Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says there have been no dis­cus­sions on who the prospec­tive can­di­dates are to per­ma­nent­ly fill the role of di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Alexan­der re­spond­ed to the re­moval of Arthur Bar­ring­ton as head of the in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing arm of home­land se­cu­ri­ty.

While he did not pro­vide any fur­ther de­tails as to what prompt­ed Bar­ring­ton’s re­moval, Alexan­der con­firmed that the agency’s deputy di­rec­tor, Roger Mc­Clean, would act as head for the next three months.

Asked if there were can­di­dates in mind, he said, “We haven’t dis­cussed that yet, so I don’t want to pre-empt any con­ver­sa­tion.”

Con­cerns over the abil­i­ty of the SSA to prop­er­ly ful­fil its man­date arose last Ju­ly when for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley claimed that the agency was un­der the in­flu­ence of a “re­li­gious cult.”

Row­ley made the rev­e­la­tion dur­ing a sit­ting of the Low­er House, where he re­port­ed that there was an im­pend­ing threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Pas­tor of the Jerusalem Bride Church in Mal­abar, Ian Brown was al­so im­pli­cat­ed in the pur­port­ed “cult” and was charged along­side for­mer se­cu­ri­ty ad­vi­sor Suzanne Portell-Grif­fith and po­lice­man Sher­win Wal­dron last May for mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice in re­la­tion to the al­leged trans­fer of four pro­hib­it­ed firearms be­long­ing to the TTPS to the SSA.

How­ev­er, the trio was dis­charged in Feb­ru­ary when pros­e­cu­tors failed to com­ply with the court’s in­struc­tions. —Shane Su­perville