Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er Gary Grif­fith has dis­tanced him­self–and the Prime Min­is­ter–from a state­ment is­sued last week by the Prime Min­is­ter's own of­fice which gave the "wrong im­pres­sion" about the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency. The state­ment was is­sued in the wake of com­ments last Mon­day by Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, who said the files from the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA) were trashed by "two Is­raeli men." He al­so made oth­er re­marks. Af­ter Vol­ney's ut­ter­ances, last Tues­day, the PM's of­fice is­sued the re­lease head­ed "Re me­dia re­ports about SIA files al­leged­ly linked to the of­fice of the PM." That OPM state­ment stat­ed that the OPM "is NOT nor has ever been in pos­ses­sion of any in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions by the SIA and al­le­ga­tions oth­er­wise are false mis­lead­ing and er­ro­neous."

That re­lease stat­ed that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice had and con­tin­ued to have sole and ex­clu­sive ju­ris­dic­tion and con­trol over the SIA and all mat­ters con­cern­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions fall ex­clu­sive­ly un­der the CoP. Af­ter crit­i­cisms, in­clud­ing from the Op­po­si­tion on the state­ment, the OPM is­sued a sub­se­quent re­lease last Wednes­day stat­ing that the OPM "wished to clar­i­fy ques­tions over which agency had over­sight over the SIA." The state­ment stat­ed that the pre­vi­ous OPM state­ment "in­ad­ver­tent­ly gave the me­dia the wrong im­pres­sion that the SIA falls un­der the CoP." Of the foul-up which caused the Op­po­si­tion PNM to deem Per­sad- Bisses­sar as "in­com­pe­tent," PM Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vis­er, Grif­fith said yes­ter­day: "Con­trary to what I have been hear­ing, I wish to make it em­phat­i­cal­ly clear that I have no knowl­edge and had no in­put in­to the re­lease per­tain­ing to the am­bit of where the SIA falls.

"In ad­di­tion, I know for a fact that the Prime Min­is­ter was al­ways ful­ly aware that the SIA falls un­der the am­bit of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, bear­ing in mind that the PM at­tends Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ings for which she is the chair­man and no sub-unit of any law en­force­ment agency at­tends such meet­ings," he said. "All I could state was I was not in­volved in that re­lease in any way and I don't think any gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial should be mak­ing any state­ment on this mat­ter of the SIA with­out the Prime Min­is­ter's ap­proval. "But on the is­sue of the OPM re­lease I, how­ev­er, had to clar­i­fy this in view of my po­si­tion–nei­ther the PM nor I made the er­ror on the state­ment that the SIA falls un­der the CoP. "The Prime Min­is­ter is not to be blamed for this in any way–look in an­oth­er di­rec­tion.

"On Mr (Patrick) Man­ning's claim that the Prime Min­is­ter is in­com­pe­tent, I wish to rec­om­mend that he looks in the mir­ror as it was the last Prime Min­is­ter who in­di­cat­ed he was clue­less to that fact that the SIA was il­le­gal­ly wire­tap­ping peo­ples' phones for sev­er­al years when he was Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil chair­man." The con­tro­ver­sial state­ments were re­ceived by the me­dia from com­mu­ni­ca­tion of­fi­cers at the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice. OPM of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day that the OPM's com­mu­ni­ca­tion di­vi­sion was now staffed by for­mer me­dia work­ers, in­clud­ing from TV6. No one has been ap­point­ed to the post of Press Of­fi­cer va­cat­ed re­cent­ly by Garvin Nicholas, now High Com­mis­sion­er to Lon­don.