Suspicious DVDs From Ehud Barak’s Office Discovered

The Israeli Defense Ministry said Thursday night that DVD recordings recently found in the safe of an ex-security officer in the Defense Ministry were probably not related to the “Harpaz affair,” a scandal involving internal squabbling over the nominee for army chief of staff in 2011.

• IDF Chiefs and Defense Ministers: Ties Without Rules
• The Harpaz Affair for Dummies: What's It All About?
• Indictments Recommended Over Harpaz Affair
• Barak Denies Alzheimer's Rumors
• AG Orders Check of DVDs From Barak’s Bureau

"According to the dates marked on the DVD's labels found in the safe of the guard who was fired after a disciplinary hearing, the recordings are from 2006 and 2012, so it seems they are not from the Harpaz affair period," commented the ministry after Israel's Channel 2 revealed the discovey of the recordings.

The Defense Ministry added that it brought the matter to the attention of the attorney general and is awaiting his orders about what to do with the recordings.

According to Channel 2, the DVDs included discussions held in the office of Ehud Barak, the former defense minister.

Former army chief-of-staff Gabi Ashkenazi had demanded after the affair broke that the reported erasure of recordings of discussions in Barak’s office be investigated. The defense minister’s bureau insisted at the time that the recordings had not been erased but rather damaged.

A ministry investigation determined that the recordings were damaged due to a technical problem. Recording devices were installed in the offices of the defense minister and the army chief of staff in 2006, but while the device in the chief of staff’s office recorded all conversations, the one in the defense minister’s office only recorded conversations related to military operations.

Barak told Channel 2 Thursday that the discovery was an “excellent development,” and that he expected the police to investigate them.

“I am very happy they were found,” he said.