Decades Later, CIA’s Nuclear Device Remains Lost On India’s Nanda Devi

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC – At the height of the Cold War in 1965, as China raced ahead with its nuclear weapons program, an extraordinary covert operation unfolded high in the Indian Himalayas. The United States and India quietly joined hands on a secret mission to monitor Chinese missile tests by placing a nuclear powered surveillance device atop Nanda Devi, one of India’s most revered peaks, according to The New York Times.

The plan was audacious. American and Indian climbers would haul an antenna, cables, and a compact nuclear generator known as the SNAP 19C to extreme altitude. The generator contained plutonium, nearly a third of the amount used in the Nagasaki bomb. Officially, the expedition was framed as scientific research. In reality, it was a Cold War intelligence gamble played out on ice and rock, The New York Times reported.

As the team prepared for the final ascent, disaster struck. A sudden blizzard engulfed the mountain, forcing the climbers into a fight for survival. From the advanced base camp below, Captain M S Kohli, the Indian officer leading the mission, pleaded over the radio for the team to turn back, urging them not to waste a single minute, according to The New York Times. With no choice, the climbers abandoned the equipment on an icy ledge near Camp Four and fled downhill.

The nuclear device was never recovered.

The United States never publicly acknowledged the operation. On paper, nothing had happened. Yet the origins of the mission were surprisingly casual. The idea emerged at a Washington cocktail party where General Curtis LeMay, then head of the US Air Force, spoke with Barry Bishop, a National Geographic photographer and seasoned Everest climber. Bishop described how Himalayan peaks offered clear vantage points deep into Tibet and China. Soon after, the CIA recruited him to organize a covert expedition disguised as mountaineering science, The New York Times reported.

India’s participation was shaped by lingering fears after its 1962 war with China, though Kohli himself was skeptical from the start. He later dismissed early proposals to place the device on Kanchenjunga as reckless, a view shared by American climbers involved in the planning. Eventually, Nanda Devi was chosen as a compromise between access and feasibility.

The climb itself was punishing. Climbers were flown by helicopter to high altitude with little time to acclimatize. Many fell ill, and few understood the risks posed by the radioactive generator, which emitted warmth that made it strangely desirable to carry. Only years later did the danger become clear.

When the team returned in 1966 to retrieve the device, it had vanished. An avalanche had torn away the ledge along with the equipment, ice, and rock. Subsequent searches using radiation detectors and infrared sensors found nothing.

Behind the scenes, the governments of both countries moved swiftly to contain the fallout. Then President Jimmy Carter and former Prime Minister Morarji Desai corresponded privately to defuse the issue, with Carter later praising Desai for his handling of what he called the Himalayan device problem, according to The New York Times . Publicly, both nations remained silent.

Today, most of the men involved are elderly or no longer alive. The missing nuclear device remains buried somewhere in the high Himalayas, its exact fate unknown. Before his death, Kohli reflected on the mission with quiet remorse, calling it a sad chapter in his life.