Special Hearings — Chemical And Biological Warfare Hearings — 1998-06-09

DR RANDERA: Professor, I find this very difficult to understand accept I mean you referred several times to reading in newspapers, we're talking about 1986 to 1990, 1992 period, we're not talking about a peaceful time for South Africa.  We're talking about a time when the country was almost burning, we'd had in that period that we're talking about in 1986 to 1990 period we'd had two states of emergencies declared already, so who was the enemy for you professor I mean people were throwing things inside the country?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Ja, I never considered that the army would ever utilise any of it's CBW programme aspects internally against it's own people.  Let me put that quite clear, it never entered my mind.

DR RANDERA: Professor, I want to come back to this need-to-know basis that you've been talking to, talking about and several of the questions.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes.

DR RANDERA: As a scientist where scientists have the ability to investigate, research they don't really want to have obstacles in their way and yet it appears to me that when you take on this issue of need-to-know basis, you're almost becoming like an agent.  You're deciding, or somebody's deciding for you that this is the area that you can research and no further can you go and I want to follow that up by - so I want your comment on that and then just to say to you, my perception having listened to you is that here you were, yes you were at one stage the head of this research department at this company, but even within your company you didn't know who was doing what research and what other areas of work was being done.  Within your company you were producing almost a thousand kilograms of ecstasy and you didn't know where that was going to.  You were producing CS gas, you say to us yes that it hadn't been used by the army but clearly - well when we look at that other report that was shown to you earlier on, it may well be have been used.  Now it seems to me that you were part of a machinery, you produced substances but you didn't really know where those substances ended up or what they were used for.  So, my first - I would like you to comment on this question of scientists versus need-to-know basis and secondly whether you actually knew where the products that you were researching and eventually making, whether you actually knew where that was going.  Repeatedly you've said that you wouldn't believe that this could have happened, but clearly these things were taking place and you didn't know about it.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Well, let's take CR for example.  I developed, I was involved in the development of the process of making this compound.  This was then implemented on plant scale.  People made a couple of tons of this material and this was taken away by the army.  I did not know to what extent they wanted to formulate it and what sort of mechanisms they would put this stuff into.  CS was developed on a small scale and as far as I know, we produced about one ninety eight (198) to two hundred (200) kilograms of CS on plant three.  That is what I do know about that we did make CS and that was a scale a batch to establish the method of making this and as far as CR was concerned, that was such a need-to-know highly confidential sort of thing, we were not even supposed to talk about this outside and discuss this at all so they had this cloak of secrecy around this project and we tended to ignore the whole situation.

DR RANDERA: Just one last question that I just want to come back to, General Neethling, and I'm also a little concerned why you decided to go and speak to someone who's head of forensics in the police services when you were employed within a front company for the army and therefore I would have thought you would have gone to - if you didn't want to speak to Dr Basson or Mr Mijburgh, you would have gone to General Knobel for example as a line functionary?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Can I just say something about this?  This whole question of ecstasy was actually discussed at the board, at that stage I was promoted to Research Director at Delta G and the board there didn't decided that we should clear this out and Mr Van der Spuy was also insistent that we do go and clear this out with Dr Neethling.

DR RANDERA: General, sorry professor just to for my own satisfaction, you became director in 1989.  The issue of ecstasy came up in 1992?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes.

DR RANDERA: So it's not, I mean there's a three year difference between you becoming a director and ... (intervention)

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Yes but this issue wasn't taken up with Neethling after we have made the ecstasy.

DR RANDERA: When was it taken up, when was the discussion?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: I can't recall exactly what time, but I think it was prior to making ecstasy that we took this up.

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Orr?

WENDY ORR: Thank you Chair.  I want to pursue a little further the line that Dr Randera has raised.  Both yourself and Dr Lourens, and I'm sure witnesses that are yet to come, constantly say I didn't know or I wasn't aware, not to my knowledge and I'm concerned about what it is in our society, our educational system, our work environment that produces scientists, people of obvious intelligence and supposed integrity and ethics.  What is it that makes scientists who don't ask why, for what purpose and what concerns me more scientists who don't ask when they are faced with fairly convincing evidence that science is being subverted for abusive purposes who don't ask what's going on and who don't refuse to participate and I ask this very sincerely because part of our work is to make recommendations as to how to prevent future abuses and I think if we don't understand the perspective and of scientists who were involved in this and how they were produced and what it was about the environment that allowed these things to happen, we'll be unable to make recommendations.

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Well you know the environment that I worked with we, I didn't consider my work as being something that I would use for abusive purposes in a sense of using it against a civilian population.  My brief was to develop techniques and analytical methods and ways and means to combat CBW onslaught against us and that's why I said if people want to chuck something on us, we'd be able to have the ability to chuck it back and that was how I viewed things at that time, so I said I've got no moral problems with that sort of attitude, I mean all countries, western countries had their Portend Downs and their Edgewood Arsenals and so on, why shouldn't South Africa have it?

WENDY ORR: If I could just pursue this.  You yourself have said that you were not convinced that ecstasy was an appropriate incapacitant, that in fact there had been any research into the weaponisational distribution of it, you had very serious doubts in your mind that ecstasy was going to be used in terms of your justification for this programme.  How did you reconcile yourself with going ahead and producing a thousand (1 000) kilograms of that substance?

JOHANNES MATTEUS KOEKEMOER: Well there was a lot of pressure brought on me, to bear on me to make this compound and I actually when I started off with this work, it went very slow because I didn't want to get involved with this and pressure was brought on me by both Dr Mijburgh and Dr Basson to make this compound and eventually I submitted to these pressures and I did it.