Australian investigative journalist Cameron Stewart, who broke the sensational story on the leak of data on Indian Scorpene submarines, has questioned the Indian Navy’s attempt to downplay the leak, saying his newspaper can post all the leaked documents online if India feels they pose no threat.
In an email response to questions from IANS, Stewart, an Associate Editor with The Australian, said the Navy was just trying to do “damage control”. “The Navy is just trying to control the public relations damage of the leak, so they are trying to play it down. If they claim there is no damage, then maybe we should now put all 22,400 confidential documents on the net,” Stewart told IANS.
“I have gone through the documents in detail with a Defence expert (who helped me redact those few we put out in the web) and there is no doubt these documents should never be available in the public arena. If they applied to the Australian Navy, they would be highly classified,” he said.
“This is a major and serious data leak despite the self-interested spin from India and France in trying to play it down.”