National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds says while he is “constitutionally responsible” for the Strategic Services Agency (SSA), he is not to be blamed for the ongoing fiasco at the spying agency.
Hinds said had he known all that was happening at the SSA, he would have acted much earlier than the Government did to rectify the issues with the agency.
Hinds made the comment at a media conference at his ministry’s Port-of-Spain headquarters yesterday.
Asked if he took responsibility for all that is now unfolding at the SSA, Hinds said: “Of course! I am responsible to the Cabinet. I’m responsible to the Parliament. I’m responsible to the people, which is why exactly I am here today. So responsibility under the Constitution is quite clear.”
However, he said he was not taking blame as that and responsibility are two different things, which he said he has tried to explain to the nation repeatedly.
“Blame is one thing, responsibility in the constitutional sense is another something I have tried to share with this nation on several occasions in the past. I can’t know. I could not have known who the SSA was hiring, whether it was members of one church or next, whether it was members of one family or next. I could not have known that. As a matter of fact, had I known that I’d have stopped it long before now.”
Hinds added that if the media had heard he was involved in the hirings at SSA, that would have been an issue.
Defending his colleague, Minister of Caricom and Foreign Affairs Dr Amery Browne, who was in attendance, said Hinds did not act prematurely or attempt to cover up any wrongdoings.
At a post-Cabinet media briefing last week, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley also defended Hinds in the matter, saying that he could not be blamed for the hirings at the SSA. He said only when information came to him and the National Security Council were they able to address the issue, adding it was a case of human failings by members who had responsibility for running the agency.
Asked if the hirings at the SSA needed to be looked at and given greater parliamentary oversight, Hinds said such oversight already exists, but this may have presented a chance for greater scrutiny.
“We learn as we go along and the SSA has been in existence for a very long time. We’ve never had this before, something has developed,” he said.
“So, you will all learn from this, and you rearrange your affairs, increase the height of your fences to ensure that that which popped up, which has happened, doesn’t easily happen again.”
Hinds did not answer directly when asked if the ongoing investigations into the SSA’s operations mirrored that or was greater than when Reshmi Ramnarine, a clerk at the Security Intelligence Agency (SIA), which was replaced by the SSA, was appointed as SSA director and resigned within days in January of 2011.
He said when the Government was sufficiently apprised of what was happening within the SSA, steps were taken immediately to address growing concerns.
On March 2, former SSA director Roger Best was sent on administrative leave and Brigadier Anthony Phillips-Spencer, T&T’s then-ambassador to the United States, was appointed acting SSA director.
Following the shuffle, it was learnt that Best had hired his pastor, Ian Brown, and other members of the church as SSA employees. Brown said he was a spy for the agency and was made an SRP by then-police commissioner Gary Griffith, who said this was done at the request of Best.
Brown was removed as an SRP by current Commissioner of Police Erla Harewood-Christopher on March 19. Brown has since gone into hiding, with his family saying they are concerned for his safety.
As both police and Phillips-Spencer investigate the SSA and its functions, several murders have been linked to the agency, including the death of Andrew Daniel, the husband of former SSA deputy director Joanne Daniel, who was one of 12 people recently fired as Phillips-Spencer continues his audit of the spy agency.
