By Dalcy Lulua
THE National Intelligence Office (NIO) Director General Terence Frawley has addressed the recent leak of the 2022 National General Elections report to the media. He said the leaked report did not originate from his office and expressed concern about how it became public knowledge without the knowledge of the agency. Frawley was speaking during the 5th Public Hearing of the Special Parliamentary Committee on General Elections, where questions were raised about the breach of sensitive information and provisions under the NIO Act.
“It was quite an interesting thing for us to find out on a Friday about an article that came out in the media without the knowledge of National Intelligence,” he said. It was reported that NIO reported a K300 million squandering of public funds by the leaders.Frawley said the article by the Post-Courier was a misleading, false and incorrect because “our reports say ‘unconfirmed’’.He said “unconfirmed reports” from the NIO mean reports needed verification and more information, including facts and figures to support them.
Frawley said the NIO has launched an investigation to identify the source of the leak, focusing on three potential sources — their own office, the Chief Secretary’s office and the Prime Minister’s office. He said any breach of security would be treated as serious and could lead to charges.Director for Security Intelligence David Doonar said: “For the case of information intelligence, when we collect information that needs to be “verified” we put them down on our reports as “unconfirmed”.
“In the case of this report, it was more of the view of informing the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary that these are the information we have and you still need to confirm it with facts and figures.“Under the NIO Act, there are provisions in terms of documents handling and recipients of documents. “For this case, we have identified where the leaked document came from.”
However, Dooner was not allowed to say more about the source.
