Farley, Tobagonians call for clarity as US military begins work on radar

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

The Chief Sec­re­tary has for­mal­ly re­quest­ed full de­tails on the radar sys­tem be­ing in­stalled at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

He has al­so asked for a ded­i­cat­ed meet­ing with Cab­i­net min­is­ters and state agen­cies to ex­plain the scope and pur­pose of the project, af­ter con­firm­ing he was not briefed be­fore the Prime Min­is­ter dis­closed it pub­licly.

In a state­ment on Fri­day, the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary said Unit­ed States per­son­nel have al­ready be­gun work on a radar in­stal­la­tion in­tend­ed to “en­hance sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ty,” but not­ed that Far­ley Au­gus­tine be­came aware of the de­vel­op­ment on­ly af­ter com­plet­ing a live in­ter­view on Thurs­day night. The re­lease said he learnt of the mat­ter “on­ly af­ter” the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced it.

On Wednes­day morn­ing a US Air Force C-17A Globe­mas­ter III land­ed in To­ba­go just af­ter 3 am.

Ac­cord­ing to the OCS, Au­gus­tine has since spo­ken with the Prime Min­is­ter and “re­quest­ed full de­tails on what is to be in­stalled in To­ba­go.” A for­mal meet­ing is be­ing arranged with rel­e­vant Cab­i­net min­is­ters and agen­cies to clar­i­fy the pur­pose, scope, agree­ments and op­er­a­tional con­trol of the radar sys­tem. The of­fice said the pub­lic will be up­dat­ed when those ex­pla­na­tions are pro­vid­ed.

How­ev­er, To­ba­go East MP David Joseph Thomas has tak­en a dif­fer­ent po­si­tion, say­ing he al­ready has “good in­for­ma­tion” about what is hap­pen­ing at the air­port and sees no cause for alarm. Thomas, a re­tired fire of­fi­cer with 40 years in the ser­vice, said cer­tain sys­tems may ap­pear un­fa­mil­iar to the pub­lic but are stan­dard se­cu­ri­ty re­quire­ments once an in­ter­na­tion­al air­port is op­er­a­tional.

“I know the in­for­ma­tion is good in­for­ma­tion, and I know what is hap­pen­ing. It’s pret­ty nor­mal,” he said. “When you’re not ac­cus­tomed to things, it ap­pears to be ab­nor­mal, and it brings about a cause for con­cern.”

Thomas said some as­pects of the in­stal­la­tion in­volve clas­si­fied mat­ters. “There are cer­tain de­tails, and there are events that need to be treat­ed as clas­si­fied,” he said.

How­ev­er, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so com­ment­ed on the is­sue, ques­tion­ing how the in­stal­la­tion could pro­ceed with­out full aware­ness at the high­est lev­el.

“So for­eign mil­i­tary air­craft could land at our air­port in To­ba­go with­out the knowl­edge and con­sent of the Prime Min­is­ter, and once land­ed they could pro­ceed to in­stall a radar sys­tem, and the Prime Min­is­ter would on­ly find out about this af­ter be­cause she thought they were there to build a road at the air­port,” Row­ley said.

He added, “I guess this is what the US Pres­i­dent meant when he re­ferred to us in the way he did. We are earn­ing more of these ep­i­thets each day un­der this gov­ern­ment.”

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the PNM, An­cil Den­nis, said the lack of pri­or con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple of To­ba­go was un­ac­cept­able and said wide­spread talk about the radar had been cir­cu­lat­ing for weeks.

“It is un­ac­cept­able that To­bag­o­ni­ans have to learn these things af­ter the fact,” Den­nis said. “Where is the prop­er brief­ing? Where is the re­spect for To­bag­o­ni­ans?”

Den­nis ques­tioned how the Chief Sec­re­tary could in­sist he was un­aware, giv­en that mul­ti­ple res­i­dents had raised the is­sue with him ear­li­er.

“The first time I heard about any radar be­ing built in To­ba­go was about two to three weeks ago,” he said. “Peo­ple were talk­ing about it… and all I could say is ‘I do not know’.”

He crit­i­cised the Chief Sec­re­tary for re­main­ing silent on an is­sue where he would usu­al­ly be out­spo­ken. “The same Chief Sec­re­tary who at every op­por­tu­ni­ty, even for the most friv­o­lous things, screamed dis­re­spect, is silent to­day,” he said.

Den­nis al­so raised ques­tions about who con­trols the sys­tem, what agree­ments were signed, and why com­mu­ni­ties in Crown Point, Bon Ac­cord and Canaan were not con­sult­ed. He said the pub­lic needs an­swers on en­vi­ron­men­tal, safe­ty and op­er­a­tional im­pli­ca­tions.

But on Thurs­day night, Au­gus­tine, while speak­ing on a tele­vi­sion pro­gramme, ac­cused some in the me­dia of dri­ving un­nec­es­sary pan­ic over the first US mil­i­tary air­craft, a C-17, land­ing.

“I see a lot of fear-mon­ger­ing hap­pen­ing. I see a lot of jour­nal­ists mis­con­stru­ing facts.”

He said two things could be true — that the air­craft did re­fu­el in To­ba­go, and that he was gen­uine­ly not briefed be­fore­hand.

He said he in­tends to vis­it the air­port per­son­al­ly. “I am go­ing to go down to the air­port my­self and look at what they are build­ing there,” he said.

Mean­while, res­i­dents said the sit­u­a­tion has be­come in­creas­ing­ly dis­rup­tive and un­clear. Yes­ter­day morn­ing, Crown Point com­mu­ni­ties were again jolt­ed awake by the ar­rival of a US C-17A Globe­mas­ter III — the third con­sec­u­tive night of heavy, late-night air­craft ac­tiv­i­ty.

Fligh­tradar24 con­firmed that a US Air Force C-17, reg­is­tra­tion 01-0192, de­part­ed To­ba­go short­ly be­fore 4 am and land­ed in New York around 7.40 am To­ba­go time.

“This is the third night in a row,” one res­i­dent said. “I keep jump­ing out my sleep. Why must the com­mu­ni­ty be both­ered at that hour of the morn­ing?”

An­oth­er res­i­dent said the noise was un­like any­thing from com­mer­cial air­craft. “These planes com­ing in when every­body sleep­ing and leav­ing be­fore dawn. It wak­ing up the whole neigh­bour­hood.”

Air­port staff told Guardian Me­dia a re­strict­ed zone has been set up for the in­stal­la­tion of the radar. Work­ers said a struc­ture “was put up in two days,” and an­oth­er “shed” was com­plet­ed in the last 24 hours. They were in­struct­ed not to en­ter the area or ask ques­tions.

The de­vel­op­ments come amid height­ened re­gion­al ten­sion be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela and grow­ing con­cern about the sud­den ap­pear­ance of for­eign mil­i­tary air­craft in To­ba­go. The Prime Min­is­ter has con­firmed the radar in­stal­la­tion is un­der­way, trig­ger­ing calls for full trans­paren­cy from both the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and the THA.

Chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Cur­tis Williams, said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is equal­ly un­set­tled by the lack of in­for­ma­tion com­ing from of­fi­cials.

“We are as sur­prised as all the To­bag­o­ni­ans that all these ac­tiv­i­ties are hap­pen­ing on the is­land and no one is forth­com­ing with the in­for­ma­tion as to what is ac­tu­al­ly hap­pen­ing,” he said.

“We are all con­fused, and we are def­i­nite­ly wait­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to say some­thing pos­i­tive be­cause the spec­u­la­tion is bring­ing un­ease, and we re­al­ly want every­one to be com­fort­able as to what’s hap­pen­ing in this space.”