Wisner letter adds credibility to Jas' mole claim
The ‘mole-in-the-Narasimha-Rao-PMO’ theory put forward by Jaswant Singh, which has had the country’s political class - especially the BJP - in a tizzy since it first surfaced about a week ago, on Friday got a new lease of life with the publication...
By TNN |
NEW DELHI: The ‘mole-in-the-Narasimha-Rao-PMO’ theory put forward by Jaswant Singh, which has had the country’s political class — especially the BJP — in a tizzy since it first surfaced about a week ago, on Friday got a new lease of life with the publication of the contents of a letter purportedly written by the then US Ambassador to India, Frank G Wisner, confirming the presence of such an element.
Armed with the revelations, Mr Singh, who has in the past few days come under heavy fire for his refusal to identify the mole, on Friday, said that the Rao establishment was aware of the existence of the ‘mole’. He even went on to dare the Manmohan Singh government to take legal action against him for withholding the spy’s name.
The Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, in fact, alleged that the Rao government was somehow involved in leaking secrets about the country’s nuclear programme. “The government had the information because it was the government that was leaking (nuclear secrets),” he said, rather cryptically, in an interview to a news channel.
The Wisner letter, written in 1995 to an American Senator, lends weight to Mr Singh’s claim, made in his book ‘A Call to Honour,’ that the ‘mole’ was a high-ranking official in the Rao PMO, and was in the loop on most crucial issues, with direct access to the Prime Minister.
The ‘mole’s’ status in the Rao government, apparently, can be gauged from the fact that he was privy to the discussions held during a “super-secret meeting” convened by the Prime Minister in Bangalore “to debate whether India should resume nuclear-testing, deploy the Prithvi missile and take other steps.”
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Excerpts from the letter, which have been published in the latest issue of leading English weekly, seem to prove that information about the country’s nuclear-testing plans was being consistently leaked to the US during late Narasimha Rao’s tenure as the prime minister. The letter lists the compulsions facing the government in resuming nuclear tests, and its likely fallout on Indo-US relations, as also the political dividends such a course would yield to the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls to be held less than year later.
“We may be faced with a situation where we will have to choose between respecting the confidence of a person with direct access to the Prime Minister.....who in the past has helped defuse pressure to resume nuclear testing versus informing the secretary of Defence.....Secretary of State.....and President.....that India may decide to test nuclear weapons and deploy Prithvi missiles before the upcoming elections,” Mr Wisner states in the letter.
“The senior person I talked to swore me to secrecy as he departed for a secret meeting in Bangalore, where the issue of nuclear testing would be put before the Prime Minister by a majority of his advisors who favour this step. He was very concerned that he might not win this battle, but he did not want me to share this information with anyone at this time,” the letter adds.
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