Hello Garci Political Scam: ISAFP's 'Project Lighthouse'

The Hello Garci political scam's shameful-detailed secrets shall be exposed soon by the Philippine Senate. Lame duck and illegitimate President Gloria Arroyo’s political reign is over. The opposition will deliver the fatal blow in the senate investigation.

Former AFP chief of staff General Efren Abu has lot of explaining to do why the family of T/Sgt. Vidal Doble was kidnapped in Kidapawan by ISAFP men and illegally detained in his Camp Aguinaldo’s official residence basement. Even Balanga Bishop Socrates Villegas maybe part of cover-up operations. He was picked-up by a military chopper in Balanga, Bataan to ‘negotiate’ the Makati City San Carlos seminary stand-off. By coincidence, former Comelec commissionaire Virgilio Garcillano had been hiding somewhere in Bataan before he boarded a private jet in Subic to Singapore. The Bureau of Immigration and Air Transportation Office may have conspired in his great escape.

It had been established by the Biazon’s defense committee that ISAFP is responsible for wiretapping Gloria Arroyo, Virgilio Garcillano and some opposition personalities. One centavo question: Who ordered the illegal wiretapping?

Doble to name telecom firm in 'Hello Garci'

Doble ready to testify on GMA-Garcillano vote pad gabs

Ex-Isafp agent turns Senate witness, bares all in Garci wiretap
By Angie M. Rosales
08/22/2007
The dead also rises.
Or so it seems, with a former military intelligence agent, Air Force T/Sgt. Vidal Doble, ready to spill the beans on the 2004 presidential cheating operations under the baton of President Arroyo, as recorded in the now infamous “Hello Garci” wiretaps, which Malacañang keeps on insisting is a “dead issue” and a “closed book.”
In a surprise move yesterday, Doble, caught on videotape, gave his testimony, identifying the voices of the President and a poll commissioner, confessing that it was indeed the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Isafp), which included himself, that did the wiretapping of the conversations between Mrs. Arroyo and then Commission on Elections Commissioner Virgilio “Garci” Garcillano, stressing that it was really Mrs. Arroyo and Garci’s voices caught on tape. Both had denied it was their voices that were heard on the tape, with Mrs. Arroyo apologizing for having spoken with a commissioner, but without adverting to the taped conversations.
Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, in presenting the taped interview showing Doble’s confession, delivered a privilege speech on the Garci tapes, sparking a new round of proceedings and the reopening of the congressional inquiry, this time, to be handled by the Senate.
Doble is ready to spill the cheating beans, saying he could not do so before owing to the fact that when the scandal broke out in June 2005, his family was kidnapped in Kidapawan City and brought to Manila and was detained in the basement of the official residence of then AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Efren Abu.
Doble also said he could no longer take the continuing cheating in the elections committed by the administration as shown in this year’s elections.
Vidal recounted how “Project Lighthouse,” which ran from September 2003 to April 2005, targeted several personalities and detailed how the operation was done.
Targeted for wiretapping, among others, were opposition standard bearer, Fernando Poe Jr, former Agrarian Reform Secretary Horacio “Boy” Morales Jr, Poe supporter Rez Cortez, the Magdalo Group including Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, and now-Sen. Gregorio Honasan.
Doble also said there were some administration personalities who were ordered wiretapped, among whom are Michael Defensor, then presidential chief of staff and Garcillano.
The former Isafp agent, along with Lacson, linked a number of ranking military officers and some known personalities, including retired General Abu and Bishop Socrates Villegas, in deliberately frustrating efforts by the opposition to expose the truth before the public when the so-called master or “mother of all tapes” was revealed by former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) deputy director Samuel Ong.
Lacson yesterday presented before the Senate a taped interview of Doble, last seen in 2005 before he was placed under Isafp custody since June of that year until he was discharged from military service last February, containing his confession, which was also reduced into a sworn affidavit.
Lacson’s latest expose presented in a privilege speech, sparked the reopening of the congressional inquiry on the Garci scandal, this time to be handled by the upper chamber convening as a “Committee of the Whole.”
This was agreed upon by senators after a round of debates over which committee should conduct the probe as a number of them called for the inclusion of not only the defense and security panel chaired by Sen. Rodolfo Biazon as proposed by Lacson, but several other committees, in order not to provide the Executive Department any excuse in preventing the Senate from summoning concerned officials.
It will likely be a redux of the Garci probe in the Senate as investigation on this matter was also carried out by them, simultaneous with their counterparts from the House of Representatives, prior to the first impeachment proceedings of Mrs. Arroyo in 2005, with the upper chamber concentrating on the alleged involvement of four military generals in the tampering of results of the 2001 presidential elections, in favor of the Chief Executive.
Doble and Lacson also detailed how the Isafp carried out what the former Isafp agent branded as spying operations.
When his interviewer, identified as lawyer Alex Abesado inquired further on who were the other personalities the Isafp wiretapping operations, Doble disclosed that the monitors chanced upon Mrs. Arroyo calling up Garcillano.
“At the start, we already knew that “Gary” was Garcillano from the many long conversations. One time, someone called his cell. We were all stunned that it was President Arroyo who was calling Garcillano. What she asked him was about the 1 million vote padding. At that time, it was our team that was on duty,” Doble said, referring to the controversial charges against the Chief Executive on her alleged order to Garcillano to pad her votes by at least one million in some areas in Mindanao, while the congressional canvassing was still ongoing.
In attesting the validity of his charges, Doble named names such as his immediate superiors then namely Master Sgt. Alex Villedo and T/Sgt. Ariel Petate from the Philippine Air Force (PAF).
Doble said he served in the second of the four teams created to operate Project Lighthouse which he claimed was manned by Captains Paul Sumayo, Frederick Rebong and Lindasay Rex Sagge who acted as group commanders.
He detailed how they were given Nokia 3600 units by Captain Rebong, which have the capability of monitoring phone calls that were recorded and given to Rebong. The master tapes were left with the team and four of these tapes were given to Lito Santiago, who is a man of Sammy Ong.
Doble corroborated the earlier testimony of Ong when he made public the so-called mother of all tapes, after having sought refuge at the San Carlos Seminary in Makati City. Doble, with his family kidnapped by his superiors, was coerced into contradicting Ong and even claimed that he was abducted by the priests in the seminary.
The former Isafp agent mentioned Bishop Villegas who is identified closely with the late Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, as the person who fetched him from the seminary and turned him over to Abu in AFP headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo , Quezon City, hinting broadly that Abu and Villegas were part of the effort to have Doble silenced and the truth kept hidden.
Doble said that was the time he saw his children and his wife who were detained in Abu’s basement, that he also saw Bishop Villegas there in the basement and that this was reason he could not tell the truth, adding that now he can, since he is out of the AFP and has not re-enlisted.
Doble claimed his decision to resurface and spill the beans was prompted by reports alleging anew that cheating was committed in this year’s senatorial and local polls, similar to what he attested actually took place in May 2004.
In backing up his charges, Doble said he can prove that the so-called Garci tapes were the handiwork of the military and can prove this before the public, adding that it was his voice as annotator that can be heard in the conversations.
Lacson said Doble deserved another day in court since his appearance before the investigating committees of the House of Representatives in 2005 was done against his will.
“When he was haled before the House of Representatives as a resource person, Vidal Doble was obviously not a free man,” the senator said.
“For two years and running, the nation has been kept in the dark about the truth behind ‘Hello Garci’ because the man who knew how conversations were illegally tapped for political and other purposes, could not speak out…thus his silence on the issue was guaranteed by the terror of fear for his family,” he added.
Lacson said this probe is aimed at providing closure to the controversy that hounded the country for two years now and may prove too costly for the administration as it will bring about anew the issue on the question on legitimacy of the mandate of the present leadership, the revelations are extremely alarming.
He asked them to take advantage of Doble’s testimony, having “finally found the courage of his convictions, and will tell the people, through us in this august chamber, freely, the whole unvarnished truth – the what’s, when’s, where’s, who’s and how’s of the “Hello Garci” tapes.”
“Not only had the Isafp been ordered to do its dastardly deed; no less than the leadership of the AFP became party to covering-up for the crimes it committed by threatening vital witnesses who sought to tell the truth,” he said, adding that the wiretapping could not have been done without the participation of a service provider, whom the senator did not name.
Lacson, after playing the tape on Doble, also presented to his colleagues how the so-called bugging operations were carried out by the military in this case.
“Notice how their technique is as simple as it is fraught with the most fearful of implications. What is frightening is the reality that we have all remained vulnerable while using any type of telecommunications equipment. It only takes a service provider willing to cooperate and conspire with whoever has knowledge in basic electronic surveillance.
Step 1: A cell phone conversation is coursed through the cell site of the service provider.
Step 2: The service provider splits the signal and relays it to a cell phone unit that can record voice calls (in this case, a Nokia 3600 programmed for the purpose by the service provider).
Step 3: The conversation is recorded as a digital file to the duplicate cell phone’s memory card, and is transferred to a computer.
Step 4: The file is then transferred to a cassette, CD or other media; in this case, a cassette tape… and, there we go… we have the infamous and notorious “Hello Garci” tapes.
“Now that we all know how simple a cell phone wiretap operation is being undertaken, we are indebted to Mr. Vidal Doble Jr. for finally surfacing to give us the truth, about how “Project Lighthouse” brought the nation into the dark, applying clandestine acts to achieve sinister ends...He has brought out the truth so that the Senate investigations into the farce that was the elections of 2004 can be put to its closure. Daily Tribune