Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-08

MR CHASKALSON: I will in a moment, I'm just looking for an index.  I believe that document TRC 30 may be a useful one to start off with Doctor van Rensburg.

DR VAN RENSBURG: TRC 30?  Right.  We've got a list of research projects there.  I have done some analysis of these projects.  I've just got to find the place, I'm sorry for the delay.  Document TRC 30 provides lists of a total of 163 hard projects.  There are 163 listed here.  They include projects commenced in 1985, 1986 and from 1990 onwards.  In other words the three years, '87 to '89 are missing.  Of the 163 known projects 66% concerned potentially lethal toxins.

MR CHASKALSON: Could you identify some of those potential lethal toxins?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Yes, I will come to that in a moment.  If I can just give you a breakdown of the type of projects done?

MR CHASKALSON: Carry on.

DR VAN RENSBURG: Most were toxicity studies in animals followed by studies in which toxins were actually prepared and those were also listed as projects.  Some projects concerned chemical properties and administration methods.  Only 6% of these toxist studies involved treatment and neutralising agents, only 6% of the 66%.
 Psychotropic agents were the subject of 2% of all studies as were techniques for detecting explosives.  There were two or three projects for detecting explosives.  Those were not really, there was no progress made on them until they were transferred to the Roodeplaat Breeding Enterprises where they of course went on very well.
 Fertility and fertility control studies comprised 18% of all projects.  Microbiological agents were examined in 12% of the studies.  Highly pathogenic micro organisms predominated in those 12%.  
 There was only one cancer study listed, that is fact was cancelled, it never took place.  It was actually in the very early stages when we had spare capacity, I wanted to sneak in an academic study which didn't have covert potential but the laboratory soon became fully occupied so I didn't have a chance to do it.  So no cancer work was done.

MR CHASKALSON: Were you aware of the nature of this work while you were at RRL?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Yes, I was, I had no say in formulating or deciding what sort of work was done in this field.  Where I did see it was as Chairman of the Laboratory Animal Ethics Committee.  They used to  briefly be shown to me so that the institute could tell the world they guaranteed that every study done there had been subjected to laboratory animal ethics screening and that we did.
 And very often I would reduce the number of animals and the techniques to reduce suffering drastically as borne out.  You can see in many of the reports listed in here they claim there were inadequate numbers of animals used.

MR CHASKALSON: I'd like to return to the animals but maybe at a slightly later stage.  Can you tell me what Monensen is?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Monensen is a, I think it's one of these ion o fours(?), it's a growth stimulant in animals but it can also be very toxic in certain species.  It's safe to use in ruminant animals, animals with four stomachs but in monograstic animals like the horse or the dog it's highly toxic.

MR CHASKALSON: And what about the human?

DR VAN RENSBURG: One would assume, being a monograstic animal, it would be very toxic.

MR CHASKALSON: Yes.  A substance by the name of Brodifacum?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Brodifacum is an anti-coagulant.  It would normally be extracted from I should think something like Cooper's Finale, it's a rat poison.  It's a rat poison which prevents blood clotting.  In other words if you feed small amounts you can suddenly die of haemorrhages or strokes or whatever.

MR CHASKALSON: Doctor van Rensburg, some of these studies even to the lay person look slightly strange. If I can refer you to the first page of that list.  It seems to be marked with five zeros although some of the subsequent ones are cut off, about half way down the page, 86 H 1630, we see that they're talking about the: "stabiliteit van 'n PO nikotien mengsel".  It seems as if substances are being put into nicotine.

DR VAN RENSBURG: That's right.  PO stands for Paraoxon.  Paraoxon is the - if you take the organic phosphate poison - Professor Folb please correct me, I'm not a pharmacologist, if I'm wrong, the organic phosphate poisons ...[indistinct] colon ...(indistinct) inhibits like Parathion.  They themselves are not really toxic but what happens when you get them in, the body tries to break them down and makes a product that's far more toxic and infinitely more toxic than the parent substance and that is Paraoxon.
 One can see it's a favourite substance used in various ways and I think it's one of the substances possibly they used to paint on clothes to take out selected targets.

MR CHASKALSON: Possibly looking at these experiments put into tobacco or cigarettes?

DR VAN RENSBURG: That's right.

MR CHASKALSON: Can I refer you to another document which is TRC 52.  And I was wondering if you might consider some of the substances listed on this document to be of a covert nature?

DR VAN RENSBURG: Is that the list of products?

MR CHASKALSON: That's correct, it's a document with a list of dates down the left-hand side, substances and then there's a gram measure and a price on the far column.

DR VAN RENSBURG: I've analysed these lists.  I knew about these lists because I had heard Doctor Immelmann and Doctor Swanepoel talking about them.  As far as I know usually Doctor Swanepoel would be urging Doctor Immelmann to keep them up to date or asking for copies that he could use them to motivate more money and that sort of thing.
 This is the only one I've actually seen.  I knew about these product lists but I'd never seen them.  I will say I was horrified to see that on 48 occasion 67 items were supposedly sold over a mere eight months.  That is, this list covers March '89 to October 1989, only eight months.
 If you average out this rate for the approximately five year offensive period of Roodeplaat then one can deduce that round about 500 products were in fact issued.  Now what were these products?  30%, 36% were small quantities of highly lethal toxins, chemicals that are capable of incapacitating or killing one or a few people, that's about the quantities issued.
 Fourteen different chemicals were issued in just over these eight months.  The favourite was cyanide, it was issued five time, followed by Thallium and Botulinum Toxin three times each. 
 A further 36% of the so-called sales also involved the administration means of these agents.  For toxins chocolate was the favourite, they issued 13 doses on four occasions followed by laced beer tins or bottles, that was seven doses and whisky five doses.  
 Also issued were orange juice, hypodermic needles, Propane, which I think is a propellant probably for an aerosol, Methanol and two snakes.

MR CHASKALSON: I'd just like to draw your attention to a couple of the specific items.  On page two of this document the first item is Vibrio Cholera and there's a volume of 16 bottles, then slightly further down, that was on the 4th of August 1989, then on the 16th of August 1989 another 16 bottles of the substance were provided and on the 9th of August 1989 a further 10 bottles were provided.  In your view, could such quantities be used to have caused an outbreak?

DR VAN RENSBURG: My answer here reads: "Remarkable was the issue of the 32 bottles of Cholera germs on three occasions during July to September 1989".  I was frankly shocked to see this.  With that you can cause massive outbreaks of Cholera amongst various populations.  It would be interesting for the medical people to see if there were outbreaks after August/September 1989.

MR CHASKALSON: I'd just like to read out a couple of these items and then pose a question to you and I'm going to be somewhat selective here but I will cover a fair amount.