Wes­ley Gib­bings

In a leaked 2006 diplo­mat­ic ca­ble from the US em­bassy in Port-of-Spain, "the much-ma­ligned blimps and al­leged at­tack he­li­copters" were de­scribed by US of­fi­cials here as ex­trav­a­gant crime-fight­ing "toys" of the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion. The dis­clo­sure comes via the con­tro­ver­sial Web site Wik­ileaks, which made all 251,287 diplo­mat­ic ca­bles that it ob­tained last year avail­able in sev­er­al lo­ca­tions on the In­ter­net. The rev­e­la­tions about the mil­i­tary spend­ing of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment came in the form of a Jan­u­ary 26, 2006 of­fi­cial dis­patch from the US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain in the name of for­mer US Am­bas­sador, Roy Austin. The diplo­mat­ic ca­ble fol­lowed a Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SAUTT) meet­ing with the US Jus­tice De­part­ment's In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal In­ves­tiga­tive Train­ing As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (IC­I­TAP).

The dis­patch says that "due to the Govt's abil­i­ty to buy the toys they want (such as the much-ma­ligned blimps and al­leged at­tack he­li­copters), US Gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance should tar­get build­ing up ba­sic skills and cre­at­ing sus­tain­able, self-per­pet­u­at­ing train­ing pro­grammes in Trinidad and To­ba­go." The ill-fat­ed US$15 mil­lion blimp has since been tak­en out of ser­vice and is be­ing sold while two Au­gus­ta Wes­land AW139 at­tack he­li­copters were com­mis­sioned by the mil­i­tary Air Guard in June this year. In the leaked ca­ble, for­mer SAUTT di­rec­tor, Brigadier Gen­er­al Pe­ter Joseph, is said to have com­plained dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tions with US au­thor­i­ties that the Unit was be­ing asked by the gov­ern­ment of the day to "creep, walk and run at the same time."

In the leaked diplo­mat­ic ca­ble, the US em­bassy says Brig Joseph lament­ed the fact that SAUTT had been hav­ing a hard time work­ing with the Or­gan­ised Crime and Nar­cotics Unit (OC­NU), "which caus­es some prob­lems be­cause of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al turf wars." Dur­ing a brief­ing with IC­I­TAP of­fi­cials, Joseph is de­scribed as want­i­ng "to make a per­cep­ti­ble im­pact on crime by re­duc­ing the mur­der rate and re­duc­ing kid­nap­pings." "He al­so wants," the leaked diplo­mat­ic ca­ble says, "to change the per­cep­tion that peo­ple can walk around Trinidad car­ry­ing weapons with­out reper­cus­sions." Part of achiev­ing these goals, the doc­u­ment says "will be to work close­ly with the po­lice force and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies to sup­ple­ment their skills with SAUTT's abil­i­ties that fo­cus on kid­nap­ping and mur­ders."

The leaked dis­patch de­scribes Joseph as "a straight shoot­er who freely ad­mits SAUTT's short­com­ings and is un­afraid to ask for as­sis­tance." IC­I­TAP of­fi­cials sug­gest­ed at the meet­ing that "a com­pre­hen­sive over­haul of SAUTT is nec­es­sary to con­vert it in­to an ef­fec­tive crime-fight­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion." The ca­ble says em­bassy of­fi­cials were "en­cour­aged that SAUTT is now in phase two of their three-phase plan and fo­cus­ing on train­ing rather than on procur­ing more tech­nol­o­gy." "In look­ing at the se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus of Trinidad and To­ba­go, one re­alis­es that al­though they pos­sess some of up-to-date tech­nol­o­gy, ba­sic skills are sore­ly lack­ing," the ca­ble says.