Guest Blog: Tell me no leaks

As the news editor of the only paper of the big four newspapers in Israel that did not publish any leaks of the Olmert - Talansky affair last week I feel that I am in the unique position to offer my assessment of what has turned out to be an extremely bizarre story.

The Jerusalem Post has covered the story of the daily leaks of the questioning of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his long-time associate Uri Messer with a benign detachment, with some amusement, and a lot of worrying about the state of our democracy. I don't feel bad that we weren't leaked to. On the contrary, I am happy that we are not perceived as a willing tool in somebody's campaign, be it the Prime Minister's Office, the police, prosecution, or any number of lawyers representing Shula Zaken, Uri Messer and Morris Talansky. We're playing it straight, and that's the way I prefer it.

Here are the facts: At the start of last week, Maariv published a 13 page exclusive transcript of Olmert's second interrogation by the police fraud squad in May. In the transcript, Olmert is seen to be tussling with his investigators, writing down all their questions, wasting time, and generally giving them a hard time.

The very next day, Monday, Maariv's great rival, Yediot Aharonot, published its own 13 page exclusive transcript of an earlier Olmert questioning session by the police. In this transcript too, Olmert comes off as evasive, wastes time, and has a serious memory problem.

The next day Haaretz, not to be outdone, published a large transcript of Uri Messer's Q and A with the police, in which he details how he got instructions to pick up cash for Olmert and his bureau chief Shula Zaken from a bank account controlled by Morris Talansky. Messer kept that cash in a safe in his office.

The next day, Yediot also carried similar transcripts of Messer's testimony.

Now, there are a lot of theories as to who is leaking to whom, and why.

Olmert's public relations man, the man he hired to fight his battle since the damning cross-examination of Morris Talansky in May, has publicly accused the legal establishment of plotting to overthrow the Prime Minister because they want to get rid of his Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann. Some of Olmert's associates even go as far as calling it a silent coup. There is some justification for this view.

At the end of May, Morris Talansky testified in open court that he gave Olmert cash in envelopes over 15 years, mostly for upgraded in flights, fancy hotels and expensive cigars. The PM looked very bad indeed. Pundits were saying his days as PM were over, he was likely facing an indictment on fraud, breach of trust and a slew of other crimes, and could even end up in jail. Politically he was finished. Again.

Fast forward to last Friday: Since Olmert's lawyers got hold of Morris Talansky late last week and all of this week, the NY businessman's testimony and character have started to unravel. This is what Olmert had hoped for, even to the extent of working to delay his party's [Kadima] primary race, promising his challengers that his name would be cleared. Olmert believed that once his lawyers got through cross-examining Talansky, the prime minister's narrative that he made no personal use of Talansky's money and that it was all used to cover campaign debts, would gain traction, and Olmert's image would be slightly resuscitated.

Now, back to the leaks. Indeed, Olmert's lawyers made mincemeat of Talansky and his testimony. It was clear over the weekend already that Talansky was looking more and more like a shady, untrustworthy witness. He didn't remember many things, his accounts just didnt add up, he contradicted himself repeatedly, and lost his good humor. Now his earlier testimony looked to be one big lie and all of a sudden Olmert was thrown a lifeline.

And bang! Maariv opens the week with a 13 page transcript showing Olmert in a very bad light. Talansky's demise is pushed to the sidelines as the whole country picks up on the Maariv scoop.

The rest of Sunday, Olmert's lawyers toiled at dismantling Talansky's credibility. Almost nothing he said made any sense, and his May testimony was in tatters.

And bang! On Monday, Yediot Aharanot runs its own leaked transcript, again showing Olmert evading the police and looking as guilty as can be. By Monday evening, Talansky, and his ruined testimony, were again a side item, as analysts poured over the Yediot transcript. Olmert was in trouble again.

By the way, these are not your ordinary leaks: the one-page faxes, the handwritten note passed in the corridor, the crumpled-up photocopy document, or the taped conversation. These are mega-leaks: vast amounts of information given over to a reporter in the form of a CD, or a large file attachment email, probably the former as its harder to trace. These are actual transcripts of a police interrogation, and they were published as is, without editing or changing the format it any way.

Now here is where I begin to speculate: Both Yediot and Maariv published full police interrogation transcripts, not summaries, not highlights. Why would they do this, unless the person offering them the leak made it a condition to run the full transcript? Even I had trouble reading through the entire contents, let alone the rest of the paper. Imagine your average reader, who barely has time in the morning to drink coffee and take the kids to school, reading through an entire 13 page transcript of an interrogation. How many advertisements did Maariv and Yediot have to cancel to get those transcripts in? Speaking as a news editor, I can tell you, if somebody offered me a transcript like that, but said I would have to run the whole thing, I would have a serious dilemma. What do I do with the rest of the news pages? What about the other important stories going on in the world. What about Iran? What do we tell the ads department? Even if I wanted to publish the full transcript, I would have found it almost impossible to do so. Maariv and Yediot had to make pretty serious compromises in the rest of their papers those days to fit in transcripts that most of their readers would not fully read. So we have a situation where both papers published full transcripts that most of their readers would not read, and on which they probably lost some serious advertising revenue.

Here is a point on the timing of the leaks: whoever leaked the transcripts did so because they saw Talansky's credibility drop and Olmert's rise, and wanted to reverse that, or at least keep Olmert's name sullied as much as they could. Who would be interested in doing that and had access to the transcripts? For one, Talansky's legal team who want to protect its client's credibility as a witness. Secondly, the police and state's attorneys office, who want to keep Olmert on the defensive and eventually serve him with an indictment.

And thirdly, Olmert himself, through his PR man, may have leaked the transcripts to the media. This is a tricky assessment, but bear with me: There is no Olmert-Talansky corruption trial yet, people forget that. What is going on now is an extremely bizarre case of pre-trial moves: damaging early testimony, grueling cross examination, and leaks of Olmert's questioning by police. This is a virtual trial taking place simultaneously in the courtroom and in the media. Olmert's public image has been damaged beyond repair, and he is largely considered unelectable inside Kadima, who has moved to replace him. He is likely not fighting to save his political career or public image, that battle is over. He is however, fighting to stay out of jail. Olmert is a lawyer, a businessman, a patron, and should he leave public office one day, he will want to re-enter the private sector, where his experience and connections will make him a very sought-after figure.

In this vein, he may have embarked on a very interesting and sophisticated strategy: Media spin and legal moves have become intertwined in a very complex, very sophisticated battle to stave off a police indictment on fraud and corruption. If the public is by and large not reading the full transcripts, then who were they meant for? Why were they published in full? Perhaps they were meant for other people involved in the corruption probe? Perhaps they were meant for Shula Zaken and Uri Messer, whom Olmert is not allowed to speak with so that testimonies cannot be coordinated, to show his old associates that he did not implicate them or speak badly of them to the police, thus giving them a signal to do the same for him. Remember, Zaken and Messer were the two closest people to Ehud Olmert for the past three decades, his most inner circle. Could this be Olmert's team's way of communicating to the other players involved? If it is, it is extremely risky, and very bold. And I have no way of assessing if and how it could affect the actual outcome of the police's investigation, but it might give Zaken and Messer the message that their old patron kept faith with them, and that they should repay him in kind.

In any case, for a Prime Minister with his back very much to the wall, all options are on the table.

For more of Amir Mizroch's blog entries and articles, see his personal blog Forecast Highs