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

MR VALLY: We move on from TRC52.   There was a question that you started answering and then we moved off that topic.  This question related to whether you were aware of any scientific basis for considering, and I used the drugs dagga, mandrax, cocaine, ecstasy, whether you were aware of any scientific research in which these items were used as incapacitants.   You then responded by giving us an explanation what incapacitants were.   I want to hone my question a bit further.   My question is simply this, are you aware of any published scientific research in any journal internationally where any of these substances have been discussed as incapacitants in the sense of being part of a chemical and biological warfare programme

DR BASSON: Chairperson, at this point I'd like to explain to you that we've moved away from TRC52 now and Mr Vally's question to me before was simply was I aware of any scientific basis and I tried to explain that to him.   If Mr Vally's going to continue with regards to these incapacitants, then I'd have to excuse myself and say that I cannot answer these questions because I do not have competent legal representation, except I would like to make one general comment, that if Mr Vally thinks that in general, with regards to chemical biological warfare research, at the head of the line in the general literature all over the world, it was ever published, then he lives on Planet Zero, he doesn't live on earth.   What would appear in international publications is basic pharmacological research.  I think there's enough pharmacological basis to describe all these substances as incapacitants.   You cannot drive a vehicle because you smoke grass, therefore it is an incapacitant, and the same goes for cocaine and several other of the substances mentioned.   So I don't think it has to be described in international publications, I think the government forced us to expose this project to the American and the British Intelligence Services, and there was questioning for six days and none of the Americans or the English expressed surprise that we've been doing this research.   As a matter of fact, a lot of them came to certain realisations and I think we did cause a bit of proliferation there when we gave the information where they thought they wouldn't receive any, and that's as far as I'm prepared to answer that question.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Vally?

MR VALLY: You see, Dr Basson, it was a lot more than just experiments.   We have submitted documentation to you which shows that Delta G, under the auspices of Project Coast, of which you were the project officer, manufactured 1 000kg of methaqualone, the active ingredient of mandrax, it manufactured 1 000kg of ecstasy, you personally arranged for the importation of at least 500kg of methaqualone or mandrax from Croatia, you were personally given at least 200 000 mandrax tablets, 250kg of dagga, handed to you by General Neethling for you to put in the boot of your car without any documents which you had signed for it.   We're not talking about small quantities for experimentation, we're talking about huge quantities.   How do you explain the fact that you were manufacturing such large quantities of illegal substances?

DR BASSON: Chairperson, it's late, I'm tired, can you please ask Mr Vally to make his questions short, I lose him halfway through his question.   I'd answer his question in this manner:  it's not so that General Neethling just gave us drugs.   There are signatures, there are delivery proofs of everything that he's given us.   That's available at the police forensic laboratory and we signed for everything we received.   So it wasn't like it was in the boot of my car.  By chance it was loaded into the boot of my car, because that's the only transport we had available to us, we didn't have Coin Security to work for us, the fact of the matter remains the quantities of which one speaks here is not as absurd as Mr Vally makes it to be.   Has Mr Vally got any idea what the monthly use of mandrax is in Cape Town?   If you can convey that to him, he'd probably find a completely different perspective with regards to this 1 000kg, and we have difficulty getting these facts from the South Africa Police, basically because they do not know, but if you go to look at projection figures and that which they confiscate, then one can accept that a 5% effectivity of the South African Police Department today is quite an acceptable level of success, then we talk about that 1 000 of kilogram, it's probably used up within a month or two in totality.   So I don't know why Mr Vally is concerned about 1 000kg, half of it was burnt and half of it was anyway thrown away, and we did it to create a pyrotechnic mechanism, and before I could finalise that, I used hundreds of kilograms to find the right recipe, you just don't throw a chemical substance into another mixture and then set fire to it, you've got to test different proportions, different quantities, different temperatures, and the problem with pyrotechnics is that you lose about 80% of your actual substance, a great variety of experiments must be done in order to check this combustion reaction, so one uses hundreds and hundreds of kilograms in an effort to do this research.
 So as far as the quantities are concerned, all I can tell you is that, in the broad spectrum of things, if Mr Vally wants to allege that these substances reached the streets, then I'd like to say that we could have made a month or two difference in the amount of time people's been using that drug.   To determine the amount of mandrax, thousands of kilograms a day is produced in India, which is spread all over the world.   So to talk about 1 000 or 1 500kg against the background of the years and years of abuse, then it's nothing.  It was one confiscation, they were all packed in the same manner, so it was the result of one confiscation by the police, and there were hundreds and hundreds of confiscations in the last few years.   So the quantities has to be placed into perspective, it's not absolute quantities.

CHAIRPERSON: Would those remarks also cover the quantity that has been mentioned in respect of ecstasy?

DR BASSON: In the broad context, yes.   And probably much more, because the amphetamine preparations are more acceptable than the methaqualone ones, for the user that is.

CHAIRPERSON: Dr Randera?

DR RANDERA: So, Dr Basson, are we to understand from what you're saying that although we have this report of the production of 1 000kgs of mandrax and 1 000kgs of ecstasy by Delta G, from what you say in terms of experimental use, you probably used much more than that, and therefore was that being produced by Delta G and we're not aware of that, or did you get, was the extra kilograms of mandrax or ecstasy or cocaine or whatever substance you were using, was that received by other purposes?

DR BASSON: Dr Randera, we are moving very close to the detail of the criminal case.   I would like to answer you as follows, by saying that the amounts which were produced by Delta G in totality was not enough to make a real difference in the South African narcotics market.   As far as I know, and I'm prepared to stand at this fact... (intervention).

DR RANDERA: I'm not even referring to the narcotics market... (intervention).

DR BASSON: Ja, okay.

DR RANDERA: ...I'm referring to the experimental use that you're referring to.

DR BASSON: That's part of the problem, because at this stage there is conflict between myself and the people who are bringing charges against me with regards to how much was used and where it is, so everything which was manufactured was either used in research or destroyed, and that's as far as I'll go to answer that question.   I can give you the assurance that those substances did not reach the streets of South Africa.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Vally, in the following 20 minutes.