'Our phones are bugged'

Are bugs crawling out of the woodwork again?

Members of the opposition in the House of Representatives said yesterday that their phones are tapped and that government agents have been spying on them.

Deputy Minority Leader Sergio Apostol (Lakas, Leyte) told reporters that he and his colleagues disco-vered they were being spied on when their office telephones were checked for bugging devices two weeks ago.

He said they requested the help of Rep. Jack Enrile of Cagayan, who in turn sought the assistance of three surveillance experts from the military.

Quoting Enrile's experts, Apostol said the tapping was done in the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) central exchange.

He said on the basis of the findings, the minority will protest the bugging with the PLDT and ask the company to remove the taps.

Malacañang distanced itself from the wiretapping and advised the opposition legislators to file a complaint with the National Telecommunications Commission.

"We don't know anything about this. We know nothing absolutely," said Executive Secretary Ronaldo Zamora. "Whoever is doing this must be pu-nished with the full force of the law... Certainly we'll not agree to anybody being bugged - not only congressmen but all our citizens."

Zamora's initial reaction, when asked about the opposition's charges, was, "It's like being asked, 'How often do you beat your wife'?"

Enrile, who does not belong to any political group, counts himself with the House minority. He is the only son of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, long-time defense minister of the late President Ferdinand Marcos.

Apostol said his telephones, and those of Minority Leader Feliciano Belmonte Jr. (Lakas, Quezon City) and other opposition congressmen were found to have been tapped.

"We cannot prevent government agents from spying on us, but they should not do it through illegal means," he added.

Asked who could have tapped their phones, Apostol referred to the "usual suspects -- the group of PNP chief Ping Lacson, NICA (National Intelligence Coordinating Agency) and ISAFP (Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines)."

Other opposition congressmen whose telephone lines were said to have been tapped include Michael Defensor of Quezon City, Oscar Moreno of Misamis Oriental, Juan Miguel Zubiri of Bukidnon, Hernani Braganza of Pangasinan, Magtanggol Gunigundo of Valenzuela, Robert Ace Barbers of Surigao del Norte, Federico Sandoval of Navotas-Malabon and Rolando Andaya Jr. of Camarines Sur.

A minority congressman familiar with how Jack Enrile's surveillance experts checked their phone lines said the military men attached a gadget with meters to the telephone sets while the lawmakers were using them.

The meters indicated if the phone taps were working at the time the congressmen made the calls, he said.

He said some offices checked for tapping devices yielded negative results.

"This could mean either of two things: either the taps were not working or are not really there," he said.

He added that the "sweeping" operation indicated that spying on the opposition lawmakers' phone conversations is being done on a random basis.

At the height of the word war last year between then PNP chief Deputy Director General Roberto Lastimoso and Lacson, head of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, a spying list was leaked to the media.

The list contained the names of scores of media practitioners, politicians and businessmen who were allegedly being spied on by Lacson's men, with over 300 in a so-called priority list.

Lacson, the President's favorite policeman, denied his men were spying on those in the list. Lacson also sent out letters of explanation to the people on the list.

It was not the first time that Lacson was accused of illegal wiretapping. During the campaign for the 1998 presidential elections, his office was raided by government agents who said they found wiretapping devices. The case was dismissed after the raid was declared illegal. -- With Marichu Villanueva