A considerable number of the "green books" that are central to the Garda investigation into leaks of Government documents are in the private papers of Mr Gay Mitchell which he took with him when he left office, he said yesterday.Mr Mitchell said his documents, relating to Northern Ireland had been untouched since he left office, were kept under lock and key and could not have been leaked to the media.Mr Mitchell told The Irish Times that when he took office as Minister of State at the Departments of Foreign Affairs and of the Taoiseach he asked that his private papers be filed for him so he could take them when he left office. Some ministers took their private papers with them, he said, while others donated them to libraries or institutions.When he became a Minister of State he found "green books stewn around he offices, lying on windowsills, the floor, the tops of filing cabinets". It wasthen that he asked his private secretary to file his private papers.When he left office in June, some 40 small boxes of documents were given to his driver to be brought to a secure place of storage. The vast majority of these documents related to European affairs, he said, but a few boxes related to Anglo-Irish matters.Among these would have been the weekly "green books" compiled by the Anglo-Irish division of the Department of Foreign Affairs. It wa documents in these books, leaked to the media over the past fornight, which were used to suggest that Mary McAleese sympathised with Sinn Fein.He used to skim the contents of the green books, he said, and occasionally read documents of interest. He could not recall reading the document relating to Ms McAleese but that didn't mean he did not receive them.He had taken documents from these boxes only once, he says, and that was to find material on the Amsterdam treaty."The boxes are indexed, the ones relating to Anglo-Irish matters have not been touched and any forensic examination will show that they have not been disturbed," he said.There was no question that he would have leaked anything from them, he says, and nobody else had had access to them.The Garda investigation into the leaks is entering its second week. While officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and some journalists have been interviewed, none of the politicians who had access to the documents have been spoken to yet.