Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Attorney General Anand Ramlogan’s apparent dismissal of reports that a spying device was found in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is of grave concern, says Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley. “If the office was determined to be bugged, who would want to do this and for what purpose?” he asked, indicating these were the kinds of questions the Government should be asking. “It is wholly unacceptable for the Government, especially the National Security Council, to dismiss or ignore information that the DPP’s office was bugged. “The National Security Council is feigning ignorance that the DPP’s office could be penetrated by criminals. “Even if there were no e-mails in Parliament, this should be of great concern. “There is a need to get some clarity on what happened or did not happen at the DPP’s office. So far, we’ve only had comments of, ‘No comment.’”
He said Persad-Bissessar was chairman of the National Security Council, and Ramlogan a member of the council, and both appeared to want to dismiss the spying of the DPP’s office story. Rowley made the comments at his bi-weekly press conference yesterday, pointing to a T&T Guardian report last Friday that an invisible infrared beam used to transmit conversations had been detected last November in the conference room of the DPP’s office in the Winsure Building, Richmond Street. “I would assume there was some basis for the story being placed on the front page,” he commented. Rowley said one of the controversial e-mails he read in Parliament last week, which appeared to implicate high government officials in corruption and conspiracy, showed an interest in obtaining information from the DPP’s office through bugs either to be planted there or already there.
He also noted that acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams had said DPP Roger Gaspard made no report to him, nor Deputy Commissioner of Police Mervyn Richardson, about bugging devices found in his office. “I can’t understand how the CoP could be so far out of the way as not to know if his officers stumbled on this.” Rowley said whoever found the sophisticated laser spying device in the office of the DPP in November last year, it was not the Special Anti-Crime Unit (Sautt). Rowley said Sautt, set up under the former PNM administration, was disbanded in August 2011, long before the spy device was detected. Quite likely, it was the Special Branch division of the police, Rowley said. He recalled when he moved into the Leader of the Opposition’s office on Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, it was the Special Branch that did the “requisite cleansing” of the office.