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Passersby watch a TV news in Tokyo Friday, Nov. 5, 2010, showing a YouTube video which is said to be showing a Chinese fishing boat approaching a Japanese coast guard vessel, not shown, off disputed islands in the East China Sea. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

A Japan Coast Guard officer who admitted uploading footage of collisions between a Chinese fishing boat and two coast guard vessels to YouTube has told investigators that he first sent the footage to CNN.

The 43-year-old officer reportedly told police and public prosecutors that he sent an SD card containing footage of the collision to the Tokyo branch of the U.S. television channel but subsequently decided to upload it to YouTube.

"It wasn't aired on CNN so I decided to upload it," he was quoted by investigators as saying.

Sources close to the investigation said the officer reported during voluntary questioning that he sent the SD card to CNN sometime between late October and early November, before he uploaded the video to YouTube. However, since the envelope he sent contained no information about the content of the SD card, the card was reportedly disposed of and its exact content has not been determined.

The Japan Coast Guard officer suspected of the video leak bows to reporters after leaving the 5th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters in Kobe's Chuo Ward on Nov. 16. (Mainichi)

During earlier investigations, it emerged that the officer had saved the footage aboard the Japan Coast Guard patrol vessel Uranami, which had been saved on a shared computer, to a USB flash drive and uploaded it to YouTube from an Internet cafe in Kobe on Nov. 4.

Regarding the officer's explanation, a representative of CNN's Tokyo branch said that they were not aware of the fact and could not comment.