Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), Ma­jor Roger Best, has been fired. Best was sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave on March 2 and re­tired Brigadier Gen­er­al An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer, T&T’s am­bas­sador to the US, was re­called to re­place Best and lead an in­ter­nal au­dit of the SSA’s staff and equip­ment. 

In a state­ment a day lat­er, on March 3, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter said, “The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) has rec­om­mend­ed to the Cab­i­net that the head of the SSA be re­placed im­me­di­ate­ly and that new lead­er­ship and man­age­ment be in­stalled with despatch.”  

Like his re­moval, news of Best’s dis­missal came in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, which said act­ing Pres­i­dent Nigel de Fre­itas was ad­vised by Cab­i­net to ter­mi­nate his con­tract. 

“The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­es the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that the Cab­i­net met ear­li­er to­day and took the de­ci­sion to ad­vise the act­ing Pres­i­dent to ter­mi­nate the ap­point­ment of Ma­jor (re­tired) Roger Best as Di­rec­tor of the SSA with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.” 

Best is among just over a dozen peo­ple fired from the SSA since Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that there was some­thing amiss at the agency.   

Self-pro­claimed spy, pas­tor Ian Brown, was among four men, in­clud­ing Best, to be de­tained dur­ing a 24-hour ex­er­cise be­tween Wednes­day morn­ing and Thurs­day af­ter­noon. 

Best and Brown have been as­sist­ing the po­lice with a se­ries of in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Up un­til late yes­ter­day evening, po­lice said they were close to com­plet­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions, which cen­tred on the il­le­gal use and trans­fer of high-pow­ered weapons. Best re­mained in cus­tody. No charges have been laid.

Po­lice said they did not ques­tion any of the men in re­la­tion to mur­ders that were part of their two-and-a-half-month-long in­ves­ti­ga­tion. 

Those mur­ders in­clude those of Bryan Fe­lix, 40, and landown­er Aleem Khan, 50, who were found in a forest­ed part of Cu­mu­to in 2019, and last year’s mur­der of Andy Daniel, 53. Daniel was the hus­band of now-sacked SSA deputy di­rec­tor Joanne Daniel. The killing of al­leged gang­ster An­thon “Boom­bay” Boney in Sep­tem­ber 2021 was al­so probed in con­nec­tion with pos­si­ble links to the SSA. 

Be­fore Daniel’s death, in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cials tried, with­out suc­cess, to alert the State of ques­tion­able op­er­a­tions at the SSA. Fol­low­ing Best’s sus­pen­sion, the State sought in­ter­na­tion­al as­sis­tance to in­ves­ti­gate al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct at the SSA.  

Weeks af­ter he was re­moved, the Prime Min­is­ter, at a sod-turn­ing event, ex­pressed grave con­cerns over the deal­ings of the SSA. 

“As I speak to you now, the prob­lem has mul­ti­plied be­cause, for the last two weeks, we have been deal­ing with the State’s con­tri­bu­tion to that prob­lem, where the state au­thor­i­ty in a po­si­tion of trust has sur­rep­ti­tious­ly bro­ken down and the ca­lyp­so that we lis­ten to, Who’s Go­ing to Guard the Guards, be­came the most per­ti­nent ques­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause the state agen­cies had be­come one with the crim­i­nal agen­cies,” the PM said. 

Dur­ing the probe, the home and church­es of Brown at Mal­abar and Cu­mu­to were searched.  

Brown not on­ly claimed to be a spy but al­so claimed to be Is­raeli and Ger­man-trained. His phi­los­o­phy of re­build­ing a gov­ern­men­tal struc­ture, in­clud­ing us­ing peo­ple of faith with a mil­i­tary mind­set, saw many mem­bers of his church be­com­ing mem­bers of the SSA, in­clud­ing its then deputy di­rec­tor of in­tel­li­gence, Joanne Daniel. 

Brown, who was Best’s per­son­al ad­vis­er and pas­tor and al­so a for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer, re­mains in po­lice cus­tody. Brown was fired as a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer on March 19. 

Days be­fore he was dis­missed, Brown re­turned the four high-pow­ered ri­fles, which al­so form part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions. 

Two oth­er SSA mem­bers, Portell Grif­fith, a for­mer se­cu­ri­ty su­per­vi­sor, and Sgt Sher­win Wal­dron, a tac­ti­cal op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer, are al­so in po­lice cus­tody.