The Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian con­demns Thurs­day's un­prece­dent­ed, un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and over-zeal­ous raids by of­fi­cers of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau at the of­fices of News­day and at the home of one of that news­pa­per's jour­nal­ists. Dur­ing the raid, which took place as a re­sult of a search war­rant, those po­lice of­fi­cers seized two cell­phones, four flash dri­ves, one hard dri­ve and three of the jour­nal­ist's per­son­al com­put­ers. The po­lice con­duct­ed the raid as a re­sult of a re­quest by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, whose chair­man is re­tired ex­ec­u­tive Ken Gor­don, a man who spent much of his work­ing life as a me­dia man­ag­er and de­fend­er of press free­doms. The raid on the news­pa­per arose as a re­sult of con­cerns by some mem­bers of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion that con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing a dis­pute be­tween Mr Gor­don and Gladys Gafoor, the deputy chair of the com­mis­sion, had been leaked to the news­pa­per.

Mr Gor­don had re­quest­ed that Ms Gafoor, an at­tor­ney of long stand­ing and a re­tired judge of the In­dus­tri­al Court, and an­oth­er com­mis­sion­er, ac­coun­tant Se­u­nar­ine Jokhoo, should re­cuse them­selves from de­lib­er­at­ing on a mat­ter in­volv­ing for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, fol­low­ing a re­quest by Mr Je­re­mie that ques­tioned the neu­tral­i­ty of the two com­mis­sion­ers. It ap­pears that Mr Jokhoo agreed to re­cuse him­self but Ms Gafoor re­fused. There­fore, it can be con­clud­ed that the po­lice, who act­ed legal­ly and in ac­cor­dance with the search war­rant they had re­ceived, tram­pled on the right to free­dom of the press, which is en­shrined in the fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights sec­tion of T&T's Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion, based on a dis­pute be­tween the chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and one of the com­mis­sion­ers and the fact that that dis­pute found its way to a na­tion­al news­pa­per and was pub­lished. We sub­mit that such a dis­pute and such a leak do not come any­where near to jus­ti­fy­ing the raid and the po­ten­tial dam­age that it does to the abil­i­ty of the lo­cal me­dia to do its job in a man­ner that is free and fair and free from fear. Many gov­ern­ments in democ­ra­cies around the world have grap­pled with this is­sue of leaks but there have been very few in­stances in which po­lice of­fi­cers have en­tered in­to news­rooms and seized com­put­ers, cell­phones and stor­age de­vices.

When in 1971 the New York Times be­gan pub­lish­ing what has come to be known as the Pen­ta­gon Pa­pers, the Nixon ad­min­is­tra­tion did not send agents of the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the news­pa­per's news­room to seize the note­books and doc­u­ments of re­porters and ed­i­tors. And the Pen­ta­gon Pa­pers, which were leaked by an anony­mous source, re­vealed that the US Gov­ern­ment had con­duct­ed a se­cret war in Cam­bo­dia, Viet­nam and Laos and that four Amer­i­can ad­min­is­tra­tions had lied about the ex­tent of the US in­volve­ment. No po­lice were dis­patched to the Wash­ing­ton Post in 1972 when that news­pa­per be­gan re­port­ing on a mat­ter that came to be known as the Wa­ter­gate Scan­dal, which even­tu­al­ly led to the his­toric res­ig­na­tion of US Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon. It is ab­surd in the ex­treme and an abuse on many lev­els, then, that T&T's an­ti-cor­rup­tion po­lice should have been sent to find out who leaked the fact of a dis­pute be­tween Mr Gor­don and Ms Gafoor. It is akin to us­ing a nu­clear weapon to kill a fly.

Giv­en the ex­tent of the dis­re­spect met­ed out to the me­dia, we rec­om­mend that the Gov­ern­ment gives se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to con­duct­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this en­tire af­fair, with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on the role of the chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. We would al­so rec­om­mend that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or­der an im­me­di­ate halt to the point­less leak in­quiry and re­turn the seized items to the news­pa­per and the jour­nal­ist forth­with with an apol­o­gy for the ap­par­ent break­down in in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Coun­tries that al­low the po­lice to tam­per with the rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of jour­nal­ists-in a mis­guid­ed­ly heavy-hand­ed search for sources of leaks-are coun­tries that are head­ing down the slip­pery slope to dic­ta­tor­ship and an­ar­chy. We hope that the Gov­ern­ment does not al­low the coun­try to go down that road.