'Digging' deep, finding nothing By Dawn Ritch According to press interviews given elsewhere by Roderick McGregor, he didn't wiretap Ministers of Government, but rather people suspected of gun-running and drug-smuggling. On those wiretaps were inadvertently recorded the voices of certain highly-placed officials in Government and the police, who engaged the suspects in "questionable conversations" on the telephone. Mr. McGregor said that the Civilian Intelligence Unit (CIU) was only halted when the investigations moved beyond persons in the inner city to those higher up and that the question of illegal wiretap was used to divert attention from the criminal activities identified by the wire-tapping. Readers will remember that after the story broke about Mr. McGregor and his CIU, an interminable debate raged about whether or not these wiretaps were legal. Prime Minister P.J. Patterson was reported in this newspaper as saying he did not order the wiretap and that only he had the authority to do so. This debate about illegality raged on for weeks, but was totally beside the point. Nevertheless, it ceased only after everything had been dumped into the lap of Kent Pantry, the Director of Public Prosecutions. The public, somewhat bemused by the notion that the local police were going to investigate the local police, were quickly given a palliative that the FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Scotland Yard would also be called upon to assist. And this, not until after the CIU itself, which had gathered the information, was promptly disbanded and branded a rogue operation, and Mr. McGregor himself dismissed in disgrace. More questions From that disgrace he has subsequently been elevated, however, to high public honours by the Bahamian Government for his work in breaking a regional drug ring and given fulsome praise by the Bahamian governor. A puzzled public here rightly believes that this latest development, therefore, raises more questions than answers about what exactly is transpiring in Jamaica. Mr. McGregor, in a recent interview said that K.D. Knight, Jamaica's Minister of National Security and Justice, knew about the unit and gave it his blessing. The Opposition spokesman on National Security, Derrick Smith, promptly issued a public statement demanding to know whether or not the Minister knew. Early next morning Police Commissioner, Francis Forbes, said the Minister knew about it after the fact. Then next day Mr. McGregor confirmed that the Minister knew about it after the fact. And the media debate raged on last week about whether or not "due process" had been at all followed in setting up this surveillance. This is a totally nonsensical discussion and wholly irrelevant. If people who are to provide the legality or due process might themselves be implicated in corruption being investigated it seems hardly worthwhile and indeed counter-productive, to ask for their permission to put them under surveillance. Undercover work must of necessity operate on the basis of "need to know". It is important to note that what has been sent to the DPP is "hundreds of copies" of tapes made up to the date when the investigation was halted. The important thing to have asked months ago, therefore, was why did the Government disband the unit and stop the investigation. People bug people's phones all the time in Jamaica. Mine was bugged once, and may be bugged again. Am I selling drugs and running guns? Not likely. But it was bugged anyway. Was it authorised by due process? In addition to wanting to know, therefore, why the Mr. McGregor surveillance of suspected drug dons was halted, I'd also like to know what was said on the tapes sent to the DPP and what made their conversations with certain officials "questionable". And I'd like to know exactly which officials and policemen are implicated, and in what way. None of this apparently is of any interest to her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, the Jamaica Labour Party. All they want to know, judging from Mr. Smith's statement, is whether or not the Minister knew about it. Which is really neither here nor there. Of course, the Minister promptly denied that he did, and merely repeated what he said months ago. Could the JLP have foolishly expected that Mr. McGregor would then jump on public radio to bawl out everything and everybody's name and still remain an employable person in the international spy business? Any reasonable person might well conclude, therefore, that the JLP itself has become a captive to the endless obfuscations. Interviews It seems to me that more than anything else Mr. McGregor is giving bland interviews about what any school child could have surmised because he's just vexed that the Government blew his cover in Jamaica. He is, after all, a Jamaican who is clearly put out by being maligned in the place of his birth. But that, however, takes the country not one jot closer to being able to root out the cancer of corruption that is destroying Jamaica and the decent and honest people who want to remain here instead of emigrating. The JLP exposed the whole story of Haggart in its press release of March 10, 1994, as I reported last week. I'm at a loss to know, therefore, why seven years later they have nothing to say on the matter. Has Jamaica become the victim of a conspiracy of silence on both sides of the House of Parliament? Is the country never to know who has betrayed it? It is of no comfort to me to hope that when Washington remembers Jamaica, we might get some indictments and extradition requests. As a mere transshipment port and factory for cocaine, Jamaica is not regarded by the United States Government as the source of the problem. That interest is reserved for Colombia. The U.S. spends domestically US$42 billion annually to fight drugs, and for the first time spent US$1.3 billion last year in Colombia. That country has declined into a state of civil war between right-wing and left-wing militia groups funded by cocaine, where the Colombian Government has officially ceded control over large swathes of land to these militias. Jamaica itself is in an undeclared state of civil war, and our Government has unofficially ceded control over the inner cities. This is a hell of a way to live, and my sense of things is that people are not going to put up with it much longer. Known to love parties and entertainment, Jamaicans universally believe that if we don't laugh we cry. I would therefore like to suggest the inauguration of a new national award. This could become known as "The Trough Award", open to nominees from both political parties and their keenest supporters. It is a race to see whose snout remains in the trough longest.
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