Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: Yes, that is correct, that is exactly how it worked.  I can give you for example one of the last requests that I ever received from SANA.	The 19th of November 1979, which was only a few months before I was exposed.  Here is a telegram from Botswana asking for permission to go to Zimbabwe to cover the Zimbabwean elections.	To make contact with Mr Chantete and Vusi Maki.  Vusi Maki of the PAC.  Chantete was a well-known Attorney who was involved in defending political prisoners and who at this time, I believe, had already left South Africa.	And then there was a request for an assignment inside South Africa to look at Inkatha, to visit resettlement areas and obviously I would then approve that, give the budget for it and perhaps give them some further instructions on the type of coverage that they should undertake.	And that obviously would be determined by my Intelligence tasking from Pretoria.

MR NTSEBEZA: In fact, you've got to correct me if I am wrong, even when you left the SAP and then you know your career was in other directions, in the Intelligence Services, journalists still became very useful tools in the formation, certainly in Intelligence gathering.  I am reminded here of the work that Peter Caselton was doing with the Swedish journalists.	Would that be a typical example of how even in that form, journalists were being used?

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: Yes, Mr Chairman, I have in fact given you documentation on Mr Bertiel Verdin, a Swedish journalist and in his case, he was in fact one of those journalists introduced to us as part of a Foreign Affairs programme.	He came to South Africa to cover you know, for some journalistic reason and who was then recruited for other purposes.  If I can just refer to that document.	Sorry, which number is it?  Yes, I have a memorandum.  This was actually while I was still in the SAP, where I wrote to Colonel Goosen, who later became Brigadier Goosen.  You can see on the top it was referred then to General Coetzee, saying the foreign journalist Bertiel Verdin, for whom you had made arrangements will visit South West Africa, Namibia, left the country on Sunday.  He was particularly impressed with the positive and rendered a positive report to Mrs Thatcher and Mr Reagan's Foreign Affairs staff.	And he also undertook to work with Mr Brian Crosio to investigate which South African exiles in Britain were also trained terrorists.	And in his case, as has been well documented, his relationship became a close relationship with the Security Branch.  He was paid for the information which he provided and in his case, interestingly enough, when he was charged in Britain, for the role he played, in receiving documentation stolen from the ANC and the PAC offices, he was in fact acquitted because as a journalist he had the legal right to do what we were paying him to do.  It was not a crime for him to do what we wanted him to do.	This was one of the reasons why these type of people were used, because he not only had the access, but in fact it was not illegal for him to do something that would have been illegal for a South African Police Officer or Intelligence Officer.

MR NTSEBEZA: And from the point of view of the South African Security Intelligence offices, he being (a) a foreign journalist and (b) a Swedish one at that, he was strategically very convenient for your purposes, because he wouldn't have credibility problems at first glance?

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: No, he became quite close to the PAC in London.

MR NTSEBEZA: Yes, and Sweden was always also known to have been a supporter of the Liberation Movement in the form of the ANC, so he would also be able to get closer to the ANC without having any acceptance problems as a Swedish journalist?

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: No, he had no South African connection.  He was Swedish which is regarded in the world, and at that time, even now, as politically progressive country.

MR NTSEBEZA: Now, you possibly want to tell us about the categories of Human Intelligence employed by the Security Branch.  I say so because Mr Horak has indicated that there were all sorts of, there were agents and this, maybe you want to tell us whether in your own way of dealing with the media, you had those sort of categories of people.  Whether you operated specifically in the media, via people who were contracted, via people who were agents, via people who were informers, etc.

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: Yes, Mr Chairman, the Intelligence game as we like to call it.

MR NTSEBEZA: Dangerous game, I must say.

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: When you are dealing with agents and informers, it is the motivation, I heard very briefly what Mr Horak was saying, but I think I agree broadly with his categories, that you have professional agents.  Full time serving members of the Intelligence Organisation.	Then you have a whole spectrum of other people.  We had what we called HK (Headquarter) sources.  We had regional sources, like WWR, Witwatersrand sources.  And like in the Soviet or other Intelligence Agencies, often the coding given to the source, was an indication of his level, his or her level in the hierarchy as it were.	There were ideologically motivated people, there were people who were purely motivated by a pecuniary interest and there were a lot of Walter Mitty's who enjoined to be in this exciting, dark, dangerous world and I think it relates to agents in the media just as much as to agents in any other place.	And the motivation and control of an agent was the same, whether he was in the media or anywhere else.

MR NTSEBEZA: Now, whatever category of agents maybe it was to a certain specific type of media persons whom you were targeting.  Whether on contract or informers or whatever, did you have any formalised briefing sessions or workshops or "bosberaad's", at which you know, the whole purpose of them being used and targeted, was discussed and gone into?

MOEGSIEN WILLIAMS: Yes, Mr Chairman.  The media because of the centrally important role that the State saw it playing in the counter-revolutionary and the revolutionary struggle, there were a lot of attempts made not only to have specific agents who were recruited in the media who were doing specific jobs, in other words, like Mr Horak for example.	He was an RS who at one time was handled by myself.  The important thing was to have a different level of involvement in the media.  Your agents of influence, people who would write certain stories or who would plant certain stories or who would take a certain line on a particular story.	But then overall there was the Editorial policy of the paper and that was dealt with at a higher level and I was not really involved in that until I went down to Parliament and became a member of the President's Council.	And at that time, I was involved in certain what I called STRATCOM type operations, where senior members of the media were taken on a "bosberaad" up to the border to Special Forces' bases, with the highest ranking Officers of the military, maybe of other Intelligence Agencies and there were, I recall one in 1987, shortly after I went down to Parliament, where a "bosberaad" was held where the main focus was on the Soviet Union and what they were going to, or possibly what they could do about Namibia and Angola and the withdrawal of the troops.	And so Mr Horak, in his evidence also did touch on it.  You have to see the State's relation with the media as a macro continuum.  It goes right from the owners of the media, the people who owned the newspaper, the Editors who controlled the policy of the newspaper, right down to the chap who can clean the dustbin at night and stuff it all in an envelope and give it to you and you had to have agents through that entire spectrum.	One was, I would refer mainly a tactical agent and the other was a more strategic agent.  Somebody who would be able to influence the broad policy direction of the newspaper.