CIA's Himalayan Plutonium Device Vanished

In October 1965, the CIA and India's Intelligence Bureau sent a team up Nanda Devi in the Garhwal Himalayas to install a surveillance station powered by seven plutonium-238 capsules. The device would intercept telemetry from Chinese missile tests at Lop Nur, but a blizzard forced expedition leader Manmohan Singh Kohli to anchor it in a crevice and retreat. When another team returned in May 1966, the generator had vanished, and three recovery attempts failed to find it. Its disappearance fueled fears that radioactive material could contaminate the Ganges headwaters, prompting an Indian scientific committee to recommend regular monitoring of the area's air, water, and soil in 1978.

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