Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has made the star­tling ad­mis­sion that Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) agents were al­ready heav­i­ly armed even be­fore they were giv­en of­fi­cial per­mis­sion to car­ry weapons by Cab­i­net.

The new rev­e­la­tion comes amid an on­go­ing probe in­to the op­er­a­tions of the SSA.

Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Row­ley re­vealed that the SSA did not have the au­thor­i­ty to have armed of­fi­cers un­til No­vem­ber last year, when the Cab­i­net ap­proved it af­ter sev­er­al re­quests.

“We dis­cov­er­ing now that SSA was heav­i­ly armed, well-armed be­fore that time. These are le­gal prob­lems and there are ques­tions to be an­swered as to how they got those arms and whether these arms were en­gaged in any crim­i­nal con­duct. I will not say any more of this. This is a se­ri­ous mat­ter be­ing han­dled by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

Asked about the ques­tion­able op­er­a­tions of some at the SSA un­der his watch as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, and whether his Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds should be held ac­count­able, the Prime Min­is­ter said he does not hire of­fi­cers for the SSA. He added that al­though struc­tures of ac­count­abil­i­ty are in place, peo­ple may of­ten break trust.

“It hap­pens be­cause there are hu­man fail­ings. It doesn’t mat­ter what struc­ture you put in place there are hu­man fail­ings and the ques­tion is are we in a po­si­tion to know that? In this case, what we ex­pect­ed to hap­pen was not hap­pen­ing and thank­ful­ly we dis­cov­ered that and we are now tak­ing ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to find the facts and act on the facts,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter re­vealed that he had con­cerns about the SSA long be­fore the al­le­ga­tions sur­faced.

“I had some con­cerns along the way. As head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, I had to re­spond to a par­tic­u­lar de­vel­op­ment. Two peo­ple in po­lice cus­tody were killed and the au­thor­i­ties could on­ly say they fell off a chair. There have been in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to that and to the best of my knowl­edge, noth­ing has come of it,” he re­vealed.

As head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Prime Min­is­ter said he en­quired and “was bla­tant­ly lied to by the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice”.

“This in­ves­ti­ga­tion is tak­ing place right now at the high­est lev­el,” he ex­plained.

He did not say who the com­mis­sion­er was and when this oc­curred.

But he added that his con­cerns had ex­ist­ed since the tenure of for­mer com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to en­quire whether she was the one the Prime Min­is­ter spoke about al­though names were not called. How­ev­er, she nev­er re­spond­ed.

‘No se­cret TTPS spy unit’

Re­gard­ing the al­leged pres­ence of a hit squad in the SSA, Row­ley said: “Se­ri­ous con­cerns emerge in some of our se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions; very se­ri­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tions are un­der­way, with very de­ci­sive ac­tions tak­en based on the gath­er­ing of in­for­ma­tion. Those in­ves­ti­ga­tions are far from com­plete. I don’t want to prej­u­dice any of them.”

He al­so de­nied that the TTPS Re­search Analy­sis Unit was re­port­ing di­rect­ly to him and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­ster Hinds, or that it had the abil­i­ty to spy on cit­i­zens.

“As chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, I can as­sure you that the po­lice do not have the equip­ment to do the in­ter­cep­tion that the SSA is sup­posed to do. The po­lice re­ly on the SSA to do in­ter­cep­tions, and gath­er in­for­ma­tion, and if crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is iden­ti­fied, SSA shares it with the po­lice. The as­sump­tion that there is an SSA equiv­a­lent in the Po­lice Ser­vice re­port­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, is not cor­rect.”

On March 3, SSA di­rec­tor Ma­jor Roger Best was sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave over the ques­tion­able re­cruit­ment of some em­ploy­ees in the SSA. For­mer am­bas­sador and re­tired Brigadier Gen­er­al An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer was ap­point­ed as act­ing di­rec­tor to un­der­take a re­view and au­dit of all per­son­nel, equip­ment and process­es with­in the agency.

So far, 12 SSA em­ploy­ees have been fired, in­clud­ing the now-for­mer deputy di­rec­tor Joanne Daniel. Daniel’s hus­band Andy was killed in 2023. In­ves­ti­ga­tors are prob­ing if his mur­der, as well as those of Bryan Fe­lix and Aleem Khan, were in any way linked to SSA op­er­a­tions.