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2026-03-21

Did the CIA attempt to assassinate Nehru?

Disclaimer

• Quick Note

Main

• That's it, that's the post.
• Link to wikipedia post on this, which has further sources
• I am aware there is serious speculation that the CIA may have tried to assassinate Homi Bhaba, who helped Indian govt develop nuclear weapons.
• I am surprised Nehru was also a target, and I am surprised how little this is talked about.

Update

• I downloaded both the wikipedia linked sources - Covertaction issue 46 and William Blum's book. Both just have a one-liner on the attempt and nothing more. Where is the proof?

gpt-5.4 says the following, may contain hallucins

Yes. In the material you attached, the only clear mention I found is in Covertaction Quarterly issue 46 (Fall 1993), in William Blum’s one-page piece “Hit List.” It explicitly includes the line “1955 Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India.” The same Nehru entry also appears in Blum’s later online essay “U.S. Government Assassination Plots” and in the appendix/list section of Killing Hope. But in both the magazine piece and the later web version, the Nehru entry is just a list item, not a documented case study, and the article’s only note is a general citation to Alexander Cockburn on the 1993 Iraq bombing—not a source for Nehru specifically. (invissin.com)

When I followed the trail outward, the strongest traceable 1955 source line does not point to Nehru. In Blum’s related essay “Making Heads Roll,” and in the substantive discussion in Killing Hope, the 1955 case is instead tied to the Kashmir Princess bombing and to an alleged CIA attempt against Zhou Enlai. Blum says the 1975 Senate committee heard testimony about an unnamed “East Asian leader” to be assassinated to disrupt the 1955 conference, and he writes that this leader was “in all likelihood” either Sukarno or Chou En-lai. He then recounts John Discoe Smith’s allegation that he delivered a package later said to contain the bombs used against the Air India plane. That is a different claim from “CIA tried to kill Nehru.” (thirdworldtraveler.com)

Independent archival and scholarly material I found also points to Zhou Enlai, not Nehru, as the target of the Kashmir Princess sabotage. Steve Tsang’s article in The China Quarterly identifies the incident as “Target Zhou Enlai” and states that the Air India flight was chartered by the PRC to carry a delegation headed by Zhou to Bandung. A document in the Nehru Archive likewise discusses the sabotage case in terms of Chou Chu, described there as the chief suspect in the sabotage of the Kashmir Princess. (resolve.cambridge.org)

There is, however, one intriguing lead showing how a Nehru claim may have circulated. A 1966 CIA FOIA item summarizing foreign press reaction to the New York Times CIA series says one foreign commentary drew the conclusion that the CIA had “a finger in planning the assassination of the late Indian prime minister Nehru.” That shows the allegation existed in Cold War propaganda/discourse by 1966, but it is not evidence that such a plot actually occurred. (cia.gov)

My bottom line:

• Yes, issue 46 mentions a CIA assassination plot against Nehru.
• No, I have not found a solid primary or scholarly source yet that substantiates that claim specifically.
• The best-documented nearby episode is the 1955 Kashmir Princess bombing, whose source trail points to an alleged plot against Zhou Enlai, not Nehru.
• So for now I’d treat the Nehru line in issue 46 as an unsupported or at least unverified assertion, possibly a later conflation by Blum or one of his sources. (invissin.com)

Useful-writing scores, PG-style:

• Blum, “Hit List” / “U.S. Government Assassination Plots”: 3/10. Useful as a lead list, but weak because it compresses very different evidentiary levels into bare assertions and gives almost no source trail. (invissin.com)
• Blum, “Making Heads Roll” / the related Killing Hope discussion: 5/10. More useful because it at least names the Kashmir Princess case, John Discoe Smith, and the 1975 Senate material, and even admits uncertainty about who the “East Asian leader” was. Still polemical, but better as a research starting point. (thirdworldtraveler.com)

If you want, next I can do one of two things:

1. build a source genealogy from issue 46 → Blum → Smith → Kashmir Princess → Senate report, or
2. try to find whether the Nehru-specific allegation appears anywhere before Blum in print.

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