MANILA, 13 August 2005 — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's camp yesterday said it would ask the House of Representatives to junk an impeachment charge against her, citing findings by an American sound expert that the wiretapped recordings being used as evidence in the case were fake.
Environment Secretary Mike Defensor, who also serves as Arroyo’s political spokesman, said the tapes in which Arroyo allegedly asks an election official to ensure her 1 million vote margin in last year’s polls were “full of lies.”
“Yes, it is the voice of the president, but that is not the president talking,” he said. “It is an electronic and digital manipulation to link the president to cheating and rigging the elections.”
Defensor said he had asked Barry G. Dickey, an audio forensic expert with the Arlington, Texas-based Audio Evidence Lab, to analyze two alleged wiretapped snippets from the tapes.
In an Aug. 2 report made public by Defensor yesterday, Dickey declared that “several anomalies exist which question the integrity” of the recordings.
Dickey, who has consulted with US news networks on purported recordings of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, said though that he needed more time to “render conclusive results.”
Even then, Defensor said at a news conference that Dickey’s findings “will kill the impeachment complaint.”
He also presented three local audio experts, who all said they had heard evidence of splicing in the tape.
Dickey and a Filipino digital audio engineer, Jonathan Tiongco, said two tracks taken from the Paguia tape had been tampered with.
One of the tracks contained the purported conversation in which Arroyo was heard mentioning to a Commission on Elections official — supposedly then Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano — the votes allegedly padded in her favor: “Yung dagdag, yung dagdag. (The padding, the padding.)”
The other track contained the portion where the alleged participation of generals in election cheating was mentioned.
Dickey said it was possible that not just one device had been used to produce the two tracks. Both tracks also allegedly lacked start signatures, or the distinct marks created by the activation of a recording device. He said these marks could be found in original recordings.
For his analysis, Tiongco downloaded an MP3 file from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism website and recorded the contents of the Paguia tape aired over DZMM. Dickey used waveform and spectrographic analysis on the two tracks contained in the recordable CD sent to him.
‘For the Sake of Truth’
Defensor said he intended to submit the Dickey report to the House of Representatives. The impeachment complaint rests on the wiretapped phone conversations in which Arroyo and other officials are supposedly heard discussing with the Comelec official how the May 2004 presidential vote was being rigged.
The House justice committee is to begin hearings on the case on Monday to determine whether the impeachment complaint is “sufficient in form and substance” and can be sent to the Senate for trial.
The impeachment charges filed by opposition legislators against Arroyo accuse the president of rigging the May 2004 election, corruption, bribery and other crimes. Opposition leaders have urged Arroyo to resign instead of going through a painful trial by the Senate.
Arroyo has apologized for a “lapse in judgment” in calling an election official before results were announced, but has denied she won the election through fraud and steadfastly refused to step down.
She has not identified the election officer she spoke with but the opposition says it was Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, who has gone into hiding.
But while Defensor appeared certain that the report was conclusive, Dickey suggested the need for further verification and even reserved the right to modify his report in the future, upon the submission of the so-called “mother of all tapes.”
“The results suggest that the audio is the resultant of several transfers, which involved the audio being recorded/encoded/decoded by different devices. (However) several anomalies ... require further analysis of comparative exemplars created by the original recording,” Dickey said.
He also admitted that the unfamiliar language had hindered him from making further evaluations.
Rubbish
Defensor’s technical report was dismissed as rubbish by lawmakers, including staunch administration stalwart Surigao del Sur Rep. Prospero Pichay.
“He (Defensor) should be concentrating on the environment department’s reforestation program instead of trying to prove himself as a sound expert,” Pichay said.
Pichay also said Defensor’s report had “no additional probative value” because lawyer Alan Paguia had already admitted to having edited the tapes he submitted to the House.
“In the first place, (investigating the authenticity of the tapes) is the work of the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation),” Pichay said. “It is not (Defensor’s) job to do that.”
Even Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez cast doubts over the credibility of Jonathan Tiongco, who he said had visited his office twice this year offering his expertise to determine if the alleged conversation between Arroyo and Garcillano was authentic.
Gonzalez said Tiongco, a digital sound engineer, offered materials to buttress his claims that the audiotapes were tampered.
“I just told him to leave whatever he had and I will study (it),” Gonzalez said at a press conference, adding that Tiongco even offered his services to the National Bureau of Investigation to help in the probe.
In an affidavit detailing his credentials, Tiongco claimed he was recruited as intelligence consultant and deep penetration agent for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in 2000.
He also said he was secretly trained in forensic examination of counterfeit audio material and had been assigned on a few “high risk” and confidential operations to infiltrate big triads in Hong Kong and Macau.
“He might be trying to over blow himself to convince people on his expertise, but the thing is if he is an expert whether he boasts about it or not,” Gonzalez said.
But Tiongco brush aside Gonzalez’s statements.
Tiongco, who first appeared in the Senate in May when he opposed the confirmation of Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, said Gonzalez is just “sourgraping,” adding that his findings were even confirmed by US-based sound forensic expert Barry Dickey.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Opposition Sen. Panfilo Lacson stood by the findings of the Australia-based Uniquest Pty. Ltd. (UPL), which he had commissioned and which said the Paguia tapes were “authentic and unaltered.”
Lacson said Defensor had submitted a “fake” tape, which was supposedly why the American expert Barry Dickey came out with his conclusion.
“They spliced it. If you submit garbage, the one authenticating it will find garbage. Garbage in, garbage out,” Lacson said at a press conference.
Lacson also said the examination could not be accepted because Defensor submitted only two tracks of the 3-hour-long tape.
“The integrity of the tape (cannot be determined) if you submitted only tracks 3 and 4. You should submit the entire tape and CD in its entirety to have a forensic examination of whether it is spliced or doctored,” he said.
He said he would submit to Dickey a copy of the tape he had sent to Dr. Brian Lovell of the UPL to get at the truth, and again challenged President Arroyo to resign if the Paguia tapes were proven authentic.
“If we submit similar tapes, both to Uniquest and Barry Dickey, they should have the same finding,” Lacson said, adding:
“I challenge him (Defensor), if Mr. Dickey would come up with the same findings as Uniquest, can he ask the president to resign or step down?
“If the tape we sent to Australia would be found to have been spliced, edited or doctored, I am willing to go personally to Arroyo and apologize to her. I’m even willing to talk to (San Juan) Rep. (Ronaldo) Zamora, the lead prosecutor, to talk to his colleagues in the House to withdraw the impeachment complaint.”
Creating Confusion
The opposition said Defensor was trying to confuse the public.
“They want to stop the impeachment before the evidence is presented,” said Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano, spokesman for the impeachment team. “They fear that after the evidence is presented ... the people will believe that the president stole, cheated and lied.”
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said Defensor’s presentation was a poor attempt at muddling allegations of electoral fraud that were bolstered by the president’s admission in late June that it was her voice on the tape.
“It is obvious that they are trying to confuse the meaning of the words that are uttered in the tape to reach out not only to the congressmen or women but also to the people at large,” Pimentel said at a press briefing.
He added: “(Defensor’s) announcement falls in line exactly with the lies the administration is peddling to cover up for the misdeeds of the president.”
He also said Defensor and Jonathan Tiongco were making fools of the Filipino people: “All this talk about (the word) ‘dagdag’-obviously, they are trying to stretch the tape even further to the irrational conclusion.”
Cavite Rep. Gilbert Remulla, chair of the House inquiry into the tapes, said the chairs of the five committees conducting the investigation would meet on Monday and pursue the authentication of the tapes by a neutral and credible foreign government agency.
Remulla also said he considered Defensor’s report to be biased. (Input from AP & Inquirer News Service)
