AS the nation marked the 36th anniversary of the attempted coup of 1990 yesterday, former national security minister Gary Griffith accused Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander of misusing the National Operations Centre (NOC), saying it has been reduced from an intelligence hub to a police dispatch centre.Griffith posted on Facebook yesterday, that the attempted coup happened largely because of poor intelligence gathering.Reflecting on July 27, 1990, Griffith said, “As one of the youngest soldiers serving my country during the attempted coup, I witnessed first-hand the mistakes, irregularities and shortcomings that took place. These included law enforcement officials abandoning their posts during the first 48 hours, leaving many of us to fend for ourselves and defend the country.”He said the Commission of Enquiry established after the attempted coup identified key failures and made 34 recommendations to prevent a similar event.“Only in a banana republic could a Commission of Enquiry be held into an attempted coup, with its findings and recommendations then left virtually untouched for more than a decade,” he said.According to Griffith, while serving as Minister of National Security, he implemented 13 of the recommendations, but successive governments failed to continue the process.He said the commission’s primary recommendation was the establishment of a National Operations Centre because intelligence agencies had failed to share information before the coup attempt.“The failure to share information resulted in law enforcement agencies being caught completely unprepared and allowed the insurgents to do what they did. The State was then forced into damage control mode rather than being able to conduct a pre-emptive response through predictive intelligence and law enforcement operations,” he said.Griffith said the National Operations Centre, established during his tenure, was “a $500-million, high-technology system designed to facilitate immediate, real-time intelligence gathering.”“Its purpose was to ensure that all arms of intelligence could work together, accumulate and analyse information, develop proper operational plans and prevent threats to national security before they materialised,” he said.He added that the NOC contributed to a reduction in crime during his tenure.“In 2014, Trinidad and Tobago recorded the largest reduction in serious crime in 31 years without the use of a state of emergency,” he said.Griffith accused the current administration of changing the role of the facility.“Sadly, the present administration, through a Minister of Homeland Security whose knowledge is limited primarily to policing, has reduced this highly advanced system to a dispatch centre working alongside E 999, even though E 999 already has its own dispatch centre,” he said.He added, “The National Operations Centre was not built to duplicate E 999.”Griffith warned that the country remains vulnerable because key recommendations from the Commission of Enquiry have not been fully implemented.“Poor intelligence gathering was the principal weakness in 1990. The failure to implement the remaining recommendations of the Commission of Enquiry, combined with the failure to utilise the National Operations Centre as intended, has left this country exposed.“Thirty-six years later, we are not one step closer to ensuring that what happened in 1990 will never happen again,” Griffith said.