Renee Pendergast said senior officials' handling of a Telegram access to information request in 2007 was not at all unusual. (CBC)

A witness at Newfoundland and Labrador's breast cancer inquiry has contradicted earlier testimony that senior government officials, including in the premier's office, tried to control the release of documents to the media.

Renee Pendergast, who used to manage information requests for the cabinet secretariat, said officials did not give special attention to a 2007 request for briefing notes on flawed hormone receptor tests that had been prepared for successive ministers of health.

The inquiry has heard, however, that this particular access to information request had garnered a great deal of interest from the highest levels of government.

Reg Coates, an official in the Department of Health and Community Services, told the Cameron inquiry in June how he was surprised by "the level of intensity" shown by officials in the office of Premier Danny Williams and in the cabinet secretariat.

He said they tried to control the release of information to the Telegram, and that the premier's office insisted that information be edited out of key documents.

Pendergast said on Wednesday that wasn't the case.

"The job of cabinet secretariat is to support the premier. The premier is our minister and, you know, what some people might consider to be an extraordinary involvement [in access to information] requests, I consider it to be my day-to-day responsibilities," said Pendergast, who served in cabinet secretariat for a year and a half.

"It's no way excessive. This particular request was handled exactly the same way and was put under the same type of scrutiny and lens of any other request that has hit my desk."

Pendergast was not on the original witness list for the Cameron inquiry. A lawyer for the government of Newfoundland and Labrador asked that she be called.

In June, after Coates testified, Justice Minister Jerome Kennedy said it was "absolutely ordinary" for political staff in the premier's office to become involved in the handling of an access to information request.

Justice Margaret Cameron is examining how hundreds of breast cancer patients received inaccurate hormone receptor test results, and also with how officials dealt with the crisis once it emerged in 2005.