Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says while he is “con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly re­spon­si­ble” for the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), he is not to be blamed for the on­go­ing fi­as­co at the spy­ing agency.

Hinds said had he known all that was hap­pen­ing at the SSA, he would have act­ed much ear­li­er than the Gov­ern­ment did to rec­ti­fy the is­sues with the agency.

Hinds made the com­ment at a me­dia con­fer­ence at his min­istry’s Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters yes­ter­day.

Asked if he took re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for all that is now un­fold­ing at the SSA, Hinds said: “Of course! I am re­spon­si­ble to the Cab­i­net. I’m re­spon­si­ble to the Par­lia­ment. I’m re­spon­si­ble to the peo­ple, which is why ex­act­ly I am here to­day. So re­spon­si­bil­i­ty un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion is quite clear.”

How­ev­er, he said he was not tak­ing blame as that and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty are two dif­fer­ent things, which he said he has tried to ex­plain to the na­tion re­peat­ed­ly.

“Blame is one thing, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in the con­sti­tu­tion­al sense is an­oth­er some­thing I have tried to share with this na­tion on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions in the past. I can’t know. I could not have known who the SSA was hir­ing, whether it was mem­bers of one church or next, whether it was mem­bers of one fam­i­ly or next. I could not have known that. As a mat­ter of fact, had I known that I’d have stopped it long be­fore now.”

Hinds added that if the me­dia had heard he was in­volved in the hir­ings at SSA, that would have been an is­sue.

De­fend­ing his col­league, Min­is­ter of Cari­com and For­eign Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne, who was in at­ten­dance, said Hinds did not act pre­ma­ture­ly or at­tempt to cov­er up any wrong­do­ings.

At a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing last week, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so de­fend­ed Hinds in the mat­ter, say­ing that he could not be blamed for the hir­ings at the SSA. He said on­ly when in­for­ma­tion came to him and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil were they able to ad­dress the is­sue, adding it was a case of hu­man fail­ings by mem­bers who had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for run­ning the agency.

Asked if the hir­ings at the SSA need­ed to be looked at and giv­en greater par­lia­men­tary over­sight, Hinds said such over­sight al­ready ex­ists, but this may have pre­sent­ed a chance for greater scruti­ny.

“We learn as we go along and the SSA has been in ex­is­tence for a very long time. We’ve nev­er had this be­fore, some­thing has de­vel­oped,” he said.

“So, you will all learn from this, and you re­arrange your af­fairs, in­crease the height of your fences to en­sure that that which popped up, which has hap­pened, doesn’t eas­i­ly hap­pen again.”

Hinds did not an­swer di­rect­ly when asked if the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the SSA’s op­er­a­tions mir­rored that or was greater than when Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine, a clerk at the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA), which was re­placed by the SSA, was ap­point­ed as SSA di­rec­tor and re­signed with­in days in Jan­u­ary of 2011.

He said when the Gov­ern­ment was suf­fi­cient­ly ap­prised of what was hap­pen­ing with­in the SSA, steps were tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly to ad­dress grow­ing con­cerns.

On March 2, for­mer SSA di­rec­tor Roger Best was sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave and Brigadier An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer, T&T’s then-am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed States, was ap­point­ed act­ing SSA di­rec­tor.

Fol­low­ing the shuf­fle, it was learnt that Best had hired his pas­tor, Ian Brown, and oth­er mem­bers of the church as SSA em­ploy­ees. Brown said he was a spy for the agency and was made an SRP by then-po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who said this was done at the re­quest of Best.

Brown was re­moved as an SRP by cur­rent Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher on March 19. Brown has since gone in­to hid­ing, with his fam­i­ly say­ing they are con­cerned for his safe­ty.

As both po­lice and Phillips-Spencer in­ves­ti­gate the SSA and its func­tions, sev­er­al mur­ders have been linked to the agency, in­clud­ing the death of An­drew Daniel, the hus­band of for­mer SSA deputy di­rec­tor Joanne Daniel, who was one of 12 peo­ple re­cent­ly fired as Phillips-Spencer con­tin­ues his au­dit of the spy agency.