When India formed its intelligence agency R&AW in 1968, RAW's first director, R.N. Kao, held meetings with his CIA counterparts in the U.S., as well as the United Kingdom's SIS and the Soviet Union KGB. Much of the liaison was essentially political in character — what is today known as 'back channel diplomacy' — but R&AW's special operations and SIGINT/IMINT unit, the Aviation Research Centre, received technical assistance from the U.S. in return for information on China.[6]