Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The re­cent­ly ap­point­ed head of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Arthur Bar­ring­ton was fired on Fri­day. A me­dia re­lease from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice yes­ter­day said Cab­i­net re­voked his ap­point­ment.

Bar­ring­ton, a for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer, took up du­ties on April 1. He was ap­point­ed by for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young who said Bar­ring­ton would pro­vide much-need­ed sta­bil­i­ty in the SSA.

He re­placed Am­bas­sador An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer who was brought in last year to clean up the SSA fol­low­ing the dis­missal of Ma­jor Roger Best.

Best, who was seen at a UNC ral­ly in south in the lead up to the gen­er­al elec­tion, was fired af­ter be­ing de­tained and ques­tioned by the po­lice.

He was nev­er charged for any of­fence but, three SSA em­ploy­ees—Pas­tor Ian Brown, Sgt Sher­win Wal­dron and Su­san Portell-Grif­fith—were charged for the unau­tho­rised trans­fer of pro­hib­it­ed firearms from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to the SSA. Charges against the trio were dis­missed ear­li­er this year.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Bar­ring­ton said he did not have much to say.

Asked if he was told about his dis­missal be­fore the me­dia re­lease was sent out, he said: “If that’s what you’re say­ing is true, I have ab­solute­ly no com­ment. You can­not ex­pect me to com­ment on that. I can­not give you any word on that at all. I’m not play­ing coy with you.”

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der was al­so con­tact­ed but said he was at a Moth­er’s Day func­tion.

Last Ju­ly, then-prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley read in­to Hansard a state­ment on the au­dit con­duct­ed by Phillips-Spencer, which re­vealed that un­der Best’s lead­er­ship, the SSA had amassed mil­i­tary-grade weapons and am­mu­ni­tion, op­er­at­ing a high­ly trained and mil­i­tarised Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Unit.

The au­dit al­so un­cov­ered al­leged prac­tices of nepo­tism, with a con­cen­tra­tion of mem­bers from one church be­ing hired by the in­tel­li­gence agency.

“Such per­sons be­longed to a cult which was arm­ing it­self while preach­ing a doc­trine for trained mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary per­son­nel with a re­li­gious call­ing to be the most suit­able per­sons to re­place the coun­try’s po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship,” Dr Row­ley said.

“They were ex­ert­ing high lev­els of in­flu­ence on the af­fairs of the agency to the detri­ment of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”