Holes in Overland's disclosure defence

THERE are holes in the justification relied on by Chief Commissioner Simon Overland for disclosing secret intelligence about an undercover murder investigation.

And there are major problems with the written clearance he received from the Office of Police Integrity's director, Michael Strong, a week ago.

Overland has said he had a "permitted purpose" under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act for passing on the intelligence from a telephone tap to the then media director of Victoria Police, Stephen Linnell.

In Overland's words, it was because Operation Briars was facing "collateral attack" from its targets.

He said one of the targets of Briars, Peter Lalor, wanted to embarrass him by leaking to Melbourne radio station 3AW a story about Overland going on a management trip to Fontainebleau, near Paris. This, according to Overland, would have undermined the operation.

Overland's assertions are at odds with his sworn affidavit of late 2007. The Australian can now reveal that his assertions are also at odds with the record of interview with the taskforce head, Superintendent Rod Wilson, who passed on the intelligence about Fontainebleau to Overland on August 14, 2007.

Wilson in this interview makes no mention of collateral attack. However, he does tell the OPI's investigators that he told Overland about the intercepted call, in which target Lalor discussed the rumour going on to 3AW, because he thought Overland wanted to come back and say publicly: "Well, you know, it's a perfectly legitimate management course."

The clearance letter from Strong last week says: "Overland was the officer ultimately responsible for, and publicly associated with, Operation Briars. He has asserted that he regarded the planned leak of the Fontainebleau rumour to the 3AW Rumour File as an attempt to undermine Briars by undermining him. The fact that one of those involved in the intercepted telephone conversation, Lalor, was the primary person of interest in that investigation would give him reason to make that connection."

One of the problems with this clearance letter is that Overland was not "publicly associated" with Operation Briars until September 14 when the operation's existence was disclosed by The Age newspaper in Melbourne. As one legal source taking a keen interest in the controversy put it yesterday: "Not only was Overland's role in Operation Briars not publicly known at that time but the existence of Operation Briars itself was not publicly known.

"This creates the interesting conundrum that even Franz Kafka would have had trouble inventing. The OPI investigates and prosecutes several police members for leaking the existence of telephone intercepts because this would undermine Operation Briars by making the targets aware of the operation - but when questioned as to why the original source of this information was not investigated, the answer is that he was authorised to do so because he was the public face of the operation and the rumour might have undermined him and therefore the operation."

Were Police Association secretary Paul Mullett and Lalor so clever that they could conspire to undermine an operation of which they have no knowledge?

The legal source raises the further question of why a director of a statutory body tasked with investigating police would clear the Chief Commissioner of Police on the basis of "incorrect" or "inconsistent" information.