A former official from the National Security Council (NSC) explains the purpose of confidential and intelligence funds.
“Confidential funds are used by civilian agencies, while intelligence funds are used by security agencies, especially the armed forces and the police,” according to Former National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon.
This is how former National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon explained the difference between confidential and intelligence funds.
This issue arose after the Office of the President (OP) and Office of the Vice President (OVP) were allocated P125-M in confidential funds, taken from the President’s contingent funds.
According to Esperon, confidential funds serve various purposes.
“One is for counter-intelligence, which involves the protection of personnel, documents, and communications. There’s also an operational aspect, which includes human intelligence, technical intelligence, and other methods of collecting information,’’ Esperon added.
Esperon, a former Armed Forces Chief of Staff, emphasized the importance of confidential funds in ensuring the loyalty of individuals to the government.
It’s crucial to ensure that they are not spies or enemies of the state.
“All agencies must recruit people fit for the job. Their loyalty should be to the people and their objective should be to serve the people or the agency itself,’’ Esperon stated.
Regarding VP Sara Duterte, Esperon stated that confidential funds are particularly vital in her role as education secretary. He argued that these funds should not be questioned by leftist lawmakers in Congress.
“Your teachers should be loyal to the Department of Education (DepEd) and dedicated to enhancing learning capabilities and improving the youth. They shouldn’t be teachers who lead in recruiting people for radicalization,” he added.
Leftist party-list organizations, previously identified by former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte as fronts for the CPP-NPA-NDF, persistently inquire about confidential and intelligence funds during the 2024 budget hearings for all government agencies.
This raises Esperon’s question of why they seem afraid of government agencies having confidential funds.
“They are not representatives of the people but representatives of the combined CPP-NPA-NDF. They are there, so they will fight any effort to defeat them,” Esperon said.
The veteran official has a reminder for lawmakers, especially those swayed by leftist influences, to disclose details of intelligence and confidential funds to the public.
Because if that happens, he believes that adversaries will learn about all the government’s plans.
Leftists should not know how confidential funds are used—Esperon
“They are against the Anti-Terrorism Law, they are against NTF-ELCAC, they are against personal security, they are against document security, they are against intelligence. But what are they doing? They are snooping around documents. Every document in Congress should also have classified documents. They shouldn’t know about the intelligence budget. There should be a select committee so that not everyone knows. Otherwise, our adversaries, not only the CPP-NPA-NDF, will know. Our efforts, which are not aligned with our national interest, will also be exposed to other organizations or even countries,” Esperon stated.
