In a telephone interview with Bulgarian television bTV, former deputy head of the State Agency for National Security (SANS), Ivan Drashkov, lashed out at former chairperson of SANS, Petko Sertov, member of parliament Tatyana Doncheva, as well as spokesperson for SANS Zoya Dimitrova.

According to Drashkov, the three had "lied and misled" the Bulgarian public for almost a year about who ordered a far-reaching investigation of contacts between MPs and journalists, known as the operation Gallery.

Drashkov said he welcomed the announcement by Prime Minister Boiko Borissov to declassify information about the operation, but expressed doubt whether that would be sufficient to understand the reasons behind the investigation.

According to Drashkov, it was Sertov who had ordered the operation. "But since opening any operative work takes about a week of technical training, proposal writing, referencing actual work, and so on, the start of the operation had been registered in the office books as a few days after Sertov went on leave," Drashkov said.

Drashkov said his signature was not on any Gallery documents. Drashkov said it was Sertov who ordered the operation, though he could not say whose idea it had been.

Drashkov said that as far as he knew, the phones of politicians had not been tapped. This, allegedly, was a "part of the plan to create a row," Drashkov said.

Drashkov said he did not know how many journalists' phones had been tapped, but said he considered the claim of SANS spokesperson Zoya Dimitrova that it was only one journalist to be a lie.

According to Drashkov, the possibility of phone-tapping in Bulgaria was so real, that anyone intelligent would not say anything over the phone that they did not want society to know.

"So I think tapping phones is silly," Drashkov said.

According to Drashkov, politics had changed Sertov and to wash his hands, using subordinates was "a great betrayal" for a manager, Drashkov said.