Ashkenazi made mistakes, but should he be indicted?
Op-ed: Whoever trusts chiefs of staff's discretion on matters of life and death must respect their discretion when it comes to disclosing information to journalists.
After many difficulties and quite a few arguments among the investigating team, the police reached the conclusion that there was no room to indict former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi over the two original suspicions of forging and distributing the "Harpaz document," which aimed to prevent Major-General Yoav Galant from succeeding Ashkenazi as chief of staff, and of planning a putsch against then-defense minister Ehud Barak.
The police are recommending that Ashkenazi be prosecuted for holding the document for 48 hours and for disclosing secret details in a conversation with two journalists. When one looks at each case individually, a police officer told me on Tuesday, it seems trivial. The troubling thing is the overall affair.
The ball is now in Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein's court. He is facing quite a difficult dilemma. He was involved in one of the issues probed by the police – Ashkenazi's failure to hand over the document for 48 hours. According to Ashkenazi, Weinstein had told him that there was no rush, that the document could wait.
The second issue presents a different kind of problem for the attorney general. The investigators found out about the conversation between chief of staff Ashkenazi and the two journalists only after listening to and transcribing 100,000 conversations between Ashkenazi and his bureau staff throughout his four years in office – most of them were phone calls, from the bureau and from his house, and a few were recordings of conversations held at the bureau.
The investigators discovered that Ashkenazi had occasionally briefed journalists, and in one case even a minister, a cabinet member, in conversations at his bureau or on the phone. In some conversations they found embarrassing segments, and in other conversations they found classified military information. The texts were handed over to the examination of the IDF's Information Security Department.
On the surface, the police recommendation seems puzzling. Chiefs of staff brief journalists in the capacity of their position. Whoever trusts their discretion on matters of life and death must respect their discretion when it comes to disclosing information to the press, especially when the journalists involved in this case are experienced and responsible, and the information they received from the chief of staff was not published by them.
It is even more puzzling when one casts the events at Ashkenazi's bureau aside for a moment and examines their possible implications on the democratic discourse. Journalists receive classified information from the government in order to prevent them from publishing erroneous information, which could sometimes alarm the public for no reason, and in order to promote the government's agenda. From time to time, mistakes are made by a source who spoke too much or by a journalist who crossed the line, but in general the flow of information serves the national interest.
If a chief of staff, a police commissioner, Shin Bet director, Mossad chief, major generals or police commanders were afraid that disclosing classified information, off the record, would get them involved in a criminal offense, the damage would be greater than the benefit. Every person in the system knows that, and the members of the police know it more than anyone as their organization is much more open and leaks much more than the army.
It's not the individual case, police officers reiterated in our conversation Tuesday, it's the overall affair. What happened in Ashkenazi's bureau is serious, both ethically and morally. The head of the police's Investigations Unit, Major-General Meni Yitzhaki, was so annoyed by what he had heard and read that he decided to add such a note to the statement he issued.
As far as I can judge, the investigators' hands are clean. Let them probe the Israel Railways corruption affair, a classic investigation, and they'll be thrilled. They entered the Ashkenazi investigation against their will. They are not the ones who generated the sensational headlines. Some of them were familiar with the officers the investigation centered on. They all valued Ashkenazi and what the chief of staff position symbolizes. They were not bloodthirsty, or headline-thirsty. They acted according to their professional considerations.
The current round of investigation lasted exactly one year, but the investigation in fact kicked into high gear only in the past six months. In the end, Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino urged the investigators and the State Prosecutor's Office to get the job done.
It was an unusual investigation from many aspects. The police investigators were supervised by three external teams: Investigators from the IDF's Criminal Investigation Division, four (and then three) legal experts who conducted their own investigations simultaneously, and the State Prosecutor's Office. In the end, when they all convened, it turned out that there was a 90% agreement over the findings and recommendations.
One of the issues irritating Ashkenazi's associates is that the investigation was one-sided: They were questioned over leaks, while Ehud Barak and his associates were not questioned; they were questioned over obstruction of justice, while Barak's people were not questioned.
The police offered a simple response: We only investigate when there is evidence. We searched for evidence, we used intelligence, but we didn't find any. Ashkenazi's associates reply: They didn't search hard enough. On the issue of the leaks, at least, there is plenty of evidence.
Ashkenazi made quite a few mistakes in the wars he conducted from the chief of staff's bureau. His assistant Erez Weiner, his spokesperson Avi Benayahu and chief military advocate general Avichai Mandelblit, who currently serves as the cabinet secretary, were swept into his affair against their will. Their errors are as serious, perhaps even more serious, than Ashkenazi's errors. When the investigation material is leaked, and it will leak eventually, they will find it difficult to face the public.
But the truth must be told: If it wasn't for the Harpaz affair, which disappeared from the case, at least where Ashkenazi is involved, no one would have thought of launching an investigation, bending the law in order to extend the state prosecutor's term, waging a noisy media campaign and reaching the police recommendations, after four years.
Weinstein will not rush to make a decision: He is not the hasty type. The case will first be discussed by the district prosecutor's office, then they will ask for additional details, then it will be handed over to the state prosecutor and then to the, current or next, attorney general.
Ashkenazi's grandchildren entered a day care center this week, at the age of nine months. Ashkenazi is convinced that they will not hear about the end of this affair before they begin the first grade.
