Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

For­mer di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Ma­jor Roger Best is dis­tanc­ing him­self from claims by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that the agency un­der his watch was plot­ting to re­place the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship.

“The men­tion of me lead­ing a coup or any form of desta­bi­liza­tion is not on­ly pre­pos­ter­ous but lu­di­crous,” he told the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day in his first state­ment fol­low­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­port.

Last Wednes­day in Par­lia­ment, Dr Row­ley read in­to Hansard a state­ment on the con­clu­sion of 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”, 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 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.

For his part, Best has been silent since he was sus­pend­ed from the agency on March 2 and sub­se­quent­ly fired on May 18.

His fir­ing came af­ter his de­ten­tion and in­ter­view by po­lice, fol­low­ing which three SSA em­ploy­ees—Pas­tor Ian Brown, the self-pro­claimed spy, Sgt Sher­win Wal­dron and Su­san Portell-Grif­fith—were charged with the “trans­fer­ring” of four “pro­hib­it­ed firearms” from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to the SSA.

The Sun­day Guardian sent sev­er­al ques­tions to Best and while he chose to ad­dress Dr Row­ley’s state­ment di­rect­ly, he opt­ed to an­swer the oth­ers through an in­ter­me­di­ary.

“These claims are pre­pos­ter­ous and filled with many de­grees of dis­in­for­ma­tion to suit a par­tic­u­lar nar­ra­tive that was based on in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion from the be­gin­ning,” a source close to Best said.

“This was part of a witch hunt; any­one who con­duct­ed a prop­er au­dit would have known that weapons with­in the SSA were in­her­it­ed from the four agen­cies that formed the new SSA in 2016,” the source said.

“Roger Best has spent over 35 years in pro­tect­ing the state as a sol­dier and in var­i­ous units of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty; he has placed his life on the line for this na­tion with dis­tinc­tion and he would, if called up­on to do so to­day; he is a true pa­tri­ot, ask them who tru­ly know him.”

Dr Row­ley dis­closed that fol­low­ing the au­dit 28 peo­ple from the agency were fired.

On the ques­tion of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Jerusalem Bible Church and the SSA, the source re­spond­ed: “There is no link as is be­ing sug­gest­ed. There were bright, hon­est God-fear­ing young peo­ple who on­ly want­ed to serve this na­tion and were qual­i­fied to do so and were ex­posed to all the re­cruit­ment re­quire­ments.”

Nei­ther Best nor his in­ter­me­di­ary chose to ad­dress how the in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing agency came to pro­cure mil­i­tary-grade weapons or the where­abouts of 70,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion that went miss­ing from the SSA.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that Best was not in­ter­viewed for the au­dit and is look­ing at his le­gal op­tions.

Pas­tor Best

Best still is a pas­tor at the Jerusalem Bible church whose ser­mons fo­cus on dooms­day-like lec­tures. SSA sources de­scribed Best as a “born-again Chris­t­ian.”

As the SSA scan­dal un­fold­ed in the pub­lic space, Best took a back seat in ad­dress­ing al­le­ga­tions levied against him and the agency.

On queries over the past sev­er­al months by the Sun­day Guardian, he would re­spond with ser­mon pas­sages.

“Watch­ing and pray­ing; look­ing to Je­sus the au­thor and fin­ish­er of my faith; in this, I will re­joice; He sees and knows all and will al­ways up­hold the right­eous in their day of per­se­cu­tion. Matthew 5:11-12 KJVS [11] Blessed are ye when men shall re­vile you, and per­se­cute you, and shall say all man­ner of evil against you false­ly, for my sake. [12] Re­joice, and be ex­ceed­ing glad: for great is your re­ward in heav­en: for so per­se­cut­ed they the prophets which were be­fore you,” was one such re­sponse.

“A blessed day; I am pa­tient­ly wait­ing on the Lord. Isa­iah 40:28-31 KJVS [28] Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the ever­last­ing God, the Lord, the Cre­ator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, nei­ther is weary? There is no search­ing of his un­der­stand­ing. [29] He giveth pow­er to the faint, and them that have no might he in­creaseth strength. [30] Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall ut­ter­ly fall: [31] But they that wait up­on the Lord shall re­new their strength; they shall mount up with wings as ea­gles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint,” was an­oth­er re­sponse.

Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue

Dr Row­ley con­firmed that sev­er­al po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions were still tak­ing place con­cern­ing the SSA, in­clud­ing mur­ders linked to the agency through the Tac­ti­cal Unit es­tab­lished by Best.

The Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed last week that three mur­ders—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.

On Sep­tem­ber 8, 2021, Boney was dri­ving his ve­hi­cle north along the Uri­ah But­ler High­way when he stopped just af­ter the Ca­roni fly­over. Po­lice re­ports had stat­ed that a dark-coloured SUV pulled up along­side him, and a man, dressed in black with a face­mask, ex­it­ed and ap­proached his car. The per­son in­quired if Boney was the own­er of the ve­hi­cle, af­ter which ex­plo­sions were heard. The ve­hi­cle re­port­ed­ly veered off the road­way and in­to a ditch while the get­away SUV sped off.

Daniel was shot and killed while parked on the north­bound lane of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way near the Ca­roni over­pass around mid­day on No­vem­ber 11, 2023.

It was re­port­ed that Daniel’s as­sailants, who were in a black Nis­san X-Trail SUV, stopped be­hind him on the shoul­der. They got out of their car, shot him sev­er­al times, and fled the scene.

Daniel was the hus­band of the then-deputy di­rec­tor of in­tel­li­gence at the SSA, Joanne Daniel. It was his mur­der which alert­ed the Gov­ern­ment that there was some ex­po­sure to the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Andy Daniel, who in­stalled cam­eras for sev­er­al gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, kept the ad­min­is­tra­tion rights to the sys­tems he set up.

His ad­min­is­tra­tion rights to the cam­era sys­tems, in­clud­ing those of some of the coun­try’s top of­fi­cials, busi­ness­men, and gang­sters (all named), which he could re­mote­ly tap in­to at any giv­en point, made it a valu­able com­mod­i­ty for in­tel­li­gence and crim­i­nal el­e­ments, for use and abuse.

Guardian Me­dia had re­port­ed that in­tel­li­gence gath­ered from the Re­search and An­a­lyt­i­cal Unit (RAU), head­ed by Cor­po­ral Brent Clement, which re­ports on­ly to the Spe­cial Branch, was what alert­ed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, head­ed by Dr Row­ley, that the SSA had been com­pro­mised.