MANILA, Philippines - An active officer and a retired official of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) provided the Senate yesterday with information that could tie all of the loose ends in the “Hello, Garci” wiretapping controversy during the 2004 presidential elections.
Lt. Col. Emil Zosa, head of the operations and intelligence division of ISAFP, and one of his predecessors, retired Lt. Col. Allen Capuyan, appeared at the Senate yesterday as resource persons in the third hearing on the alleged poll fraud that took place in the 2004 and 2007 elections.
The two soldiers, however, requested for an executive session with the senators.
The executive session was held immediately after the joint hearing of the committees on accountability of public officers and investigations and electoral reforms and people’s participation was convened.
Since it was an executive session, the senators in attendance were not allowed to disclose the details of the testimony provided by the two officers.
Sen. Francis Escudero said that the information provided by the two ISAFP officers were important in tying up all the loose ends in the entire “Hello, Garci” controversy.
Lt. Col. Pedro Sumayo, former commander of the Military Intelligence Group-21 (MIG-21), had mentioned both Capuyan and Zosa during the previous hearing of the Senate. Sumayo said the two officers were supposedly involved in the wiretapping issue.
Sumayo claimed that sometime after the 2004 presidential elections he was able to listen to the raw copy of the taped recordings of wiretapped conversations between former Commission on Elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano and various individuals, including one that sounded like former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
According to Sumayo, he was convinced that the voice he heard was that of the former president and immediately reported this to his superior, Capuyan.
Sumayo said that he was ordered by Capuyan to destroy the tape, the copy of which originated from former T/Sgt. Vidal Doble, also an agent of ISAFP.
He said that he had an inkling that it was Capuyan who ordered the wiretapping operation on Garcillano.
Escudero said that the discussion during yesterday’s executive session centered on the reasons behind the wiretapping operation, the people behind this and the source of the funds.
“He (Capuyan) is the one who would be able to put all of the pieces together because he was operations head of the ISAFP then and he was the one that Colonel Sumayo identified as his immediate superior and this was confirmed by Doble,” Escudero said in Filipino.
Escudero said Capuyan was able to provide two or three names of officers who were allegedly involved in the operation but he said that this must be verified first.
Even though he said that Capuyan was somewhat cooperative, Escudero expressed his belief that the retired officer was still withholding some information, particularly about the people who ordered the wiretap.
“I am not satisfied. It appears that they are still apprehensive. Some of my colleagues even asked them why they were holding back information when the people who supposedly ordered the operation or could cause them harm in the government are no longer around,” Escudero said.
He said that the names mentioned by Capuyan were former ranking officers of the military but he was not convinced that they were the only ones involved.
In the case of Zosa, Escudero said that he understood the reasons for his being apprehensive because he is still an active officer of the AFP.
Zosa was implicated by Sumayo as the officer who handed over P900,000 in cash to him, allegedly from Capuyan.
According to Sumayo, he received a text message from “BB” (Big Brother), the alias of Capuyan in the military, to approach Col. Zosa because he had a package for him.
The “Hello, Garci” wiretapped conversations contained details of an alleged plan to rig the elections to favor former President Arroyo and other candidates of the administration.
Charges have been filed against Arroyo and former Commission on Elections chairman Benjamin Abalos, among others, for electoral sabotage in connection with the 2007 senatorial elections.
The Senate has yet to dig deeper into the 2004 elections inquiry since the current focus of the investigation is the 2007 elections.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson said that the Senate “won’t stop at anything short of a logical closure to the poll fraud of 2004 as well as 2007.”