Military official was protecting someone in testimony—‘Hello Garci’ whistleblower

MANILA, Philippines – Colonel Pedro Sumayo was “saving someone” and was not telling the whole truth when he appeared Tuesday in the Senate investigation into alleged electoral fraud during the Arroyo administration, according to his former subordinate in the military intelligence community.

Former Philippine Army Sergeant Vidal Doble said on Wednesday that Sumayo was in a position to identify who “from Malacañang” ordered his intelligence unit to eavesdrop on and tape telephone conversations of then Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano in 2004.

Doble described Sumayo as the group commander of “Project Lighthouse,” which consisted of a team of covert intelligence agents that eavesdropped on Garcillano and other key personalities. It had a total of 18 members, including the commander.

“As agents, our knowledge was limited, but being our commander, he could provide the link between our operation and Malacañang. There’s a very big possibility that he knew all the connections all the way to the top, who from Malacañang ordered the wiretapping,” Doble said in Filipino in a phone interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Doble said he was present when his former boss testified before the joint investigation by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and the committee on electoral reforms. But he said he opted to leave soon after Sumayo began talking.

“He was not telling the whole truth. He was hiding something. He was playing safe. He was trying to save someone,” he said.

Doble added: “Since everybody now is searching for truth, he should tell all.”

At his level, Doble said, he and other agents had been told that Garcillano had been ordered wiretapped for fear that he might “double cross” his benefactors. Doble said he only knew that retired Vice Adm. Tirso Danga, then deputy chief for intelligence, had sanctioned the operation.

Doble said he wanted to correct Sumayo’s account that the colonel simply received a number of cassette tapes from him. Some of the tapes contained conversations supposedly between Garcillano and then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

“The truth was he asked for a copy because I think someone else wanted to listen to the Arroyo conversations,” Doble recalled.

Sumayo said Tuesday that he had burned the tapes on orders from his superior, Lieutenant Colonel Allen Capuyan. If Sumayo’s account was true, Doble said, the destroyed tapes were a mere reproduction of the “master tape” his group was still keeping at that time.

“What we gave him were just copies of the master tape,” he said.

Doble said his team then opted to keep the master copies as a “reference for our very big operation, our very big accomplishment of having learned about big personalities, how they did vote-buying and other things.”

The master tape was later given to then Deputy Director Samuel Ong of the National Bureau of Investigation, who died two years ago. Doble said the tapes were now with the Senate committee on national defense, which investigated the “Hello Garci” election cheating scandal.

Doble said the tapes contained the signature “H13,” the code for Garcillano.

Besides the master tape, he said, an “original and unadulterated tape recording” was yet to be retrieved. He said he gave the recordings to Army Colonel Dioscoro Reyes shortly before the congressional canvassing of votes in the 2004 elections.

Reyes, a member of the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1981, is yet to surface and shed light on the original tape.