At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan made the claim in the Sen­ate on Tues­day. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Man­ning said Ram­lo­gan's claim was "com­plete­ly false and I chal­lenge him to prove oth­er­wise." Ram­lo­gan said Clement told him the for­mer PM in­struct­ed him on cer­tain phones to be tapped.

Man­ning said he want­ed to state three facts on the mat­ter.

He said the first was that "there was nev­er any di­rect re­port­ing re­la­tion­ship from the head of the SIA to me as Prime Min­is­ter on mat­ters per­tain­ing to my role as chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil or in any oth­er ca­pac­i­ty." Man­ning said re­ports went to sev­er­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Cus­toms, po­lice, mil­i­tary, Spe­cial An­ti Crime Unit of T&T and oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies.

He said as chair­man of the coun­cil he met with the SIA head to dis­cuss na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. Man­ning said: "There were nev­er any dis­cus­sions on wire­tap­ping or oth­er meth­ods to be used in wire­tap­ping. As Prime Min­is­ter I nev­er gave any di­rec­tions to the head of the SIA to en­gage in wire­tap­ping." He said sources and meth­ods of in­for­ma­tion-gath­er­ing, in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­col, were left to the agen­cies and he "nev­er in­quired how in­for­ma­tion was re­ceived or un­earthed."