Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) defended the prosecutors' actions yesterday.
"There should be certain limits on press freedom. News reports should not break the law and offices of newspapers should not be exempt from searches," Chen told reporters.
Meanwhile, the China Times said its source for its stories yesterday was Liu Kuan-chu.
The China Times yesterday published three full-pages of coverage of the documents, which they said were provided by the defected former NSB chief cashier Colonel Liu Kuan-chun (劉冠軍).
Liu fled the country in September 2000 with a fake passport and his whereabouts are unknown. He is wanted for embezzlement.
Prosecutors declined yesterday to say why they didn't search the newspaper's premises.
On March 5 the Control Yuan found a senior adviser to the president and the secretary general of the National Security Council (NSC), as well as four current and former senior NSB officials, guilty of dereliction of duty in their oversight in the handling of the secret bank account.
The NSB issued a news release after the announcement of the Control Yuan's verdicts yesterday. It stated that the NSB respected the verdicts and that the Liu case happened because "the NSB did not have a sound administrative mechanism to monitor the secret intelligence budget."
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