Thread by @Manik_M_Jolly

Spy Stories by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott is exactly opposite of what investigative journalism is all about. On Pakistani side, a fictional Shahrukh Khan type over the top ISI spy becomes a protagonist who’s suddenly fighting everyone from ISI to Al Qaeda. On India side, they

gone to extreme lengths to disparage, implicate and pull down Indian government, Modi and NSA. Page after page they’ve tried to push the ‘Saffron terror’ up and given a clean chit to ISI on almost everything. For a book focused on Inter services rivalry, dedicating lot of pages

just to narrate the ‘Oh so nice’ Burhan Wani’s story and accolading him with names like Prophet and Young Fidel Castro and what not. There is absolutely no insight on any RAW operation except what’s already available on Internet. But to sell the Pak’s innocence agenda and again

give India a negative shade, a Manisha character is invented who goes on to get disgruntled with the RAW because of, guess what - Hindu Nationalism rising in agency and country. And this is her view right in and from 2008 ! Factual inaccuracies like ‘Indian Army has cash for

kills’ Policy and going into petty details like Major Gogoi’s incident, in the same language as Scroll, Caravan, FirstPost etc, which btw are major source of information as mentioned in Notes in end, is pretty immature. If the first half of the book is a boring narration of

things that almost everyone knows, the second half is a pure hit job on India. Calling NSA’s Operations as self planted stories to become a James Bond, and unflattering adjectives for Modi, Yogi etc are pretty indicative of the agenda.
There are indeed some insights but they are

small drops in an overall ocean of propaganda. Every narration is - ‘someone told us’. And that someone always uses the narrative and language that a Pakistani would use against India.
Their assessment of Kulbhushan Jadhav is that if he joined NDA in so and so years so after 20

Years he HAD to be a serving officer. Why? Haven’t you heard of premature retirements and resignations ? And then they go on to say that he wasn’t even employed by anyone but was a unprofessional and immature self styled spy who wanted to take revenge from ISI, so he moved to

Iran. So serving officers, like they believe, can just pick up bags and move to another country to start businesses? The whole chapter is a joke to be honest. Contradicting themselves time and again.
All terrorist organisations based in Let, Jaish etc have been given lot of

berth too by projecting them as dwindling and poor organisations fighting for existence against their war against Pakistani Army. And Hafeez Saeed is supposedly being hunted by ISI and Pak Army but getting treated in Military Hospital - is a normal fact to be digested.
The book

is an assault on sensibilities and common sense of readers. Disjointed, overly repetitive and depending heavily on unsubstantiated stories from sources that all tend to have the same mindset somehow - anti India. At times the over sensationalisation of the Hero from ISI, shown

as some master of tradecraft, stops making sense. It’s comical and theatrical representation of how world of Intelligence works. There are some exceptionally good books that fit the bill of investigative journalism. This is not one of them. This is a timely intervention to

absolve Pakistan and ISI and project them as victim and India as draconian state ruled by Right Wing Misogynist paramilitary RSS ( their description for RSS). There are no spy stories here. Just gathering of lot of opinions from people and articles from usuals suspects in

India. The book comes with heavy praises from Scroll, Caravan, FirstPost, Hindu, NY Times and an interview of author by Barkha Dutt. #Nuffsaid FYI - Gol Gappas are not eaten in a plate with a spoon! Investigators don’t make such mistakes.
Verdict : Totally avoidable.