Protecting the President

“Brother Caster” has grown – not just older and wiser at 53, but also around the waistline.

He no longer looks like the boy who was sent on an errand to buy vinegar at the corner sari-sari or convenience store – pinabili lang ng suka – only to find himself tasked to guard the highest official of the land.

The boyish Jaime Castro wasn’t buying vinegar but had been working for three years as a constabulary intelligence officer at Camp Olivas in Central Luzon when he was recruited on April 20, 1986 to be part of the close-in security escorts of the president of the post-EDSA revolutionary government, Corazon Aquino.

Cory Aquino called him “Jimmy” and he came to regard her as a surrogate mother. In her final days, Castro went on leave from the Presidential Security Group (PSG) to stand guard by her sickbed; he stayed with her until her death. Castro and another former Aquino security officer, police Inspector Mel Mamaril (now retired), escorted her remains from the Makati Medical Center to the Heritage memorial park.

At the Philippine Constabulary, which Castro joined after he dropped out of his management course in Colegio de San Juan de Letran, he underwent training for 20 months in basic intelligence work.

Within the PSG, “Caster” belonged to an elite team, initially with seven volunteers, that underwent a month-long training at the forensics section of the National Bureau of Investigation.

His new job: food taster of the president of the republic.

Caster would hold the job throughout the six years of the first Aquino administration, and for another two and a half years during the presidency of Fidel Ramos. He would be reassigned to the task when the only son of Cory Aquino became President.

Food tasting is no laughing matter in a country where the chief executive constantly faces death threats (real or imagined) and coup conspiracies.

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In a recent chat, during which I took note of his wider girth and gray-speckled hair, “Brother Caster” clarified that food tasters don’t actually taste the president’s food first (eew! is a common reaction), like allergy-prone people do when sampling certain types of food. More accurately, Caster is a food tester. The president’s food is subjected to a special test for toxicity – what was taught during the NBI training. (My reaction to the testing process Caster described was still eew!)

It’s not true that when Caster detects poison in food, he wiggles his ears without using his hands, like an extraterrestrial. But it’s true he can wiggle his ears by sheer muscle control, with no visible corresponding movement in his face.

When possible, the food taster monitors the preparation of food for the president, which can start several hours before an event. If the president decides to pop up unannounced in a dining establishment, the food taster has to make the best of the limited time for testing.

Apart from the close-in aide, it’s usually the food taster you see hovering near the president at official events that include meals.

Caster is unassuming and keeps a low profile, but his job made him ubiquitous throughout Cory Aquino’s administration. We, the reporters who covered her presidency, knew for sure that she would show up for an event once Caster was there. At one point in her administration, Palace personnel started calling him “Brother Caster.” This was when Mrs. Aquino ordered all PSG members to undergo values formation after the chief of her close-in escorts shot dead his wife and her lover in a motel room in Manila. The officer got off merely with destierro, or banishment, in accordance with our medieval laws.

Caster wouldn’t know about unfaithful wives; the eldest of 12 children, he is, like his current boss, a bachelor at past 50. His rank is special police officer 3, and he is a member of the Police Security Protection Group in the PSG.

In his years as a food taster, Caster has not once detected toxic elements in the food of the president.

But as an intelligence officer under Fidel Ramos’ PSG, Caster participated in operations that led to the discovery in Manila of “Oplan Bojinka” over a decade ago. This was a plot hatched by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, convicted mastermind of the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, tagged as the principal architect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to blow up at least 12 planes flying to the United States from the Philippines and other parts of Asia. Bojinka also involved a plan to assassinate Pope John Paul II during his visit to Manila. Washington was alerted to a plot to crash planes into high-value targets in the United States. The information was largely ignored by US intelligence.

Caster’s work in covert operations put him in touch with foreign intelligence operatives and units. The anonymity has allowed him to move around without fearing for his personal safety. Still unable to drive, Caster to this day commutes by jeepney or taxi.

He might soon lose his anonymity, however, this March 18, at the premiere of a documentary prepared by National Geographic on the seat of the Philippine government.

Called “Inside Malacañang,” a special preview of the documentary was shown to Palace officials and friends last Feb. 28. Among the “stars” in the documentary are the presidential food tasters led by SPO3 Jaime Castro.

As Caster prepares for retirement in January 2016, almost co-terminus with his current boss, he likes to say that presidents in this country don’t eat death threats for breakfast. That’s the job of the food taster.