TUESDAY, 5.30PM
IT emerged on Tuesday that Deputy Defence Minister Ronnie Kasrils inadvertently precipitated the “false flag” sting operation by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation against three suspected spies.
FBI investigators earlier suggested the three suspects had offered their services to an unnamed senior SA Communist Party official, who had forwarded the offer to “appropriate channels”, which in turn alerted US authorities.
However, a different story emerged on Tuesday: Some time after the publication of his book Armed and Dangerous Kasrils received a letter from one of the arrested spying suspects, Theresa Squillacote. She signed this letter as “Lisa Martin”. In her letter, Squillacote expressed her appreciation of Kasrils’s book, which shesaid she had found exciting. Kasrils subsequently sent her a Christmas card thanking her for her letter. A press statement issued on Tuesday by the deputy president’s office said this was the only contact to take place between Kasrils and Squillacote.
However, because Squillacote was under surveillance, the FBI knew of the exchange. As a result of this knowledge, the FBI then mounted a “false flag” operation in which their agent posed as a South African official who had ostensibly been sent by Kasrils. The deputy president’s press statement takes pains to make clear that neither Kasrils, the government, nor any of its agancies were at any stage in contact with the US Government or any of its agencies in connection with the operations which led to the arrests of the suspected spies.
TUESDAY, 1.00PM
FBI agents posing as South African spies have arrested three American officials for passing on documents to foreign powers.
The three spies, all described as communist sympathisers, worked for the Soviet Union and East Germany from 1972, and recently offered their services to an unnamed South African government official who is also a member of the SA Communist Party.
The spy-trap has made headlines around the US today. The three alleged spies are Theresa Squillacote, who worked as a Pentagon defence attorney, her husband Kurt Alan Stand, a unionist, and James Clark, a private detective.
The three allegedly used miniature spy cameras and shortwave radios to communicate classified US defence and CIA documents to their spy masters in Eastern Europe. More recently, they wrote to a South African government official, offering their services as spies.
The FBI made use of this “South African connection” by posing as South African agents, to whom the three fed classified US material. The South African embassy in the US says it knows nothing about the case.