Fired SSA workers recalled for interviews

Asha Javeed

Lead Editor Investigations

[email protected]

Several Strategic Services Agency (SSA) officers who were fired between April and May have been called to be re-interviewed at the agency.

The former officers, who were dismissed following the shake-up at the agency in March, have been seeking legal counsel over their termination and are gearing up to sue the State. While legal action has yet to be filed, Guardian Media was informed that several of the agents were asked to come back this week.

Guardian Media could not confirm whether it was to be re-interviewed to be re-employed, re-interviewed because of ongoing investigations, or to negotiate their exit packages in lieu of legal challenges.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley had 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 Roger Best, Pastor Ian Brown, the self-declared spy for the SSA, and his son, who was also employed at the agency, and former deputy director of administration Joanne Daniel.

However, none of the employees recalled are affiliated with the Jerusalem Bride Church. Both Brown and Best are elders of Brown’s church, the Jerusalem Bride Church.

When Guardian Media contacted new SSA Director Anthony Phillips-Spencer last Friday night, he said it would not be “prudent” to speak to the media at this time.

On July 3, in Parliament, Dr Rowley read into Hansard a statement on the conclusion of an audit conducted on the SSA by 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 which 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.

Guardian Media reported that the employees felt aggrieved that their professional reputations had been affected by Dr Rowley’s statement, which would affect their future employment.

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—for 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.

Denials

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

For his part, Pastor Ian Albert Ezekiel Brown told the Guardian Media that his church was not a cult.

“It is the absolute fact that we were never a cult, we are not a cult, and we resent the fact that we are being so called …” Brown said.

However, Dr Rowley confirmed that several police investigations were taking place with regard to the SSA.

One of those investigations involves murders linked to the agency through the tactical unit established by Best.

Criminologist Dr Daurius Figueira had accused Dr Rowley of acting prematurely in revealing some of the findings of the ongoing audit into the operations of the SSA, especially under the cloak of parliamentary privilege.

Griffith responds

Political Leader of the National Transformation Alliance (NTA) yesterday said he was “reliably informed that nearly half of the individuals who were terminated from the SSA have been recalled to return to duty at the same SSA.”

In a statement, he added, “If this is indeed true, then this highlights the extent of the Government’s hypocrisy, double standards, bias, victimisation, and incompetence for all of the public to see.

“Adding to this unjust situation, it has been revealed that the dismissed individuals have been told they simply need to reapply to go through the same process they did to be hired initially. This was the same process that they underwent when they were first hired, despite Prime Minister Rowley’s misleading statements to the country claiming they were not qualified.”

Griffith said, “These individuals were fully qualified and had passed the polygraph test at the time of their initial hiring. By asking them to return and go through the same hiring process again, it further demonstrates the unjust nature of their initial dismissals, showing that the Government’s accusations were baseless and unfounded, which mirrors the unfounded allegations of corruption related to firearm licenses, which have yet to be substantiated.”

The Government’s decision “to rehire these individuals,” he said, “appears to be a desperate attempt to mitigate the impending legal repercussions for their unjust actions.”