IDF general said to lose highly classified military documents in parking lot
Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Winner, accused last week of leaking info to Smotrich, reportedly dropped files while getting out of his car, and they were picked up by a passerby
A senior Israel Defense Forces officer, named by Hebrew media as Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Winner, reportedly lost highly classified military documents in a Ramat Gan parking lot.
According to a Ynet report, the documents were found by a passerby who handed them in to the building security officer, who in turn informed the police and the IDF.
A military source confirmed the incident to the news site, saying that the IDF had investigated the incident and found that Winner had accidentally dropped the documents while getting out of his vehicle.
The source said that further compounding the seriousness of the incident, the documents should not have been removed from the base to begin with.
The IDF did not issue any public comment on the incident.
Winner’s name was recently tied up in another scandal, when it was reported a week ago by the Kan public broadcaster that he was regularly leaking information to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also serves as a minister in the Defense Ministry.
According to reports, Winner — who commands the operational planning team in the Southern Command, a wartime role — was providing Smotrich with printed presentations from the army, and current information not revealed to the rest of the cabinet, via an unauthorized back channel.
Smotrich did not deny the accusation.
Winner, a former aide de camp to ex-IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi, was accused over a decade ago of illegally collecting and secretly distributing materials aimed at defaming IDF officials, as well as senior politicians, as part of an internal succession battle.
He was arrested and questioned in the incident, his scheduled promotion was canceled, and he was forced out of the army in 2013, but ultimately was never charged.
Winner remained a reservist in the IDF, and in 2018 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general.
During the 2014 Gaza war, Winner was also accused of feeding information to Naftali Bennett, then a political partner of Smotrich, about IDF deployments and findings via an unapproved back channel.
The Times of Israel Community.