What the US snoops missed

Reports that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was one of the six political entities globally that a top US spy agency might have snooped on have been met with some mirth among BJP second-rung leaders. They point out that Nancy Powell was removed as US ambassador to New Delhi because she failed to assess the changing political equations in India, and that the Americans could not gauge the BJP's rise to power despite the snooping. If anything, what has galled BJP is the US equating the party with such notorious and extremist political groupings as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. The leaders believe this is the second time in a decade-and-a-half that the party has outfoxed the Americans, the first instance being that of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance government carrying out a nuclear test in Pokhran in 1998 without the Americans getting a whiff of it.