Press Release
February 23, 2007

Use P2 B intel fund to flush out death squads

With almost P2 billion in combined operating funds this year , eight intelligence agencies should be ordered by Malacanang to flush out rogue military units suspected of liquidating activists , Sen. Ralph Recto said today.

Senator Ralph Recto said the government should now tap its vast intelligence network in identifying the enemy within.

The Melo commission, which probed the spate of the assassination of activists, in its report released by Malacanang on Thursday, urged that the whip must be cracked to bring the rogue military elements back in line.

The report of the five-man Palace-created body, however, virtually cleared the President and the military hierarchy of complicity in the killings of leftist activists and journalists since 2001.

It said there is no direct evidence, but only circumstantial evidence, linking some elements in the military to the killings.

If there are indeed rogue units within the military, then maybe its time the President order her intelligence men to go after them, Recto said.

Intel groups should now step in to end the humiliation other investigating bodies are getting from killers who seem to be running circles around them, Recto said.

Bagging the killers, he said, is one way by which intelligence groups can prove that they deserve every peso of their sizeable allocation this year, Recto said.

Under the proposed P1.126 trillion national budget for the year, eight intelligence gathering agencies led by Palace-based Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission share about P2 billion in operating funds.

The PAOCC has P500 million in intelligence funds, an item the Senate initially deleted but which it later relented to be restored in the budget bill during the bicameral conference on the measure.

Two other civilian agencies in the Office of the President, the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency and the National Security Council are set to receive P272.3 million and P57 million respectively this year

The intelligence arm of the Philippine National Police has a proposed allocation of P431 million.

Four military intelligence agencies, the ISAFP and the intelligence arms of three major services, have a combined budget of about P800 million.

News Latest News Feed