Last Monday, a Bill which potentially could be viewed in a sinister light was read for the first time in the National Assembly. Its flaws, which are glaring even to the relatively uninitiated, were dissected in an editorial in this newspaper on the same day. The proposed legislation will set up a National Intelligence Security Agency, referred to by its acronym of NISA, and will concentrate considerable powers in the hands of the President. The government already has intelligence capacity in the form of the Special Branch of the Police Force, Military Intelligence in the GDF, and the Hinterland Intelligence Committee which was revived last year.
After news of this Bill plummeted down landing on an unsuspecting public last Sunday, questions about it inevitably arose. For his part President Irfaan Ali said that a national intelligence agency was already in existence and had been in operation for over a decade; it was merely a matter of giving it legislative form. This is not untrue, since its origins go back to the Central Intelligence Unit set up by the PPP/C government in 2010 with a base in the compound of Castellani House.
Even at that time, however, questions were asked about whether the Unit would spy on the citizenry, including government opponents. This was strenuously denied by then President Bharrat Jagdeo who insisted it was there to support the police in their fight against crime. It would, he said, have the best operatives who would garner electronic intelligence using high-tech surveillance methods. The methods to which he was referring were CCTV cameras installed around the city, which were said to number around 130 towards the end of his party’s last period in office, but were reported to total 120 when the coalition was in government.
The precise mandate of the Unit, staffing matters and the like, were always treated as a state secret. Last week former President Donald Ramotar told this newspaper that its main responsibility had been national security. “Whenever the state seemed to be in danger either externally or internally, such as the crime wave of 2004, such an agency as this would be important in accumulating information to avert the dangers to the state,” he said. Precisely what this involved, however, was not something of which anyone outside a closed circle in government had any notion.
Despite the fact that the Unit had been advertised as there to help the police, it was not until 2014 that the Force was given access to live feed from the cameras. As it was, these were not instrumental in solving any major crimes, including the killing of a young policeman in Avenue of the Republic, never mind that had taken place close to where a camera was positioned. Their main function under the APNU+AFC government was to identify traffic offenders, and for the first nine months of 2016, 975 violations were reported as having been seen. If the police were using the cameras at that period to chase up traffic matters, what the Unit itself was doing with the feed not to mention otherwise still remained shrouded in as much secrecy as before, with no information being made available on its mandate, composition or terms of reference.
At the time the coalition had acceded to government in 2015 then President David Granger had announced that the Central Intelligence Unit would be incorporated into a new national security agency. This happened in 2017, with the establishment of the National Intelligence and Security Agency, still without any legislation being passed in relation to it. This is despite the fact that while in opposition APNU had argued that in the interest of accountability the Central Intelligence Unit needed to be governed by a legislative framework and not by political bosses.
The Central Intelligence Unit’s first head was Lieutenant-Colonel (now Brigadier) Omar Khan. Under the coalition there was no head until the formation of NISA when Brigadier (rtd) Bruce Lovell was appointed to the post in 2017. Following his resignation a few months after the return of the PPP/C government, Brigadier Khan was reinstated. Now, of course, he has been made Chief of Staff of the GDF. There was a security committee which functioned during the period when there was no head, which gave weekly reports to Mr Granger, although whether it also operated at other times has not been said.
In a country such as this where trust is so lacking a Bill of this kind will automatically raise suspicions, more particularly since it is not at all apparent why we need yet another intelligence agency. Given the government’s unrelenting hostility to critics of all kinds, and its refusal to deal with the opposition, there will be the supposition, as there was in 2010, that this is all about silencing contrary voices.
Defending it, the AG has said, “This bill seeks to bring a transparent legal structure into being and to establish an accountable framework in respect of the agency itself and those who will man and comprise the agency, and to say clearly how the agency will be funded.” He added that it would also now be made subject to parliamentary oversight, as annual reports of its work would be laid in the National Assembly. His view was that the agency had been performing the very functions outlined in the bill, but it had had no governance structure or statutory framework.
While its legally unauthorised predecessor might have been performing some of the main functions envisaged for its legal successor, it did not have the powers enumerated in the Bill. It has some disturbing clauses, not limited to the following examples, such as those dealing with immunity from suit, the power of the agency to access information from a public body regardless of any other law, and the appointment of liaison officers to our embassies abroad. Where the last named is concerned, one can only wonder if the oil money has so corrupted official imaginations that they see themselves competing with the CIA or MI6. The least they can expect will be that others will view it as a means of collecting data on diaspora critics.
As for an “accountable framework”, the leader in our Monday edition gave a thorough synopsis of the extraordinary powers which will be held by the President and the Director of this agency, not to mention the status of the latter official, and the obvious dangers inherent in this. Under the proposed format they will be accountable to no one. And as for the agency report to Parliament, it will be fairly meaningless since grounds of secrecy will prohibit anything of substance being revealed.
There is only one small item of good news emerging from all this, and that is that yesterday we reported President Ali as saying he had ordered the Bill relating to NISA to be taken to a Select Committee of Parliament for deliberations, “so that the views and ideas of all stakeholders can be examined.” Considering that the government since coming into office has shown a decided disinclination to refer anything to a select committee, this is a positive sign for more than one reason. What will matter in the end, however, is whether after that it is prepared to countenance any meaningful – and radical ‒ amendments to the Bill.
The truth of the matter is, as said on Monday: “A custom-built intelligence agency is the last thing that is needed. The government should instead focus on the strengthening of the GDF and its various units, the police force and agencies such as the Special Organised Crime Unit, the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit.”
