Ex-Victoria Police chief Christine Nixon stays mum on Stephen Linnell book claims

CHRISTINE Nixon is “surprised” former police media head Stephen Linnell has written a tell-all book and today refused to comment on its unflattering allegations.

Former Victoria Police media boss Stephen Linnell in Werribee yesterday. Picture: Paul Loughnan

CHRISTINE Nixon is “surprised” former police media head Stephen Linnell has written a tell-all book and today refused to comment on its unflattering allegations.

“I'm surprised he wrote the book. I thought last time I heard of Stephen Linnell, he gave me a letter of apology for having let me down and having misused his position, and that was the last time that I would have heard from him,” the former police chief said on ABC radio this morning.

“This is a speculation and I don't want to comment on some of the assertions that are made in the book.”

In his book, Mr Linnell says that police chief Simon Overland's decision to pass on information from a secret phone tap led to a serious of leaks on a covert operation ending in the collapse of Operation Briars.

He also cast doubts on Mr Overland's justification of the unauthorised disclosure that he was being subject to “collateral attack” from the targets of the operation.

Mr Linnell also wrote that Ms Nixon was approached to become Victoria's governor.

Ms Nixon would also neither confirm nor deny that she was approached to become Victoria's governor before the position was given to David De Kretser.

“I don't have any comment to make about any of the matters that he raises in the book,” she said.

Mr Linnell resigned in disgrace from Victoria Police after a range of recorded phone conversations he held were made public during the Office of Police Integrity (OPI) hearings in 2007.

He later pleaded guilty and was convicted in court on three counts of perjury and three of disclosing confidential information.

But his convictions were overturned on appeal, after a technicality rendered the OPI hearings as informal proceedings. This meant that while Mr Linnell had lied at the hearings, he had not perjured himself because the hearings were not proper court proceedings.

Additional reporting: AAP