Its biggest achievement was saving skins of responsible political leaders
Damage that the Easter Sunday Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) has caused to national security by revealing sensitive information about state intelligence operations is far worse than what resulted from the Athurugiriya Millennium City betrayal, senior intelligence officers say.
The adverse fallout of the Millennium City betrayal came to an end with the conclusion of the war, but the country will have to contend with the consequences of the PSC report, which highlights procedural mechanisms of the State Intelligence Service, for many more years, intelligence officer maintain.
"The report has made a scapegoat of the SIS Director who had been named guilty for not taking action, but he did everything possible," a senior SIS officer told The Island yesterday. "He had written 96 reports since 2016 to the IGP and Secretary Defence informing them of the Zahran’s extremist group and its operations and contacts. The SIS Director shared the intelligence reports with relevant authorities and it is wrong to name as a guilty party."
He said that the taking decision on the basis of "responsibility to act" as regards intelligence findings lay with the law enforcement authorities and not intelligence agencies.
The SIS conducted operations and gathered intelligence under the previous government, but the incumbent administration had done away with the operational elements and reducted the SIS to an agency which gathered and processed intelligence, another senior officer said.
The post of Chief of National Intelligence had been created by the previous government to coordinate the operations of intelligence but the incumbent government had made it redundant and this fact has been mentioned in the PSC report, a senior SIS officer said.
( The Island)
( The Island)
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