An extraordinary tale of mistrust and resentment between two generations of South African spies has run like an exposed nerve through the proceedings of the Desai Commission in Cape Town in recent weeks. Much of the commission’s attention has focused on the financial scandals in which some Democratic Alliance office holders in the Western Cape are alleged to have been involved. But the intelligence vein provides a fascinating glimpse of friction in the transformation of one of the most delicate areas of the new South Africa.
On one side are the “new-order” spies, led for the purposes of the commission hearings by the Deputy Director General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Barry Gilder. Declaring the NIA’s commitment to democracy and independence from party political interests, Gilder displayed a degree of openness in his testimony perhaps more naturally suited to his youthful days as a guitar-picking struggle troubadour than to his current position as guardian of South Africa’s secrets.
On the other side is the pick of the “old-order” spooks, gathered around the former director general of the now-defunct National Intelligence Service, Niel Barnard. Sometimes unctuously polite to the commission and at others outraged, Barnard clung tenaciously throughout his testimony before Judge Siraj Desai to what he believes is his deserved reputation as a man of honour who helped end white minority rule in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
For both sets of spooks, the central issue before the commission has been the motive behind, and the propriety of, Barnard’s decision to set up a provincial “information unit” staffed exclusively by former old-order spies. Barnard set up the “information unit” in April 2000. He was then director general of the Western Cape — a position he lost after the alliance between the National and Democratic Parties had broken down in December 2001.
The reasons behind the setting up of the information unit are complex. A great deal has to do with Barnard’s state of mind and his assessment of his working situation in 2000 and 2001.
A man whose ego reputedly almost rivals his very considerable intellect, Barnard felt cut off from the new generation in the NIA. As a retired senior spook then serving in an important provincial position, he apparently expected some obeisance from the new domestic intelligence structure. He admitted in his evidence to being, for example, disappointed at not being consulted by them.
Barnard’s disappointment ran parallel to his suspicions, first, that someone had tried to hack into his office computer and, second, that he and other provincial officials were being subjected to telephone bugging and other forms of surveillance by the NIA. The commission heard that the head of information technology in the Western Cape administration subsequently established that a hacker had used a computer in the office of the province’s head of internal audit to try to access Barnard’s machine. In the case of the suspected surveillance, Barnard sought a written denial from the NIA but got only an oral one from both Vusi Mavimbela, director general of the NIA, and from Gilder, who oversees its operations. This did not satisfy him.
Barnard, along with politicians in the National Party-Democratic Party alliance then ruling the province, did not feel that the NIA was above manipulation in favour of the ANC, the commission heard. At the same time, there was a feeling among some Western Cape ruling politicians and officials that the quality of the NIA’s reporting on local issues — which included urban terrorism and gang violence in Cape Town — was below par. Barnard’s testimony, though, that the Minister of Intelligence herself, Lindiwe Sisulu, had told him she shared this low opinion of NIA reporting led to a sharp exchange. The NIA’s advocate, Lee Bozalek, told Barnard in cross-examination that Sisulu had instructed him to tell the commission that her discussion with Barnard had not dealt at all with the quality of intelligence products. Barnard denied Sisulu’s denial.
For NIA chiefs like Gilder, the stand-offish relationship between the Western Cape’s leadership and the NIA was painful. Gilder told the commission that a lot of time and energy had been spent ensuring that NIA officials from all backgrounds understood that the agency was there to serve the government of the day, not any one political party. Tight controls — overseen by Mavimbela, himself and by outside bodies — were in place to ensure NIA officials acted accordingly. As regards the quality of the NIA’s “product”, Gilder said that, in instances where this was sub-standard, the agency was its own harshest critic.
Barnard and others described the provincial information unit’s function as being, in the main to supply the province with information and perspectives derived from open (that is non-secret) sources that would help inform provincial decision-making. To set up the unit, Barnard took on as hourly-paid workers two of the old order’s most accomplished operational intelligence officers — Piet Smit (who had worked in Portugal, the United States and elsewhere) and Louis Steyn (once based in Paris).
Smit and Steyn are, evidently, not the kind of intelligence officers who fly a desk. According to one insider, who was speaking outside the commission, Steyn is a “boer James Bond”. He added: “Hiring Louis to write open-source reports is a bit like hiring 007 as your secretary because he has nice legs.”
The information unit subsequently employed or drew on only highly rated intelligence officers from Barnard’s days as head of the apartheid-era National Intelligence Service, some of whom had remained on for a while when the NIA and South African Secret Service were formed. They included Dr Nel Marais, reckoned by both Barnard and Gilder to be a top-drawer intelligence analyst.
Over a period of nearly 18 months, the unit produced just nine reports for the provincial government — all of them, according to Gilder, covering areas on which the NIA either had or could produce quality material. The unit also established its own contacts with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations to help deal with the terrorist threat in the Western Cape without informing the NIA or other arms of national government — an act Gilder said was out of order and potentially a threat to national security. The provincial unit, moreover, was instrumental in converting a strong room in the provincial administration building into a surveillance-free “secure space” in which meetings could be held without any fear that what was said could be bugged. The room was defended by an electronic device, brand-named Watchdog, designed to detect electronic surveillance. These measures were to reveal no outside bugging of provincial offices or officials, Barnard testified.
An NIA technical expert testified that the Watchdog device could also be used offensively — that is, to bug conversations in or close to the strong room — and he quoted from its manual to the same effect. But Barnard denied this.
When, in late 2001, the NNP-DP coalition in the Western Cape gave way to an NNP-ANC coalition, almost all records of the information unit and its work, which cost the province some R1-million a year to maintain, were deleted or went missing.
This combination of circumstances and events, together with the acceptance by members of the information unit of allegedly classified information from a state intelligence official, led the NIA to fear that the unit might be an attempt by the old spy-master Barnard to re-enter the world in which he had once made his mark — this time outside of authorised structures (the Constitution allows the president alone to establish an intelligence organisation). Gilder feared the unit amounted to an alternative intelligence operation to the NIA in the province. Whereas some commission witnesses, including Hennie Bester, former Western Cape MEC for safety and security, said the unit was supposed to provide what he said NIA could not, Barnard denied this. Barnard indicated that, to the extent that he had had intelligence on his mind when he set up the unit, he had hoped for, and sought, cooperation between the unit and the intelligence community in the province.
The wounds reopened by the row are deep. They may, however, prove quite easy to heal. Barnard evidently craves fuller recognition of his status as an elder spook and his role in bringing South Africa to democracy. For its part, the NIA needs acknowledgement that it is maturing into a competent, unified domestic security agency — as its contributions to bringing an end to terrorism in the Western Cape and averting the recent alleged far-rightwing threat to national stability indicate it may be entitled to expect.