Cabinet secretary fumes at AG for publicly rebuking him over letter of ‘greatest secrecy’

Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs rejects Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara criticism of a letter he sent to the National Security Council. Fuchs says her complaint to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the letter “harmed the work of the cabinet and public trust.”

The attorney general strongly criticized Fuchs and the government for what she said were procedural violations when making weighty cabinet decisions. These include the letter Fuchs wrote on July 31, which Baharav-Miara said had been a legal brief written by Fuchs without due authority.

A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office in response to the attorney general says, however, that Fuch’s letter was not a legal brief, but rather a memo of the “greatest secrecy” which he sent to the head of the National Security Council, and that the attorney general and the prime minister’s military secretary were also copied on.

“In total contrast to the attorney general’s claim, the cabinet secretary’s letter was sent in the framework of his authority as secretary of the Security Cabinet, does not constitute a legal opinion and has no implications in the security field,” insists the statement on Fuchs’s behalf.

“The attempt to attribute ‘severe consequences in the realm of security” in the public letter which the attorney general sent to the press — to a letter which dealt with professional administrative issues alone is a distortion of reality, harms the work of the cabinet and public trust,” asserts the statement.