Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer CoP Gary Grif­fith is warn­ing that if for­mer Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) mem­bers are suc­cess­ful in their le­gal chal­lenge against the State on the grounds of wrong­ful dis­missal, then tax­pay­ers will bear the cost of what he be­lieves will be mil­lions of dol­lars in dam­ages. Guardian Me­dia was told that the 28 em­ploy­ees dis­missed by the State have since been seek­ing le­gal coun­sel over their dis­missal from the agency. Among those em­ploy­ees are Pas­tor Ian Brown, the self-de­clared spy for the SSA, and his son, who was al­so em­ployed at the agency, for­mer di­rec­tor of in­tel­li­gence Joanne Daniel, as well as for­mer di­rec­tor Roger Best. 

“Af­ter weeks now, not one name can be called, not one per­son ar­rest­ed, not one per­son charged af­ter all this talk about a coup, cult and plot to over­throw the Gov­ern­ment and ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty. 

“This is sim­i­lar to Email­gate, sim­i­lar to the firearms is­sue and that is how they op­er­ate, they say the same lie over and over and hope peo­ple be­lieve it. When you fire 28 peo­ple and al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly make men­tion of the peo­ple who worked in the SSA can be viewed as cult mem­bers and to over­throw a gov­ern­ment, the dam­ages that will come in court from the at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing these in­di­vid­u­als, you’re speak­ing about hun­dreds of mil­lions in tax­pay­er dol­lars.” 

Grif­fith said that based on his in­ter­ac­tions with the for­mer em­ploy­ees, sev­er­al had con­firmed their plans to move for­ward with fil­ing a law­suit against the State. 

Ear­li­er this month, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley told the Par­lia­ment that among the alarm­ing find­ings of the au­dit in­to the SSA was the pro­cure­ment of high-pow­ered weapons and the train­ing of per­son­nel to use them as part of a pos­si­ble plot by the SSA to re­place the Gov­ern­ment. The au­dit and po­lice probe al­so re­vealed that the use or where­abouts of 70,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, pur­chased by the SSA, re­main un­record­ed and un­ac­count­ed for. In ad­di­tion, some peo­ple for­mer­ly em­ployed with the SSA be­longed to a “cult” that was arm­ing it­self to re­place the Gov­ern­ment, Dr Row­ley re­vealed.

Grif­fith main­tained that the Prime Min­is­ter act­ed too ear­ly in re­veal­ing the find­ings of the au­dit. 

“No­body stat­ed that for sure we know some­body did any­thing il­le­gal but you make a com­ment like that and up to now, you have no wit­ness­es, no names no­body ar­rest­ed. What you have done, apart from the fact that these peo­ple will sue the State is the dam­age to Trinidad and To­ba­go which is ir­repara­ble. 

“It took us years to re­cov­er from what hap­pened in the 1990 coup, you’re talk­ing about in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ments, tourism and so forth.” 

When con­tact­ed for a re­sponse to the plans by the for­mer SSA mem­bers to sue the state over their dis­missal, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds stat­ed that he had no po­si­tion on the de­vel­op­ment since the mat­ters were un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.