Washington: The US government says it has nothing to do with the alleged correspondence between a former American ambassador to India and a senator that suggested the existence of a mole in then prime minister PV Narasimha Rao's office in the 1990s, but does not see anything nefarious in it.
Even if authentic it was at best an exchange between two private individuals, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters on Thursday while making three points about the so-called correspondence between one Thomas Graham and Harry Barnes, former ambassador to India.
"One, we can't verify that this correspondence is in fact authentic. Two, the individuals involved were not employed by the US government at the time listed on the correspondence and were in fact working in private non-governmental organisations, he said.
"Third, the initial press reporting on the alleged correspondence was very selective in how it was put out," McCormack said.
But he still did not see anything nefarious in the copy of the 'correspondence' that he had seen.
This would have been - if in fact it is an authentic correspondence - a correspondence between two private individuals not employed by the US government, he stressed.
Barnes has himself denied that he ever wrote or received a purported letter from a senator on the basis of which former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh had claimed the existence of a mole in Rao's PMO.
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