Police look into newly surfaced Barak tapes
Despite initial hopes that materials could shed new light on corruption scandal, officials say recordings may be irrelevant
Adiv Sterman is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
Discs with recordings of conversations between several officials in the office of former defense minister Ehud Barak have been found in a safe belonging to a security officer who recently left the Defense Ministry, Channel 2 News reported Thursday evening.
But while police initially believed the discovery could lead to a breakthrough in the investigation of a high-level military corruption scandal between 2009 and 2011, it was later understood that the tapes only contained information from the years 2006 and 2012, which are irrelevant to the case.
The recordings that the police are seeking are thought to have been lost or destroyed. Investigators believe they could possess key information regarding a mid-2010 attempt to influence the appointment of the successor to then-Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and shed light on Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi’s possible involvement in that affair.
Police have focused on the sour working relationship between Ashkenazi and Barak during the time both of them were in office. Investigators say the spat between the two contributed to a delay in over 150 senior IDF appointments, impacted the process by which Ashkenazi’s successor was chosen, and preoccupied both the chief of staff’s office and that of the defense minister for well over a year — a period that included Israel’s Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza and the growing effort to grapple with Iran’s nuclear program.
In September, police recommended that Ashkenazi stand trial for his alleged involvement in the scandal. After over a year of investigating, special investigative unit Lahav 433 determined that there was enough evidence to charge Ashkenazi with breach of trust and for delivering classified information to journalists.
However, Ashkenazi and his associates were cleared of any involvement in forging a document leaked to the press by a former officer and Ashkenazi family friend, which defamed a candidate to succeed Ashkenazi.
The director of the police’s investigative and intelligence department added that even while some of Ashkenazi’s actions did not cross the threshold of criminality, they did “raise questions concerning the conduct of a public official, especially one who is in charge of the state’s security, in regard to the norms of conduct expected from such officials.”
Police also said they found enough evidence to indict former IDF spokesman Avi Benayahu; Ashkenazi’s personal aide, Col. (res.) Erez Weiner; former officer Boaz Harpaz; and cabinet secretary Avichai Mandelblit, who served as the military prosecutor when the so-called Harpaz affair came to light.
In addition, Channel 2 reported, police will recommend disciplinary action against Director of Security for the Defense Establishment Amir Kane.
The police were said to have incriminating evidence — namely recordings of conversations — against Ashkenazi, which could lead to charges of breach of trust, obstruction of an investigation, and providing unauthorized information in the affair. Several of those tapes show Ashkenazi sharing military secrets with reporters, information that could have put soldiers at risk.
As chief of the General Staff from February 2007 to February 2011, Ashkenazi was found by the report to have acted in “a manner unworthy” of a senior officer in his collaboration with Harpaz, who sought to besmirch Barak.
Weiner, who was the primary point of contact to Harpaz, was also found to have acted in a manner unbecoming to a senior IDF officer, an ongoing comportment that revealed “a mistaken understanding on his part of the boundaries between the permissible and the impermissible.”
The investigation into the affair was sparked by a document released to the press by Harpaz, which was purported to detail a plan by Brig. Gen. Yoav Galant, a candidate to succeed Ashkenazi, to gain the nomination and smear Ashkenazi. First revealed on Channel 2 News on August 6, 2010, the police found within days that the author of the document was Harpaz, “a family friend,” by his own admission, of Gabi Ashkenazi and his wife, Ronit.
In March 2014, police arrested Weiner and Benayahu, who were both described to the courts as “a danger to public security.”
Harpaz was sent to 10 days of house arrest after he was interrogated by police for several hours.
According to police, all three are suspected of committing theft, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, fraud, breach of trust and conspiracy.
Police said that Harpaz, Weiner and Benayahu had all illegally collected and secretly distributed materials aimed at defaming IDF officials, as well as senior politicians. The three are suspected of conspiring to stymie the nomination of Galant to succeed Ashkenazi as chief of the IDF General Staff.
The police added that Benayahu and Weiner had illegally held classified and confidential documents.
For his part, Benayahu said he had been involved in the affair “not of his own will,” as he had only been a mediator between Ashkenazi and “senior politicians.”
Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report.
