http://www.tntmirror.com/2012/07/06/charged-with-reading-pm-e-mails7 SSA agents facing axe
SEVEN SSA agents are now facing dismissal following an exercise during which Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s name was linked with a bomb threat.
While the agents have insisted that the exercise was simply to demonstrate the use of the spying technology, using key words to alert the national security officials of an impending threat on the prime minister, the agents are being forced to defend themselves against allegations that they spied on the PM.
The “system acceptance testing” training incident occurred on February 28 at the Piarco International Airport at the Verint equipment suite, under the guidance of Israeli trainers.
Following the exercise, one junior officer, Alonzo Fleming, submitted the damning report to SSA Deputy Directors Julie Browne and Keron Ganpat, activating a probe by the Anti Corruption Investigations Bureau (ACIB).
The seven officers also had to submit to polygraph tests.
Sources have confirmed that the head of Information Communications Technology Adrian Pantin has since been demoted and two other officers have been sent on long leave.
The team’s whistleblower, Fleming, has since replaced Pantin and has been promoted to the position of acting head of the ICT.
Mirror has been able to secure several documents relating to the incident, which is said to have raised the ire of the Attorney General, Anand Ramlogan, who enjoys a close relationship with Browne and SSA Director Bisnath Maharaj, whom he is said to have recommended for a position in the elite spy agency.
A report on the involvement of the seven officers was submitted to the former Minister of National Security, Ret’d Brigadier John Sandy, on March 15, along with testimonies from each of them.
The cover letter was signed by then SSA Director Ret’d Colonel Albert Griffith, who made it clear to Sandy that in light of Fleming’s accusations, he felt it “prudent in the interest of completeness” to submit the individual accounts of the other officers who participated in the testing.
He told Sandy that the reports from the SSA officers, Pantin, Andy Lewis, Joel Duncan, Roger Gibson, Damian Scott, Geoffrey Cooper and Curt Harrison, were not in any way an investigation and he had drawn no conclusions on the views expressed.
In his detailed statement, Scott, who is a Technician II, admitted that it was his idea to use the name “Kamla” as a test word for the exercise.
According to him, it was while demonstrating the internet capabilities of the system that Israeli trainer Ronen Talibi asked them to provide him with a key word for searching the body of emails within the Verint suite.
“The first word suggested was ‘bomb’,” he said, adding that after searching the database for the past two days of the exercise of email containing the word “bomb”, they received a number of “hits” and proceeded to examine three.
Every time the word came up it was highlighted in yellow. Scott said that Talibi requested another name and he suggested “Kamla”. He explained that at the time of the testing, the Prime Minister was due to defend herself against a no-confidence motion in the House of Representatives, initiated by the Opposition Leader, Dr. Keith Rowley.
“I had to explain to him (Talibi) this was the first name of our Prime Minister, which is how she is referred to by the man-in-the-street, and who happened to be the subject of a no-confidence motion in three days’ time.
“I also told him that surely there will be emails flying back and forth, from both sides of the political divide that will feature the word ‘Kamla’ within them.”
Sure enough the search was done for the past two days and there were numerous instances, including someone receiving a Facebook notification of a post from some group dedicated to “all matters Kamla”.
Scott said the exercise was “misconstrued” by others to whom the incident was reported. He said at no time was the PM’s email address the focus of any search, adding that at no time did anyone present see any item in the internet search that appeared to be correspondence to or from the PM.
For his part, the ICT head Pantin said he arrived late into the session and was quickly brought up to date by the Verint engineer.
“Mr. Talibi sought to apprise me of the morning’s events, which were performed using the Vantage Broadway (VBW) Passive solution module of the Verint platform,” he explained, adding that Talibi then described the textual search feature, which analysts use to identify possible new targets or persons of interest due to key words used in emails or text messages.
Pantin added that upon hearing that a test had been done on the name Kamla, he immediately voiced his objection and advised Talibi that it was “not wise” to proceed in that direction.
He said Talibi told him that the use of the PM’s name was in keeping with how the system was intended to be used in “live scenario.”
Pantin said for the rest of the session the matter was dropped and never revisited.
Reports from the other SSA officers corroborated the chain of events.
Mirror has learnt that although they were cleared of all wrongdoing by the police and the lie detector tests were negative, there is still a move by forces within the government and the SSA to have them removed.
Calls to the cell phone of the SSA Director Bisnath Maharaj went unanswered up to press time on Monday.
Meanwhile, Mirror has learnt that the investigation by the ACIB into allegations of misconduct against Deputy Director of the SSA Keron Ganpat, in breaching internal protocol to carry out a search on a target in March 2012, is expected to be handed in over the next few days. Ganpat is reported as saying that the request came from persons “very high up”.
