Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-07-08

DR KNOBEL: No, Sir.  Let me try and give you the background there.  There are, as far as I can remember, 13 CD Rom optic discs in the safe.  After the technical information was transferred from documents onto the discs, the discs were brought to me by Colonel Ben Steyn in a safe.  I established that the discs were inside the safe, and as far as I remember there's also an additional floppy along with it, which is the access mechanism, access coding that you require to be able to access the information on the discs.
 It was then put into a very large wall safe attached to my office and my headquarters and only Colonel Steyn and I had control, joint control over the small safe, smaller safe, the portable safe.  After the demarche and particularly after the Americans and the British expressed concern about the safety of the information on the discs, I went to see Mr de Klerk and I followed it up with a letter and that letter I can give you a copy of.  It was in April 1994.  
 At that stage we changed the joint control in such a way that all three of us, the President, Mr de Klerk, Colonel Steyn and myself had to be present in order to access or to be able to open the small safe.  The position was then changed, it was then changed to a safe in a different part of my headquarters, a huge safe with two keys and a combination and the small safe with its two keys was put into the bigger safe.  
 And in that joint control we gave the President one of the keys of the big safe as well as the combination of the big safe.  I kept the key of the big safe and one of the keys of the small safe.  Colonel Steyn had the combination of the big safe and the other key of the small safe, and that was how that situation was maintained.
 The discs were never accessed, although we recommended to the previous government and to the present government, particularly with regards to the investigation of both the d'Oliviera Commission as well as of the Offices of Serious Economic Offences, that at some or other time we would have to access the information on those discs.
 After the withdrawal of Mr de Klerk from the government of national unity obviously the situation changed.  Let me just say this, after we briefed Mr Mandela in August '94 and explained the security measures to him, he indicated that we should maintain it as it is at that time.  
 In other words that Mr de Klerk should still retain his part of the control.  But when Mr, and I beg your pardon, when Mr Mandela met the overseas delegation from the USA and the UK, the whole question of the security of that information was again discussed with them and they expressed their approval of the system which was in place and it was maintained exactly in that way.  And then when Mr de Klerk withdrew from the government of national unity, I indicated to him that he would have to give up his part of the control and hand it over to either Mr Mandela or Mr Mbeki.  That ultimately took place and at the present time the control is exactly the same with present Surgeon General having the position that I had, with Colonel Steyn still being in the office there as the past Project Officer and still the expert on chemical and biological defence and I believe Mr Mbeki now has the further control.
 But the answer to your question is, the information has not been accessed ever, although may I just add this, when we discovered or when the trunks were discovered with information on it, a lot of files on it, the files that we are dealing with at the moment, both National Intelligence and I recommended strongly to government that we should access the information, because if we access that information we can then deal with what was the official project programme as I've been describing it to you up to now and what was outside that programme.  I believe we will be able to determine that.

MR VALLY: To the best of your knowledge, have these discs ever been checked?

DR KNOBEL: No.

MR VALLY: So, ...[intervention]

DR KNOBEL: Well, I don't know what you mean by: "checked".

MR VALLY: Well, has any person with scientific knowledge accessed these discs and looked what is on them?

DR KNOBEL: I've answered that question Mr Vally.

MR VALLY: Is the answer: "No"?

DR KNOBEL: Of course not.

MR VALLY: So there may be a lot of nonsense on there for all we know?

DR KNOBEL: You're asking me to speculate Mr Vally.

MR VALLY: Sure.  I accept that.  But if you look at, we're still busy with Annexure J and I'm looking at the minutes of the meeting of the Co-ordinating Committee of the 24th of January 1994.

DR KNOBEL: Yes.

MR VALLY: If you look at paragraph 5(c), it's J4 for the Commissioners.

DR KNOBEL: I'm sorry, just that date again please?

MR VALLY: Sorry, it's the minutes of the Co-ordinating Committee meeting of the 24th of January 1994.

DR KNOBEL: Yes, I've got it, thank you.

MR VALLY: Our reference is J4.  Look at 5(c).

DR KNOBEL: Yes.

MR VALLY: It says
"Surgeon General must ensure that all relevant information has been loaded correctly on the discs and that all technical documents have been destroyed"
It appears that you were given an instruction to acquaint yourself with what is on the discs.  Am I misreading it?

DR KNOBEL: No, no, that is certainly not what is meant there.

MR VALLY: Can you explain to us what is meant there?

DR KNOBEL: What is meant was I had to enquire from the previous Project Officer who was involved in placing the data onto the discs, that he had in fact placed all the technical information on the discs ...[intervention]

MR VALLY: Well, let's talk names.  So, all you had to do was ask Brigadier Basson: "Brigadier Basson, did you put all the information on the discs"?

DR KNOBEL: All the technical information.

MR VALLY: All the technical information?

DR KNOBEL: That's correct.

MR VALLY: And that's what you did?

DR KNOBEL: Yes.

MR VALLY: And he said he'd done that?

DR KNOBEL: He in fact confirmed that at a meeting of the Co-ordinating Management Committee.

MR VALLY: So Brigadier Basson was the person who was ultimately in possession of the knowledge of whether the relevant information had been put on the discs or not?

DR KNOBEL: That's correct.

MR VALLY: And the company that was given the contract to capture this information on discs, that was Data Information Images?

DR KNOBEL: No, I think Data Images Information Systems.

MR VALLY: Data Images Information Systems.