Monrovia — The lawyer for Gerald Smith, a former deputy at the National Security Agency, has come to the defense of his client, declaring that none of the allegations against Smith have resulted in charges and that he is presumed innocent unless and until proven otherwise. Smith is represented by Cllr. Gbawou Kowou, who disputes the account attributed to sources close to the investigation.
Smith, a key former operative of the National Security Agency, was called in for questioning last week, and his direct ties to the government of former President George Manneh Weah could expand an investigation already reshaping Liberia's security service.
Smith is remembered publicly, if at all, for a June 2020 incident in which he pulled a 9mm handgun on Vice President Jewel Howard Taylor's security detail outside her residence, after repeatedly trying to bulldoze past the officers assigned to guard it. At the time, it was his third attempt to force his way through.
Smith's Lawyer Pushes Back
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Speaking to FrontPageAfrica, Kowou laid out his client's position point by point. "We are not aware of any credible evidence supporting the allegations you have referenced," he said. "Our client has no knowledge of the reported use of the late Archie Williams' home to house Colombian drug traffickers, nor of any sale of NSA badges by Gerald Smith. To our knowledge, no such conduct was brought to our client's attention during his tenure at the NSA, and no action was taken because no substantiated complaint or evidence was presented to him."
Kowou argued that the allegations, however serious, remain just that -- allegations. "These are serious allegations, and if there is evidence to support them, it should be presented to the appropriate authorities for investigation," he said. "However, at this stage they remain unverified claims, and it would be unfair to speculate about their accuracy or to suggest that they blemish our client's service without proof. Our client denies any involvement in, or prior knowledge of, the conduct described."
It's worth being clear about what that means for the reporting so far: the badge sales, the $25,000 figure, and Smith's alleged role at Floko Town all trace back to sources close to the investigation, not to charging documents or Smith's own account. That doesn't make the claims untrue. It does mean they remain allegations, made by people with their own view of events, about a man who has not been charged and who, through his lawyer, denies them outright.
Six years later, as investigators dig into last week's US$318 million drug bust -- the one that followed June's US$19 million seizure at Roberts International Airport -- Smith's name is surfacing again, this time as a person of interest in an investigation that officials say now reaches back roughly six years, into the final stretch of the Weah administration.
That question of the badges is one point on which Smith's account and the government's own explanation for why the credentials were changed don't obviously line up. Separate from Kowou's denial, an NSA source described the badge change in blunter terms: badges belonging to the agency had ended up "in the hands of unauthorized persons," the source said, "and we had to change the badge." The source did not say who was responsible for that breach, and the account does not, on its own, confirm the specific allegation against Smith -- but it does establish that the NSA itself has acknowledged a real security failure involving its credentials during the period in question.
"This Network May Have Been Operating for More Than Six Years"
That six-year timeline comes from the government itself. Addressing the US$318 million bust last week, Attorney General and Justice Minister Oswald Tweh said the ongoing investigation has generated significant evidentiary leads pointing to "an organized, sophisticated, complex and well-funded narcotics trafficking network." According to Tweh, "It has also revealed that this network may have been operating in Liberia for a considerable period -- more than six years."
Given the scale of what's been seized and the circumstances of the bust, Tweh said, the Joint National Security Investigative Task Force is pursuing every available lead to determine the full scope of the operation. "Cooperation with relevant national and international law enforcement partners will be pursued where necessary to identify additional persons, networks or jurisdictions connected to the investigation," he said. "We thank them for their continuous collaboration and support."
Armed Colombians on a Beach in Floko Town
The trail investigators are following now leads to Smith, who multiple sources close to the investigation describe as a key figure behind the presence of armed Colombians at a house in an area known as Floko Town. The property was previously owned solely by the late Richelieu Archibald Williams, a former managing director of the Liberia Airport Authority.
Sometime before the 2023 presidential election, a team of heavily armed Colombians landed by boat on the beach near the property. FrontPageAfrica has gathered that the group was managed by NSA agents once they came ashore, and neighbors in the town recalled hearing gunfire that sounded, at the time, like training exercises. "All this went on without the knowledge of the AFL chief, NSA head," one source said. At the time, the Armed Forces of Liberia was led by Col. Prince C. Johnson, and the Ministry of Defense by Major General Daniel Dee Ziankahn Jr. -- neither man, nor their offices, has been reported as aware of the operation on the property.
It remains unclear whether James Pearson II, who headed the NSA at the time, knew what was happening. According to sources, Smith sold NSA badges to the Colombians at $25,000 apiece -- credentials that, once Prince C. Johnson later took over the agency, had to be changed agency-wide as a result. That is the same badge change the NSA source quoted above described independently, in less specific terms, without naming Smith.
This is, worth repeating, exactly the allegation Kowou disputes on Smith's behalf. Two accounts of the same underlying event -- a badge change forced by a security breach -- now sit side by side: one naming Smith as the cause, sourced to people close to the investigation, and one from Smith's own lawyer denying he had any part in it.
New Names in a Widening Internal Investigation
The current investigation is drawing in personnel from both the Liberia National Police and the NSA, and sources say the roots of the problem go back to a leadership transition. The cartel is alleged to have operated inside Liberia during the former CDC administration; when the current government took over, a significant number of personnel from the previous administration were let go, and the agency had to recruit new security staff. FrontPageAfrica has learned that at least two NSA agents were recruited by the cartel in July 2025, in the middle of that turnover, and that one of them didn't realize he was under surveillance until his arrest on Tuesday, July 20, 2026.
Two of the operatives implicated are Jamal Jallah, identified as Director of Armory at a facility referred to internally as Fox, and a second man identified as Christian Nyanti, from the Field Services Department. Both were reportedly recruited by the network roughly 13 months ago and, sources say, didn't know their activity had been detected until the investigation caught up with them.
During the same period, another NSA agent was reportedly denied access to the Floko Town property altogether, and several local authorities -- including the town chief -- were allegedly offered money to look the other way. Surveillance built around those refusals and payoffs eventually led investigators to last week's raid in the VOA Community. FrontPageAfrica has also learned that the same monitoring effort turned up evidence that some Liberia National Police personnel facilitated or escorted drug shipments tied to the bust into the VOA area.
All of it, sources say, was the product of a 12-month undercover NSA operation carried out with little or no international support -- quiet work that only became visible to the public once last week's raid did.
Background: Liberia's Recent Drug Busts, in Context
The Smith allegations don't exist in isolation -- they're the latest layer on a run of drug cases that has defined Liberia's security conversation for the past two months.
It started June 8, when authorities intercepted 237.6 kilograms of cocaine at Roberts International Airport, worth more than US$19.2 million, hidden in cargo falsely declared as Maggi cubes and lappas. Nearly every principal suspect in that case left the country before warrants caught up with them. Then, on July 21, a joint security operation raided a stash house in the VOA Community, Paynesville, and seized 3,971 kilograms of cocaine worth roughly US$318 million -- the largest drug bust in Liberia's history, more than sixteen times the weight of the RIA haul. Investigators say both shipments moved into Liberia from Sierra Leone, and a senior security official has alleged that Dutch fugitive Jos Leijdekkers, believed to be sheltering in Sierra Leone under the protection of political elites there, organized the RIA shipment.
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The internal fallout from the Paynesville bust has since spread through both the police and the NSA. Deputy Police Commissioner for Crime Services Johnny Bolar Dean was fired after admitting to taking a $10,000 bribe to make things easier for two of the suspects in custody -- a man whose name had already surfaced in a 2016 armed-robbery facilitation case and again in a February 2025 CDC-COP call for his dismissal, both times without consequence. Separately, NSA operative Jamal Jallah has been named in connection with an even larger alleged payment -- $300,000, which he reportedly told investigators he handed to a money exchanger on Randall Street for safekeeping -- while three Liberia National Police officers, identified as chief of intelligence Olufemi Briggs, highway patrol chief Waddell Kwabo, and major crimes chief Anthony Blade, are also under interrogation. None of them has been charged, and all remain presumed innocent.
None of this is Liberia's first brush with cocaine at scale. In 2014, authorities seized more than 770 kilograms of marijuana along with smaller amounts of cocaine and heroin, and made 70 arrests. In October 2022, Liberian and U.S. officials found 520 kilograms of cocaine -- worth roughly US$100 million -- at the Sonit Liberia Corporation compound in Monrovia, then the country's largest seizure. A Monrovia jury acquitted all four defendants in May 2023, and within about 24 hours of walking free, all four had left the country, leaving behind US$200,000 in cash a judge had ordered returned to them. None were ever located.
What the Gerald Smith allegations add, if they hold up, is a starting point. Rather than a network that appeared with June's RIA seizure, investigators now appear to be describing one that took root years earlier, inside the same security institutions meant to stop it -- and that, for six years, nobody caught. Whether that starting point runs through Gerald Smith personally is exactly what his lawyer disputes, and exactly what the rest of this investigation will have to settle.
