Special Hearings — State Security Council Hearings — 1997-12-04

MR MCADAM: Yes Mr Chairperson.  In the adjournment the pages have now been cross-referenced and flagged.  If I can go back to where I started because when we started reading it there was the adjournment and in fairness, I'll start from beginning it will be easy to pick up. What I propose to do is just read out what Mr Williamson said before this Committee in its entirety and then come to come back with comments and questions from Dr Barnard where he can shed light on certain aspects.  I'll read passages in their entirety first.
 Chairperson on my page 99 it starts off -
"Now by their very nature covert actions were rarely to my knowledge discussed or written about. I append here to document 21 and I quote the report of the National Intelligence symposium held at National Intelligence Head office Pretoria  "when survival is important it is often necessary for a service to resort to secret actions  which does not comply with the laws, morality, norms or values which controls the public attitudes of the State.  Secrecy both defensive and offensive is important.  Coverage is used to allow the operatives to use secret instructions.
When I was instructed to present the paper to the symposium on the user of cover and secret operations as well as the recruitment of long term deep cover agents or moles I discussed the contents on my paper with my colleagues and found no disagreements with these expressed.  The symposium I was not challenged on my views.  The report was also circulated to the highest level as the discretion list show". 
 Turning to the next page and then the second paragraph Mr Williamson expresses the opinion -
"In the light thereof and in the terms of the knowledge which I had of standard secret and/or special force procedures in the then South Africa as well as in many other States I had no doubt that secret, violent and other actions against the revolutionary enemy were an accepted and approved procedure in our overall arsenal of counter-insurgency weapons'.
 Turning over to the next page he deals with fact, and I propose to mearly summarise key features of that page and not read it out,  is that there was a conflict between some  officials from the Police and Justice and Foreign Affairs department who wanted the counter-insurgency programme to be conducted strictly in terms of law and if possible for the law to accord with acceptable western norms. 
"On the other extreme we had officials especially from the counter insurgency element to the police and the military who felt that a democratic State using democratic methods could never withstand a concerted Soviet-backed revolutionary effort.  Their solution was to spend democratic freedoms and militarise South African society.
Now the upshot of this debate was a mish-mash of compromise".  
 Turning to the next page and to then pick up from the third paragraph, 
"Along all of the above the State and the security forces maintained and expanded their secret ability to attack their enemies without necessarily having to accept responsibility for what was done. The basis of such operations in the grey zone was deniability but it's for this reason that specific so-called chains of responsibility will in many instances be impossible to determine.
The operational procedures were designed by people who knew the law in order to circumvent proof of legal responsibility for the deed by the upper echelon.  Such covert action leading to mysterious explosions deaths etc cannot said to be unusual in South African political life".  
 Turning to the top of next page. 
With the benefit of hindsight it appears that that upper eschelons, especially the politicians, were so keen to be as what I say legal arms length from covert action that they abdicated their responsibility to exercise close operational supervision of such actions and so lost significant operational control.  Nevertheless. they can never deny responsibility for the budgets used to fund covert actions".
 Then if we proceed to skip to my page 112 and towards the bottom Mr Williamson is then quoted as saying -
"I would imagine so Mr Chairman I now go further so that every serving high level politician, now I'm talking of a politician in an executive position,  a Cabinet minister, most of his Deputy ministers, Chairman of committees have the advantage of receiving on a daily basis Intelligence summaries. Insums, which summarises everything that happened the day before, the week before, projected what would happen tomorrow and the coming week and which reported all incidents".
 Turning over to the next page at the very top - 
"Some politician would have asked the Intelligence team to determine who was responsible for these activities and asked why with monotonous regularity the ANC cadres in one or other neighbouring States start their cars, their cars explode, but these questions weren't asked.  There was a tacit acceptance and an understanding that this had something to do with South Africa's counter-insurgency programme that's the only answer I can give".

MR LYSTER: You want to formulate that into some sort of question.

MR MCADAM: In the  first place Doctor,  would you accept this explanation or exposition that was read?

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: Mr Chair I cannot accept it.

MR MCADAM: If we look at Mr Williamson's background I think that the most important thing is there where he ends as part of the National Party's caucus on defence. How would he express such a view.

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: It is Mr Williams' right to express his position as he did I am not here to comment on a political party or department in the light of what Mr Williams said, I can't do it.

MR MCADAM: In your submission you mentioned that you,  in your department were involved in negotiations with especially the ANC.

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: Yes,  we played a very pertinent role in that respect.

MR MCADAM: Did the ANC as part of that process express any concerns about the fact that prominent political people were murdered or disappeared?

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: In the period of time when the discussions took place with Mr Mandela in 1988 in May and also after that during the discussions with Mr Thabo Mbeki and other members of the ANC in Europe, specific names of political figures did not receive any attention from either one of the parties.  The discussions were aimed at finding a way to get Mr Mandela out of prison on certain provisions so that he could participate in the negotiation process.
 In the second place the ANC had external wings, had an external wing in overseas to suggest how these people could come back to the country to participate in the political process.  
 The question that you asked later on at the Groote Schuur meeting, discussions were about general amnesty and the atrocities they were committed .  It was discussed how these things could be addressed it was also addressed at the Pretoria minute.  I can say that I was quite sad that at a certain incident where during the Pretoria minute political amnesty was discussed but no agreement was reached due to the views of a Cabinet minister of the then Government.  That is a pity because here at the Truth Commission we are now addressing the issues of political responsibilities and this is of  you can address much earlier.

MR MCADAM: Would you agree that in the propaganda that was spread by the ANC from 1985 until the unbanning of the organisation there were various accusations that the South African goverment was busy using the South American elimination tactics.

LUCAS DANIEL BARNARD: I do not know about the South American elimination techniques I don't know what you mean therewith in the propaganda Mr Chair that was spread by the ANC these points of view were spread it was said that these people were responsible for these murders.