In May 2002 the FBI, supported by the CIA, hatched a plan to hijack the source material from South Africa’s erstwhile biological weapons programme — material the South African government has for years claimed was destroyed when the secret apartheid-era programme was shut down.
A document obtained by the Mail & Guardian shows the United States plan was first a covert project to remove South Africa’s unacknowledged biological stockpile — with the help of one of the scientists entrusted with preserving the material.
The plan apparently fell apart when the FBI decided to blow its own scheme in order to expose the South African government’s failure to come clean about its biological assets — and to portray this country as a proliferation risk. US sensitivities over the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons have been at fever pitch since September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks.
In January the M&G first reported details of attempts to set up deals to sell hazardous biological cultures developed under the auspices of the notorious apartheid-era Project Coast led by Wouter Basson.
That report focused on the role of a shadowy former intelligence agent, retired general Tai Minnaar, who acted as a go-between for a group of former Project Coast scientists led by Daan Goosen.
Minnaar, who died under suspicious circumstances last September, put Goosen in touch with two agents, Bob Zlockie and Don Mayes, who claimed to be representing the US government.
At the time of the M&G report, neither the two agents nor the CIA would confirm official involvement. But recent evidence obtained by The Washington Post, which published a front-page story about the deal on Sunday, shows that Zlockie and Mayes were indeed in constant communication and consultation with the FBI.
Now the M&G has obtained a copy of a contract between Goosen, Minnaar and Zlockie, which shows exactly what the Americans were after.
The contract, signed on May 5 last year, commits Goosen and Minnaar as the sellers to deliver 200 ampoules of ”hazardous biological material” that is ”extremely harmful to people and the environment”.
The $5-million contract also makes it clear that the Americans were interested in cleaning out South Africa’s bio-warfare potential. Clause 5.5 states: ”The Seller expressly warrants that all material known to exist in the Seller’s country that is within his control shall be provided by the Seller to the Buyer. The Seller further guarantees that no material shall be left undelivered to the Buyer that is in the control or easy access of the Seller and his agents.”
Goosen told the M&G this week that he had wanted to work openly with the Americans to counter the threat of biological terrorism — such as the US anthrax attacks, which remain unsolved. He said he would have preferred to have worked under the auspices of the civilian Centre for Disease Control, but that Zlockie — a retired CIA officer — insisted that the US would only accept a covert relationship.
”I signed that document very reluctantly,” says Goosen: ”They said they needed it to go and negotiate with the US government.”
He now believes he was deliberately set up by the US to make South Africa look bad — a view echoed by officials of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), which since 1994 has taken former Project Coast scientists, including Goosen, ”under its wing”.
Goosen sealed his proposal by delivering a sample of what was on offer — something the FBI had reportedly demanded. He handed Zlockie a toothpaste tube that concealed a vial of a less dangerous pathogen, an organism that was however technically advanced because it was based on genetic modification.
According to the Post article, Zlockie flew back to the US and handed the tube to the FBI on May 9. The US army’s biological analysis laboratory at Fort Detrick conducted a scientific analysis and confirmed that Goosen had delivered what he claimed to have.
For as yet unexplained reasons, the FBI decided to reject the deal and to inform the South African authorities about Goosen’s overtures — despite pleas from Mayes not to do this.
By about May 20 a letter of complaint about Goosen and Minnaar’s activities had been delivered through the US embassy to the South African Police Service, which began its own investigation of Goosen and Minnaar, without telling the NIA.
The intelligence agency then stumbled across the police investigation, leading to inter-agency confrontation before everyone sorted out what was going on.
The fallout was embarrassing for the NIA, revealing that Goosen — a man it was supposed to be close to — had made contact with the US without telling it.
What the NIA missed should have been clear to them, because Goosen had made no bones about his desire to enter into scientific cooperation with the US on bio-defence, and early in 2002, had made contact with the Pentagon. He had also made a trip to Bioport, a US vaccine facility.
His claims of good faith are called into question by a clause in the contract he signed with Zlockie, which committed him not to share any information about the contract with, among others, ”the [South African] government authorities and agencies”.
More seriously, the debacle has exposed the danger of the government’s attempt to maintain an ”off-the-record” bio-defence capability through a low-key, quasi-official relationship with people like Goosen.
Indeed, it appears that at least part of the motivation for the approach to the Americans was a desire to safeguard the skills and material developed by the South Africans against the threat of proliferation.
In an e-mail to Mayes, quoted by the Post, Minnaar states: ”With the current situation here at present, we need to ensure that the technology as well as ‘stock in hand’ (at present stored safely in a private facility) are safeguarded from finding its way to the people on the wrong side of the fence.”
Government officials admit privately that organisms and pathogens developed by Project Coast still exist. They claim these are safely stored and under control, though they decline to detail exactly how and where.
The government believes it is necessary to keep these samples. Firstly it wants the samples for ”fingerprinting” so that in case of a biological attack South Africa could match the material used with Project Coast samples to ascertain if there had been leakage from the apartheid-era programme.
It also wants samples for defensive research purposes: to manufacture vaccines and antidotes.
Vusi Mavimbela, the NIA’s director general, this week put a brave face on the extraordinary affair. Stopping short of confirming that South Africa had indeed kept samples of Project Coast material, he did point out that the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention, to which South Africa is a signatory, bans only quantities and types of dangerous biological material that, in the convention’s words, ”have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes”. Samples held purely for peaceful research are allowed.
Mavimbela said that because of South Africa’s past — and specifically Project Coast — ”it became our responsibility to make sure we work closely with those scientists [who were part of Project Coast] who understand the problems that this government is confronted with. That would explain why we are in contact with Daan Goosen.”
He said the NIA’s role included to ”monitor institutions and individuals to make sure there is no proliferation; that there is no research into weapons of mass destruction.
”Daan is not the only person, it is just that Daan has been put on the spot,” he said. ”Daan is not a member of the NIA, and in that capacity he has the right to pursue his research, interact with scientists and institutions all over the world.”
The relationship with someone like Goosen, Mavimbela said, became relevant only where there were proliferation issues at stake.
Asked if he believed there were sufficient controls to prevent proliferation, Mavimbela said: ”I believe there is sufficient control. But at the same time there are many scientists who are not working with the government of the day, and some who have even left the country. We can’t lock them all up.”
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