Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-06-20

MR LAX: The question then is, on what basis would you at your level then evaluate things?  If you were going to refuse something you would have had to evaluate information and you've already told us you never ever evaluated or verified anything yourself, so how could you say no, based on what?

EDWARD WEBB: I received different inputs by Special Forces Headquarters and if something was submitted by the CCB that I didn't approve of, for whichever reason, it could have been stopped there, or if it was acceptable I could have said, very well, let me - if it was necessary, get further approval.  ...(transcriber's interpretation)

MR LAX: Well you see that's what I asked you yesterday and you specifically said you hadn't actually followed anything up.

EDWARD WEBB: No, you asked me about the bombing and I didn't take that further.

MR LAX: I also asked you a general question about "What other sources did you use?"  Because you spoke about having access to sources and you said in relation to Region 6 you didn't actually even follow any of those things up.

EDWARD WEBB: Yes the one incident, the bombing incident, it wasn't followed up.  But as a result of my position I received several inputs, there were documents that I had to read, there were briefings at Headquarters of Special Forces and when I went to CCB they briefed me about incidents or whatever, or if they wanted to do an operation.  So in my position you got different inputs.

MR LAX: You see these briefings at Special Forces, what bearing did they have on the work of the CCB?

EDWARD WEBB: During my time, none, except it might have happened that Bishop Tutu's name was mentioned in whichever context, that came out of an information report and so forth.  But in my time, not really. ...(transcriber's interpretation)

MR LAX: Well for example, did such briefings entail a prioritisation of targets?

EDWARD WEBB: No, Chairperson.

MR LAX: So how would you know that person X was a target or person Y was a target?  How would you know when Verster came to you and reported on the activities of Region 6 or any other region, that what they were doing was in line with what other people were doing and that ...(intervention)

EDWARD WEBB: But Verster never came to me with a target.

MR LAX: When he came to report on his work and on the work of the CCB, for example, "We're monitoring person X, because in the long term it links in with this or with that project which we've authorised and remember budget X", that's the nature of the report you would have received from him on a monthly basis, not so?

EDWARD WEBB: Yes, that should have been the report, ja.

MR LAX: Not there should have been, what else would you have spent an hour talking to him about every month?

EDWARD WEBB: But he never made such a submission to me.

MR LAX: So in all the time that you were head of the CCB, you never got any of that kind of contextual report, where he gave you on-going reports about what work was happening and who was being monitored and what they were doing in Zambia, or what they were doing in Angola?  You never got any of that kind of report?  I'm not dealing with the details of any specific project.

EDWARD WEBB: No, I got a lot of feedback, especially about external operations and frequent feedback, but he never came to me to say "We should eliminate such and such a person", or to ask approval for it.

MR LAX: I'm not talking about elimination.  You see I'm not talking about elimination, I'm specially not talking about elimination, I'm talking about the kind of detail that you would have had to deal with in a monthly report by Verster to you, with specific reference to Region 6.  You see according to what we've heard so far and you've been here the whole time, Region 6 was monitoring people, primarily.

EDWARD WEBB: Yes.

MR LAX: And it's inconceivable that that couldn't have been the content of what he would have reported to you about, because that's all they were doing according to him.

EDWARD WEBB: It now appears from the reports and so on of the Truth Commission, that there were several things in which the CCB were involved, but ...(intervention)

MR LAX: We're talking about Region 6, General.

EDWARD WEBB: Yes, Region 6.

MR LAX: Don't confuse the issue with all the other stuff.

EDWARD WEBB: It appears that they weren't particularly effective.

MR LAX: We're not talking about effective, we're talking about how active they were and the little bit that they were doing it appears from what we've heard, that they were monitoring lots of people.

EDWARD WEBB: So monitoring at that stage was very important for them, that was in the beginning stages.  Special operations, with all respect, doesn't take place over night.  There are some operations that you plan which could take you up to five months to get everything into place, it simply can't happen overnight.  It's not simply a enemy target on the one side and yours on the other side and you launch an attack, it simply doesn't work that way.  You have to find out where is the enemy, who is the enemy, all their routines etcetera, etcetera, and only then can you start placing yourself in position, finding out what would be an appropriate time for an attack.  So it's a very time consuming thing.

MR LAX: General, I absolutely understand all that, that's precisely why I'm asking you these questions, because you don't just monitor people in isolation, you don't just monitor them for no reason whatever.  I mean you've just given us the exact reason why people are monitored, it's to develop a profile, it's to look at the kinds of strategies that are required, it's to look at what your options are tactically and strategically and then you marry all of that with target prioritisation.

EDWARD WEBB: Yes, correct.

MR LAX: Now that's precisely the kind of stuff that I would have expected Verster and you to have spoken about in that portion of your meeting that you had every month when you dealt with Region 6, but it's been your evidence so far that you didn't talk about that sort of stuff because you don't know anything about it.

EDWARD WEBB: We didn't only discuss Region 6, we discussed the entire CCB.

MR LAX: Precisely, I know that, but we're focusing on Region 6 because we're not dealing with all your other stuff at this point in time.

EDWARD WEBB: But Mr Lax, we discussed many things and I can't remember everything now that we discussed, but it wasn't simply just a happy-go-lucky meeting, it was a serious discussion and detail certainly formed part of that discussion, it had to.

MR LAX: You see the reason I'm asking these questions is this, is that up to now every bit of business that's been referred to, and we can only infer from the questions that you've been asked and what you've testified about, you say you know nothing about except Lubowski and his internal monitoring.

EDWARD WEBB: Yes.

MR LAX: The rest you know absolutely nothing about.

EDWARD WEBB: That's correct.

MR LAX: So on your version there's nothing else that Verster would have spoken to you about, because they weren't doing anything else, on your version.

EDWARD WEBB: If you talk about Region 6, that could be the case, but that was not what happened.  We were talking about several things.

MR LAX: But you see, then the next question is, well you are the Commanding General and you see that Region 6 is doing precious little, surely the question in your mind is "What work are they doing?  They're eating up our budget, what are they doing?"