employees, drawing on diaries from several of the climbers to offer
impressions not usually recorded in covert operations. A host of
photographs and maps puts readers on the slopes as the team attempts
repeatedly to plant the sensor on a Himalayan summit.