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

JAN LOURENS: Let me try and explain something to you.  This is despite the attitude of several of the gentlemen on the right, I had a very strong association to my ex-colleagues, and I had an excellent relationship with them, and they had been responsible for a fantastic part of my life, and thus it was very, very difficult to actually turn against them, because that's exactly what I did, and I have no illusions about it.
 I discussed it with Brian Currin at the time.  I said Brian what am I supposed to do?  And Brian said to me, the right thing to do is to phone them and tell them that you've turned State witness or that you are going to disclose the facts.  
 The first person that I phoned, I phoned James Davies. James' reply to me was, he says that Jan we've met with lawyers, the group on our right, they discussed that they were scientists, they had done nothing wrong; that they were on the right side of the law, so they were not going to apply for amnesty and not disclose anything.  At that point I - and I asked him, I said James, had all people been party thereto?  And he said Jan, Wouter was there, Wynand was there, Philip was there and I phoned nobody else.

UNKNOWN: Thank you.  I have no further questions.

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Randera.

DR RANDERA: Mr Lourens I want to come to this question of front companies that were set up.  I think in the time that we've been listening to you and in the period that we are looking at you must have set up about ten or eleven different companies that you mentioned.  Companies that were involved in producing if not destructive, certainly very dangerous substances, biological or chemical.  The perception that I have is that all you required was some money and a few scientists of like mind, because you had to be of a like mind to be involved in as exciting as you may say the work was, to be involved in what you were doing, were there no obstacles?  Were there no checks and balances even within the period that we are looking at to setting up these companies?
 I ask this question because we want to look at the future, and if the same sort of situation pertains today, then I am very concerned, because what is to stop us from doing the same tomorrow what you did in the last ten years or in the ten year period that we are looking at, because I mean you started with Special Ops in 1982 and by the time you finished in 1993 it was almost a ten, eleven year period.  Can you give us an idea?

JAN LOURENS: I think what you need to do is you need to look at the project in terms of two aspects.  The first part is the big project, Project Coast being Roodeplaat and Delta-G etc, etc, which was very formally funded, set up, run, managed and audited, despite the fact that it had come from largely secret funds.
 The smaller units, such as the units that I had set up and run, was much more sort-of, there were no fixed structures.  You know I didn't have fixed guidelines from any authority, military or otherwise, in terms of these are the checks and balances.  And other than having a private auditor there was practically no checks and balances, no.

DR RANDERA: And would you like to comment as to what these checks and balances should be today, having been involved in the sort of work that you were involved in?

JAN LOURENS: I think that there are two issues that you need to take into consideration.  The one is an ethical issue and the other one is one of financial application.  I think the principle of having large-scale secret funds that are controlled and used by single individuals is extremely dangerous and we've seen it in terms of the wastage.
 In terms of the ethical side is that I believe that there will always be a role to play in terms of particular defensive systems and you know in chemical defence, as an example, there will always be an offensive part.  You will always look at new generation toxic substances that you need to protect yourself against.  But if you have the right scientific balances, and I believe that those scientific balances should be outside the military.  They should be in academic institutions that people that can, from a liberal point of view, question what the purpose and what the objectives, what the final direction is.  And those checks and balances need not to be totally transparent, in other words it need not be public, but it needs to be transparent to a wider community, which we never had.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Dr Randera.  Advocate Potgieter.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you Chairperson.  Dr Lourens you gave some idea about the operations that you were involved in, but is it correct that was part of, it slotted into this CBW programme?

JAN LOURENS: That's correct.

ADV POTGIETER: Whatever it was called, Project Coast or whatever name was given to it, but it was part of that overall project?

JAN LOURENS: Yes.

ADV POTGIETER: Now often in a hearing like this there is a tendency to get stuck in terminology and so on, but can I ask you just for a comment.  Taking into account your experience, taking into account the kind of equipment that you said you had assisted in producing, what would your response be to a statement that this programme, the CBW programme was purely defensive in nature?  What response would you have to that sort of statement?

JAN LOURENS: I would respond to you and say to you that's typical rhetoric that we've heard on a number of occasions from the previous military dispensation and it's absolute nonsense - unqualified absolute nonsense.

ADV POTGIETER: Was there ever any doubt in your mind that any of these things, any of the screwdrivers, whatever, this whole lot of equipment, that any of this was anything but murder weapons really?

JAN LOURENS: No, it couldn't be.

ADV POTGIETER: And that they were clearly intended to be used against human beings?

JAN LOURENS: Absolutely.

ADV POTGIETER: And that they had the clear potential to kill?

JAN LOURENS: Advocate there is no doubt in my mind that that was the application.  So I - and I think any normal human being of reasonable intelligence would have reached the same conclusion.

ADV POTGIETER: And that it seems to me also that they were meant for covert action, for covert operation?

JAN LOURENS: Yes.

ADV POTGIETER: Thank you very much.

CHAIRPERSON: Whilst you are on covert operations it has now become notorious or common cause that there was an element of the South African Defence Force called the CCB which was a covert operation.  Did you ever have any dealings or links with the CCB?

JAN LOURENS: I had dealings with two individuals, Joe Verster and Danie Wahl, very, very briefly.  But what I must tell you is that at the time that I dealt with them the name CCB was unknown to me.  So I didn't deal with them knowing that they were part of a covert operation.  I knew both Joe Verster and Danie Wahl from Special Forces headquarters, and not in terms of their CCB role.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, no that's just a matter of detail.  But it was Joe Verster and Danie Wahl ...(intervention)

JAN LOURENS: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Joe Verster, as you now know ...(intervention)

JAN LOURENS: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: ...was the Chairperson, or the managing director of the CCB.  And do you still recall what sort of encounter you had with Joe Verster?

JAN LOURENS: I was introduced, I met Joe and Joe - basically the reason for the meeting was is Joe introduced me to Danie and Danie and I was going to work together on some projects and they never materialised.
 In a subsequent meeting that I had with Danie he gave the explosives and the letter bomb devices and so forth to me and that was it.

CHAIRPERSON: And you do not know if any of your "speelgoed" was ever passed on to them for usage in the operations?

JAN LOURENS: No, not that I know of.

CHAIRPERSON: You were never the person to do that even if it did take place?

JAN LOURENS: No, no absolutely.