Senator Grace Poe admitted Thursday that she was shocked by the alleged hesitation of relieved Special Action Force chief Director Getulio Napeñas Jr. in telling the Senate joint committee the whole truth about participation of Americans in the Mamasapano operation in January.
The senator said it took a while before Napeñas answered the questions of the senators during the executive session on the US involvement and the latter was inconsistent with his answers.
“What shocked me the most was at the very beginning he was untruthful. We were asking him, “So were there Americans there?” And it took a while (before he) said yes. And then, ‘Papaano? nakipag-usap ba kayo? Did you coordinate?’” His initial answer was ‘Bigla na lang nandoon na e’,” Poe narrated the conversation in a television interview.
“How will you believe that? That foreign… that the American was actually there because he just showed up? And then we said, ‘Ilan?’ At first, tatlo o dalawa ba? Biglang naging apat, naging anim… Tapos later on we found out, they were already setup in the command post with television monitoring equipment etc.” she added.
Poe said it was acting Minority Leader Vicente Sotto III who was able get the information from Napeñas.
“Senator Tito Sotto was the one who was able to get it out of him to say, ‘May Amerikano e, yung pangalan e….’ Basta he mentioned the name and that’s what we had to say because he figured out na mukhang may nagsasabi dito,” she said.
Poe said there was nothing wrong with the Americans sharing intelligence report with the Filipino counterparts as long as they are not part of the actual combat.
“It’s not wrong for us, for inter-country sharing of intelligence, it’s important; it’s for the safety of our own people,” she said.
She added that during the Senate probe, they did not find evidence that the US troops were involved in the firefight.
“I don’t think we find anything that the US was actually conducting ground combat operations, no. They were giving intelligence information, some equipment… for sure the scanner…they were also there to train. They train these people. Maybe that’s why there’s that loyalty, because he admitted that that person actually trained them,” he said.
