A Frozen Peak, A Covert Mission, and a Disaster Waiting to Happen
In the heat of the nuclear arms race during the Cold War, a single event sent shockwaves through Washington and New Delhi: China’s detonation of its first atomic bomb in October 1964. The urgent question arose: how could the West penetrate China's veil of secrecy and monitor its burgeoning missile program?
The Solution: A Perch in the Sky
The answer came from a surprising conversation. General Curtis LeMay, the formidable architect of U.S. nuclear strategy, was intrigued by tales from Barry Bishop, a mountaineer and photographer for National Geographic. Bishop described the unparalleled, hundred-mile views from Himalayan summits, deep into Tibet and China. A bold and dangerous idea was born: install a spy station on Nanda Devi, one of India's highest and most remote peaks.
The Cover: A Scientific Expedition
In 1965, a joint CIA-Indian Intelligence mission launched under an elaborate facade. Officially, it was a team led by renowned Indian naval officer and mountaineer Captain M.S. Kohli and American climber Barry Bishop, conducting high-altitude atmospheric research. Their true objective, however, was clandestine and perilous.
The Beating Heart of the Mission: A Lethal Nuclear Battery
To power the listening post in the extreme, isolated cold, engineers devised a portable nuclear generator. Codenamed and hidden, it was a 56-pound (23 kg) device, roughly the size of a beach ball. Its core contained the mission's greatest asset and gravest risk: seven capsules of plutonium-239—highly radioactive fuel equivalent to nearly a third of the material in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. This "nuclear battery" was a double-edged sword: a revolutionary power source and a potential dirty bomb.
Disaster: The Mountain's Wrath
On October 16, 1965, after a grueling ascent, the team was within reach of the summit. Then, the mountain fought back. A fierce storm, brutal cold, and crippling altitude sickness forced a desperate retreat. Faced with certain death, they made a fateful decision: leave the generator behind. They secured it with pitons and chains near a glacier, intending to retrieve it the following spring.
When a team returned in the spring of 1966, they found only emptiness. The device was gone. Investigators concluded a massive avalanche or ice shift had likely swept it into a deep crevasse or the maze of meltwater channels that feed the headwaters of the Ganges River—the sacred lifeline for hundreds of millions.
Panic and Silence
The disappearance triggered silent panic within the American and Indian governments. Covert search missions involving elite climbers, soldiers, and radiation experts were launched for years, but all failed in Nanda Devi's treacherous, shifting terrain. The political and diplomatic fallout risk was immense. A total blackout was imposed: documents were classified, participants were sworn to secrecy, and the area around the mountain was closed for decades under environmental pretenses.
Exposure and Outrage
The secret held for over a decade until investigative reporter Howard Kohn broke the story in 1978. The revelation sparked an uproar in India, leading to protests, political condemnation, and the summoning of the U.S. Ambassador. The core fear was no longer espionage, but environmental catastrophe—the potential for plutonium to poison the Ganges.
The Enduring Mystery... and a Renewed Threat
A subsequent Indian government inquiry found no immediate radiation contamination but issued a stark warning: corrosion of the device's metal shell over time could eventually release its deadly payload into the watershed.
Today, more than half a century later, the mystery persists:
Where is the lost nuclear device now?
Is it still entombed, intact, in the glacier's heart?
Most chillingly, could accelerated glacial melt due to climate change unearth this radioactive relic? The potential outcomes are dire: the poisoning of a major river system or the recovery of weapons-grade material by malicious actors.
The story of Nanda Devi is more than a Cold War spy tale. It is a lasting legacy of geopolitical gambles, a testament to human audacity and fallibility, and a slow-motion environmental thriller whose final chapter has yet to be written. The mountain keeps its secret, for now, but the ice is melting.