Renu­ka Singh

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith says in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar drug bust in Nor­folk, Vir­gina last month are "pro­ceed­ing at a pace."In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Grif­fith said he had in­formed all in­ves­ti­ga­tors, both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al, that in­for­ma­tion and find­ings from the in­ves­ti­ga­tion were strict­ly on a "need-to-know ba­sis.""Right now, no one in the Gov­ern­ment, no one in my Min­istry, not even I, need to know," he said.

He al­so slammed what he de­scribed as "to­tal­ly in­ac­cu­rate re­ports" in the me­dia fol­low­ing the big co­caine bust last month.Since re­ports first sur­faced of the De­cem­ber 20 haul and the ship­ment was traced back to Trinidad, Grif­fith said there have been "lots of in­ac­cu­ra­cies" in the lo­cal me­dia."The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is pro­ceed­ing at a pace. Lo­cal in­tel­li­gence is work­ing close­ly with the US of­fi­cials and the DEA (Drug En­force­ment Agency)," Grif­fith said.

But even af­ter say­ing that, Grif­fith said he could not con­firm that DEA agents were in the coun­try."I can­not make an of­fi­cial state­ment about that," he said.For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an was al­so re­port­ed as say­ing that no ex­tra­di­tion re­quest had been made by the Unit­ed States for any­one in con­nec­tion with the $644 mil­lion drug find.

Last month, US Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion (CPB) of­fi­cers seized 732 pounds of co­caine con­cealed in cans bear­ing the la­bels of Trinidad Or­ange and Grape­fruit Juices at the Port of Nor­folk in Vir­ginia, Unit­ed States. The co­caine had a street val­ue of over US$100 mil­lion and was re­port­ed as the largest such drug find in Port of Nor­folk's his­to­ry. The con­tain­er, port of­fi­cials said then, was bound for New York.

Lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er SM Jaleel, which pro­duces the juice cans, re­leased sev­er­al state­ments dis­tanc­ing the com­pa­ny from the find and has since launched its own in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions.Grif­fith was al­so crit­i­cal of the idea that the T&T brand was at risk. He said the busi­ness sec­tor of­ten of­fers "ex­cel­lent rec­om­men­da­tions and con­struc­tive crit­i­cism," but not in this mat­ter.

"What I have no­ticed, how­ev­er, is that cer­tain oth­ers–thank­ful­ly on­ly a hand­ful–who were silent for years pri­or to May 2010, and there was not a sound from them when T&T on a whole was at risk, but now they are stat­ing that brand T&T is at risk.

Now we are mak­ing a ma­jor break­through by seiz­ing il­le­gal drugs and weapons in abun­dance and do­ing a com­plete re­fur­bish­ment of our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, whilst work­ing hand in hand with our in­ter­na­tion­al for­eign al­lies as nev­er seen be­fore. But all of a sud­den, cer­tain peo­ple have dis­cov­ered their vo­cal cords and are de­mand­ing re­sults," he said.

"The crim­i­nals were get­ting away with it, and this af­fect­ed our rep­u­ta­tion even more. This (drug) seizure would in­deed hit those in­volved in the il­le­gal drug trade very hard, and the on­ly peo­ple who should be up­set are crim­i­nals," Grif­fith said.