An investigation began to be carried out in Justice after the director of Intelligence of the Uruguayan government, Alvaro Garcewould say that the National Intelligence Plan was leaked from Parliament to the press, being the journalist from TV City Y M24Eduardo Preve, who made it public.
Both Garcé and the President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou, have maintained that the leak was made in Parliament and the latter dared to affirm that the act was a “betrayal” to “harm a government”.
However, the Prosecutor in charge of the case found at least three indications that the document was not leaked from the secret session in which it was presented by Garcé in Parliament, but that it would have come from another instance. In fact, the document should have passed through dozens of government agencies, agencies and ministries, which are included in the Intelligence strategy of the current government.
According to the newspaper The Observerthe National Intelligence Plan 2022, presented in the Special Commission for Control and Supervision of the National Intelligence System and the one filtered by Preve are different, a difference that the investigation would have detected.
The one released by the journalist has 14 pages and was numbered, but the one that reached Parliament has 15 pages. There are also differences between the recipients and those involved in the plan, as well as minor details such as Garcé’s name, since only one of them appears in his full name.
“In any case, the content of the document is broadly the same,” said the aforementioned newspaper.
They are different
Eduardo Preve testified last Tuesday as a witness in the Prosecutor’s Office, while the prosecutor in charge, Gilberto Rodríguez, went to Parliament to take the statement from Raúl Lozano, president of the commission where Garcé says the plan was leaked.
Rodríguez understands that there are “other agencies” of the State that could be compromised, in the understanding that it was not only Parliament where this document was. In that same sense, the senator from the Front, LIliám Kechichian, had assured after the leak that Garcé arrived with fewer copies than required for the number of legislators present in the commission, so she took him to photocopy. She understands that this could have been a risky moment.
However, and despite the differences detected, Garcé insists that he has “no doubt” that the leak occurred in Parliament, and that it is the document that he presented in that instance.
“I understand that the journalist has a right and a correlative obligation. He has a right not to reveal his source, we do not denounce the journalist (…) freedom of the press is not at stake here, neither specifically for the person, nor in general. Therefore, the disclosure of the source is not required, but there is a correlative obligation to that right, which is to collaborate with the Justice and immediately present the document so that it can be compared, ”he assured.
“That should happen today, and if not tomorrow. In short, we are, if there is good will, 24 hours away from definitively clarifying and proving that what we have said that the origin of the leak was in the secret session of the commission, also with respect to the Intelligence and Counterintelligence Plan,” he said. the hierarch
