The Prime Minister tells the country of a cult within the Strategic Services Agency preaching an armed replacement for the country's political leadership.
Dr. Rowley read a lengthy document giving an insight into why persons were fired from the SSA and what has been uncovered so far about illegal arms and ammunition at the Agency.
00:00Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley told the House of Representatives on Wednesday
00:04that there had been persons within the SSA who were being trained to replace
00:09the political directorate.
00:11Several family members and associates of particular persons and of a particular church were found to have been surreptitiously employed in the agency.
00:26Such persons belonged to a cult which was arming itself while preaching a doctrine for trained military and paramilitary personnel
00:39with a religious calling to be the most suitable persons to replace the country's political leadership.
00:47As of March 2024, 28 SSA employees were terminated for violations of the SSA Act and regulations.
00:55Reading a statement approved by the Cabinet, the Prime Minister spoke of other findings in the ongoing audit of the SSA.
01:02He said its Tactical Response Unit was abolished in March 2024.
01:08Its operations prior to March 2024 is under review by the SSA and the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service.
01:19Madam Speaker, for what purpose was such a unit established in an intelligence-gathering agency?
01:27What was their role? What did they actually do?
01:34These questions are still to be fully understood and answered and form the subject of police investigation.
01:44In the meantime, the National Security Council views this development with great concern.
01:50And he spoke of the lack of accountability of the arms and ammunition that changed hands from SOT to the SSA.
01:58Among the firearms and ammunition coming into the possession of the SSA in the period under review,
02:04several of them were issued from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Armory to the Special Operations Response Team, SOT.
02:14SOT was formed during former Police Commissioner Guy Griffith's tenure as the top cop from 2018 to 2021.
02:21This Special Operations Response Team, SOT, has since been disbanded.
02:28It was disbanded because it became entangled in allegations of serious human rights abuses
02:35and exposed the government of Trinidad and Tobago to the United States sanctions flowing from the assumed violation of the United States Leahy Act.
02:45This, Madam Speaker, involved killings where it was said by a commission of police and subordinates
02:52that persons in police custody actually died when they quote-unquote fell off a chair.
02:58In 2022, SOT was dismantled and replaced with the National Operational Task Force.
03:04It was on March 2nd of this year, 2024, the Office of the Prime Minister announced that the head of the SSA had been sent on administrative leave
03:13and that the new acting SSA Director is currently engaged in initiating an extensive review and audit of the agency.
03:22The SSA Director has since been fired.
03:24Why would an intelligence gathering agency need 103 firearms of different types and caliber?
03:32And why would the agency in 2022 need 100 rungs of ammunition, 100,000 rungs of ammunition?
03:42One aspect of the audit has so far revealed that the use and or whereabouts of 70,000 rungs of ammunition purchased by the SSA remains unrecorded and unaccounted for.
03:58The Prime Minister said much of what the SSA did during the period under the audit review occurred without the required authority.
04:06This led to a question from Opposition MP, Dr. Rudal Munilal.
04:11Would you agree that given that this disaster, as you describe it, occurred under the weekly watch and noses of members of the National Security Council
04:22and under the statutory oversight of a Minister of National Security by virtue of Section 3 and 4 of the Strategic Services Agency Act,
04:32do you now agree that the Minister of National Security ought to be fired forthwith?
04:38Madam Speaker, I wonder under whose watch the discovery has been made, allowing me to report it here.
04:50The Prime Minister earlier told the lower house that the receipt by the National Security Council of certain information from the Police Services Special Branch warranted an immediate intervention,
05:00but that notwithstanding the ongoing audit, the core business of the SSA remained uninterrupted.
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