COMMENT | Certain media outlets have quoted me out of context over my comments today on the letter by an intelligence agency to the CIA.

Again, I stress that I have no knowledge of that letter and have never seen it or instructed it to be written or sent.

I have read the alleged leaked letter in an online news media and note that the letter was dated May 4, 2018. On that day parliament was already dissolved, which meant that the country was operating under a caretaker government. I was already deep into campaigning for the general election that was taking place only five days later.

The letter was also on the letterhead of the agency itself and not on the letterhead of the Prime Minister's Department. The letter was not signed by me but by the head of that agency.

The alleged leaked letter seems to indicate that it was a congratulatory letter to the new acting head of CIA and was to update her on the geo-politics situation of Malaysia. Nowhere in the letter was it asking CIA to interfere in the campaigning of our general election.

YB Lim Kit Siang who has been continuously obsessed with me to the extent of issuing statements daily about me has implied that I have knowledge of this letter and was responsible for it.

If Lim has no problems in believing Dr Mahathir' (Mohamad's) testimony in the Royal Commission of Inquiry last year that he was unaware of BNM gambling on forex for four years in the early 1990s and losing RM31 billion, then why does he find it hard to believe that I am unaware of a letter sent directly by the head of an agency (one out of the hundreds of agencies in the government) under their own letterhead, during a time when I was busy in campaigning and I was only in charge of a caretaker government?

The media portal that broke the story said that "well-placed sources linked to the Pakatan Harapan government confirmed the authenticity of the document "

The real question that Lim should be asking is how did intelligence letters leak directly to the media and subsequently confirmed to the media by those in the Harapan government?

Shouldn't intelligence communications with foreign agencies remain secret or was this a deliberate leak by the current government to further attack me and my previous government?

Or is leaking secret intelligence and national security communications to the media going to be the norm and acceptable in the New Malaysia?

Lim Kit Siang should call for investigations over this leak and plug it instead of obsessing over me.

NAJIB ABDUL RAZAK is the former prime minister of Malaysia.

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