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The full picture as admitted by both sides:

The CIA was running a magazine called Imprint in India — revealed decades later by CIA station chief Harry Rositzke himself. It was intended to counter the influence of Soviet magazines flooding the Indian market. Scroll.in

The CIA's own assessment was that the Soviets gave substantial financial assistance to Indira Gandhi's Congress (I), the two communist parties, and individual politicians of different political parties. They probably matched each other personnel for personnel inside India. Scroll.in

So here is the full picture that both the CIA and KGB eventually admitted: India was their most contested battleground in all of Asia. Both superpowers were running media operations, funding politicians, recruiting bureaucrats, and placing agents inside Indian institutions — all at the same time.

And in the middle of all this? RAW — born in 1968 with 250 officers and a converted theatre as an office — was expected to fight them both.

That it survived, and that India remained sovereign, is perhaps RAW's most underappreciated achievement of all.

What KGB records revealed:

This is one of the most explosive revelations to come from Soviet intelligence archives.

Indira Gandhi's codename in KGB records was "VANO." Scroll.in

The KGB claimed they had ten Indian newspapers and one news agency on their payroll, and thousands of articles were planted in these outlets. It claimed to have funded several politicians, senior bureaucrats (including diplomats, police officers and intelligence officers) and members of Parliament. Scroll.in

Now here's the fascinating layer: Indira Gandhi was also the person who created RAW and gave it teeth. So the KGB was running influence operations on the very Prime Minister whose agency was fighting off foreign interference. RAW existed in a world where even India's own leadership was in foreign intelligence crosshairs.

What the book based on RAW spies revealed:

This is a story confirmed by RAW's own former operatives, while the CIA was busy arming Massoud's rivals through Pakistan.

RAW had recruited three powerful warlords, including Ahmad Shah Massoud, in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and the US-Pakistan proxy war. The book 'RAW: A History of India's Covert Operations' by journalist Yatish Yadav did not disclose the identity of the two other warlords, as they still occupy positions in Afghanistan politics. Dailyhunt

The CIA's partnership with ISI was "a serious concern" for India, and RAW needed allies to counter the unlikely partnership of the mujahideen and the Pakistani spy agency. deccanherald

So while the CIA was funding the mujahideen through Pakistan — who then turned those weapons on India — RAW was quietly cultivating the very commanders the CIA underestimated. Massoud later became the only major Afghan warlord who never turned against India. Coincidence? Hardly.

Year: 1989

After Pakistan had been running CIA-funded mujahideen training camps for years — camps that were then turning their weapons on India — RAW did something remarkable.

Around September-October 1989, RAW officers armed with evidence of terror training camps confronted US officials directly. deccanherald

The US knew about Indian activities in Afghanistan and had launched propaganda against RAW, with stories appearing from Washington that US arms supply was "a sort of punishment" to India for failing to oppose the Soviet Union on Afghan soil. deccanherald

RAW walked into a room with CIA officers and laid out physical evidence of what Pakistan was doing with American weapons. It was intelligence diplomacy at its sharpest — India using its spy agency not just to collect information, but to confront a superpower with proof of its proxy wars.

Year: 2004

Here's an operation so strange it sounds fictional.

In 2004, it came to light that a timely tip-off by RAW helped foil a third assassination plot against Pakistan's former president, General Pervez Musharraf. Wikipedia

The same Musharraf who ran the Kargil War against India. The same Musharraf whose phone RAW had tapped. RAW saved his life — because a destabilized, assassination-ridden Pakistan with a power vacuum was actually more dangerous for India than a Pakistan with a known, predictable enemy at the top.

This is the kind of cold, calculated strategic intelligence thinking that separated RAW from simple revenge agencies.

What declassified CIA documents revealed:

India was the playground of intelligence games between the CIA and the KGB. This admission came from the Americans themselves. And in this playground, RAW was the referee nobody expected. Scroll.in

The CIA's own 1985 secret report, declassified in December 2011, gives details of how the Americans saw KGB activities in India up to November 1985. The fact that the CIA was tracking KGB's moves inside India so obsessively reveals just how strategically vital India was — and how both superpowers feared India developing a truly independent, powerful intelligence apparatus. Scroll.in

When RAW was born in 1968, the CIA had already been operating in India for over a decade. And yet within a few years, RAW had neutralized enough of those operations that the CIA started documenting its own setbacks.

The story Pakistan's ISI told:

In 1967, Israeli General Moshe Dayan — the legendary warrior of the Israeli-Arab wars — visited Nepal, and was expected to meet Indian representatives. Islamabad feared this meeting was a joint operation by RAW and Mossad to destroy Pakistan's Kahuta nuclear facility dream. Defence News India

In 1981, ISI planted surface-to-air missiles in Kahuta, convinced that Israel and India would strike at any moment. Defence News India

Pakistan was so terrified of a combined RAW-Mossad airstrike on their nuclear program that they deployed anti-aircraft missiles around the facility. The two agencies never needed to fire a single shot — the fear of them acting together was enough to paralyze Pakistan's military planning for years.

What Israel's intelligence network revealed:

This is perhaps the most jaw-dropping recent story — and it came to light through Iran's own outrage after Israeli strikes.

After Israel's strikes on Iran, a covert network decades in the making was uncovered — 25 years of quiet cooperation between RAW and Mossad. At the heart of this network are tech workers, most of them Indian nationals, thousands of whom are spread across Iran and the wider Gulf region. Their jobs — particularly in construction and technical sectors — had granted them access to sensitive infrastructure, allowing them to quietly gather intelligence from within. Alestiklal

According to revelations attributed to Mossad, the network had been built quietly and patiently — an operation years in the making. It relied on Indian diaspora workers whose presence in Iran raised no suspicion. Alestiklal

Iran is almost impenetrable to American and Israeli operatives. But Indian workers? They were everywhere — in factories, power plants, construction sites. And nobody suspected a thing for 25 years.

The man who confirmed it:

In 2019, something extraordinary happened. A former Mossad boss — not a junior officer, but the Director of Research — sat down and openly acknowledged RAW.

Uzi Arad, former Director of Research at Mossad and National Security Advisor to PM Benjamin Netanyahu, confirmed that India and Israel have an old and strong intelligence partnership. "There has been intelligence cooperation between Israel and India over the years and these endeavours have been mutually beneficial," he stated. TheQuint

When asked about the details, Arad said, "I cannot go into details" — but the acknowledgment itself was historic. A senior Mossad figure publicly confirming a long-running partnership with RAW is something that virtually no Indian government official had ever done. TheQuint

Mossad said it first. RAW stayed silent, as always.

What Mossad confirmed:

Most people think India and Israel became friends only in 1992 when they formally established diplomatic relations. But Mossad's own former officers have told a different story entirely.

Prior to the establishment of formal relations in 1992, Indian-Israeli relations largely developed through backchannel communication between Mossad and RAW. These secret defense relations — which ranged from the transfer of technology and expertise to covert diplomatic visits — were developed to counter Pakistan's increasingly close relationship with China and North Korea. MERIP

Think about what this means: for over two decades, while India officially maintained distance from Israel at the United Nations (to keep Arab nations happy), RAW and Mossad were quietly meeting, sharing intelligence, and running joint operations — completely off the books.

From the early days, RAW had a secret liaison relationship with Mossad. The main purpose was to benefit from Israel's knowledge of West Asia and North Africa, and to learn from its counterterrorism techniques. cfr

Two agencies. No formal diplomatic cover. Just a handshake in the shadows — and it lasted decades.

Year: 2008

This is perhaps RAW's most painful chapter — not a failure of intelligence, but a failure of coordination.

About 2–6 months before the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, RAW had intercepted several telephone calls through signals intelligence (SIGINT) which pointed at impending attacks on Mumbai hotels by Pakistan-based terrorists. However, there was a coordination failure and no follow-up action was taken. Wikipedia

A few hours before the attacks, a RAW technician monitoring satellite transmissions picked up conversations between attackers and handlers as the attackers were sailing toward Mumbai. Wikipedia

RAW knew. But the warning fell through the cracks between agencies. 166 people died. It remains one of independent India's greatest intelligence coordination failures — and one RAW silently carries.

Year: 2004

Every intelligence agency has its traitors. RAW's most infamous one was one of its own senior officers.

Rabinder Singh became a mole of the CIA and flew to the US despite being under RAW surveillance. Singh initially worked with the Indian Army and held a very senior position with RAW handling Southeast Asia. By the time the agency sensed his affiliations, Singh escaped to the US through Nepal in 2004. The News

Rabinder Singh had helped run CIT-J — RAW's covert counterterrorism team targeting Khalistani groups — in its early years. Which means the CIA had an insider view of RAW's most sensitive counter-terrorism operations for years. EducatedIndia

Eight other key RAW operatives had also gone missing — almost all while on critical assignments outside the country — since the agency's creation in the late 1960s. The News

Singh later died in a car crash in Maryland in 2016. Whether it was an accident or something else, nobody officially knows.

Year: Early 1990s

By the early 1990s, the Kashmir Valley was burning. ISI was funding and training dozens of militant groups. India's response was not just military — RAW went inside.

Operation Chanakya was the RAW operation in Kashmir to infiltrate various ISI-backed Kashmiri separatist groups and restore peace in the valley. RAW operatives infiltrated the area, collected military intelligence, and provided evidence about ISI's involvement in training and funding Kashmiri separatist groups. 

RAW was successful not only in unearthing the links between the ISI and the separatist groups, but also in infiltrating and neutralizing militancy in the valley. RAW is also credited with creating a split in the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. 

RAW didn't just fight terrorism — it engineered divisions within terrorist organizations, making them fight each other instead of India.

Year: February 8, 1998

India's Northeast has always been a hotbed of insurgency, and in the 1990s, RAW discovered something alarming: the very rebel groups they were cultivating in Myanmar had turned against India.

During the 1990s, RAW cultivated Burmese rebel groups and pro-democracy coalitions, especially the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). India had allowed them to trade precious stones on Indian territory — a goodwill gesture. 

But KIA started training and supplying weapons to northeastern Indian rebel groups. When RAW came to know about this, it initiated Operation Leech — they shot 6 rebel leaders and arrested 34 Arakanese guerrillas in a sting operation at Andaman's Landfall Island. 

RAW, along with the Indian Navy's MARCOS, lured the smugglers into a trap under the guise of an arms deal. The smugglers were neutralized, and entire arms caches were seized. This weakened insurgency in India's Northeast. 

RAW had trusted a group, realized the betrayal, and eliminated the threat — all in one surgical move.

Year: 1999

During the Kargil War, Pakistan was publicly claiming that the fighters in Kargil were independent mujahideen, not Pakistani Army soldiers. India needed proof.

RAW was successful in intercepting a telephonic conversation between Pervez Musharraf, the then Pakistan Army Chief who was in Beijing, and his Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz in Islamabad. This tape was later published by India to prove Pakistani involvement in the Kargil incursion. 

Musharraf was in China — thinking his call was safe. RAW was listening. The tapped call was a grave breach of Pakistani security — Musharraf was discussing a sensitive military operation on an open telephone line from China. 

When India released that tape to the world, Pakistan's entire diplomatic narrative collapsed overnight.

Year: November 3, 1988

This is perhaps RAW's most cinematic operation, and most Indians have never heard of it.

In November 1988, the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), composed of about 200 Tamil secessionist rebels under Abdullah Luthufi, invaded the Maldives. At the request of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the Indian Armed Forces, with assistance from RAW, launched a military campaign. 

On the night of November 3, 1988, the Indian Air Force airlifted the 6th Parachute Battalion from Agra and flew them over 2,000 km to Maldives. The Indian paratroopers landed at the airstrip of Hulhule island and restored Government rule at Malé within a day. 

RAW's quick intelligence gathering and coordination with the Indian military earned international praise, including from the US and Britain. 

India saved an entire country overnight — and then quietly went home. No celebration, no press conference.

Year: 1984

This is one of RAW's most brilliant intelligence coups, and it came from the most unexpected source — a shopping receipt.

RAW received information from a London company that had supplied Arctic-weather gear for Indian troops from the Northern Ladakh region, that Pakistan had also bought similar Arctic-weather gear. This tiny commercial tip set alarm bells ringing. Pakistan was clearly planning to move troops into the Siachen Glacier — and seize it before India could.

This information was shared with the Indian Army, which soon launched Operation Meghdoot. Around 300 acclimatized Indian troops were airlifted to Siachen before Pakistan could launch any operation, resulting in an Indian head start and eventual Indian domination of all major peaks in Siachen. 

The Siachen Glacier was not demarcated under the Simla Agreement. Indian troops reached the glacier just days before Pakistan, securing the strategic heights. 

Today, Siachen is the world's highest battlefield, and India controls it — all because a RAW officer noticed a suspicious purchase order in London.