Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The pro­cure­ment of high-pow­ered weapons and the train­ing of per­son­nel to use them were part of a pos­si­ble plot by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) to re­place the Gov­ern­ment.

These are among the alarm­ing find­ings of the au­dit in­to the SSA that was launched in March af­ter the Spe­cial Branch of the Po­lice Ser­vice flagged sev­er­al oc­cur­rences to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) which led to the in­stal­la­tion of new SSA lead­er­ship.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed the dis­turb­ing find­ings of the au­dit in a state­ment to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

“Shock­ing­ly, the au­dit dis­cov­ered that the for­mer SSA di­rec­tor ini­ti­at­ed the pro­cure­ment of high-grade mil­i­tary bolt-ac­tion ri­fles, com­plete with the most mod­ern si­lencers and oth­er ac­ces­sories; and the SSA was en­gaged in train­ing spe­cial­ly se­lect­ed ques­tion­ably hired per­son­nel in the skill of the use of such weapons,” he said.

The au­dit and po­lice probe al­so re­vealed that the use or where­abouts of 70,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, pur­chased by the SSA, re­mains un­record­ed and un­ac­count­ed for.

In ad­di­tion, some peo­ple for­mer­ly em­ployed with the SSA be­longed to a “cult” that was arm­ing it­self to re­place the Gov­ern­ment, Dr Row­ley re­vealed.

“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 to re­place the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship,” Dr Row­ley said.

“They were ex­ert­ing high lev­els of in­flu­ence on the af­fairs of the agency to the detri­ment of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Many were nev­er poly­graphed, oth­er­wise screened, or in­tegri­ty-test­ed.”

He said the au­dit found that “what was hap­pen­ing at the SSA ren­dered the en­ti­ty in­creas­ing­ly in­ca­pable of se­cur­ing pub­lic trust.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said be­tween March 4 and April 21, 2024, plan­ning and pre­lim­i­nary re­view ac­tiv­i­ties were com­plet­ed in the au­dit.

Dr Row­ley said it was dis­cov­ered that the SSA had adopt­ed an un­ap­proved or­gan­i­sa­tion­al de­sign, struc­ture, and staffing with­out the re­quired au­thor­i­ty of a de­ci­sion, ei­ther by the Cab­i­net, the NSC, or the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

“For ex­am­ple, the SSA es­tab­lished and op­er­at­ed a high­ly trained and mil­i­tarised so-called ‘Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Unit’ for op­er­a­tional pur­pos­es. As part of the au­dit re­view, this unit was ex­am­ined and abol­ished in March 2024. Its op­er­a­tions pri­or to March 2024 are un­der re­view by SSA and the TTPS.”

He ques­tioned, “Why would an in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion, with a man­date to col­lect and share in­for­ma­tion with op­er­a­tional units in oth­er law en­force­ment and de­fence agen­cies, find it nec­es­sary to se­cret­ly have an op­er­a­tional unit of that na­ture and mag­ni­tude?

“For what pur­pose was such a unit es­tab­lished in an in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing agency? What was their role? What did they ac­tu­al­ly do? These ques­tions are still to be ful­ly un­der­stood and an­swered, and form the sub­ject of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Mean­while, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil views this de­vel­op­ment with great con­cern.”

The SSA’s then di­rec­tor, Roger Best, was sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave. For­mer am­bas­sador to T&T in Wash­ing­ton (Ret) Ma­jor An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer was re­turned to head the SSA and do an ex­ten­sive in­ter­nal re­view and an au­dit of the agency. Best’s ser­vices were ter­mi­nat­ed in May.

Dr Row­ley said that notwith­stand­ing the on­go­ing au­dit, SSA’s core busi­ness re­mained un­in­ter­rupt­ed. He said in March, 28 em­ploy­ees were ter­mi­nat­ed, ei­ther for vi­o­la­tions of the SSA Act and Reg­u­la­tions, anom­alous re­cruit­ment, or faulty pro­mo­tion process­es and prac­tices.

Self-pro­claimed spy pas­tor Ian Brown, al­so among those dis­missed, was placed on cer­tain charges along with two oth­ers in May.

The au­dit, he said, found dis­turb­ing prac­tices of nepo­tism and op­por­tunism. For ex­am­ple, sev­er­al fam­i­ly mem­bers and as­so­ciates of par­tic­u­lar peo­ple and of a par­tic­u­lar church were found to have been sur­rep­ti­tious­ly em­ployed in this agency.

SSA ar­moury–103 guns, 100,000 rounds of am­mo

The au­dit found a clear need for im­proved man­age­ment of the con­trolled equip­ment and sup­plies in­ven­to­ry to treat with SSA’s in­creased stock of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion.

“In 2017, the Agency pur­chased 8,000 rounds of 9-mil­lime­tre am­mu­ni­tion, but by 2022, the amount pur­chased dur­ing that year was 100,000 rounds!” Dr Row­ley added.

“While arm­ing it­self, the agency did not dis­ag­gre­gate am­mu­ni­tion held for op­er­a­tional use from am­mu­ni­tion stored for the pur­pose of train­ing, in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices. Sim­i­lar­ly, where­as in 2016, the SSA held 24 firearms—con­sist­ing of pis­tols or re­volvers—since 2021, the num­ber of firearms held by the SSA has in­creased to 103, of dif­fer­ent types and cal­i­bre, in­clud­ing mil­i­tary grade.”

He cit­ed the pur­chase of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion be­tween 2017 to 2022: 2017 (8,000 rounds), 2018 (7,500 rounds), 2019 (Nil), 2020 (16,000 rounds), 2021 (52,000), and 2022 (100,000).

Dr Row­ley added, “Why would an in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing agency need 103 firearms of dif­fer­ent types, and cal­i­bre; and why would the agency in 2022, need 100,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion?”

The PM said there was nev­er a bud­get in the SSA to pur­chase mil­i­tary-grade weapons, nor was the NSC ever in­formed of any such ac­tiv­i­ties or that such ca­pa­bil­i­ties were be­ing de­vel­oped with­in the SSA. “This didn’t pre­vent the SSA from mak­ing part pay­ment for mil­i­tary-grade weapons with sup­pres­sion ca­pa­bil­i­ties,” he added.

He said it was on­ly on No­vem­ber 1, 2023, up­on re­quest from the then SSA di­rec­tor for the agency to bear arms in cer­tain re­strict­ed cir­cum­stances “and per­sua­sive rea­sons of­fered,” that Cab­i­net ap­proved and Par­lia­ment au­tho­rised SSA staffers to keep and car­ry con­ceal­able pis­tols, whether on du­ty or not.

Dr Row­ley not­ed, “This mat­ter is gain­ing the at­ten­tion of the po­lice as we speak ... the mat­ters re­lat­ing to the two bolt-ac­tion sniper ri­fles, of which I spoke ear­li­er, are in­deed un­der fur­ther po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. “

The PM al­so said arms and am­mu­ni­tion be­long­ing to the TTPS were trans­ferred to the SSA with­out au­thor­i­ty.

Dr Row­ley said sev­er­al SSA mem­bers and for­mer mem­bers are the sub­ject of on­go­ing TTPS in­ves­ti­ga­tions, in re­spect of cer­tain mo­tor ve­hi­cles, cur­rent­ly and pre­vi­ous­ly as­signed to SSA. 

TTPS arms, am­mo trans­ferred to SSA mi­nus au­thor­i­ty

Arms and am­mu­ni­tion be­long­ing to the TTPS were trans­ferred to the SSA with­out au­thor­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley.

Row­ley said among the firearms and am­mu­ni­tion com­ing in­to the SSA’s pos­ses­sion in the pe­ri­od un­der re­view, sev­er­al were is­sued from the TTPS Ar­moury to the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT).

“ The nec­es­sary record keep­ing and state­ments of is­sue are quite mud­dled or in some in­stances even non-ex­is­tent. These firearms were chron­i­cled in the SORT Team’s Firearm reg­is­ter. This SORT has since been dis­band­ed be­cause it be­came en­tan­gled in al­le­ga­tions of se­ri­ous hu­man rights abus­es and ex­posed the Gov­ern­ment to Unit­ed States sanc­tions flow­ing from the as­sumed vi­o­la­tion of the Unit­ed States, Leahy Act. “

“This in­volved the killings where it was said by a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, and sub­or­di­nates that per­sons in po­lice cus­tody ac­tu­al­ly died when they ‘fell off a chair’. On­ly re­cent­ly this sick joke was re­peat­ed by a for­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice who used the said ex­pla­na­tion to as­sure the pub­lic that the un­for­tu­nates who fell off the chair ‘could nev­er rape any­body again’,”Row­ley added.

“The up­shot is that arms and am­mu­ni­tion be­long­ing to the TTPS were trans­ferred to the SSA with­out au­thor­i­ty, os­ten­si­bly for of­fi­cial use, by the Guard Unit of the SSA, lo­cat­ed at Camp Cu­mu­to, a TT De­fence Force fa­cil­i­ty, where the SSA al­so has a pres­ence That is­suance, was in clear breach of the Firearms Act re­sult­ing in po­lice per­son­nel be­ing charged for cer­tain crim­i­nal of­fens­es in re­la­tion to it.”

In ad­di­tion, a for­mer SSA em­ploy­ee of the SSA, who was par­ty to that trans­ac­tion was al­so charged in re­la­tion to it.

Row­ley said,” Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions have since re­vealed that the ‘Guard Unit’ at the SSA, nev­er re­ceived the firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, as was de­clared to be the case, in the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments. An au­dit con­duct­ed in re­spect of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, is­sued to the SSA, didn’t re­veal the pres­ence of those firearms and am­mu­ni­tion.

“How­ev­er, on the March 5 a self-de­scribed ‘spy’, who was al­so ap­point­ed a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice Of­fi­cer, by the then Com­mis­sion­er ap­peared at the Cu­mu­to Bar­racks and vol­un­tar­i­ly hand­ed over a cache of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion, to a mem­ber of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Task Force, at the same camp. Sub­se­quent in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­firmed that these weapons came from the TTPS by way of trans­fer to the SSA be­fore it was au­tho­rised to have any such weapons.”

“These firearms were sub­mit­ted to the rel­e­vant na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agency for analy­sis; and were con­firmed to be au­to­mat­ic weapons. Aris­ing out of these re­lat­ed mat­ters, the Po­lice per­son­nel and for­mer SSA em­ploy­ees were all ar­rest­ed and charged for sev­er­al crim­i­nal of­fens­es. It’s still to be de­ter­mined where these weapons were stashed, whether they were ever fired and if so, in what op­er­a­tions, for what pur­pose and un­der whose au­thor­i­ty and di­rect con­trol.”

The au­dit in­to the SSA al­so found in­stances of dis­hon­esty and deep de­cep­tion. For ex­am­ple, the com­po­si­tion of a SSA del­e­ga­tion, was au­tho­rised to trav­el abroad on of­fi­cial busi­ness, af­ter which, a non-em­ploy­ee of the agency was in­ex­plic­a­bly in­sert­ed in­to the del­e­ga­tion, in the place of an em­ploy­ee who was ap­proved for the del­e­ga­tion.

Row­ley said the pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive is now to re­tool the SSA and re­gain the pub­lic trust and the con­fi­dence of all stake­hold­ers, both na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al, “ Suf­fice it to say that there’s much more in­ves­tiga­tive work to be done as the req­ui­site polic­ing agen­cies con­tin­ue to fol­low the ev­i­dence....” (GA)