Inconclusive Findings

Posted by Alecks Pabico 
PCIJ

AFTER a few weeks' absence from the political limelight, environment secretary Michael Defensor is back, though he is not going after environmental saboteurs.

The secretary has come out lashing at the political opponents of Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, armed with his own commissioned authentication of the Paguia tape (so called as it was released by Alan Paguia, former lawyer of ousted president Joseph Estrada), alleging that they were spliced so as to incriminate the president to charges of rigging the elections in her favor.

Defensor cited the analysis done by a renowned American forensic sound expert, Barry Dickey, on the materials — two tracks of audio recordings from the Paguia tape — he submitted which was based on the audio examination done by Jonathan Tiongco. Defensor, who has contracted Tiongco with the help of a friend in the media for his "technical expertise," described him as a "veteran audio/voice technician steeped in the process of sound and voice recording." (Tiongco's background and credentials are however suspect. See our next post.)

Dickey's report, however, was not at all conclusive. Using waveform and spectrogaphic analysis, the forensic expert pointed to several "anomalies" that cast doubt on the integrity of the recordings. But these "anomalies," he said, could be the result of "several transfers, which involved the audio being recorded/encoded/decoded by different devices."

Dickey's findings were also only categorical as far as the track involving the time code 00:00:33.00 to 00:00:35.00 is concerned, which is associated with a male speech, as being "inconsistent with the rest of the recording." Anomalies associated with the track referring to the part where " yung dagdag" is mentioned (time code 00:00:29.00 to 00:00:36.00), he said, will require further analysis.

In fact, the analysis is actually silent on the issue that the "yung dagdag" portion is spliced. To make his case, Defensor had to rely on the examination done by Tiongco to discredit the "yung dagdag " allegations, which is by far the most damaging to Pres. Arroyo.

Defensor claimed that by enhancing and time-stretching the "yung dagdag, yung dagdag" portion, it was revealed that the phrase was merely inserted to replace "Galban, Binalbag." What the words "Galban" and "Binalbag" refer to, Defensor did not say. (We heard they are places in Lanao del Sur. We did our research but did not find any place named as such in the province. There is a barangay named Binalbag in Agdangan, Quezon Province though, while Galvan is a barangay in Guimba, Nueva Ecija.) Tiongco's audio analysis report also pointed to the missing "d" attributes in the syllables to produce the word " dagdag."

Acceding to repeated questions from the media if it was indeed the voice of Pres. Arroyo on the tape, Defensor said: "It is the voice of the president but that is not the president talking. It is an electronic and digital manipulation to link the president to cheating and rigging the elections."

However, an independent audio expert we consulted, and who has done his own analyses of all the versions of the recordings that have come out, said that the foreign analysis is expected to come out "positive" on the matter of splicing because the Paguia tape is known to be a spliced version.

But the only spliced portions in the Paguia tape are the annotations made by the agents of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP), which Paguia removed, and the introduction added by the lawyer himself. Our source said the actual conversations of the President were preserved, with no discontinuties found, particularly on the " yung dagdag" part.

In fact, the "yung dagdag" portion is also found in the versions released by Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye (both allegedly "original" and "spliced") and the three-hour recording in the possession of former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) deputy director Samuel Ong. A wave comparison of these versions can be found here. An FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) or spectrographic analysis will be made available in the next post.

It is also possible, our informant said, that the clip presented to the foreign expert was tampered, particularly the "yung dagdag" portion just to produce that "spliced summary result" presented by Defensor. Tampering, he said, is easily done by simply "deleting" a very small portion of the waveform particularly on the " yung dagdag" part which, graphically, will present an obvious discontinuity but will still "sound" identical with the three-hour-tape version when played.

Defensor, he said, should provide a copy of the exact clip submitted to the foreign analyst to the public. "But my guess is he wouldn't do that because that will be subjected to the same Bunye and Chavit tapes analysis. But if he will do that, we will simply wave "compare" his version with the rest — probably bringing forth a new version called the 'Defensor Z-tapes'," he said.

As to Tiongco, our source said he should be challenged to present an FFT analysis of the supposedly spliced "yung dagdag" and allow him to explain in public where the discontinuities are found and not just "play" it in public.

It would be better if he could do the same analysis on the three-hour-tape version, he said. "I bet, it will take him forever to find a single form of discontinuity on the three-hour-tape version unless he will do an analysis using his own version."