SSA sends 10 more employees on leave

Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

The State’s spy agency, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), sent a fur­ther ten em­ploy­ees on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave last week. The em­ploy­ees were at­tached to the Op­er­a­tions Se­cu­ri­ty “Opset” Unit. The unit was es­tab­lished un­der for­mer SSA di­rec­tor Ma­jor Roger Best and was in charge of in­stalling CCTV cam­eras and pro­vid­ing cov­er for agents when on field as­sign­ments.

It worked in con­junc­tion with an­oth­er unit es­tab­lished by Best, the Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Team (TRT), and was as­sem­bled be­tween April and May 2023. In an in­ter­view in the News­day pub­lished on Au­gust 4, Best said units were formed to pro­tect mem­bers of the agency and its as­sets, in­clud­ing a $28 mil­lion mo­bile com­mand unit nick­named Mam­ba and tech­ni­cians em­ployed to in­stall CCTV cam­eras in key lo­ca­tions around the coun­try.

He had said that two mem­bers of the tac­ti­cal unit were re­tained, in­clud­ing the unit’s su­per­vi­sor and an op­er­a­tor, and that the team was formed af­ter a re­quest from staff for SSA per­son­nel to be the first re­spon­ders.

How­ev­er, the Sun­day Guardian learnt that the re­main­ing mem­bers were in­clud­ed in the em­ploy­ees set on leave. All ten mem­bers of the TRT team were fired from the SSA on March 23 fol­low­ing a shake-up at the agency. They re­ceived one month’s salary and a pro­rat­ed gra­tu­ity pay­ment.

“They treat­ed us so bad­ly. It has left a bit­ter taste. We have been treat­ed like en­e­mies of the State,” one of­fi­cer had told Guardian Me­dia.

The for­mer of­fi­cers have been seek­ing le­gal coun­sel over their ter­mi­na­tion and were gear­ing up to sue the State since. De­spite al­le­ga­tions made, none of them have been charged with wrong­do­ing or mis­be­hav­iour in of­fice.

Last month, Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that the SSA held me­di­a­tion talks with the fired mem­bers of the now-dis­band­ed TRT, where they were told that while the team was no longer nec­es­sary by the or­gan­i­sa­tion, the mem­bers of the team had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to come back to work in a dif­fer­ent ca­pac­i­ty where a va­can­cy ex­ists that is a best fit with ex­pe­ri­ence, qual­i­fi­ca­tions, and the re­quire­ments of the po­si­tion.

How­ev­er, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds is­sued a state­ment that “no ter­mi­nat­ed for­mer em­ploy­ee has been re­hired by the SSA.”

He added, “The rea­son for the es­tab­lish­ment of the un­ap­proved TRT and its op­er­a­tions dur­ing its ex­is­tence are the sub­ject of im­me­di­ate and ac­tive po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

In his Ju­ly 3 state­ment to Par­lia­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that “28 em­ploy­ees of the SSA were ter­mi­nat­ed, ei­ther for vi­o­la­tions of the SSA Act and Reg­u­la­tions or for anom­alous re­cruit­ment or faulty pro­mo­tion process­es and prac­tices.”

Among those em­ploy­ees are for­mer di­rec­tor Best, Pas­tor Ian Brown, the self-de­clared spy for the SSA, and his son, who was al­so em­ployed at the agency, for­mer deputy di­rec­tor of ad­min­is­tra­tion Joanne Daniel.

Both Brown and Best are el­ders of Brown’s church, the Jerusalem Bride Church.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­u­ing

Dr Row­ley had con­firmed that sev­er­al po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions were tak­ing place with re­gard to the SSA, in­clud­ing mur­der. In­tel­li­gence sources have linked the death of Andy Daniel’s death, a closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion (CCTV) con­trac­tor, to the shake-up that took place at the SSA. Daniel’s wife, Joanne Daniel, was deputy di­rec­tor of ad­min­is­tra­tion at the SSA. Daniel was mur­dered on the high­way on No­vem­ber 11, 2023. It was his mur­der that alert­ed the Gov­ern­ment that there was some ex­po­sure to the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

For months be­fore Daniel’s death, in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cials tried to raise con­cerns to Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials they could ac­cess, to talk about chal­lenges by the SSA un­der di­rec­tor Best—the hir­ing prac­tices that al­leged­ly by­passed a prop­er vet­ting manda­to­ry for the or­gan­i­sa­tion, the con­flu­ence of church mem­bers at the top of the agency who were be­ing heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by Pas­tor Ian Brown, the chal­lenges be­ing faced with Best giv­en his re­li­gious pro­cliv­i­ties (he is an el­der at Brown’s church), and op­er­a­tions tak­ing place that were be­yond the re­mit of the SSA.

In his par­lia­men­tary state­ment, Dr Row­ley read in­to Hansard a state­ment of an au­dit con­duct­ed on the SSA by re­tired brigadier gen­er­al An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer. The au­dit re­vealed that the agency un­der Best amassed mil­i­tary-grade weapons and am­mu­ni­tion and op­er­at­ed a high­ly trained and mil­i­tarised so-called “Tac­ti­cal Re­sponse Unit.” 

There were dis­turb­ing prac­tices of nepo­tism and op­por­tunism lead­ing to a con­cen­tra­tion of mem­bers of one church be­ing hired by the SSA, in­stances of dis­hon­esty and deep de­cep­tion, and the SSA was in­creas­ing­ly in­ca­pable of se­cur­ing pub­lic trust. “Such per­sons be­longed to a cult that 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. They were ex­ert­ing high lev­els of in­flu­ence on the af­fairs of the agency to the detri­ment of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” Dr Row­ley said.

So far, the State has on­ly been able to lay one set of charges against for­mer SSA em­ploy­ees—Brown, Sgt Sher­win Wal­dron, and Su­san Portell-Grif­fith—who were charged with the “trans­fer­ring” of four “pro­hib­it­ed firearms” from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to the SSA.

While Best was de­tained and ques­tioned, he was sub­se­quent­ly re­leased as there was no ev­i­dence to charge him with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

Best, who has been silent since he was sus­pend­ed from the agency on March 2 and sub­se­quent­ly fired on May 18, in his first state­ment told Guardian Me­dia that “the men­tion of me lead­ing a coup or any form of desta­bil­i­sa­tion is not on­ly pre­pos­ter­ous but lu­di­crous.”