For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) Gary Grif­fith says re­ports that a sus­pect­ed US mil­i­tary base in To­ba­go would on­ly serve to fur­ther se­cure this coun­try from mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion, but felt that trans­paren­cy and clear mes­sag­ing was need­ed on the part of the gov­ern­ment.

On No­vem­ber 30, Guardian Me­dia ob­tained drone footage of the heav­i­ly guard­ed, cor­doned-off fa­cil­i­ty hous­ing the radar.

The im­ages show sev­er­al trucks and util­i­ty ve­hi­cles po­si­tioned with­in the re­strict­ed area, along with a small tent and an­oth­er tem­po­rary struc­ture lo­cat­ed close to the equip­ment, sug­gest­ing use for op­er­a­tional or shel­ter pur­pos­es.

A num­ber of portable toi­lets were al­so ob­served at the site.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp on Sun­day, Grif­fith said if the struc­ture cap­tured via drone footage was, in fact, a US mil­i­tary base, it would serve to pro­tect the coun­try.

He al­so not­ed that it was not un­usu­al for the US gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tions in oth­er coun­tries, in­clud­ing those where there were no ac­tive con­flicts.

“With­out the US Venezuela can ac­tu­al­ly im­ple­ment what they have been threat­en­ing to do for the past few months, which is to in­vade Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Venezuela said in the last few months that we (T&T) were har­bor­ing ter­ror­ists and per­sons bent on desta­bil­is­ing Venezuela and they will hunt these per­sons down wher­ev­er they are, that was a sign that they want­ed to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“They have made sev­er­al threats that they in­tend to at­tack Trinidad and To­ba­go, so we should wel­come any US pres­ence to pro­tect Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Grif­fith al­so said that an­oth­er pos­si­ble ben­e­fit of hav­ing a US mil­i­tary base would en­hance T&T’s econ­o­my with for­eign ex­change.

He, how­ev­er, stressed that the gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to clear­ly state whether there is a US mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tion in T&T and warned that fail­ure to do so would stir pan­ic and en­cour­age the spread of mis­in­for­ma­tion.

“What is re­quired is hon­esty and trans­paren­cy. That will fil­ter down to cit­i­zens to know that this is in our best in­ter­est.

“If it is done in a clan­des­tine man­ner and peo­ple start sec­ond-guess­ing, it will leave the win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty open for peo­ple with an agen­da.”