Secrets & Lies: Wouter Basson and South Africa’s Chemical and Biological Warfare ProgrammeThis is a tale of military machination and scientific subterfuge, of combatants who disappeared without trace, and bizarre experiments carried out behind locked doors. In waging ‘total war’ during the 1970s and 1980s, South African securocrats demanded a ‘total strategy’, including secret and unconventional means to fight the perceived ‘total onslaught’ against the apartheid regime. Against that background, a group of scientists under military guidance crossed the threshold of an arcane realm, familiar to ordinary citizens only through the imaginations of fiction writers – a world marked by covert operations and germ warfare, high-stakes deals in the international arms bazaar, smoke and mirrors, plausible deniability. A world where intrigue and double-crossing are routine, where secret missions and sinister sub-plots are the milestones for life in the fast lane. Set against the backdrop of the international Cold War and South Africa’s bloody passage to democracy, the events related in this book were uncovered during ten years of investigation and made public by the trial of Wouter Basson, the first criminal prosecution in the world of the head of an official chemical and biological warfare programme. As the authors take you from combat zone to courtroom, read how one of the apartheid era’s best-kept secrets became the subject of one of the ‘new’ South Africa’s costliest legal exercises – and how the former military officer at the heart of both walked away a free man. Ten years have passed since Wouter Basson was acquitted of the criminal charges brought against him and Secrets and Lies was originally published. This eBook edition comes with a brand new foreword by author Chandre Gould. |
Contents
Toxins in Little Bottles | |
First Do No Harm | |
The Drug | |
Follow the Money | |
Foreign Affairs | |
Living High on the | |
Dangerous Liaisons | |
Blame the Dead | |
Stranger Than Fiction | |
SOURCES | |
The Grim Reapers | |
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Common terms and phrases
according to Basson Ackermann agents aircraft alleged Angola Barnacle Basson claimed Basson testified Basson trial biological warfare Bosch Bothma Bouwer Buffham CBW programme charges chemical and biological chemical attack Cilliers covert deal defence Delta G Scientific doctors documents drug Ecstasy equipment financial principals Floyd Ford foreign former front companies funds Goldstone Commission Goosen Hartzenberg Hashemi Immelman Intelligence Agency interrogation investigators involved Jetstar judge Knobel laboratory Libyan Liebenberg Lothar Neethling Magnus Malan Mandela Mandrax MDMA methaqualone Mijburgh Military Intelligence million murder Murgham NBC suits Neethling never Nieuwoudt officer Operation Protea operations peptide synthesiser Phaal Pienaar poison Pretoria Project Coast prosecution prosecutors Remoortere Renamo Roodeplaat Research Laboratories Russian SADF SADF’s scientists secret security forces South Africa Special Forces Speskop substances supplied Swanepoel Swapo testimony Theron toxins trip troops Unita Viljoen weapons Webster Wentzel Wisdom Group witnesses Wouter Basson WPW Group