THE PRESS conference at the Justice Ministry had not even finished when, at about 8.30 local time last night, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, decided that the moment had arrived to address the nation.
The Attorney General, Mr Elyakim Rubinstein, and the State Attorney, Mrs Edna Arbel, were still explaining the finer points of their decision not to indict the Prime Minister, but Mr Netanyahu had heard enough. He had escaped prosecution. It was time to go on the offensive.
In a most uncharacteristic gesture, he acknowledged making a "mistake" over the appointment in January of Jerusalem lawyer and Likud party activist, Mr Ronnie Bar-On, as the country's attorney general, and pledged to carry out certain government "housecleaning" to prevent any recurrence.
But defence turned almost immediately into attack, as Mr Netanyahu rounded on the "leftist" media and the unscrupulous opposition who, he said, had cynically inflated the Bar-On affair into a full-scale and thoroughly unjustifiable effort to bring down the democratically elected government of Israel.
From Mr Netanyahu's vigorous TV performance, and from the grim faces of the Labour Party opposition leaders, it appeared likely last night that Mr Netanyahu had probably escaped, with his coalition intact, from the Bar-On affair.
But it was a very, very close thing indeed.
As Mrs Arbel acknowledged in her briefing for the media, not only had the police recommended charging the Prime Minister with fraud and breach of trust, but so too had several members of her own state prosecution team.
And the "distance" separating the various opinions among her officials as to how to proceed, she added, had not been great.
The Prime Minister was not being charged, she and Mr Rubinstein indicated, but neither was he being exonerated.
Mr Rubinstein spoke of there being some "astonishment" as to the decision-making processes in the Prime Minister's office.
The report that summed up the investigation into the affair highlighted the "real suspicion" of criminal activity relating to the Bar-On appointment.
But in the end, it appears, the decision on whether to prosecute the Prime Minister came down to the fact that the weight of the case against him depended on the testimony of one man, a prominent lawyer, Mr Dan Avi-Yitzhak, who was himself a rejected candidate for the post of attorney general and whose testimony in a court trial would doubtless have been attacked by the Prime Minister's lawyers as the bitter, baseless accusations of a disappointed man.
Mr Netanyahu said last night that, as far as he was concerned, the whole episode was now behind him. That may well turn out to be wishful thinking.
It is almost certain that opposition politicians and other citizens will petition the Supreme Court to overturn Mr Rubinstein's and Mrs Arbel's decision not to prosecute.
But both these officials are courtroom veterans, and they will have taken the possibility of having to justify their positions before the Supreme Court into careful account.
There are also several coalition members who were contemplating resigning if the judicial report on the Bar-On affair was gravely critical of the Prime Minister. But they too will, if they want to, be able to find in last night's ruling enough material to justify staying loyal to the Prime Minister.
No wonder that, behind the scenes, officials in the Prime Minister's office were smilingly describing the dossier of findings on the Bar-On affair as "an excellent report".