Gail Alexan­der

A se­nior po­lice­man wrote to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in mid-Oc­to­ber 2010, rec­om­mend­ing that an in­ter­im man­age­ment team, head­ed by Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine, should be ap­point­ed at the now-de­funct Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA), Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley has claimed.

"So now we know the an­swer to how Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine was se­lect­ed and ap­point­ed, on the rec­om­men­da­tion to a new Prime Min­is­ter by a rogue po­lice of­fi­cer," Row­ley al­leged on Tues­day night at a PNM meet­ing in St Au­gus­tine. The Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine is­sue was one of the ear­li­est furores to hit the new PP ad­min­is­tra­tion in Jan­u­ary 2011 af­ter Ram­nar­ine was ap­point­ed SIA di­rec­tor. Amid crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment over her ap­point­ment and lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions, Ram­nar­ine re­signed days af­ter the is­sue be­came pub­lic.

On Tues­day night, Row­ley read from the po­lice of­fi­cer's let­ter to the Prime Min­is­ter on the SIA. Row­ley's of­fice yes­ter­day sup­plied a full copy of the let­ter from the Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cer, which was head­ed "se­cret."The Op­po­si­tion of­fice al­so re­leased a re­port, marked as be­ing from the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent to then Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 2010, which said the phones of the Prime Min­is­ter and mem­bers of her Gov­ern­ment were tapped be­tween 2008 and 2009.

Row­ley said the of­fi­cer's let­ter to the PM on the SIA is­sue made it clear the of­fi­cer had been con­tact­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter.Not­ing the PM heads the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), Row­ley said the Prime Min­is­ter went to the po­lice of­fi­cer and "asked him what to do."Row­ley said "su­per­in­ten­dent so-and-so "was re­port­ing di­rect­ly to the PM, un­known to the po­lice com­mis­sion­er and NSC, and cov­ered him­self when he said in his let­ter that the Prime Min­is­ter had called him.

He quot­ed from the let­ter: "At 12.15 pm on Oc­to­ber 11, 2010, I was con­tact­ed by the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter ..."Row­ley said the of­fi­cer "slan­dered every­one who he want­ed to get out of the way of the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem" in the let­ter by nam­ing some SIA staff as "sup­port­ers of the PNM and ex­treme­ly loy­al to Mr So-and-So..."He said the po­lice of­fi­cer's let­ter iden­ti­fied six tele­phone in­ter­cept of­fi­cers and read out: "Su­san J, An­na M, Conard B, Christo­pher F, Ann C, Ar­lene V..."

He said the let­ter went on to say that 25 oth­er peo­ple whose names fol­lowed were "very loy­al to Mr So-and-So." Row­ley not­ed that when the PM was leav­ing for Ja­maica in 2010, she said she was fir­ing SAUTT of­fi­cials. He claimed that was al­so linked to the po­lice of­fi­cer's let­ter, which told her who was PNM in the unit and that some staff still main­tained close links with the PNM.

He said the of­fi­cer's let­ter then made rec­om­men­da­tions, which he read: "The sit­u­a­tion at the SIA war­rants im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion. If sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion from that unit is al­lowed to be clan­des­tine­ly sent to lead­ing mem­bers of the PNM, it would un­der­mine the le­git­i­mate con­sti­tut­ed Gov­ern­ment of T&T and ul­ti­mate­ly lead to its down­fall."Row­ley said the po­lice of­fi­cer was re­port­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, knew who "was PNM" in the unit and rec­om­mend­ed they be re­moved and the PM fired all of them.

He said the of­fi­cer rec­om­mend­ed that the SIA di­rec­tor, as well as oth­ers men­tioned in his re­port, should be re­lieved of their posts im­me­di­ate­ly and the Prime Min­is­ter al­so com­plied.He read out the of­fi­cer's rec­om­men­da­tion B in his let­ter that "an in­ter­im man­age­ment com­mit­tee, head­ed by SIA's Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine (Tech­ni­cal Op­er­a­tor)", should be ap­point­ed im­me­di­ate­ly.

The copy of the let­ter, is­sued by the Op­po­si­tion of­fice yes­ter­day, said an in­ter­im man­age­ment com­mit­tee, head­ed by Ram­nar­ine and sev­er­al oth­er named of­fi­cers, "should be ap­point­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to pro­tect the as­sets of the State un­til Mrs Julie Brown com­pletes her as­sign­ment" with one Dr Gibran.Row­ley said the let­ter went on to make sim­i­lar rec­om­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing steps to merge the SIA, SSA and SAUTT with oth­er agen­cies in­to a new in­tel­li­gence agency head­ed by one "Mr Gan­pat."

He said: "That brings us to the point of the Fly­ing Squad. This is where the idea of a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre came from."Se­cu­ri­ty sources said yes­ter­day that the of­fi­cer Row­ley spoke of is a se­nior Spe­cial Branch mem­ber who was on leave.