At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says it was the Cab­i­net and not Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who ap­point­ed mem­bers of a steer­ing com­mit­tee for the pro­posed Na­tion­al In­tel­li­gence Agency (NIA). He said so in an email yes­ter­day in re­sponse to the Sun­day Guardian's sto­ry un­der the head­line "New se­cu­ri­ty agency not yet le­gal."

The AG al­so de­nied say­ing: "Those are high lev­el ap­point­ments that can­not be an­nounced," as was re­port­ed in the sto­ry. Ram­lo­gan said what he stat­ed was: "I point­ed out that we were the first gov­ern­ment to pub­licly name the head of the SIA and SSA." He said he al­so high­light­ed that "for eight years, un­der the PNM, no one even knew about the ex­is­tence of the SIA, far less who was the head."

He said the same ap­plied to the SSA. Ram­lo­gan said while it was "ap­pro­pri­ate to name the head of these sen­si­tive se­cu­ri­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions, it would not be ap­pro­pri­ate to go fur­ther hav­ing re­gard to the na­ture and func­tion of these na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies."

The AG said it was the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment that "passed the In­ter­cep­tion of Pri­vate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act to put the op­er­a­tions of the SIA in a le­gal frame­work." Ram­lo­gan said he was cer­tain that "in ac­cor­dance with usu­al prac­tice and pro­ce­dure the in­ter­view was taped and what I said can be eas­i­ly ver­i­fied."