DR. WOUTER BASSON'S� CONNECTIONS TO U.S. INTELLIGENCE LOS ANGELES TIMES NATION & WORLD Saturday, August 1, 1998 http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/NATION/t000070160.html By DEAN E. MURPHY, Times Staff Writer CAPE TOWN, South Africa--The United States and its Cold War allies encouraged South Africa's former white regime to develop a chemical and biological warfare program that investigators here say veered out of control and targeted the country's own black population, according to testimony Friday by the program's director. Dr. Wouter Basson, the general who headed the top-secret project from its inception in 1981, also said that U.S. intelligence officials were not surprised when told that his researchers had explored using cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy and other street drugs as "incapacitates" on enemies of the apartheid government. "At that stage in South Africa, we were confronted with information that the Russians, East Germans and Cubans definitely had capabilities in neighboring countries," Basson said, referring to fears of a communist expansion in Africa in the 1980s. "Western countries were interested in the information we gathered on this . . . so I had access to [their] senior government officials." The revelations came on the last day of public hearings before the main committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a government body that has been delving into human rights abuses of the apartheid era of racial separation. Committee members must now sift through 2 1/2 years of testimony involving some of the most sensational and contentious events of South Africa's recent past and prepare a report for President Nelson Mandela by October. The effort was intended to foster racial harmony by exposing the crimes committed by both whites and blacks during the apartheid era. The panel's exhausting hearing process concluded with a surprise bang when Basson, who had been dodging questions for months, commandeered Friday's session for nearly 11 hours. The steely-eyed general aggressively rebutted claims by investigators and witnesses that he was apartheid's "Dr. Death" -- the mastermind of a sinister plot to silence black opponents of the white regime through clandestine chemical and biological means. "I did many things, but not one of them was illegal and not one of them led to the death or bodily harm of a single person," Basson said. "I was part of the ordinary defense force that had to support the government of the day." Basson said Project Coast, as the weapons program was code-named, had no offensive capabilities, despite testimony by former government scientists that they had been instructed to develop "gadgets" that kill or maim people. The creation of such cloak-and-dagger items as peppermint chocolates laced with cyanide, cigarettes contaminated with anthrax and whiskey spiked with weedkiller were for training purposes only, he said, and were no different from teaching aids used by militaries worldwide. Occasionally, Basson said, the experiments were tested on laboratory animals to emphasize, for example, never to eat a chocolate left on a hotel pillow. "There is no better lesson than for the person to actually see the results of his mistake," Basson said. In 14 pages of notes written by Basson after a visit to the United States in 1981, he said that he was welcomed warmly by scientists and others who were more concerned with the communist threat than with the increasingly unpopular racial policies of his government. The notes, written in Afrikaans and made public at the truth commission proceeding Friday, say Air Force officials encouraged him to develop joint "medical projects" with the United States, while other top military and defense officials extolled the virtues of chemical weapons. "He feels that chemical warfare is an ideal strategic weapon because infrastructure is preserved together with facilities, and only living people are killed," Basson wrote of a conversation with Maj. Gen. William S. Augerson, who was deputy assistant secretary of Defense for health resources and programs but has since retired from the military. "The warm climate of Africa is, according to him, ideal for this type of weapon because the diffusion of the poison is better and the absorption is increased by perspiration and increased blood flow in the persons who are targets." In another notation, Basson recorded that Augerson said he wondered if the incidence of typhoid, cholera and other diseases during the war in Vietnam were the result of "bio-manipulation" by the Soviet Union. In an eerie echo of that speculation, Basson now stands accused by former Project Coast employees of ordering research into cholera as a weapon of mass destruction; Basson dismissed the possibility as absurd Friday. Referring to himself as a patriot loyal to the "people of South Africa," not its former white regime, Basson went so far as to suggest that he saved Mandela from an assassination attempt while the African National Congress leader was in prison. At the same time, he said he knew nothing about a classified document from the State Security Council that talked about poisoning Mandela to make him incapable of governing once freed. Basson said he was advised by a top defense official in the mid-1980s that radical members of the ANC intended to kill Mandela because they considered him too conciliatory toward the apartheid government. Basson said he instructed his staff to come up with a list of methods that might be used in an attack or to protect Mandela. "My job was to integrate the plans and set up a protection plan to make sure Mr. Mandela did not become a victim of forces trying to destabilize this country," Basson said. "For the benefit of this country, I had to ensure that Mr. Mandela remained alive." Basson and his attorneys spent a large chunk of the day arguing unsuccessfully with commission lawyers about the appropriateness of his testimony because of his upcoming criminal trial. Basson is scheduled to appear in court next week on charges of conspiracy to murder, obstruction of justice, fraud totaling $10 million and other alleged wrongdoing related to his tenure at Project Coast until he was forced out in 1992. But when his lawyers finally gave up and went home late in the day, Basson shocked most everyone when he stayed put and fielded questions alone, denying every allegation and explaining away -- often with witty sarcasm -- every insinuation. "I don't envy the attorney general," said Commissioner Dumisa Ntsebza, referring to the prosecutor in the criminal case. "Dr. Wouter Basson is nobody's fool." ��������������������� ELECTRONIC MAIL&GUARDIAN June 27, 1997 Basson's army buddy blows the whistle Prosecutors break through in their drug-dealing case against the sinister figure behind South Africa's chemical warfare programme, Brigadier Wouter Basson. His co-accused has agreed to turn state evidence in a case that may shed light on the mysteries of the "red mercury" murders. CHRIS OPPERMANN THE Transvaal attorney general's office has made a major breakthrough in the case against Dr Wouter Basson, leader of the former South African Defence Force's (SADF) chemical warfare project. Dr Johan Koekemoer, former research manager at the covert SADF factory, Delta-G Scientific, has turned state witness and will give evidence against Basson. This will, investigators in the attorney general's office believe, aid their long-term task of determining the exact volume of dangerous drugs - such as Mandrax - that were manufactured at the factory, why the SADF needed them and where they ultimately landed up. The investigators have information that some of the drugs were - for reasons still unknown - dumped in the sea, but that others were concealed in the nose-cone of an airforce jet which frequently flew abroad on top-secret missions. One such flight was to Britain, and also on board was a group of rugby enthusiasts who went to the first test between the Springboks and England in 1992 after sporting ties had been re-established. Koekemoer was arrested in possession of the designer drug Ecstasy in January and was to be charged with Basson, in the first instance in a drugs trial. Basson was to appear in court in Pretoria on Friday in connection with allegations that he tried to sell 1 000 Ecstasy tablets during a police sting operation. But the trial, although important for the contribution it could make to understanding how taxpayers' money was allegedly used in the manufacture of illegal drugs, is incidental to the main goal in the sights of investigators in the Transvaal attorney general's office. This goal is to pin down some of the most enduring mysteries of covert operations and crimes committed by the military during the apartheid era, in particular the chemical and biological warfare programme codenamed Project Coast. During his bail application, after being caught allegedly selling Ecstasy, Basson was described by the prosecutor as the "root of the evil". Koekemoer was recruited in May 1986 to work as a researcher at Delta-G. The last time he allegedly had dealings with Basson was in 1993. He has said, in a recent interview in the presence of his lawyer, that he received instructions in the early 1990s from one of his seniors to manufacture 1 000kg of Ecstasy crystals. Another breakthrough for the investigators has been the co-operation of a former senior procurement official for Delta-G who worked for the company for eight years. The official kept a careful diary of all products and raw materials entering the facility. The employee also had several business dealings with Thor Chemicals executive Alan Kidger, who was brutally murdered. "I had an unofficial business deal with Kidger two weeks before his death," the former employee said recently. "I ordered two and a half tons of mercuric oxide from him ... A colleague of mine at Delta-G fetched the oxide from Thor's plant on the East Rand and paid them in cash." He described Delta-G as "state-of-the-art" research laboratories consisting of five different facilities. The official product was teargas for the security forces and everything else was "top secret". Only the researchers working on the projects knew what they were doing. "We worked in cell structures on a need-to-know basis and nobody really knew what the other was doing," the official said. The former commander of the Brixton murder and robbery squad, Charlie Landman, confiscated all the diaries when he was investigating the so-called "red mercury murders". The diaries were recently handed over to the prosecutor in the Basson case, Dr Toerie Pretorius. The investigators are also hopeful that a former military intelligence agent, Rich Verster, who is awaiting trial in Britain on drug-smuggling charges together with a well-known Port Elizabeth businessman, Michau Huisamen, may shed some light on the SADF's covert drug-manufacturing project. Verster indicated last week that he was ready to talk to Transvaal Attorney General Jan D'Oliveira's investigators to strike a deal. Verster and Huisamen are charged with smuggling 171kg of compressed dagga into the UK on board Huisamen's private jet. In his bail application, Verster claimed that he had previously been employed by the directorate of covert collection within the department of military intelligence to smuggle drugs-for-arms from South Africa. Investigators are trying to unmask all the activities and funding of Delta-G Scientific, as well as the operational and financial affairs of the Roodeplaat Research Laboratories, RSL and several other SADF front companies which formed part of Project Coast. Animal rights groups say that at the Roodeplaat laboratory near Pretoria, gases were tested on live animals - often young baboons who were housed in cages built so that researchers could watch how the poison spread. O ne animal rights group warned earlier this week that it planned to protest outside Friday's court hearing. One of their posters was to carry a picture of Basson on one side and a baboon on the other, with the words "agony and ecstasy" above the pictures. The SADF's counter-intelligence began investigating Basson in the early 1990s after several security leaks. The agents probed intelligence reports that Project Coast operatives were involved in business deals with the Libyan leader, Moammar Gadaffi. As a result of the leaks the name of the operation was changed to Project B and later to Project Iota. Other front companies believed to have been connected to the covert operation are Roodeplaat Teelondernemings, Protechnik Laboratories, Lifestyle Management, Medchem, Technotek, Sevmed, Intramex and Hitech Lasers. All these companies are being scrutinised by the office of serious economic offences which is trying to trace millions of rands which, it is believed, are hidden in foreign banks. --------------------------------- Johannesburg, South Africa. March 26, 1999 � Wouter Basson and the dark recesses The astonishing indictments against chemical warfare man Wouter Basson prove once again that dark recesses of South Africa's past remain unexplored. --------- Mail & Guardian editorial --------- IT was obvious, from the early stages of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that it had no hope of uncovering the "whole truth" of the apartheid era. The best that could be expected was some kind of broadly representative truth. But this week's release of the criminal indictment against Wouter Basson reminds us that there are some dark recesses of South Africa's more recent history which remain unexplored, most notably those activities relating to the chemical and biological weapons programme. Desmond Tutu's admirable inquiry did, of course, try to stage hearings on the programme. But, with the help of the long-running conspiracy of silence on the part of the military, legalistic filibustering by Basson himself and what can only be described as a psych-ops operation directed against the truth commission by intelligence agencies, the hearing developed into something approaching farce. It did so most memorably with the pathetic performance of the former police forensic chief, General Lothar Neethling, as he told of efforts to produce racially minded bacteria and a riot-control gas, brewed with hallucinogens including marijuana, designed to persuade mobs to make love, not war. The hearings certainly failed to encompass the acts of cold-blooded mass murder outlined in this week's indictment � such as experiments with poison on Swapo prisoners of war in Namibia who were allegedly suffocated to death with the help of chemicals. And even the charges contained in that indictment fall well short, we suspect, of the full catalogue of horrors to which such as Basson was privy. There has still been no disclosure, for instance, on chemical or biological experiments which we believe were carried out by South African police backing Ian Smith's forces during the Rhodesian bush war. By one account South African police "researchers" then carried out murderous experiments on passers-by picked up at random in Zimbabwe's townships. If there is any truth to such claims, the Bassons of the old South African Defence Force are directly comparable to the Mengeles of World War II concentration camps and, perhaps more importantly, the political bosses of our past deserve classification, pursuit and prosecution along with the Nazis. In the week that Nato has bombed Serbia and General Augusto Pinochet has had his extradition confirmed by the House of Lords � all in the name of human rights � it would also be unconscionable for the inquiry into the chemical and biological weapons programme to be blocked or in any way handicapped by the non-proliferation argument used by our government in the past. There might be a reluctance among some sectors of our society to face up to such truths. "Haven't we gazed for long enough into the cesspit of our past?" they might argue. The answer is a flat "no"; not until we have are confident we have plumbed its depths, as is demanded by our future. -- The Mail & Guardian, March 26, 1999. -------------- ELECTRONIC MAIL&GUARDIAN Johannesburg, South Africa. November 14, 1997 Wouter Basson: Apartheid's specialist in biological warfare Double life of anti-weapons activist �CHEMICAL WEAPONS A top official
