Washington, Aug. 2 (PTI): Former US envoy Harry Barnes, whom Jaswant Singh has named as the author of a letter about a “mole” in the late P.V. Narasimha Rao’s PMO, has said he has no knowledge of the missive.

The BJP leader had yesterday said that the letter was addressed to senator Thomas Graham. In a TV interview he said he did not know the name of the mole.

In his just-released book, A Call to Honour, Singh has said there was a “mole” in Rao’s office who leaked nuclear secrets to the US in 1995.

Barnes denied knowledge of “any senator” by that name and said the best way to sort out the matter would be to ask Singh. “I find the reporting very confusing,” Barnes said from the US. “I was not in India in 1995. I was the ambassador between 1981 and 1985.”

Barnes, however, said he knew two persons who share the name. “One Thomas Graham was a representative of the Rockefeller Foundation and the second was the head of the arms control and disarmament agency in the 1990s.”

US snub

The US today distanced itself from the purported letter, saying it was a “fraudulent, poor imitation” of an official US correspondence.

“The letter does not contain a shred of truth. The US was not asked to examine it (the letter) before its publication in newspapers. Had we been asked, we would have pointed out that it is fraudulent, poor imitation of official US government correspondence,” a senior administration official said.