Mr P.J. Patterson, the former prime minister, and the Digicel executives with whom he returned by private jet from Cuba are perhaps lucky that they escaped the manacles and being hauled off to jail, or worse, in the high-comedy farce that opened at the Norman Manley airport last Thursday night.

The week-long episode - having played itself out yesterday as a bungling farce by officials of the state - might have been funny but for the serious flaws it exposed in the management of national security and the seeming ease with which organs of government can be used to create public mischief.

We make no judgements about manipulation of the media.

According to the statement issued by Prime Minister Bruce Golding yesterday, ahead of the arrival of the aircraft with Mr Patterson's delegation, security officials received information that foreign currency was stashed in a secret compartment of the plane. The aircraft was searched and nothing was found.

Left without knowledge

That search took place after Mr Patterson, his aides and the Digicel executives had disembarked and had proceeded to Immigration and Customs. They appeared to have left the airport without knowledge of these events.

Yet, according to the prime minister, even as Mr Patterson and his party were being processed, claims were flying among Customs Enforcement officials and further abroad that he had arrived in the island with Cuban diplomats and that there was a diplomatic bag, which scans showed contained bank notes. It was further alleged that the diplomats objected to the bag being searched and opted to reboard the aircraft and leave Jamaica.

These claims had so morphed into 'fact' that Customs brass sought late-night advice from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and Solicitor General on how to treat with diplomatic pouches, not as a hypothetical case, but as a matter of immediate and specific instant. It appeared not to have occurred to the senior Customs officials, who may have been acting on the advice of subordinates, to seek clarity about this diplomatic pouch that vanished into ephemera.

Larger issues

Much of the discourse surrounding this incident has focused on the embarrassment that might have been caused to Mr Patterson. But as Mr Golding pointed, there are, for the state, larger issues.

We shudder at the thought that what happened last week was typical of Jamaica's capacity to evaluate and act on intelligence. For if it is, it is perhaps a clear example of a significant part of the reason for our failure to come to grips with crime. It is a good thing that we don't, in so far as we are aware, face al Qaida.

It also raises questions about security management, the management of information and who and how people are cleared for operation. This one was obviously a giant sieve.

If, as Mr Patterson's party appears to suggest, the incident was an elaborate scam to embarrass the former prime minister and/or others, then that, too, is dangerous for the state, whose security systems ought not to be so easily manipulated. Remember the boy who cried wolf!

Clearly, there is a need for a review of security management beyond the parameters set by Mr Golding. And those who perpetrated last week's fraud should be exposed.

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