Bartels, Room 56 & The Communication Lines

The real rationale behind the provision of personal communication lines at taxpayer’s expense to the "Gang of 21" and the setting up of Room 56 of the Ministry of Information as their communication hub can be revealed today.

The Insight was conducting an investigation into the authenticity of the leaked plans to attack Radio Gold, an Accra-based radio station when it was directed to secure additional information about how the aftermath of the attack would have been managed in the press.


According to The Insight source, a crucial part of the plan was to secure reliable and articulate team of NPP people and front journalists, who after the attack and "related operation" would have been let loose unto radio stations and other media to explain to Ghanaians how "we have been saved from yet another atrocious "coup which would have reversed the current democratic dispensation."


The source also informed The Insight that the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mr. Kwamena Bartels had set up Room 56 at the Ministry of Information as a Command and Control Centre to co-ordinate the propaganda and had established a team with direct access to the Command and Control Centre at Room 56.

Members of the team, in the meantime, were supposed to collect as much information as possible on their own, using the Internet, in order to make their submissions look original and credible.


This was the reason why they were to be provided with Internet access in their homes at huge cost to the taxpayer.


It was when The Insight asked for evidence that its source went away and came back with Mr. Bartels’s letter of 26th July, 2006, which was asking Ghana Telecom to provide communication facilities to twenty-one persons, whom Mr. Bartels described as "officials".