Paguia's tape is no 'master tape' - 2

The call was unsolicited.

It came Wednesday afternoon while five committees of the House of Representatives were trying to grill intelligence agent Doble on his role in the alleged wiretapping of the President.

"I just want to help," the former top spy said when I asked him why the call. He said wiretapping has been his "bread and butter" since the days of the dreaded Metrocom. That was during the martial law years. And he just wanted to let the people know how wiretapping is done.

"Sumasabit pa kami noon sa poste para makapag-wiretap," he said, adding that his team used wiretapping against criminal syndicates. "Unlike now," he said.

"There was a time when we were able to put our own men inside PLDT. We even put tape recorders that automatically switch on when the receiver of the wiretapped phone is lifted," he said.

Then the days of the cellular phones came. He said analog phones were easy to tap. "We used the triangulation technic to determine the sources of calls on the tapped phone," the former spy said.

When he rose in rank, the former spy said he had 18 PLDT "dedicated" phone lines, 12 of which were used for wiretapping.

"Parang naging partyline lang kami ng wiretapped phone," he said. "We could listen to anybody wherever in the Philippines."

Sometime between 2001 and 2002, the former police spy said "high-tech" bugging devices for cellular phones were discovered at Discovery Suites. Unfortunately only one of the three units was confiscated. The rest are still missing, he said.

He said the "mother of all tapes" that was played at the House of Representatives could not be the "master tape." A master tape is dedicated only to a single telephone line, he said. And it could not contain annotations like the one played at the House, he added.

What the lawmakers heard was a spliced tape composed of clips from a lot of master tapes, the former police spy said. "It could have been altered. It is a corrupt tape," he said.

And because the volume of the voices of the parties talking in the recording played at the House have the same level, the wiretapping was most likely done inside a telephone exchange, the ex-spy said. "Like what we did in the past," he added.

"Somebody inside the telephone company must be privy to the wiretapping," he said.

Our source accused Sen. Ping Lacson of having a hand in the wiretapping. "He has the motive. He wanted to win in the 2004 elections," the former police spy said.

He also accused Lacson of hiring COMELEC Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano to cheat during the presidential election. He said Lacson did not trust Garcillano that is why the senator wiretapped the election official.

"[Lacson's camp] wanted to make sure that Garci works, that's why they bugged him," he said.

He said it appears now that only after a year did the Lacson camp found a use for the recordings.

"Marami ang nahagip. Nahagip ang lahat," he said.

When asked why he told me the story, he said: "Gusto ko lang makatulong para maintindihan ng mga tao ang nangyayari."