In an exclusive interaction with CNBC-TV18 for Vir Sanghvi's show Off The Record, India's Union Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram spoke about the terror attacks that rocked Mumbai city on November 26, 2008.
Speaking with candour, the home minister touched upon the issue of possible identity and nationality of the attackers' handler, who is said to go by the moniker Abu Jindal.
"There was a handler in 26/11, whom we have known for long or suspected for a long time. He could be an Indian," Chidambaram told Sanghvi.
Here is a verbatim transcript of the interview with P Chidambaram on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.
Vir Sanghvi: I am going to start with a question that is not quite so praiseworthy, what is your biggest failure as Home Minister?
P Chidambaram: Haven’t had a big failure yet but there have been some small missteps.
Vir Sanghvi: Such as?
P Chidambaram: For example, we don’t communicate enough. I try once a month. I meet the media more often than most of my colleagues. But I think we still need to communicate quickly and in a timely manner and explain what is happening.
That I think is the biggest weakness of any government not only the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and I think a ministry like Home Affairs one has to communicate more often.
Vir Sanghvi: But you have been more accessible than most people before in the home ministry. That is a deliberate decision, isn’t it?
P Chidambaram: Yes, I think we should communicate more. That is one of the reasons why I am talking to you.
Vir Sanghvi: We talked about your time as home minister. I want to go back to the days after 26/11 when you were appointed, the general view - at least it was reported at that time - was that you were reluctant to take the job, was this accurate?
P Chidambaram: By and large – reluctant not in any sense of trepidation or fear, reluctant because the time available to me before the elections was exactly five months. God forbid, if another incident like Mumbai happened, what explanation will we have to the people of India and what do you do in five months, how do you reinvent the system in five months?
If I had a couple of years before the election, I would have been more confident but five months was – I think - adding to the pressure.
Vir Sanghvi: Was that the only reason for the reluctance?
P Chidambaram: The other reason is of course the obvious reason that I would have completed five years as finance minister.
Vir Sanghvi: Wasn’t that the main reason, very few finance ministers have done that?
P Chidambaram: Yes, only Dr. Manmohan Singh has done it.
Vir Sanghvi: You were cheated of those few months?
P Chidambaram: Not cheated, deprived.
Vir Sanghvi: The other thing that is said is that the first thing you did apparently when you took over as Home Minister is you instituted a meeting at apparently noon every day at which the chiefs of intelligence agencies came and you had a look at what the situation on the ground was and that the National Security Advisor also started coming to these meetings. There is a suggestion that you were given as part of your brief the job of bringing the security agencies within the ambit of the home ministry, is this accurate?
P Chidambaram: No that is a job I wrote for myself.
Vir Sanghvi: It was completely your own job description?
P Chidambaram: Yes but then when I took over, the Prime Minister graciously said, you will have a free hand because time is very limited, and if there is any problem, come back to me. When I thought about my job that weekend, I said, the first thing is we must bring everybody together, because I had to learn and act and change and deliver all in five months.
Vir Sanghvi: You know the background which is it is being posited by many people that you took away a lot of jobs that Narayanan use to do – your answer is always been look you people are making too much of this we have been friends for years – but let us leave friendship out of this. On purely functional terms you did take over a lot of the job didn’t you?
P Chidambaram: No. I did not take away any of his responsibilities. I did not take over any of his responsibilities. All I said was that whoever is doing whatever, it must be under political oversight. I happened to be the person providing the political oversight and therefore everybody accepted it.
Vir Sanghvi: Which is a departure from what had happened before? In Mr Advani’s time it did not happen, Mr Shivraj Patil’s time it didn’t happen. So in that sense the home ministry did assert itself over the national security advisor whether it was Brajesh Mishra or Narayanan who says his success?
P Chidambaram: That is how it should be isn’t it.
Vir Sanghvi: I personally agree that is how it should be but it wasn’t how it was?
P Chidambaram: It wasn’t for whatever reason I do not know. But if I was going to be responsible as I was made responsible on that day then I was going to make sure that I knew it was going on. The only way that I could know what was going on what happen and what did not happen was to exercise political oversight over every agency that was concerned with security.
Vir Sanghvi: My question to you therefore is what is the role of national security advisor should he be an intelligence overload to whom the chief of intelligence’s report should he be an advisor to the Prime Minister?
P Chidambaram: Essentially I think he is an advisor to the Prime Minister, advisor to the National Security Council. He heads a very important body, the NSES, the Secretariat, which combines not only intelligence from internal security matters but a number of other things - Diplomatic intelligence, external intelligence, nuclear command authority etc.
So he brings all the strands together and then advises the Prime Minister. Surely he must be in the loop as far as internal security is concerned, who can he not be in the loop, he has to be in the loop. But whether he should have executive responsibility given the pressures of work and time I think is an open question.
My personal view is that he should have very few executive responsibilities as far as internal security is concerned. That should be given to other professionals.
Vir Sanghvi: That leads me to the question of where Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) reports because R&AW cannot report to the home ministry by definition because it is an external agency, of course you have said that when it comes to terrorism the R&AW chief must be involved because there has to be a nodal point on terrorism. But what happens to R&AW, it is a bit fatherless, isn’t it in the current system?
P Chidambaram: R&AW reports to the Prime Minister now. But I think there is broad agreement that so far as counter terrorism is concerned, I don't think anybody has a serious objection that R&AW would have to report to the Home Minister.
Vir Sanghvi: Let me now go back to 26/11, do you think one of the reasons we were so ill-prepared for what happened was because mechanisms like these were not in place?
P Chidambaram: Yes, of course. There should have been one point where everything converged, all information converged. Today it converges in a group of about six-seven people who meet everyday. That is how it should be which is what the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) will be.
It will be an institutional mechanism rather than an individual-headed mechanism. And the response will be an institutional response rather than an individual driven response.
Vir Sanghvi: You have seen the evidence that there was a fair amount of intelligence pointing to 26/11 which was ignored. Do you think it was inevitable that would have been ignored or if there had been a system like this in place we would have acted on it?
P Chidambaram: The system in this place would have surely connected the dots. There were three separate pieces of information, they were not connected.
Vir Sanghvi: So there was a failure?
P Chidambaram: I said so.
Vir Sanghvi: The Pakistani attitude to what we have said is that yes they may well have been Pakistani involvement but the evidence that you have provided at a conversational or a foreign minister to foreign minister level is not enough to act in a court of law and there was considerable Indian involvement which we are playing down?
P Chidambaram: First, they are hopelessly wrong. If they want to test me on that, they should let me prosecute them.
Vir Sanghvi: Would you do that?
P Chidambaram: Of course. If they hand them over we will prosecute them on the evidence that we have got. We will prosecute Hafiz Saeed, we will prosecute (Zaki ur Rehman) Lakhvi, we will prosecute Zarar Shah.
Vir Sanghvi: Their legal system is not that different from our. If you were a prosecutor in that court do you think you can get a conviction of the evidence that you have?
P Chidambaram: Of course, my evidence plus further investigation on Pakistan soil.
Vir Sanghvi: So there is a case?
P Chidambaram: There is a cast iron case. There are transcripts, we want voice samples. They refused to provide voice samples. If voice samples are provided we will identify the handler.
Vir Sanghvi: And know who he is exactly?
P Chidambaram: Who is the handler- We will know. We suspect ten people. What does an identification parade do? You line up ten people and then you ask somebody to identify who you saw.
So if you've got a sample voice we have to match it with ten suspects isn’t it. You will know who the handler was. Today, forensic science can easily match the voice sample of a person with the real person.
Vir Sanghvi: Why do you think they are doing this?
P Chidambaram: Because they are hiding the real culprits.
Vir Sanghvi: You have said often and I think this is quite clear now that there is no will in Pakistan to go after the people who did it, I am asking you second question now, do you think there was any kind of semi-official or quasi official involvement in what happened?
P Chidambaram: I don’t know. All I know is that the so-called non-state actors they are putting forward as the culprits are not so non-state as they would like us to believe. They have got very close connections with the state.
Vir Sanghvi: Can you give me an example of what you mean by that?
P Chidambaram: For example, we know how closely Hafiz Saeed is involved with the establishment. Now leave that aside. We also know that there are state actors.
Vir Sanghvi: We know that?
P Chidambaram: Yes. We know that by nom de guerre, by assumed names.
Vir Sanghvi: How does somebody being called Brigadier saab or General saab mean that he is a state actor?
P Chidambaram: We suspect he is a state actor because the way he acted, what he did, where he was at that time, what part he played in the training, what part he played in the dispatch of the militants or terrorists. We know that.
We have to prove he is a state actor. How can you prove unless I have access to him or access to suspects, unless I investigate on Pakistan soil.
Subsequent to Kasab’s confessions and Kasab’s admission in the court, we have some more names and those names are being shared with Pakistan by the United States. Now why is Pakistan not willing to identify who those people are?
Vir Sanghvi: Which leads you to believe what?
P Chidambaram: Which leads me to believe that they are hiding some possible state actors and perhaps many other non-state actors. But I have never accepted this distinction between state actors and non-state actors as far as Pakistan is concerned because they are closely linked.
Vir Sanghvi: There were two things clear; one was that you said that there was no distinction or less distinction in Pakistan between state actors and non-state actors. The second was that you had reason to believe there were state actors involved, though you couldn’t prove it without the co-operation’s of the Pakistani authorities, I want you to talk a little about the second why is there less and less distinction?
P Chidambaram: We know that people who are so called non-state actors have worked closely with some other persons who we think are state actors. Unless we are able to crack the mask of that person, I can’t prove he is a state actor for example, I know that among the handlers there was atleast one state actor.
Vir Sanghvi: You know that?
P Chidambaram: I think he is a state actor, but I can’t prove it unless we investigate it.
Vir Sanghvi: How much certainty?
P Chidambaram: We are pretty much certain there was a state actor.
Vir Sanghvi: And you shared this with the Americans and Pakistanis?
P Chidambaram: The flow of information is not so neat, some of it comes from US and some of it goes back to US. I am not going to tell you where it came from.
Vir Sanghvi: Given your experience with Pakistan, do you believe that there is any will there or the ability to act against these people?
P Chidambaram: I think they are in two minds. I think they know that they have to move forward in order to placate international opinion, but they also know that they cannot go too far unless the people who matter bring them down.
Vir Sanghvi: People who matter in Pakistan?
P Chidambaram: Yes.
Vir Sanghvi: By that you mean what the establishment, or the Army?
P Chidambaram: There is this notorious ISI and then there is the links which ISI has with these organizations— the LeT, the JuT, the Hisbul Mujahideen, they are very closely linked and I don’t think that requires any great argument. So I think they will only do so much just to appease international opinion.
Vir Sanghvi: Then it’s back to business as usual?
P Chidambaram: That I hope doesn’t happen because if that happens it’s a new ball game then.
Vir Sanghvi: What happens to all our peace initiatives, what you are saying suggests that even as no matter how many overtures we make, the government is not in a position to act against these people?
P Chidambaram: I think as I said regretfully and reluctantly one has to conclude that they will not do more than what is the bear minimum to placate the international opinion.
Vir Sanghvi: The second part of what they say is that there were many Indian actors and we are playing this down in 26/11?
P Chidambaram: I can’t confirm nor can I totally deny that.
Vir Sanghvi: You said that in a press conference and that has been interpreted as an agreement, so you want to expand on that?
P Chidambaram: Two persons have been reined in the Mumbai case, they were preparing maps and that kind of things, but they are peripheral players. Now, there was a handler in 26/11 whom we have known for long or suspected for a long time could be any Indian. It was by the name Abu Jindal and that is something we have known for many months now, but that is not his real name. We can’t put a finger on who he is unless we get a voice sample and they wont give us a voice sample. Now there is speculation that Abu Jindal could be A or B, one can be right in the speculation, but how as a Home Minister can I speculate, I can’t.
Secondly, when we say it could be an Indian, he could be some body who has acquired the Indian characteristics, he could have been infiltrated into India and he lived here long enough to acquire an Indian accent, and familiarity with Indian words etc, or he could be somebody who was ex-filtrated from India to Pakistan and was adapted by the militants there. There are many hypothesis which are possible, so without knowing which is right and which is wrong how do I speculate. That is why I neither confirm nor deny.
Vir Sanghvi: You reject the suggestion, there are two ways of looking at it, one is that they ran an operation in India and perhaps some Indians helped them?
P Chidambaram: No; that part is ruled out. This was an extra territorial operation, they launched it from Pakistan, they attacked Mumbai, they didn’t run the operation from India. It’s possible that, one among the people who were in the planning was an Indian or a Pakistani who had acquired over a period of time Indian characteristics.
Vir Sanghvi: Let me then take it to Headley, did you have any idea about this man or it even existed before the Americans told us?
P Chidambaram: No.
Vir Sanghvi: Isn’t that a failure on our part?
P Chidambaram: No.
Vir Sanghvi: The man comes here, he lives here, he does resonance and he goes back, files reports?
P Chidambaram: All that was before 26/11, he came to India only once after 26/11.
Vir Sanghvi: And we still didn’t know who he was?
P Chidambaram: He is a white, Caucasian looking person, American name, American Passport.
Vir Sanghvi: He has got his father’s name etc written on his passport?
P Chidambaram: It’s an American passport.
Vir Sanghvi: So we don’t suspect any American ever?
P Chidambaram: We do, provided there is some intelligence.
Vir Sanghvi: So isn’t that a failure that we didn’t have intelligence?
P Chidambaram: Because he didn’t do anything here after 26/11, he just came here once.
Vir Sanghvi: When we are piecing together the puzzle of what happened, this man appears to be in a large part of the puzzle yet we had no idea?
P Chidambaram: He has nothing to do with this puzzle.
Vir Sanghvi: With the 26/11 puzzle, he had no role on reckon at all?
P Chidambaram: He had a role in reckon, but he doesn’t appear in any pieces of the puzzle of 26/11 investigation. Because from what we gather through pictures, videos and that’s it, he did nothing else.
Vir Sanghvi: The other part of this Headley saga is that the American DEA sent him into Pakistan as an under cover agent, there are court records saying this, it is a matter of public record?
P Chidambaram: Much earlier there is speculation that once he changes identity or just before he changed his identity, he may have been used by one of the agencies of the US in drug enforcement.
Vir Sanghvi: This is not speculation, this is in court papers, he was let out of jail early by the DEA, the New York Times, every American papers carried this on the ground that they sending him as an under cover to Pakistan?
P Chidambaram: Americans have never admitted that.
Vir Sanghvi: They may not have admitted to you, but they newspapers have carried it, there are also court records?
P Chidambaram: The court records only show that his sentence was curtailed and he was let free.
Vir Sanghvi: This is what you thought was odd?
P Chidambaram: Why is it odd to me? It’s not odd, it’s quiet possible that he may have been used by one of the agencies.
Vir Sanghvi: You are accepting that?
P Chidambaram: I am willing to assume that.
Q Do you think he went rouge or was he working for one of the agencies?
P Chidambaram: We don’t know; we have no access to him.
Vir Sanghvi: Isn’t that in itself odd that they don’t give you access to Headley?
P Chidambaram: No, they have just reined him, there is a grand jury and there is a procedure there. We can still go to the Letter Rogatory route, please remember, the US is also governed by a tight legal system as ours; we would not give the access to the Americans to anyone here unless they go through the legal process.
Vir Sanghvi: Did we give them access to Kasab?
P Chidambaram: We did because at that time we needed the Americans very badly.
Vir Sanghvi: So is it that they don’t need us?
P Chidambaram: Not yet. If they want access to something else in India today I would ask them to go through the legal process, but the Kasab case is an exceptional case, we had to use the Americans.
Vir Sanghvi: I take the point you are making, but here you got Kasab who we gave access to and here they have Headley who they hide away from us?
P Chidambaram: I don’t think the two are counter comparable.
Vir Sanghvi: They haven’t even given many photographs of Headley?
P Chidambaram: They have. The access we gave to Kasab, they have done us quite a favor and in return for access to Kasab, they have helped us crack that case.
Vir Sanghvi: You think the case is now cracked?
P Chidambaram: I think so, but its sub judicious, so I don’t want to comment on it.
Vir Sanghvi: There were two aspect to 26/11, one was that 26/11 happened without us knowing because we didn’t connect the dots as you said. The second was our response which was surely inadequate and took too long to put together, so would that happen again?
P Chidambaram: I don’t think so. If god forbids anything like 26/11 happens, we will respond in a much swifter passion. We have a much better command and control system here and our people will respond very quickly.
Vir Sanghvi: What about state police forces, one of the problems of 26/11 was that they now know were the problems within the Bombay Police, and it’s the same?
P Chidambaram: That’s not correct, they are getting better every day, the capacity is better, response time is quicker. We have set out SOPs now and when we sent the NSG or the Central Paramilitary force what will be the command and control structure. They can command any plane, why their own plane.
Vir Sanghvi: Which they were allowed to under the NSG act any how?
P Chidambaram: Because no body had been authorized to do that.
Vir Sanghvi: It was as simple as that?
P Chidambaram: I think so. I am not going into the past I didn’t decide that I will issue but I issued authority and they can take over any plane now.
Vir Sanghvi: Are you happy doing this job compared to how you were in the Finance Ministry?
P Chidambaram: This is the job and someone has to do it. The Prime Minister, the Congress President, the UPA Chairperson have chosen me to do it, so I am honoured to do this job. One doesn’t have to enjoy doing a job; one has to do the job. So if you ask me, are you doing your job with your heart and soul in it, I can honestly say yes, I come every morning and I stay late in the evening and I try to do my job, if I have to enjoy something I go back and read a book.
Vir Sanghvi: Was it the same way when you were the Finance Minster or did you enjoy that more?
P Chidambaram: To me it was a greater challenge and perhaps a sweeter challenge.
Vir Sanghvi: We began by talking about accessibility, that you are much more accessible than you have been at anytime before, you are more willing to communicate, are these changes in P Chidambaram the man of just the nature of the job?
P Chidambaram: This job requires government to communicate to the people because we are dealing with people’s fears, people’s anxieties.
Vir Sanghvi: So it's not a personality change?
P Chidambaram: I am not a 'Chai sipping, gap shapping politician', so maybe that gives the impression that I am inaccessible or aloof.
Vir Sanghvi: Arrogant is the word used sometimes?
P Chidambaram: Fine, they have said it; I have made a list of people who have been described as arrogant in India's history, starts with Jawaharlal Nehru therefore.
Vir Sanghvi: You have done quite well out of not being one haven't you?
P Chidambaram: Well I don't know, maybe I should.
Vir Sanghvi: You have a political base, you win your own seat, and you are a successful minister why should you want to change that?
P Chidambaram: If that is what gives you a better image perhaps I should try.
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