The High Court will convene in a special session on Tuesday morning to discuss OC Home Front Command Major-General Yitzhak Gershon's request to postpone release of the Lindenstrauss Report.
A panel of three judges will convene at 9:00 a.m. to consider blocking the publication of the interim findings of State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss’ investigation into the government’s management of the Home Front during the war against Hizbullah terrorists last summer.
The special court session is to meet just two hours before the interim report is set to be released. Gershon as well as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, demanded the right to respond to the conclusions drawn by the committee prior to the release of the interim report which the IDF and legislators received on Monday.
Olmert, who complained that the report was to be published before he had a chance to respond, refused to appear at the committee hearings and asked for an extra month to complete his answers to questions. He also demanded the publication of the interim findings be delayed.
National Union-National Religious Party Knesset member Zevulun Orlev, chairman of the Knesset’s State Control Committee accused Olmert of having held up the investigation for “more than four months”, citing “the Prime Minister’s failure to cooperate” with the committee.
Orlev will convene the committee on Tuesday, a meeting which he said had been scheduled in advance. Lindenstrauss is expected to attend the meeting. The IDF petition to the court also included a request to block the committee from holding an open discussion on the report, which is to be a limited draft and will not identify specific individuals.
Attorney General Asked to Probe Leaks
Accusations that the report had been leaked to the media even before those who were identified by the committee had a chance to see it and respond, further complicated the matter.
Kadima Knesset Member Menachem Ben Sasson, Chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee demanded that Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to investigate the leaks, saying they violated the legal requirement for secrecy.
“We have recently witnessed many media publications quoting drafts of the State Comptroller’s reports,” he said. Ben Sasson added that accusations by Olmert Sunday charging that Lindenstrauss’ office had leaked the report “cannot remain hanging in the air. These things must be checked.”
Lindenstrauss’ office denied the accusations. “The State Comptroller’s Office did not present the draft … to anyone, and the fact that the draft contains more than 600 pages, some of them classified, is enough to make it clear that no journalist could have read them in the past week.”
The State Comptroller’s Office added that it had warned media editors that the leaks, which it said it has been fighting, are against the law and that those who publish the findings without permission from Lindenstrauss could be sent to jail and fined.