E-mail by Nisha Desai Biswal.
The Obama administration had planned to have former president Bill Clinton to co-host an event attended by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to the US in 2015, according to emails hacked by WikiLeaks from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama on climate change.
The emails released by WikiLeaks show the planning done by the Obama administration to make Modi’s visit to Silicon Valley in September 2015 a successful one as it had much strategic importance.
In a letter written by US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal, she sought the help of John Podesta in planning the function attended by Modi at Stanford. Biswal also asked if Bill Clinton could co-host the event with Modi.
The administration wrote the letter after Commerce secretary Penny Pritzker, who was to represent the US government at the event, pulled out of the event.
“Indians are looking for some other USG principal to participate with industry, academia, and government”, Nisha Biswal wrote in the letter.
“We will, of course, see if Secretary Kerry or Secretary Moniz can go to California that weekend but things are complicated by the Xi (Chinese president Xi Jinping) visit and the UNGA schedule. Are there other options you would suggest we pursue? Another option would be to see if Governor Brown or perhaps President Clinton would be interested in co-hosting/convening. Also, would you want to participate in the roundtable? Let me know if you have thoughts on this or want to discuss,†read the letter.
However, the event was co-hosted by US energy secretary Ernest Moniz.
The letter noted that Indian government had an interest in the digital economy and to visit Google. Some announcement on Google’s investment in India was also expected at the event.
“The other focus is on clean energy. Here the Indians want to visit Tesla and hopefully announce a Tesla partnership/venture with India focusing on their battery storage system for solar,” Biswal said.
Modi’s visit to Silicon Valley was a successful one. Modi visited Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla’s Elon Musk, and Google’s Sundar Pichai.