By Mario Casayuran It is up to the country’s intelligence community to verify the “yet-to-be-validated” information that several thousand Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) personnel are now covertly in the country, Sen. Panfilo M. Lacson, chairman of the Senate national defense and security committee, said. Senator Panfilo M. Lacson
(CZAR DANCEL / MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO) Earlier, Lacson said he received information from a source that some 2,000 to 3,000 members of the Chinese PLA personnel might have entered the country as tourists or as workers in Philippine offshore gaming operations (POGOs), to participate in “immersion missions” and for other still unknown purposes. He, however, stressed the report has yet to be validated even as he described his source as fairly reliable. “It is a test all right, not of the intelligence of the Filipino people, but a test and a challenge as well to our intelligence community to verify what I said, a yet-to-be validated information provided by a reliable source who had given me some accurate intelligence reports in the past.” As a former Philippine National Police (PNP) chief, Lacson explained that in intelligence parlance, this information may be classified as “A6.” “Considering the implications, it is one piece of information still worth looking into,” he said. “When an issue that has serious implications -- such as the reported presence of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) members in the Philippines -- is raised, credible information is the best way to resolve it. This is without prejudice to the Philippine government's ongoing efforts to verify such information.” He also said, “The intelligence community should exert extra effort to gather information in this regard.” The PLA is China’s armed forces and is considered the world’s largest military force. Last week, police recovered PLA IDs from two Chinese nationals implicated in the killing of one of their compatriots who was shot in a restaurant in Makati City.