Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-11

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: Mr Chairman the newspapers and non-proliferation people can listen clearly.  And we have spent some hours and time on this proposition, on a drug effective against pigmented people only, yes, Dr Basson and myself.  In 1983, '84, I am not too sure when, Dr Basson presented me with a document, with a scenario and a document.  This document was delivered, he said, to the military attache in London, and this document contained a proposition from someone in Europe, and this guy says he's got a product, a bacteria, which has got the possibility of only affecting, making sick and killing pigmented people.  That was in 1984.
 Dr Basson asked me to research this fully, investigate it literature-wise.  Not doing physical work on it, but to study the literature and the possibilities scientifically.  Is that a possibility or not?  And I did an extensive literature research and studied the sciences around it and we felt, concluded, and I shared it with him, that it is a definite possibility.  Because this guy said, if we South Africans, the South African government is interested in that we should place an advertisement in a London newspaper and then he will make certain arrangements to contact us with this product.  
 Now Chairperson the ethics again of this.  And Dr Basson and myself discussed that, and we have also discussed this with General Neil Knobel.  What should we do with this?  
 Now Mr Chairman maybe I can give you an example.  The space war, the star war weapons programme of America had the purpose of developing a weapon that can destroy anything, any place on earth.  The most sophisticated weapon.  That was the purpose of the star wars programme.  The mission, the mission of the programme was to maintain world peace.  Do you hear what I am saying?  And we have discussed this aspect, the three of us.  What do you do with this and it was decided it would be good if the government had this weapon.  Not intended, not of thinking of using it at any stage, but using it as a negotiating back-up to know what your strength is, what you can do in a crisis situation.   Now I have been asked many times, how can you do these things and what can you do, and it is easy to convict from England or from America; it is easy to convict India and those guys if they want to develop an atomic bomb, but they have got to think themselves.
 So again, if a thing like this can be used to maintain peace, but what is peace?  Peace is the strongest disempowerer and this was being the strongest.  And again where was the wrong?  The wrong was for the white people, basically, to try and stay in power.  So not per se, not necessarily for having such a weapon as this.
 Chairman what happened was that it was decided I would go to London and try and make contact and try and follow this lead up.  In the same week before I would have left some people from Armscor were lead into a trap in Paris and arrested by a similar type of bait.  And the day before I left I sat with my friend Dr Knobel in his office and decided what is the risk for me now, it might just be a trap or might not.  And we didn't know.  And I went over and I decided to leave it.  It might have been a trap.  So we never followed the lead.
 To come back to your question, is it possible?  Scientifically yes, I believe it is possible.  I will discuss later on the real scientific threads of biological weapons and how can you control it.  It is frightening, Chairman, frightening.  This programme of Coast hasn't touched it.   We have tried to but we were stopped before we could close to it.  I will elaborate on it later.

MR CHASKALSON: Can you tell us what your responsibilities as a managing director of RRL were?

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: Chairperson, yes, I was managing director.  Supposed to be the boss on the ground level.  That's what managing director meant.  Establishing the programme.  Erecting the physical facilities.  Recruiting, head-hunting the suitable scientists and establish this facility for the government.  Very, very strictly we were informed that this will be a military operation.  This will be a government facilitation.  I have registered the company in my name with three other shareholders.

MR CHASKALSON: Who were the shareholders?

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: The shareholders were myself, David Palmer, Andre Immelman and later on Schalk van Rensburg.

MR CHASKALSON: Did you receive shares?

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: We received each one 25% of the shares.  When receiving the shares, the certificate, at the same time we have signed a transfer document again, and that was handed back to Dr Basson.

MR CHASKALSON: Whose name was the transfer document made out to?

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: Blank.  The structure of the company was to be, for front purposes, be run as this company I would have established to do contract research.

MR CHASKALSON: Was your international, or your national respectability and name important to that front?

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: Absolutely.

MR CHASKALSON: Do you think it would have been possible for this front company to operate effectively with a managing director who was not from the scientific community?

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: Chairperson, not at all.

MR CHASKALSON: We will return to this point at a later stage.  Did you interact with the scientists during your time as the managing director?

ADRIAAN JACOBUS GOOSEN: Yes Sir.

MR CHASKALSON: Were you aware of the research that was being done at the facility?