When the President’s national security adviser Norberto Gonzales starts talking about bombs we should all listen. You see, he is a self-confessed bomber himself.

I got introduced to Bert in 1987 when I started covering the rebel Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) of Nur Misuari. Through the years our source-reporter relationship blurred into something close to easy friendship.

That abruptly stopped after the presidential elections of 2004. Since then, he stopped taking my phone calls and answering my text messages.

The last time I interviewed him extensively was over a bombing – that of the Superferry just before the 2004 polls. He told me they could not find any evidence it was a terrorist undertaking because all evidence had sunk along with the ferry at sea. I believed him and duly reported that for South China Morning Post.

It was only over a year later, when the government and the military blamed the Superferry bombing on the Abu Sayyaf that I realized I was fooled by the national security adviser into believing the line that it was a kitchen fire that probably caused the explosion.

I now suspect the government had deliberately kept the terrorist angle under wraps because it might affect Mrs Arroyo’s presidential reelection.

Last Monday when I read that an improvised device exploded at the Office of the Ombudsman, I waited to see what the national security adviser would say.

Today, after two more unexploded bombs were found, he told radio station DZXL the bombs were a “normal” occurrence.

“Alam mo pagka malapit [na] ang SONA lahat ng uri ng grupo…siguro, may mga grupong nag-iisip kumuha ng attention. Normal naman yan na nangyayari sa ganitong panahon [You know, when the State of the Nation Address of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo approaches, all kinds of groups think up ways to grab attention. This is normal during these times.]

What he did not disclose, and I feel he should have disclosed, was that he was once involved in a bombing himself.

He was with this clandestine group called the “Light a fire movement” which set off fires and bombs during the Marcos regime.

On several occasions he told me that he took part in bombing a government building inside the walled city of Intramuros in Manila. I’m not sure now whether it was the Commission on Elections building or some other building. But I recall him very clearly telling me that while they were planting the bomb, “we were pissing in our pants.” He laughed at his terror then.

I half-believed him then. But his fellow bomber, Ed Olaguer, has since corroborated his story and in fact mentions Bert by name in an interview with veteran Inquirer writer Eric Caruncho ( see http://homepage.mac.com/dolaguer/lightafire/Personal106.html) Ed Olaguer, who was arrested and convicted, has even written a book about this.

So when authorities now say they are looking at the “usual suspects”, they of course don’t include the President’s own national security adviser whom they consider to be above suspicion.