What Went Before: Who is Vidal Doble?

Then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (left) apologizes to the nation in a televised address for her alleged lapse in judgement in phoning a Commission on Elections official to ask about the ongoing poll count. Virigilio Garcillano, the official with whom she allegedly spoke with, has come out to deny anew that he did not cheat in the elections. INQUIRER FILE PHOTOS

MANILA, Philippines—Vidal Doble, a technical sergeant at the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Isafp), is known to be the source of “the mother of all tapes” in the “Hello Garci” controversy that arose after audio recordings of an alleged telephone conversation between former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Commission on Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano surfaced in 2005.

On June 6, 2005, then Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye played before reporters two CDs of purported tapped conversations between Arroyo and Garcillano. In the recordings, a woman could be heard asking the person on the other end of the line to protect her lead of one million votes over her closest rival.

On June 10, 2005, former National Bureau of Investigation Deputy Director Samuel Ong claimed that he had “the mother of all tapes” that would implicate Arroyo. He said he got the material from Doble.

In a television interview, Doble denied that the tapes in Ong’s possession came from him. He said that he appeared in a scripted videotaped “authentication” of the wiretaps after he and his family were threatened and later received P2 million for the effort. Doble said the money came from Laarni Enriquez, a mistress of deposed President Joseph Estrada. Enriquez has denied the allegation.

Ong himself was at a seminary to seek protection. Ong denied forcing Doble to appear in the video and detaining him, saying the latter had voluntarily gone to the San Carlos Seminary on Edsa for protection. Ong died of lung cancer in May 2009.

In December 2005, Doble’s girlfriend, Marietta Santos, testified at the Senate that she used to be able to freely enter and leave the Isafp compound, and that before the “Hello Garci” scandal broke out, Doble had played the master tape of the wiretapped conversations with her as witness.

On Aug. 21, 2007, Doble said in a video testimony presented at the Senate that he and other Isafp agents listened in on the purported conversations between Arroyo and Garcillano concerning the results of the 2004 presidential election.

Doble said that fear for the safety of his family—that he claimed the military had detained in a basement—made him keep quiet, but that he was bothered by his conscience.

Doble also said it was a woman, later identified as Arroyo’s close aide, Undersecretary Remedios Poblador, who had brought Bishop Socrates Villegas to talk to him while he was in hiding at San Carlos Seminary. It was Villegas who took Doble out of the seminary and turned him over to the military.

In December 2011, Doble said Col. Pedro Sumayo was in a position to identify who “from Malacañang” ordered his intelligence unit to wiretap the phone conversations of Garcillano in 2004. He said Sumayo was the group commander of “Project Lighthouse,” an 18-member team of covert intelligence agents who eavesdropped on the conversations of Garcillano and other key personalities.

“Our knowledge as agents 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 told the Inquirer.

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