Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda says he has confidence in Darius Jauniškis, director of the State Security Department (VSD), despite revelations in a new book by two journalists that throw doubts onto the intelligence agency’s work.
The book, entitled The Whistleblower and the President, alleges that the VSD under Jauniškis’ leadership carried out unauthorised checks on Nausėda’s campaign team back when he was running for president.
“Without any doubt,” Nausėda told reporters on Thursday when asked if he has confidence in the intelligence chief.
The president said that the parliament is free to set up commissions to look into the circumstances of the department’s work, but added that but MPs should take interest “in all areas”.
“What I wanted to say, I have already said,” he told reporters. “I hope that more truth will be found every day.”
In their recently-published book, investigative journalists Dovydas Pancerovas and Birutė Davidonytė cite the testimony of a whistleblower, then a high-ranking intelligence official, that the VSD leadership gave verbal instructions to vet the team of Nausėda, then a presidential candidate.
The whistleblower claims that in July 2018, he received several sheets of paper with a lot of names, and a verbal order from Remigijus Bridikis, the department’s deputy director, “to vet the electoral team of one candidate and the list of possible supporters”.
Although the intelligence agency told the parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defence in a report that all presidential candidates’ teams and election staffs had been vetted, Pancerovas and Davidonytė cite the whistleblower as saying that only Nausėda’s staff and possible supporters were vetted.
The whistleblower also alleged that Bridikis confirmed that the lists had been received from Nausėda himself.
These and other circumstances mentioned in the book have prompted some politicians to demand a parliamentary inquiry.
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