The Prime Minister this Thursday, a month later, answered questions from the Liberal Initiative about the performance of the information services in the recovery of a computer belonging to the Ministry of Infrastructure and formalized the provision of answers to the PSD.
According to the website of the Assembly of the Republic, IL’s questions were sent to the Prime Minister’s office on May 2 and the head of government responded today within the one-month deadline.
As for the PSD, Parliament’s website also contained the Prime Minister’s responses at the end of the afternoon, which Lusa accessed this morning and which were later published on the government portal.
Today, the PSD criticized the prime minister for disclosing the answers to his request to the media before sending them to parliament, contradicting António Costa and the government for responding to the social democrats in the same way as they responded to the questions.
The application with the PSD questions, announced at the end of the morning on Wednesday and distributed to journalists, was only published on the parliament’s website in the early afternoon of today, albeit with an effective date of the 31st.
In the short answer to IL, the CEO recalls several arguments already given to the PSD, repeating some sentences verbatim.
Costa emphasizes that “no member of the government has given any instruction, order or guidance to the Security Information Service” and that “the entities are acting within the strict scope of their powers and within the framework of applicable law”.
The Prime Minister also writes that “according to what has been revealed by the Minister of Infrastructure and confirmed by his Chief of Cabinet [Eugénia Correia]took the initiative to contact the Security Information Service of the Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Infrastructure.
António Costa reiterates his opinion that the head of the cabinet of the Minister of Infrastructure “acted correctly in light of the security breach of classified documents stored on a laptop”.
When asked “can the SIS directly receive a stolen item, even if it represents or contains secret documentation, even with the express permission of the Prime Minister?”, António Costa recalled the parliamentary hearings of the Secretary General of the SIRP, Ambassador Graça Mira Gomes and the director of SIS, Adélio Neiva da Cruz.
“The Secretary General of the Information System of the Portuguese Republic and the Director of the Security Information Service have already had the opportunity to specify with the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees the legal basis of their action and the competent bodies for this. the Inspectorate of the functioning of the intelligence services have already publicly – and unanimously – stated that there are no indications of wrongful conduct by the Security Information Service.reads in the document.
Source: DN
