'Knesset should outlaw publishing police transcripts'

Mazuz says papers that published complete transcripts of Olmert interrogations shouldn't have, but they didn't break the law.

By DAN IZENBERG
mazuz 248.88 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
mazuz 248.88
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
The newspapers that published complete transcripts of police interrogations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently should not have done so, but they had not broken the law, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz told the Knesset Law Committee on Tuesday. The committee met to consider whether it was necessary to make changes in the statute book to clamp down on leaks to the media regarding the contents of interrogations. On July 20 and 21, the afternoon dailies, Yediot Aharonot and Ma'ariv, published full texts of two of the police sessions with Olmert regarding the Talansky affair. "I don't remember such a thing ever happening in the past that we had to confront," Mazuz told a packed committee room. "It is hard to conceive of any justification for this kind of publication. It involves a very dubious interest, and even if the public has the right to know that a police investigation is going on, and perhaps general information about it, it does not have to know every word said by every person involved. Among other things, it can cause problems for the investigation itself." Mazuz informed the lawmakers that he had appointed a team of police and Justice Ministry officials to look into the possibility of investigating who had leaked the transcripts and how to deal with leaks in general. "The feasibility of such an examination ranges from low to zero because of the [large] number of people who were exposed to the material," Mazuz said. He explained that some 120 people in the police, the state prosecution and the offices of the suspects' legal advisers had seen the police investigation material. Furthermore, there was an unknown number of others not directly involved in the investigation who had also had access to the material. As long as no one came forward with any information about the source of the leak, every one of these people was a suspect, said Mazuz. Thus, there was no focus to such an investigation. He said a polygraph test would not be helpful because of the large number of people under suspicion. The attorney-general called for one change in the law. According to Article 13 of the Criminal Procedures Law (Investigation of Suspects), anyone who publishes video or audio documentation of an investigation in part or in full is committing a criminal offense and is liable to a year in jail. "It is inconceivable that the law will prohibit displaying the audio or visual contents of an interrogation while allowing the full text to be published," Mazuz said. But that was his only suggestion for changes in legislation. He said the law had to be vague and general because of the need to balance the rights of the suspect against the needs of the investigation and the public's right to know. "There are types of reports that are worthy of publication and there are circumstances and types of reports that are unworthy," he said. Each case must be judged on its own merits, he added. But Mazuz also questioned how sincere was the desire of the Knesset and the media to combat leaks. If there was ever a case in which a leak was clearly wrong, it was the leak that then prosecutor Liora Glatt-Berkovich had given to Haaretz on the eve of the 2001 election, when she told the paper the state prosecution was conducting a secret investigation regarding money that had been funneled from the Netherlands to aides of prime minister Ariel Sharon, who was running for reelection. "Glatt-Berkovich leaked a document that was classified," Mazuz said. "The publication of the material undermined the investigation; she publicly accused her colleagues in the state prosecution; she leaked the document on the eve of elections, she admitted that she did so to prevent Sharon's election, and despite all this, she was treated like a heroine." Mazuz emphasized that in many cases, the leaks come from lawyers representing the suspects or the defendants. For example, he said, there had been no leaks during the entire period of the police investigation into the Tax Authority affair, in which promotions and tax breaks were allegedly given in return for bribes. The leaks began only recently, after police handed over the investigation material to the lawyers of the suspects. The same was true regarding the leaks of the transcripts of the Olmert interrogations in the Talansky affair. Both transcripts were leaked to the newspapers after the material was given to the prime minister's lawyers. On the other hand, Olmert's lawyers have not yet laid eyes on the investigation material regarding the Rishon Tours investigation. As a result, there have been virtually no leaks from it, Mazuz said. The attorney-general said he understood that there was a need for the public to know something about the fact that a public figure was under investigation. That was why, he said, "we are in favor of official statements regarding the investigation of public figures." He said that the state prosecution had kept the Rishon Tours affair under wraps for a month. When the time was ripe, it published a statement announcing the investigation and giving some of the details regarding the allegations.