Lacson willing to resign if spying charges are proved

Philippine National Police chief Director General Panfilo Lacson said yesterday that he is willing to resign if it is proven that his agency spied on senators acting as judges in the impeachment trial of President Estrada.

Lacson also told the Senate tribunal that the police had identified the telephone company employee who had leaked computer records that allegedly showed that the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force had spied on senators.

"I’m willing to put my job on the line" if the spying charges are proven Lacson told senators.

"If any of my people committed the acts as described in the newspapers, then I think I would have lost effective control over the task force and there is no reason to remain there a minute longer," he said.

Asked by a senator if a rogue officer could spy on senators, Lacson said: "That is possible."

Lacson also denied that President Estrada had asked him to tap the phones of anyone.

He said he had warned Mr. Estrada that telephones at the President’s private residence and at his offices in Malacañang might be bugged "and he advised me to conduct sweeping operations on his telephones."

The sweeping is now being done regularly by the Presidential Security Group.

During the same hearing, Lacson denied that he had ever seen the telephone company records that a local newspaper said were evidence of spying.

The computer records of senators and prosecutors in the trial have been widely cited as proof that members of Congress, acting as judges and prosecutors in the corruption trial, had tapped phone lines.

Lacson said he had "circumstantial evidence" that a female employee of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), Flovina Pasamba, had illegally provided the computer records to an unidentified officer of PAOCTF.

He added that he was having the PLDT employee summoned to find out why she leaked the documents.

He reiterated that they were closing in on a PAOCTF member who had obtained the computer records from the PLDT employee and then leaked them to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Pasamba had a relation with Senior Superintendent Rodolfo Mendoza, who used to head the PNP Intelligence Division and who was accused of creating the Red Scorpion Group as well as the training of the members of the Abu Sayyaf.

"Pasamba and I had a relationship when I was placed in a floating status a few years back," Mendoza said, referring to a 1998 administrative case filed against him by Lacson.

Mendoza, who now heads the research division of the Philippine Center for Transnational Crime, denied reports that he is involved in surveillance activities.

"I am categorically denying that I am involved in wiretapping," he told The STAR. "I do not have the capacity to do it and I am not engaged in electronic manipulations."

Mendoza is a member of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Class of 1978, which has recently adopted Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as its honorary member.

Lacson admitted that the PAOCTF had some capacity to conduct electronic surveillance on people but added that this was limited and that monitoring telephone conversations was not so easy.

The task force member had alleged that the police were monitoring the tribunal officials as part of government efforts to determine which way the senators would lean in the final verdict on Mr. Estrada.

Sen. Ramon Revilla said he was among the senator-judges whose telephone is being monitored.

He said this belies the claim of Inquirer reporter Christine Herrera that he, along with four other senators, were not put under surveillance because they were certain to vote for Mr. Estrada’s acquittal.

The reporter named the other senators as Robert Jaworski, Miriam Defensor Santiago and Tessie Aquino-Oreta. She submitted the list during a probe by the impeachment court on the alleged bugging of telephone lines by the PAOCTF.

Revilla said that while his name was not on this list, his telephone number was. He said telephone number 552-67-69, which was 63rd on the list, is the fax phone assigned to his office.

Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation and Communications warned that PLDT may lose its franchise if it is proven that the giant telecommunications company was involved in spying.

Transportation and Communications Secretary Vicente Rivera said the National Telecommunications Commission is already investigating the allegations.

"It’s about time we really look deeper into this because … we have a law against wiretapping and we have to ensure that this law is followed," he said.

In a related development, the impeachment court ordered Lacson to provide a list of surveillance equipment that the PNP purchased since 1998.

Chief Justice Hilario Davide issued the order after Senate Minority Leader Teofisto Guingona asked the court to determine if the PNP is really spying on criminal groups and not on law-abiding citizens. – Perseus Echeminada, Christina Mendez, Efren Danao, Liberty Dones, Sheila Crisostomo