Speaking to reporters at Piarco Airport Thursday on her return from a trip to the U.S. where she held discussions with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Persad Bissessar described the work of the agency as "frightening".
She said although she is the head of the country's National Security Council (NSC), no one ever informed her of the secret operations of the Security Intelligence Agency (SIA), which illegally wire-tapped the phones of law-abiding persons.
"The SIA as I say, very few people even knew it existed. Very few people know what it is they do and we were similarly not informed and advised as what was happening there.
"This is in spite of the fact that we would hold National Security Council meetings, this is in spite of the fact that at any time the heads of security at the agencies would speak to me as chairman of the NSC, this was never brought to our attention.
"And the question is, to whom was this information being fed? We don't know. Where was it going?
"And indeed, when we discovered it, and of course we were being advised that people were requesting transcripts of the tapping, requesting tapes of the tapping and this was about two-and-a-half weeks ago, from officials at the SIA, and therefore we had to take action," she said.
Police took action last month in an early-morning raid on the offices of the SIA and collected the incriminating information. And President Richards immediately revoked the appointment of the SIA head, Nigel Clement.
Read the story: T&T agency has been spying on the PM, private citizens; PP gov't to ban phone taps
The Police Service is now conducting a forensic probe of the SIA.
Persad-Bissessar stated that certain officials of a political party had asked the SIA for information obtained by the illegal wire-tapping. However she did not name the party.
The unit, which was set up during the Manning PNM administration, had been operating for about five years, illegally monitoring cell phone calls, emails and text messages.
Persad-Bissessar dismissed the suggestion that it was part of any crime fighting plan "because the persons who were being tapped do not have any record of criminal activity and certainly no propensity to criminal activity because we are talking here of members of Parliament, of all the parties.
"We are talking here about persons in private life including media persons...persons in the judiciary. It's a frightening bit of information that we discovered only by chance, and the tapping of these phones continued after May 24, after the Government had changed. They continued to tap our phones," she said.
The Prime Minister said she is grateful for the work done in this matter by the new police commissioner, Dwayne Gibbs.
She is expected to introduce legislation in Parliament to ban all wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping unless it is authorised by a judge.
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