Gail Alexan­der

The tele­phones of Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er James Philbert, PNM MP Kei­th Row­ley, busi­ness­man Gary Aboud and co­me­di­an Rachael Price were among those tapped by the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA) un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has claimed. In a state­ment to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar read out a list of peo­ple whose phones, she said, were tapped by the SIA. Per­sad- Bisses­sar said: "Un­der the for­mer gov­ern­ment, Big Broth­er seems to have tak­en a very keen in­ter­est in or­di­nary cit­i­zen's pri­vate lives and af­fairs."

The PM pre­sent­ed leg­is­la­tion that pro­vides the le­gal frame­work with­in which pub­lic or pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which are be­ing trans­mit­ted by means of a pub­lic or pri­vate telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work, can be law­ful­ly in­ter­cept­ed. "It is our view that wire-tap­ping is an im­por­tant tool that can great­ly as­sist the po­lice in the fight against crime and pro­tect na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,"�she said.

"It must, how­ev­er, be care­ful­ly reg­u­lat­ed and jus­ti­fied on the ba­sis of nec­es­sary crim­i­nal in­tel­li­gence or a po­ten­tial threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty." She said gov­ern­ments world­wide have found it nec­es­sary to em­brace the use of com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­ter­cep­tion to col­lect the vi­tal in­tel­li­gence need­ed to gain the ad­van­tage to fight do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al crime and ter­ror­ism.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, how­ev­er, said she was shocked to have re­ceived a re­cent re­port, which sug­gest­ed that the SIA may have been in­volved in po­lit­i­cal wire-tap­ping along with the Spe­cial An­ti Crime Unit (Sautt). She said in­for­ma­tion "sug­gest­ed" that sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion ob­tained via il­le­gal wire-tap­ping of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters' phones was be­ing sup­plied to a cer­tain MP from the Op­po­si­tion bench. "That MP now sits in this ho­n­ourable House and served the high­est lev­el in gov­ern­ment un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion," the PM said. "I asked Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said ex­perts were flown in from Cana­da and a "high-lev­el" team from Spe­cial Branch took con­trol of the SIA's op­er­a­tion on Oc­to­ber 23.

She claimed: "The in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed re­vealed a fright­en­ing pic­ture in­volv­ing and fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety and il­le­gal wire-tap­ping of a wide cross-sec­tion of civ­il so­ci­ety." She said the agen­cies re­port­ed di­rect­ly to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Prime Min­is­ter, as head of the coun­try's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. "In some cas­es, this pow­er was mis­used to spy on po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents and per­ceived po­lit­i­cal en­e­mies," she said.

Per­sad -Bisses­sar said sub­jects who were tapped in­clud­ed:

�2 Mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry;

�2 trade union­ists;

�2 ed­i­tors and jour­nal­ists;

�2�me­dia hous­es;

�2 ra­dio talk show hosts;

�2 co­me­di­ans;

�2 peo­ple in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try;

�2�for­mer Op­po­si­tion MPs;

�2 gov­ern­ment min­is­ters;

�2 sports per­son­al­i­ties;

�2�busi­ness­men;

�2 news­pa­per colum­nists;

�2�ad­ver­tis­ing ex­ec­u­tives;

�2 coun­ty coun­cil­lors;

�2�lawyers; and

�2 in some cas­es, the chil­dren of such peo­ple.�

Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed a "covert project," code-named "OP­PO­RA­TION NEWS" com­menced in March 2005, and has been on­go­ing since. She claimed in­ter­cep­tion in­clud­ed the mon­i­tor­ing of peo­ple's e-mail al­so. "One list pro­vid­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice con­tains the name of every sin­gle gov­ern­ment min­is­ter in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship," she said. "Sad­ly, Mr Speak­er, the names of our chil­dren are al­so in­clud­ed on this list. "There are many oth­ers whose names I have not dis­closed to this Par­lia­ment. The ones that I have men­tioned are per­sons in­volved in pub­lic life in one form or the oth­er."��

She said she did not in­tend to move from Big Broth­er to "Big Sis­ter."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Spe­cial Branch re­ports were that the SIA "was a vir­tu­al law un­to it­self." She said Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers found $5.9 mil­lion in cash and an undis­closed quan­ti­ty of firearm and am­mu­ni­tion was seized. Ini­tial au­dit re­ports re­veal that $15 mil­lion can­not be ac­count­ed for, she said. "Ev­i­dence sug­gests that a mas­sive sani­ti­sa­tion op­er­a­tion took place af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion," the PM said. "Emp­ty fold­ers car­ry­ing the name of the in­di­vid­u­als who were the sub­ject of in­ter­cep­tion were found. "Oth­er records of taped con­ver­sa­tions and tran­scrip­tion of con­ver­sa­tions have been re­moved and/or de­stroyed."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the wire-tap­ping con­tin­ued af­ter the re­sults of the last gen­er­al elec­tion. "It is al­leged that in­for­ma­tion gath­ered by the SIA was se­cret­ly be­ing si­phoned to a cer­tain op­po­si­tion," she claimed. She said re­cent­ly, she in­di­cat­ed that she be­lieved the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion was in­ter­cept­ing pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions of cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing her own. "I now know this to be true," she added. She said her sus­pi­cions were aroused by a Par­lia­ment con­tri­bu­tion by her pre­de­ces­sor dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber 2008 bud­get de­bate. She not­ed for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's re­marks then when he had claimed Per­sad-Bisses­sar had links with some­one from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed Man­ning had said he had called "one of the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies to check it." Of the al­leged over­all wire-tap­ping, Per­sad- Bisses­sar said: "That such il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty was sanc­tioned by the ex­ec­u­tive arm of the State with­out ref­er­ence to the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple and the Par­lia­ment is a tragedy and an ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous prece­dent...the coun­try was be­ing run by ex­ec­u­tive de­cree in­stead of par­lia­men­tary ap­proval."