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

MR VALLY: On page 12.  Now this letter is dated the 11th of January 1993.  Paragraph 49 starts off
"Information by Brigadier Basson supplied.
 Methaqualone was one of the incapacitating agents which was investigated in 1987 as part of the offensive CPOA programme and this substance, as some others which were experimentally manufactured, proved itself to be very good for application in the pyrotechnical format.
 In this connection the necessary substances of methaqualone and a number of derivatives thereof were manufactured.  The physiological effect on the target persons and experimental animals were determined and a number of mortars or samples were prepared for experimental purposes.
 The results thereof were fair or reasonable, although it appeared that the intense excitation and stress and tension which were caused or induced in the target persons during armed skirmishes could lead to the fact that this substance took longer to have the desired effect as what was noticed in experimental cases.  
 The utilisation of the substance was stopped in 1988".
And then it goes on -
"Since then a far more effective analog was developed by means of further research which should obviate the above drawback".
 Now are we to understand from this firstly, that there were experiments done on animals and in people, and in fact it was used in a combat situation, the incapacitant which was made up of, amongst other things, methaqualone?

DR KNOBEL: Yes Mr Vally.  Let me just point out to you at that time of course I was not the Surgeon-General in 1987, and this is the reason that the answer here is provided by Brig Basson.  As I understood it volunteers of Special Forces but also of 7 Medical Battalion group took part in simulation exercises in which they tested these few mortars to see what the effect would be on humans within battle conditions.
 So when you say experimentation it was a voluntary exercise, the type of exercise that I took part in myself at a later stage with regards to CR, not only to test the equipment that we had developed to see if we were protected against it well enough with our equipment, but also to see whether we could endure the effects of CR without using masks and filters and so on.
 Now in this particular case I was not involved or present with these exercises but this is the information as was provided to me by Brig Basson in answer to the question of the Office of Serious Economic Offences.

MR VALLY: The first question is this.  Whatever experiments on humans that were done were done on volunteers from the Defence Force?

DR KNOBEL: Yes.

MR VALLY: The experiments on animals, are you aware of what was done regarding that?

DR KNOBEL: Well I take it that the same work that was done at Roodeplaat at a later stage was also done in conjunction with the methaqualone on experimental animals, and again I wasn't involved in it personally, but when he says the physiological effect was tested on animals I think they were exposed to this incapacitant and the effects were studied, presumably at Roodeplaat Research Laboratories.

MR VALLY: And General the skirmish being referred to where this incapacitant was apparently used?

DR KNOBEL: Mr Vally you didn't listen to my answer.  I said "simulated battle conditions" were used.  That is what is meant by a skirmish here.

MR VALLY: I see. I understood that the normal meaning of "skirmish" is skirmish, but in any event let's go on.
 Now the second last sentence on that page -
"The application of this substance was stopped in 1988".

DR KNOBEL: That was the information that I had as well and it is confirmed also by the briefing that we later gave to the Minister, which is also in these documents.

MR VALLY: Which is that methaqualone was not ...(intervention)

DR KNOBEL: Was in fact not a very effective ...(intervention)

MR VALLY: And therefore you are not going to use it any longer.

DR KNOBEL: That was what was said at the time and also at the briefing to the Minister which you will recall.  However, they then started working on a different analog which is the next part of that paragraph.

MR VALLY: Right.

DR KNOBEL: Which was the work that was continued later in lieu of the President's approval that we could continue work on the incapacitating agents.

MR VALLY: If I can understand, when you talk about a different analog, was this analog related to methaqualone at all?

DR KNOBEL: Yes of course.

MR VALLY: I see.  Now we have had a number of sources for methaqualone.  The one source of methaqualone was what was sent or given to Brig Basson by General Neethling, 200,000 mandrax tablets.  We also know that at least a 1000 kilograms of methaqualone was produced at Delta-G.  If we had the capacity and were in fact producing it at Delta-G why in 1992 and 1993 at great cost were we endeavouring to import it from Croatia?

DR KNOBEL: Mr Vally I think there's a misunderstanding here.  The way I understood was initially, the initial work on methaqualone was done on the methaqualone which was extracted from the mandrax tablets that we were referring to this morning and which was dealt with in quite a lot of detail by General Neethling, and the impression I got when he gave his evidence is that 200,000 tablets in fact produces very little of the basic ground substance that you require.
 The production, as far as I am concerned, and it is also written in this letter to the OSEO was done at Delta-G Scientific.   We were informed at the Command Council meeting, or rather the Coordinating Management Committee level, that the purity of the methaqualone that was obtained was not adequate and that they were going to look for a different source overseas.  And that work that you are referring to was actually done in 1991.  The problem that arose was dealt with in '92/'93 as you will have gathered from the documents that I made available to you about the Croatian incident.  
 But when we briefed the Minister in 1993, Minister Louw, in that briefing you will see that we report that there is methaqualone available on the shelf, as it were, on the shelf.  That was the document of November '92 which said, what did we have in our possession and we reported that to the Minister.  To my mind that, or to my satisfaction that was the total quantity of methaqualone that we had available, which is the quantity which was then destroyed after the Minister gave permission to us to destroy it.
 You will notice, just if I may point out, to paragraph 51 of the document we are looking at, at the moment, we are talking there about "rooe materiale", in other words the basic ground substances.  Possibly Professor Folb can help us with a better word than ground substances.  But that had to be of a pure nature from which the methaqualone derivative or analog could then be produced.

MR VALLY: So the project regarding methaqualone was not in fact stopped, the research into methaqualone?

DR KNOBEL: No I have already said to you just now that the President approved that we could continue with different analogues, which is reported here to the OSEO, and it had been done, and then when the Minister was briefed and told about the implications of having incapacitants in terms of the new convention that we were about to sign in Paris, he instructed us to destroy what we had, which, to the best of my knowledge, was carried out.

MR VALLY: Is there any documentation, any report anywhere which said that the methaqualone which was produced at Delta-G was not of sufficient quality which necessitated the importation of methaqualone?

DR KNOBEL: No, not to my knowledge.  I believe it was a verbal report by the project officer.

MR VALLY: And that's Brig Basson?

DR KNOBEL: At the level of the Coordinating Management Committee, yes.

MR VALLY: And do you know when this happened?