Former Strategic Services Agency (SSA) agents, including fired former director Roger Best, are gearing up to sue the State.
Guardian Media was told that the 28 employees dismissed by the State have been seeking legal counsel over their dismissal from the agency. Among those employees are Pastor Ian Brown, the self-declared spy for the SSA, and his son, who was also employed at the agency, former director of intelligence Joanne Daniel, as well as Best.
On July 3, in Parliament, Dr Rowley read into Hansard a statement on an audit conducted on the SSA by director Brigadier Anthony Phillips-Spencer. The audit revealed that the agency under Best amassed military-grade weapons and ammunition and operated a highly trained and militarised so-called “Tactical Response Unit.”
He also said there were disturbing practices of nepotism and opportunism leading to a concentration of members of one church being hired by the SSA, instances of dishonesty and deep deception, and that the SSA was increasingly incapable of securing public trust.
“Such persons belonged to a cult which was arming itself while preaching a doctrine for trained military and paramilitary personnel with a religious calling to be the most suitable persons to replace the country’s political leadership. They were exerting high levels of influence on the affairs of the agency to the detriment of national security,” Dr Rowley said.
Both Brown and Best are elders of Brown’s church, the Jerusalem Bride Church. In addition, Dr Rowley said that “28 employees of the SSA were terminated, either for violations of the SSA Act and Regulations or for anomalous recruitment or faulty promotion processes and practices.”
Best, who has been silent since he was suspended from the agency on March 2 and subsequently fired on May 18, in his first statement on Sunday told Guardian Media last week, “The mention of me leading a coup or any form of destabilisation is not only preposterous but ludicrous.”
Guardian Media was told that the employees feel aggrieved that their professional reputations have been affected by Dr Rowley’s statement, which would affect their future employment.
So far, the State has only been able to lay one set of charges against former SSA employees: Brown, Sgt Sherwin Waldron, and Susan Portell-Griffith were charged in connection with the “transferring” of four “prohibited firearms” from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) to the SSA. While Best was detained and questioned, he was subsequently released, as there was no evidence to charge him with misbehaviour in public office.
However, Dr Rowley confirmed that several police investigations were taking place with regard to the SSA. One of those investigations involves murders linked to the agency through the Tactical Unit.
The Sunday Guardian reported last week that three murders—the 2019 murders of Bryan Felix and Aleem Khan, whose bodies were found in a forested part of Cumuto on October 13, 2019, and CCTV camera contractor Andy Daniel—were linked to the SSA probe. Investigators are reportedly looking at the similarity in patterns between the murders of Daniel and alleged gangster Anthon “Bombay” Boney in September 2021.
Criminologist Dr Daurius Figueira last Sunday accused Dr Rowley of acting prematurely in revealing some of the findings of the ongoing audit into the operations of the SSA, especially under the cloak of parliamentary privilege. National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds, when asked about this, said, “I didn’t think that the Prime Minister’s comments were premature. We’ve been dealing with this for months now. The Prime Minister indicated to the national community a few months ago his preliminary understanding of the facts and promised that he would keep the nation abreast.”
Hinds has maintained that the agency, which reports to him, would not be shut down despite the debacle.
