Last update - 00:00 28/01/2007
Lawyer sues Haaretz for breach of trust in exposing Kern affair
By Carmel Ben-Tsur, Haaretz Correspondent
The Tel Aviv district prosecutor who leaked to Haaretz details of a police investigation into a loan made to the family of former prime minister Ariel Sharon, filed a lawsuit Sunday against the newspaper and a former reporter for alleged breach of trust.
Attorney Liora Glatt-Berkovich had filed a NIS 2.5 million suit against Haaretz for publishing documents related to the affair, after crime reporter Baruch Kra allegedly promised to keep them secret.
The document contained details of the loan arrangement, under which Sharon's son Gilad received $1.5 million from South African family friend Cyril Kern for use as collateral to help repay campaign contributions that the state comptroller had ruled illegal.
The contributions were used to finance Ariel Sharon's campaign for leader of the Likud party in 1999.
Glatt-Berkovich is suing Kra, to whom she leaked the affair, as well as the news editor Shmuel Rosner, publisher Amos Schocken, and the Haaretz publishing house.
Glatt-Berkovich claims Kra broke a number of promises he made to her, including not to publish documents she gave him and to call her from secure lines only, in order to protect her identity as the source.
Kra has denied the accusations, saying Glatt-Berkovich did not impose such limitations, and even authorized Haaretz to publish the content of the document and its picture.
According to the lawsuit, "at one point it became clear that the journalist, contrary to what was demanded of him and what he promised, called the plaintiff from his cellphone - which helped facilitate, in hindsight, the discovery of the plaintiff as the source who exposed the affair."
The lawsuit alleges that Glatt-Berkovich and Kra agreed that the two documents she gave him - a draft request for a judicial inquiry and a letter to the state prosecution - would be destroyed or kept in Amos Schocken's safe at Haaretz and would not be given to anyone, unless the newspaper needed to defend itself in the event of a slander suit.
Glatt-Berkovich says her identity was revealed by comparing the staple marks on the judicial inquiry request, which was given to police by Channel 2 reporter Moshe Nussbaum, "or someone on his behalf."
Glatt-Berkovich maintains that while being investigated for leaking information, she was presented with evidence and segments of Kra's cellphone conversation along with the police forensic opinion that the staple marks on the copy handed over by Nussbaum and the copy she gave investigators were identical. "Following the presentation of this evidence, the plaintiff had no choice but to admit to being the source of the leak," said the suit.
"Had her identity not been exposed as the information's source," said the suit, "she would have likely continued to work and to advance up the ladder until retirement." At that point, she would have been entitled to receive NIS 2.5 million in addition to the sum she would have received for forced retirement.
Kra said in response: "I regret the manner in which Liora Glatt-Berkovich's career came to an end. Nonetheless, the manner in which she decided to deal with her exposure as a journalistic source should also be regreted. The truth is simple: In January 2003 a person I did not know called me and asked to meet me in order to give me documents. Our entire acquaintance was based on 15 to 20 minutes of conversation. Despite the fact that the person didn't place limitations on me, not on secure telephone calls and certainly nothing about a mysterious safe, the Haaretz editorial staff took a careful approach, and asked the person before publishing, which was fully at the person's initiative, in
order to ensure that the document can be published along with the picture, and the source said yes."
Kra says: "The truth is, Glatt-Berkovich would never have been exposed had she not admitted to investigators that she was the journalistic source. It's a pity that she did that, and it is appropriate that she focus on personal rehabilitation, and not waste her time and the court's time on futile lawsuits and irresponsible accusations."