Pimentel says no reason to doubt wiretap witness despite marital affair

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. on Tuesday said he finds no reason to doubt the testimony of retired T/Sgt. Vidal Doble about his role in the wiretapping activities of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP).

Doble had come out to relate his actions during the 2004 election period despite efforts of some of his legislative colleagues to discredit his credibility on account of his extra-marital affairs.

Administration senators have tried to show that Doble is a habitual liar whose words could not be taken at face value by grilling him about his estrangement from his legal wife, Arlene Doble, and his illicit relations with two other women.

Noting that Doble does not deny his philandering, Pimentel said the revelations about his troublesome personal life do not necessarily mean that he was weaving a tall tale.

Doble had earlier admitted that he was part of a team of ISAFP operatives who wiretapped the phone conversations of former Commission on Elections Chairman Virgilio Garcillano with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and several other personalities.

Facing the Senate committees during a series of public hearings, Doble admitted that he was the source of the "Hello Garci" master tape which supposedly shows the administration's alleged clandestine operations to rig the results of the 2004 presidential election.

He said he gave the tape to former National Bureau of Investigation deputy director Samuel Ong through a go-between, Angelito Santiago, aide of Ong and close friend of the ISAFP agent.

"In my view, even a liar does not tell a lie all the time. There are times when he is telling the truth. So our task now in investigating the case is to sieve all that Doble has said and find out which is true and which is false," Pimentel said.

Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile attempted to show that Doble is an untruthful and unreliable witness by pointing out the fact that although Doble has acknowledged Arlene as his wife, they have in fact been separated since 2001 and that the former ISAFP agent had remarried to Jocelyn Andaya.

Earlier, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago branded Doble as a "perjured witness" by extracting a statement from Arlene, during her Senate appearance, that she and her two children were not kidnapped by the ISAFP agents in Kidapawan City but willingly went with them to Metro Manila in June, 2005 at the height of the Hello Garci controversy.

Pimentel said it is not correct to say that just because Doble has two wives, his testimony should not be relied upon.

However, he said Enrile was just employing a technique in investigation when he raised the issue of Doble's womanizing in a bid to lessen the credibility of the witness.

"In other words, you are testing the credibility of the witness. But in this particular case, any person, no matter how grave his sins may be, can still tell the truth," Pimentel said.