Reports: Feldstein said he told Netanyahu about top-secret document before leak to Bild

Eli Feldstein, an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in his police interrogation that he had told the premier about a top-secret intelligence document he is accused of leaking to the foreign press, according to the Kan public broadcaster. Channel 13 news also reports that Feldstein told Netanyahu about the document shortly before Bild reported on it.

Netanyahu has previously sought to distance himself from the case and has so far insisted that he learned about the existence of the classified document from the media.

Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court said on November 17 that Feldstein had received the document in June.

Kan reports, without citing sources, that Feldstein said he notified the prime minister just two days before he leaked the document to Germany’s Bild newspaper, which published a report on it on September 6.

A Channel 13 report quotes Feldstein telling investigators he did not initially give the document to Netanyahu — “because that was not my job; it was the job of the prime minister’s military attache.” Rather, Feldstein reportedly testified, “I asked to utilize the classified material in order to influence debate in the media and public opinion.”

However, Feldstein reportedly also told investigators, after Netanyahu held a press conference following Hamas’s murder at the end of August of six Israeli hostages, “I whispered in the prime minister’s ear” about the document, and therefore felt that he was acting on behalf of the political echelon, Channel 13 reports. (Netanyahu gave a press conference on September 2 and another, for the foreign press, on September 4. The Bild article reporting on the document was published on September 6.)

A lawyer for a soldier also suspected in the case said on November 12 that Feldstein had told his client that he passed on the material to Netanyahu, who then asked for more. Feldstein told the soldier, who has not been named, “I transferred [the material] to the prime minister, and the prime minister wants more,” lawyer Micha Fettman said on Army Radio. “He’s clearing a full day to handle this matter.”

Netanyahu has not been summoned for testimony in the case and is not a suspect.