What’s going on with the editor of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, and the Australian Federal Police?

Commissioner Mick Keelty was on AM this morning claiming that Mitchell had assured him that the AFP was not the source of the extraordinary leak of the record of interview with Dr Mohamed Haneef. Keelty pointed the finger firmly at Haneef’s defence team as the source, although Haneef’s lawyer flatly denied it.

What is Mitchell doing entering into this conversation with Keelty, given that almost any discussion of sources is dangerous for journalists, since it necessarily narrows the field of suspects?

Keelty also said that no Cabinet ministers would have had access to the material, so that would seem to rule out Government as the source.

The Australian and other News Limited papers have had a few stories recently indicating that someone in the AFP or the senior public service is speaking to them and showing them documents. There was this one last week, for example. One wonders how the sources feel about Mitchell getting cosy with Keelty.

The AFP have acquired considerable experience, and presumably expertise, in investigating leaks over the last ten years. Most recently there was the case of former Customs officer Allan Kessing, and previously the leak that put Herald Sun journalists Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus in the gun for refusing to identify their source for a story embarrassing the Government.

So the great unasked question at present is why the editor and reporters of The Australian aren’t having their doors kicked in as we speak. Presumably Mitchell’s conversation with Keelty has forestalled any such action.

Can the AFP investigate a leak from themselves? Will they do so? And if they do and prosecutions result, what sort of a position will Mitchell be in?