Following the scandal about the dug-heist at a base of the Armed Forces of Malta, nothing has changed for Malta’s national security and things are only getting worse. The Home Affairs Byron Camilleri has kept his potion as if nothing has happened and that his incompetence is only a figment of our imagination.
“Appoġġ assolut.”
Apparently, they don’t even know the exact amount of drugs that was stored at the base and how much was stolen with forensic experts and the Police giving out two different numbers. The circus doesn’t seem to have an end.
Malta’s national security and intelligence service is called the Malta Security Services. They are composed and lead by semi-literate Laburisti tal-Mewt. This entity is supposed to be the most intelligent entity within the government: the brainchild of Malta’s security, the futures predictor, the analysts, the guardians in the shadows. They are the ones who supposedly have answers to everything, from complex national and strategic matters to even the most trivial personal details, such as the name of the last man who slept with the wife of Malta’s most dangerous criminal
The reality is hilarious if not tragic.
Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa was an MSS officer himself. The situation at the MSS is so bad and rundown, that even the corrupt Commissioner Angelo Gafa, who has been actively protecting politicians from investigation, doesn’t trust the MSS. So much so that Commissioner Gafa has taken it upon himself to create a new intelligence unit within the Police that is completely separate from the MSS. As an intelligence service, You really need to be well below any reasonable and existing standard to be loathed and mistrusted by Gafa to the extent that he would want to replace you altogether.. After all, Gafa has never had any problem using incompetent police officers for serious tasks: he makes an exception with the MSS because they are extremely useless most of the time.
Both the Police and the MSS have a responsibility over the drug-heist at the AFM base, but it is the MSS that is first and foremost responsible to collect the intelligence and data about future criminal incidents. There was a clear and blatant failure by the MSS to select highly suspicious individuals and collect intelligence about their criminal activity. In Malta, the custom has always been that the Police are mostly focused on investigations of crimes that have already been committed while the intelligence service takes responsibility for detecting and predicting major future criminal incidents. Commissioner Gafa knows that the MSS have repeatedly failed to provide this intelligence and this is also why he has taken it upon himself to create a new intelligence unit within the Police.
There is another issue. A lot of intelligence that the Police are receiving about foreign terrorists and threats by foreign terrorists mostly come from foreign intelligence services, namely, French and Italian with the US also in the mix. The MSS has been completely ineffective on these matters.
One of the very useful things the MSS have done is to collaborate with the Police over dangerous criminals. This collaboration was also lead by the Police and also related to ongoing investigations and cases. During this activities, MSS officials are working fully under directives and investigative structure of the Police. The MSS also have no active investigations of their own, not for lack of legal authority, but simply because most of them are useless, and those who are not, are working alongside Police investigators.
Having an intelligence service is a prerequisite for Malta’s security and defence. If we had reasonable and adult politics, the Labour government and the Opposition would get together and discuss this matter in confidence whilst reaching an agreement. In order to kickstart any meaningful and positive change, we have no choice but to admit that our intelligence service is a joke. From that point onward, our politicians should be mature enough to build something decent and effective together, something society truly deserves, and without creating drama or turning it into a partisan issue
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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