Tip-offs can come from anywhere, writes Mark Morri after news broke of explosives-filled caravan

If there’s a secret taskforce to find the ‘Telegraph leak’ over the Dural caravan affair, and they’re going to start interrogating people, please go easy on my mum, writes Crime Editor Mark Morri.

There are plenty of misconceptions about so-called leaks to journalists when a big story breaks — especially when it comes to crime reporting.

The furore around The Daily Telegraph’s breaking the news of the Dural caravan affair — in which a vehicle was found laden with explosives and a list of Jewish targets on Sydney’s outskirts — is a case in point.

You would think that a classified secret document was slipped across a park bench while hidden in a newspaper, or whispered during a midnight meeting in the basement of a government building.

The truth is far less romantic, particularly when a lot of the time information is discovered more from an accidental spill, rather than orchestrated leaks.

When I broke the details of when and how (not who or where) the family of the star witness in the Wood Royal Commission was moved it was called a leak.

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb last week backed down on her claim media reporting about the caravan had “compromised” an ongoing terror investigation. Picture Thomas Lisson

But Royal Commissioner Justice James Wood inquiry into police corruption had not been compromised at all.

Actually, my mum’s friend in her tennis club lived across the road from the family and saw the removalists and knew all about the bent copper who was going to spill the beans on his dodgy mates.

Likewise, when she told me there was an investigation into the possible murder of a child in the northern suburbs that no one knew about, it came from a friend in her sewing club whose son knew the family involved.

I could go on.

The area in Dural where a caravan with explosives was found last week. Picture: NewsWire / Damian Shaw

There are multiple current investigations that the Telegraph has agreed to hold that have come from sources far and wide, like a police raid witnessed by my son to the tip off by the businessman who goes to my coffee shop and knows a person who is being extorted.

Then there are the masses of emails that come in from people, including criminals with information — many of them credible — which result in stories.

In some circles journalists and cops are paranoid that their phones are tapped or being monitored.

Yes, some calls are made from landlines or less frequently nowadays public phones. Attempts to get approval for a second-hand encrypted device from a crook who was going away for a little break was rejected by the accounts department.

You would hope not one law enforcement resource, either federal or state, is being spent on looking for the so called leak to the Telegraph over the Dural caravan affair. Especially when they have the masterminds of the attacks to hunt down and the information would have become public anyway, except maybe to the Prime Minister.

Maybe knocking on doors in the area, one with a federal warrant showing a civilian the names of the suspects may have helped keep the investigation secret for a little longer.

And where would investigators start to hunt and track down the “mole’’? Perhaps members of fellow reporter Josh Hanrahan’s gym where he works out, or perhaps the surfing mates of Editor Ben English?

So if there is a clandestine taskforce in existence to find the rat in the ranks and are going to start interrogating people please go easy on my 86-year-old mum because when she says “I can’t recall,’’ I can assure she really can’t.

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Originally published as Tip-offs can come from anywhere, writes Mark Morri after news broke of explosives-filled caravan