Who’s mole, asks PM; Jaswant finally says I don’t know

• Two hours and an adjournment later in the RS, Jaswant did not give the name of the mole provoking the PM to say “now the nation will draw its conclusions.” He asked Jaswant: “Who is the mole, why are you shying away from that?”

• Later, speaking to NDTV 24 X 7, Jaswant said: “I have never claimed that I knew (the name of the mole). It’s the media which claimed IFormer US Ambassador to India Harry Barnes has denied having anything to do with what Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Jaswant Singh claims is the correspondence between Barnes and US Senator Thomas Graham that hints at a mole in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Although Singh tonight admitted that he had no idea who the mole was, in the Rajya Sabha he named Graham as the sender and Barnes as the recipient of a 1995 note that indicated a “senior person” in the PMO had leaked information to the US on “nuclear testing—deployment of Prithvi and other steps.”

“I did not write it and this is not my standard language...I do not remember having received such a document (either),” Barnes told The Indian Express from Peachem, Vermont, where he is now advisor to the National Science Foundation for the Siachen peace park project.

Barnes said he was not even in India in 1995 when the letter is supposed to have been written (he was US Ambassador to India between 1981-1985 when Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister and for a year when Rajiv was in charge).

... contd.