Amnesty Hearings

CHAIRPERSON: Any further questions?

MR VISSER: No thank you my lord, I have taken instructions on the issues raised by Mr Jansen but I do not regard that's relevant for purposes of this hearing.

MR LEVINE: Mr Chairman, could I deal with one item of housekeeping please? I had indicated to you yesterday that an index to the exhibits would be prepared. We have copies for everybody. The index is with item numbers and the exhibit numbers referred to along side. The one issue which hasn't been given - well there are two issues, one has not been given an alphabetical letter and that is the videos themselves. They were handed in yesterday, the five videos and item 24 is what they call in the vernacular, shot lists of the videos one to four....[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: If they are actual exhibits should they not just be 1,2,3,4,5?

MR LEVINE: I'm very happy with that and also there is what they call the shot lists which is a very short narrative of what appears on each of the first four videos which is item 24.

ADV DE JAGER: I think you've handed in only one, only the original, there were not copies handed in of the shot lists.

MR LEVINE: Not yesterday but they're all now available and they will be handed out but could they be given, I would possibly think V?

CHAIRPERSON: V.

MR LEVINE: V1 to V4?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

MR LEVINE: Thank you sir.

MR VISSER: My lord, while we are waiting, it's already getting slightly unpleasantly hot down here. May the same indulgence be made of the Committee as far as jackets are concerned?

CHAIRPERSON: Certainly.

MR VISSER: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos, I think we've come to you, haven't we?

MR ROSSOUW: Sorry Mr Chairman, I think I should go first?

CHAIRPERSON: Oh sorry.

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR ROSSOUW: I've just got a couple of questions.

Mr Williamson, referring to the Jeanette Schoon incident, at the stage when Mr Raven reported back to you after he had prepared the device, did he at any time inform you how it was done?

CRAIG MICHAEL WILLIAMSON: (s.u.o.)

MR ROSSOUW: Did he perhaps inform you that he was assisted by anybody?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chair.

MR ROSSOUW: Right. Mr Bosch, my client whom I'm representing is applying for amnesty in the event that he might have been involved in the preparation of this device. He is uncertain about it. Did you at any stage hear or see that he was involved?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, the first time I had any indication that Mr Bosch may perhaps have been involved was when I got the documentation.

MR ROSSOUW: Thank you. I've got no further questions, Mr Chairman.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MR ROSSOUW

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR BIZOS: Thank you Mr Chairman.

Mr Williamson, shortly after the London bombing did you send Gill Marcus, the present Deputy Minister of Finance, a postcard?

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't recollect that Mr Chairman but perhaps somebody could refresh my memory?

MR BIZOS: Well let me refresh your memory. Did you send her a postcard to say "Oh, you're still around?"

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't recollect that Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Are you able to deny that you sent such a card which said that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I obviously can't deny something that I can't recollect. It would seem to be in the circumstances the type of thing that may well have been done.

MR BIZOS: Well, you know, the Committee is not interested in theoretical possibilities and other prevaricating and evading answers. The question is, did you or did you not send such a card.

MR LEVINE: Mr Chairman, my learned friend has had an answer and it does not serve him better or the interests of his clients any better to go on an exchange of allegations of prevaricating answers. The answer ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Isn't he indicating to the witness that he does not accept that answer and he is going to argue that it is one that should not be accepted and giving the witness, the applicant a chance to alter or to add to his reply?

MR LEVINE: Mr Chairman, perhaps this postcard is available?

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman, I would appreciate it if Mr Levine left it to me as to what are in the best interests of our clients and secondly as to how I should conduct my cross-examination. I'll appreciate it Mr Chairman. I will proceed.

ADV DE JAGER: He is also entitled to protect his client if he thinks it's unreasonable.

MR BIZOS: Yes, but not telling me how to conduct my cross-examination.

MR LEVINE: Well, perhaps ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Well we had - both of you have been doing that during the course of this hearing. It would perhaps speed up things if you both refrain from advising one another how to behave.

MR BIZOS: Thank you Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Think as to whether you received - you sent off such a card with such a message?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I've said I've absolutely no recollection of sending of such a card. If I'm shown the card I could confirm whether or not it is in my handwriting. I do not remember but I said therefore I could not deny it and the sending of such a card would, in my opinion, be the type of psychological strategy that could well have been employed.

MR BIZOS: By you?

MR WILLIAMSON: By me or by somebody else in the security forces.

MR BIZOS: It was signed Craig.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman there are plenty of Craigs in the world and anybody, my name has been used and abused many, many times Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: But Mr Williamson, if you had sent a card of this nature to Gill Marcus, isn't it something you would have remembered?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, that's why I say I have no recollection. If I could remember I sent the card to her I would admit I sent the card to her Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And would that have been a message to her that the writer was surprised that she was not killed at the ANC offices when the bomb went off?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I would have been extremely surprised if Gill Marcus or anybody else had been killed when that bomb went off and I can also say that the purpose or one of the purposes of the bomb as I made very clear was to psychologically destabilise, to strike fear into the hearts of the ANC and such a postcard might well have been a continuation of such a process.

MR BIZOS: Who besides yourself involved in this bomb would have known that Gill Marcus's office was right against the wall to which the bomb was placed?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, in the intelligence services of South Africa at the time, the exact layout and internal applications in the ANC offices in London were very well known up to where the toilets were Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Did you know that what you called the printing room was also the typing room and also the desk of Gill Marcus?

MR WILLIAMSON: I knew that it was also being used as an office, Mr Chairman, and I remember now yes that Gill Marcus often used that office Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And that also she had a reputation to your knowledge of working at all hours of the day and particularly on Sunday mornings?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I don't know what her reputation was. I'm sure she worked very hard and at all hours of the morning and at different times and I - if Gill Marcus or anybody else had been a target at this operation, I would have said it and I would have admitted it and she was not the target of this operation.

MR BIZOS: Well, according to the instructions that we have that great care had to be taken not to injure non-ANC persons but the regret would have been lesser if ANC persons were killed?

MR WILLIAMSON: The regret would have been lesser? Yes Mr Chairman, I think I put it that if possible there were to be no deaths or injuries. There were - all efforts were to be made to make sure that there were no British citizens deaths or injuries and obviously in an operation of this nature the possibility of death or injury cannot be excluded one hundred percent Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: If you really ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: If there was any possibility of death or injury that this should only, this risk should only be taken if it applied to ANC or Communist Party members.

CHAIRPERSON: What time was the bomb set to go off?

MR WILLIAMSON: As far as I remember Mr Chairman it was set to go off - I believe it actually went off later than it was supposed to go off. I believe, under correction, that it should have gone off round about 6 a.m. in the morning.

MR BIZOS: If that is evidence that it was set to go off at about half past eight and it went off nearer to 9 o'clock, would that evidence be incorrect?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, it would not be incorrect. As I said Mr Chairman, I do believe my opinion at the time or my impression at the time was that the bomb had gone off later than intended but it went off within a window of time which it had been decided that it could, it would be the safest possible time for it to go off.

MR BIZOS: The window of time that is deposed to under oath by Mr Taylor at page 175 of bundle 3, was between 8.30 and 9.00?

MR WILLIAMSON: I have no objection to that window of time Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And the evidence elsewhere is that it was discussed at the or on the very same page, discussed at the final briefing according to Mr Taylor. Is that evidence incorrect?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman, it isn't incorrect. As I have already said about the so-called final briefing, it was not merely a final briefing in that everybody sat and heard everything. We were gathered in a flat and there were various discussions, there was a briefing by the Brigadier and as far as I was concerned, there was a window of time which extended up to approximately half past eight in the morning and that within this window of time, that explosion would be in the period of time that we had from our surveillance identified as being the safest and I'm not saying a safe time, the safest possible time. Not only in order to avoid death and injury but also Mr Chairman to allow the team or the various members of the team to proceed to leave the United Kingdom.

MR BIZOS: Why did - sorry Mr Chairman?

CHAIRPERSON: But Mr Taylor appears to indicate a very different reason, that it wasn't based on your surveillance? If you read on Mr Bizos from where you were reading, he says

"It was known to all members of the team that the ANC would be holding, I think, a Sharpeville Day Remembrance rally at Trafalgar Square as from 9 a.m. that Sunday morning so there was no possibility of anybody being on the premises."

MR BIZOS: Thank you Mr Chairman.

MR WILLIAMSON: That was a further speculation Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You know, when asked the question by the judge, the Chairman of this Committee, you said 6 o'clock?

MR WILLIAMSON: I said there was a window of time from 6 o' clock to approximately in my recollection 8.30 and I cannot in all definiteness state that I knew precisely what time that device was going to explode.

MR BIZOS: Nobody knew the office and it's environs better than you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well I would imagine the people who worked in it knew the office and it's environment better than me.

MR BIZOS: Implied in the question was among the group that were to destroy it, Mr Williamson?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes I will accept that Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Did you think that I was suggesting that you knew it better than everybody that worked in it and is that why you gave that answer?

MR WILLIAMSON: I was answering your question, you said nobody, nobody means nobody Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Oh I see we're going to be so exact. I will keep you to that.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well I'm trying to be exact Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, very good, we'll keep you to that. Now you knew that what you described as a parking lot was in fact a play area of a school which is called a Free School, an informal school at which people in the neighbourhood go and play in and also teachers on an informal basis go and keep them off the streets, that's why it's called a free school, people go to it freely and voluntarily at all times including the weekends for the purposes of doing something constructive and useful and not being street children so to speak. Did you know that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I did not know that specifically Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Did you know that this bomb had four and a half kilograms of explosives in it?

MR WILLIAMSON: I did not know that either Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You are able to deny that?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I did not know the size or the weight of the explosives involved in the bomb.

MR BIZOS: If the intention was to merely send a message, why were four and a half kilograms of explosive used?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I could - in an operation of this nature, one relies on the expertise of experts and the reason why I had an explosives expert involved in the operation was because he is an expert and the purpose of the operation, the political purpose of the operation was not only as we said to be symbolic or political. The purpose was to make an attack and to damage and destroy an ANC target and in the opinion of the experts involved in my planning team, the device had to be of a certain size and I did not question them Mr Chairman, I am certainly not an expert in that field.

MR BIZOS: Do you agree that damages far as fifty metres away from the bomb, spot where the bomb was placed were damaged?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I can agree with that. Shrapnel or blast damage or breaking of glass can occur obviously in a radius around such an explosion.

MR BIZOS: How many people were living or working or might have been present in a radius of fifty metres at 8.30 to 9.00 o'clock on a Sunday morning?

MR WILLIAMSON: Again Mr Chairman, I can't give specific or absolutely accurate figures but I would imagine numerous people. We took this into account Mr Chairman, it was carefully weighed up and taken into account.

MR BIZOS: So that the fact that nobody died was one of those happy, fortunate circumstances despite your intentions or lack of care?

MR WILLIAMSON: I'm sorry Mr Chairman, I cannot agree with that. There is a statement that the harder you - there's a saying that the harder you work the luckier you get and I think it applies here, every effort was made not to kill or injure anybody.

CHAIRPERSON: But you say you imagined there would be numerous people within the fifty metre radius, do I understand that to be your evidence?

MR WILLIAMSON: I mean living in the other buildings or present in the vicinity and particularly on the street side and every effort was made to make sure that people in other buildings adjacent to this building would not be effected by the explosion.

CHAIRPERSON: What effort?

MR WILLIAMSON: The effort of the position of the placing of the bomb and the focusing of the explosion into the ANC building specifically.

MR BIZOS: If Gill Marcus had been there she would have been killed?

MR WILLIAMSON: If she had been there she would have been killed, yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Killed or injured.

MR BIZOS: Also, there was going to be a big rally on that day, you knew that?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Was the office kept under observation on the Friday and Saturday and Thursday?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Was it reported to you that a number of young people worked hard during those days to make placards and posters for the rally? Was that reported to you?

MR WILLIAMSON: I - yes that there were people making preparations for the rally, yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes and that they were expected at about 9 o'clock to come and collect from the ANC office all those placards and posters and hand outs that had been prepared throughout the week for the purposes of going to the rally with them as a group? Did you have that information?

MR WILLIAMSON: I had no information that there was a group of people going to come to the ANC office at nine o'clock on that Sunday morning. My information was that if the explosion took place within the window that had been decided that nobody would be in the ANC office at that time besides possibly the security guard cum caretaker up on the top floor.

MR BIZOS: Incidently, the evidence will be that there was neither a security guard nor a caretaker but a homeless person that had taken refuge at that place. Are you able to deny that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I will not deny it Mr Chairman but from our perspective, knowing that an individual was allowed to live in and sleep in the ANC headquarters in London, I certainly would not have regarded this as some unfortunate homeless person that the ANC had given refuge to. I would merely have regarded him as obviously of high enough rank and being trusted enough to be allowed to stay in what was regarded as the sensitive installation of the ANC at night on his own.

MR BIZOS: Incidently, why did you find it necessary to say to the Committee that he had been convicted of an offence?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, all I did was to say I was asked do I remember the individual. I have a specific reason to remember that individual because of the intelligence reports that came to me about him Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes and you didn't mention it for the purposes of denigrating the ANC right up to the moment that you are giving evidence in this Committee? That had nothing to do with it?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I don't believe I have to denigrate the ANC, all I have to do is explain to this Committee how I and others in the security forces saw the ANC.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: Which is incidently not how I see them today.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Yes, we'll come to that Mr Williamson. Mr Williamson, let's start at the beginning of your career of deception. When did you register as a student at the University of Witwatersrand?

MR WILLIAMSON: 1972 Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: How long did it take you to deceive the student body that you were a radical, a left-wing radical that ought to be elected to the Student Representative Council in order to advance the non-racial policies of that university?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, if I'm being asked how long it took me to be elected to the Students Representative Council or how long it took me to deceive the people in order to get them to elect me, I can't really say how long it took me to deceive the people. Basically it took me approximately one year to get elected to the Student Representative Council.

MR BIZOS: On a ticket of deception?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, it wasn't only a ticket of deception. One must understand that I was an undercover officer working on the campus of the University of Witwatersrand but at the same time I was a student, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, but you deceived the students that elected you, that you were a left-wing radical?

CHAIRPERSON: Just let me clear this up. You were an undercover agent. When did you join the police?

MR WILLIAMSON: In 1969 Mr Chairman. Sorry Mr Chairman, 1968.

CHAIRPERSON: Did you go straight into intelligence?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I was a normal police officer. I was in the uniform branch, it was approximately 1971 Mr Chairman as a result of my promotion or my having passed the promotion exams to sergeant that I obviously came to the attention of the Security Branch. I'd also expressed the intention, Mr Chairman, of completing basically my national service in the police at that time and then going to university. So I was approached in 1971 while a member of the uniform branch of the South African Police to join the Security Branch and to go to university and to investigate. Well, Mr Chairman, in 1972 really just to get myself entrenched on the campus and then to start investigating the activities, one can term them left-wing political activities, but our specific mandate was to investigate the ANC and the South African Communist Party.

MR BIZOS: You were recruited into intelligence and you met General Coetzee, then of a lesser rank, in 1971?

MR BIZOS: Yes, well he was then a colonel.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Right, now you deceived the student body, then you got elected onto the SRC. You managed to deceive the other elected members of the SRC to elect you as an office bearer of the executive and what year was that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe in 1973 Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. During that period were you filing reports on what was happening at the university?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: What was happening on the SRC?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And what some of your teachers were teaching you?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct.

MR BIZOS: Now, so that you deceived the members of the SRC and you deceived your teachers as a bona fide pupil when in truth and in fact you went and reported what was being said in the lecture rooms?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, the impression created by that question is that I was sent to the university to report on what was happening in the lecture room. That is not correct. What I was sent to do at the university was to report on anything that could possibly be related to the South African Communist Party and the ANC and their attempts to influence, manipulate and recruit students to their cause, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You were doing what I put to you, you were reporting what was happening at the university, you were reporting what was happening on the SRC and you were reporting what was taking place in the lecture room.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, but I must say that when I was in, for example, Professor Dugard's lectures on international war, I did not report to the Security Branch on the contents of those lectures. When I was in a political science lecture where an American foreign national lecturing to the South African students was lecturing in a for example on the Vietnam war and taking a particular political approach, yes, I then reported that type of thing Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And you managed to deceive everyone that was working with you there that you were a bona fide student only?

MR WILLIAMSON: I assume so Mr Chairman, nobody thought that I was a police officer.

MR BIZOS: Yes, so that during this period going on to 1974 and 1975 you also managed to deceive the NUSAS representatives and you were elected to high office in NUSAS, the National Union of South African Students?

MR WILLIAMSON: I was elected to high office, yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And you reported on the activities of NUSAS?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And as a result of your reports and the reports of your colleague, another policemen, Drooner, charges were laid against the top leadership of NUSAS and a Wits lecturer?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I don't believe that the charges laid against NUSAS at that time were related to the reports that I made.

MR BIZOS: Well, didn't you report what happened at NUSAS meetings, didn't you hand police internal confidential memoranda of NUSAS, didn't you hand the police correspondence of NUSAS, didn't you hand the police what contacts it had in relation to it's funding from overseas, didn't you give all that information over?

MR WILLIAMSON: I gave that type of information over Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: So did numerous other police officers who were engaged in exactly the same type of work that I was, Mr Chairman and so did members of the then Bureau of State Security who were also on the campus in exactly the same capacity that I was Mr Chairman and I can go further and say at that time in my career, it appeared both to me and to my commanders that I had a chance to go further in the conspiratorial organisations that we were attempting to infiltrate and I refer again to the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party and I would have been most surprised, Mr Chairman, if there had been any use of evidence or information relating or coming from me in the trial that Mr Bizos is referring to because this could possibly have damaged the cover that I was building up for myself Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: The five people on trial were well known to you, at least four of them, your friends?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: The academic did you know him well? Not the student but the academic accused?

MR WILLIAMSON: Could I be reminded which academic it was Mr Chairman?

MR BIZOS: Yes. He is now Professor Webster.

MR WILLIAMSON: I knew him Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You continued your friendship with them during the course of that trial before the Regional Court for about ten months?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You discussed their defence with them?

MR WILLIAMSON: In broad general terms, I'm sure I discussed their defence with them Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Did you discuss their defence with your handler, General Coetzee?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I did not Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Why not?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman I also - I must just say quite frankly at that time, that type of trial was not really the focus of interest that I had in what I was doing. I supported those people during that trial in the same way as many other people gave them solidarity and support and I may add Mr Chairman in the same way as many other people gave me solidarity and support in 1972 when I with a number of other student leaders was also on trial for approximately six months or more and for student activities, Mr Chairman. The trial, the NUSAS activities at that time were not my main focus Mr Chairman, it was a means to an end.

MR BIZOS: Well let's see how that means was used. Did you suggest to any one of them that you had the means to get him over the border?

MR WILLIAMSON: I could well have suggested that Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Would you have delivered him to the security police if he had accepted your offer?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I would have delivered him where he wanted to go. Are we talking now Mr Chairman about 1975?

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman in 1975 the one thing I will definitely say is that I certainly would not have acted as the agent provocateur but in 1975, there was talk amongst various people, people who had been banned, people whose passports had been taken about leaving the country and in 1975 I had already made contact with the African National Congress and in 1975, 1976 I was involved with getting people out of the country yes, Mr Chairman. So I may well have said there is a facility available, if you want to leave the country you may.

MR BIZOS: Were you going to betray your oath as a police officer by successfully getting him across the border or were you going to betray him and his confidence in you as a friend by handing him over to the security police? Which of his ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: That is not the only choices Mr Bizos, if his purpose as I understand his evidence was to infiltrate the ANC and the SACP. He indicates that was the important task that he had. How was he being untruthful to his oath by continuing to commit acts which would give the ANC more and more confidence in him? Isn't that what he's being telling us and now you are putting two alternatives that he had a choice.

MR BIZOS: Well let me clarify the question. Would you have told your handlers that you were taking a person on a charge in a high profile case out of the country, would you have told your handlers that?

MR WILLIAMSON: Obviously Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Would that have been a betrayal of trust of your friend?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, there would have been absolutely no likelihood at that time that I would have encouraged somebody to commit a relatively minor offence such as crossing the border illegally and to have that person then arrested for this minor offence and blow my entire operation Mr Chairman. I could well, had that person wished to leave the country, had that person for example got instructions from outside the country from some or other organisation such as the ANC and the Communist Party and had wanted to leave the country to join and work with that organisation, that is a different matter. There I could have assisted him in order to boost my credibility with the revolutionary organisation and I can add, Mr Chairman, that there are high-ranking, at least one, high-ranking ANC in this person who I helped out of this country and who later even became an official in the President of the ANC's office.

MR BIZOS: The question was not that you should permit only a minor offence of crossing the border without a permit but that he would have absconded as an accused and whom the court placed it's trust to allow him out on bail?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, all I can say to that is obviously that is factual if he had done such a thing, that would have been an abuse of his bail process or the trust that the court placed on that individual at the time but that, Mr Chairman, was not my intention, it was not my focus and it was not what I was doing.

MR BIZOS: You could have been charged with attempting to defeat the ends of justice?

MR WILLIAMSON: If I had done something like that Mr Chairman perhaps that would have been defeating the ends of justice but I ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Would you deny that you did?

MR WILLIAMSON: Deny that I did what Mr Chairman? Helping ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: That you suggested to someone that you should take this way out that I have put to you?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I won't deny it, I've said that I was involved, that was the time when I started becoming involved in assisting people to leave the country and that I could have easily said to somebody that if you need to leave the country I have the ways and means of doing it.

MR BIZOS: Do you recall that you painted a very sorry picture of the likelihood that you would be convicted and sent to prison for some ten years if you were found guilty and you've expressed the view that he was likely to be found guilty, do you remember that?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman I don't remember that specifically, I would imagine that I did paint the same picture that many other people at that time were painting about the possibilities that could happen and the so-called, the draconian legislation that was in place and the depression of the democratic movements etc. etc.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Do you remember that you were told by him that he was defending himself as having done nothing wrong other than exercise with his co-accused, his democratic rights, political development in the country and that he was not prepared to become a fugitive from justice?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, I certainly don't remember anybody putting anything to me in those terms but I think there was at a stage a belief by people that the whole NUSAS trial was in itself a political act, a resistance against what was regarded as the illegitimate oppression of the State at that time of democratic ideals and opinions.

MR BIZOS: Yes and the magistrate actually acquitted them on that defence.

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, the same.

MR BIZOS: Right and did this person tell you that there was no need for him to use any underground structures because he actually had a passport?

MR WILLIAMSON: That's fine, Mr Chairman, that's exactly one of the tactics or techniques that would be used in that time and in any infiltration and investigation of this type would be to say to somebody in that type of circumstance, if you need help I can help you and perhaps if that person was in fact intending to do something like that and did have connections with the revolutionary movements across the border and did want that assistance, that that person could then get that assistance and this obviously Mr Chairman, would be an advantage to me in then building or furthering my infiltration of the organisation. If the person was not involved with the ANC or Communist Party, did not need assistance to leave the country illegally, had a passport, then obviously the case would not have arisen, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Did you report to your handlers that this accused in the NUSAS trial who was being accused of being a party to revolutionary activities still had a passport?

MR WILLIAMSON: I doubt it Mr Chairman, I would have imagined something like that was known to the authorities and they would have a file and they would know whether he had a passport or not Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Was it a coincidence that shortly after this conversation with you he was visited and his passport was taken away?

MR WILLIAMSON: It could be a coincidence Mr Chairman. All our passports were taken away. My passport, the police came to my house at night and took my passport away Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Was that also a deception for public purposes?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, the same action was being taken against all the NUSAS leaders including me.

MR BIZOS: But in your case it was a deception?

MR WILLIAMSON: Of course Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, that's all I asked you. So that during this period, you managed to deceive highly intelligent people by being particularly adept at your acts of deception? People at a university, we're not talking about people of limited experience and education, you managed to deceive highly intelligent, highly trained people with considerable experience?

MR WILLIAMSON: I must agree Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You must agree because you see I am putting all this and we will come to a conclusion in due course after I've put to you some more, that as a master of deception you are continuing those attempts into this Committee room in some respects to deceive them, the victims and the South African public. This is why I'm putting these things to you in order to show how adept you are at deception, Mr Williamson. But let's continue.

Mr Charles Nupen who was president of NUSAS asked you or you offered, it doesn't really matter, to become the best man at his wedding?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: At the time when you were filing reports which led to his arrest and tried for a period of ten months?

MR WILLIAMSON: As I said before Mr Chairman, I don't think that I would draw a direct link between my reports and the NUSAS trial or the arrest and trial of Mr Nupen and others.

MR BIZOS: We're only talking about the period, we will take about the cause and effect later if need be. Was it during this period that you were reporting on him and the organisation that he led that you offered or accepted an offer to become the best man had his wedding, Mr Williamson?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Either from the religious point of view or from the humanistic point of view of just decent human feelings to stand by a man at his marriage ceremony as his best man at the same time as you are reporting on him to the security police shows a high degree of humanity would you not agree?

MR WILLIAMSON: No I would not agree Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You don't agree?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Nupen was to my knowledge, neither he nor his wife were ever serious targets of any investigation for being related or being involved with either the South African Communist Party or the ANC.

MR BIZOS: Well there were - very strenuous attempts were made for ten months to convict him for contravening the Suppression of Communism Act and having contacts with the Communist Party and the ANC. Did you tell your superiors your accused number one is an innocent man, what are you putting him on trial for, he's my best man?

MR WILLIAMSON: I didn't tell them that Mr Chairman, nor did I tell him excuse me Charles, do you mind if I just whisper in your ear and tell you actually I'm a policeman, do you mind a policeman being the best man at your wedding?

MR BIZOS: There's another decent thing to have done to have at least found an excuse not to be so highly hypocritical and unfaithful to a friend as to be his best man at his wedding. Why didn't you at least take that option?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman at the time I was his friend.

MR BIZOS: By reporting his activities to the security police and withdrawing from the security police the, at least the opinion that this was a friend that you did not believe was involved in any nefarious activities?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I was not either in the position or personally excited by - I was not involved in the case against NUSAS. Obviously I agree that some of the information that I would have put through before may well have been used in the case against NUSAS. I saw, that time, that case against NUSAS like many other people saw it, merely as a political harassment of NUSAS, it wasn't and I hesitate to use the word but I didn't regard that whole case against NUSAS as serious. What I regarded as serious Mr Chairman was the ANC and the Communist Party and their terrorist incursions into South Africa and their attempts to overthrow the State, Mr Chairman and I never ever, ever reported that Mr Nupen or his wife were involved in such a conspiracy because I did not know that, I still don't know it and I never had ever said it, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Didn't you report at any time that they were potential recruits into the ANC?

MR WILLIAMSON: I think I may well have reported it in the context that there was the danger, in fact I was reporting at that time about an effort being made by the ANC, the Communist Party and certain of their international connections to make contact with this type of student leader and the student organisations Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Mr Chairman, may I as for an interruption of the questioning for two minutes, for two minutes, it isn't necessary for the Committee to withdraw upstairs. It will be very brief Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: You want a short adjournment?

MR BIZOS: Very short adjournment.

CHAIRPERSON: Very well.

COMMITTEE ADJOURNS

ON RESUMPTION

CRAIG MICHAEL WILLIAMSON: (s.u.o.)

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR BIZOS: (continued)

When did you meet Jeanette Schoon?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe Mr Chairman it must have been if not 1972, 1973.

MR BIZOS: Was she or had she been a NUSAS leader?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe that at the time Mr Chairman she was on the National Executive of NUSAS, responsible if I remember correctly for was termed Nuswel, N-u-s-w-e-l, which was the I think the labour side of NUSAS, the side of NUSAS which was dealing with labour matters.

MR BIZOS: Yes. It was called the wages commission?

MR WILLIAMSON: Wages commission.

MR BIZOS: A matter that formed part of the charge of the five people that were put on trial that they had associated themselves and leant assistance to people to organise themselves into trade unions?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Which was alleged to be an ANC/South African Communist Party activity?

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't know whether it was alleged to have been exclusively an ANC/South African Communist Party SACTU activity but certainly there was the allegation that the ANC, Communist Party and SACTU which was the South African Congress of Trade Unions which was controlled by the ANC and Communist Party were involved in attempting to resurrect that strongly socialist/communist orientated trade unions of the past.

MR BIZOS: Was there a difference between Nuswel, N-u-s-w-e-l and the wages commission?

MR WILLIAMSON: I think so Mr Chairman, I remember and we're talking now twenty three years ago Mr Chairman. I believe wages commission started as a project of Nuswel if I'm not wrong.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Well Nuswel was the welfare arm of the National Union of South African Students?

MR WILLIAMSON: Correct.

MR BIZOS: And was that what Jeanette Curtis was on?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe so, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Did you see this mornings Beeld?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well I'll let you read it and then ask you questions about it during the course of the day and whether you agree the picture that is painted of Jenny Curtis is a correct one but in the meantime let us proceed.

Was she interested in the welfare of all the people in South Africa and more particularly the disadvantaged groups?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe she was Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Was she interested in the upliftment of the disadvantaged people in the country and was she prepared and was she given practical effect with her feelings in teaching or arranging for the teaching of disadvantaged people?

MR WILLIAMSON: In literacy and other ways yes, Mr Chairman, I believe so.

MR BIZOS: Did she have pacifist tendencies?

MR WILLIAMSON: I can't say that I knew or discussed pacifism with her but if you say so I accept, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. And was she affectionately referred to as one of the flower children of that period?

MR WILLIAMSON: I think that would be a correct description Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: That's the Jenny Curtis that you knew?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. You went and lived with Jenny and Marius pretending to be a friend, in Botswana?

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't recollect I lived there, I think on occasion I stayed in their house when I passed through Botswana, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Spent a couple of days at a time?

MR WILLIAMSON: I think so Mr Chairman yes.

MR BIZOS: And you held yourself out and pretended that you were a friend sharing their values in life?

MR WILLIAMSON: This was a number of years later Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Are we talking about '78/'79?

MR WILLIAMSON: Six, seven years later yes, Mr Chairman, or five, six years later.

MR BIZOS: Doesn't matter, a few years later. A few years later?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes and at which stage our involvement was no longer merely in NUSAS and student activities and welfare, our involvement at that time was in the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party and it's aims of overthrowing the State in South Africa.

MR BIZOS: Yes?

MR WILLIAMSON: And when I stayed with them Mr Chairman, it was in Botswana where they were high-ranking members of the ANC and where the house in which they stayed was an ANC facility.

MR BIZOS: Yes. You managed to deceive them at least for some while that you were not a policeman?

MR WILLIAMSON: I must have Mr Chairman because we discussed very sensitive matters concerning the ANC's activities in Botswana and in South Africa.

MR BIZOS: This despite a considerable body of opinion of amongst your circle of friends and acquaintances that they suspected you of being a security policeman?

MR WILLIAMSON: There were people who suspected me yes, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And you managed again to deceive the Schoons about your true colours?

MR WILLIAMSON: I have to add Mr Chairman that a lot of people who were not Security Force agents or often the paranoia or the, than the fear of Security Force agents - if I can put it this way, that the more you were involved in the specific operations of a group the less that they would suspect you because they would know that if you were an agent they would expect there to be leakages of information and if those leakages of information didn't occur they might well then have assumed that you could not be possibly an agent, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes the question was simple one, is the answer yes? You succeeded in persuading the Schoons that you were a comrade and not a security police officer?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, try and keep direct answers and I'm sure that your attorney will re-examine you on anything that you want to add Mr Williamson.

MR WILLIAMSON: Thank you Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Your handler during the NUSAS trial and your contacts with the Schoons was General Coetzee?

MR WILLIAMSON: In 1975 during the NUSAS trial I was in fact based in Cape Town and if I remember correctly the trial was in Johannesburg. I was at NUSAS head office and my handler in Cape Town was not General Coetzee but General Coetzee was in the command structure of the operation that was being carried out. I did not, when we talk about handler, by 1975 I was not dealing with General Coetzee on a daily basis or on a weekly basis reporting directly to him, I was reporting through other security offices who were handling me directly.

MR BIZOS: During the trial Mr Williamson, you were there at least one or two days a week were you not?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I was there like many other people like all of us in a show of solidarity. This was a political trial.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Mr Williamson, the question was to merely establish whether you were in Johannesburg?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes I was there Mr Chairman, there are photographs of me standing with the accused in the newspaper Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes and you reported to Mr Coetzee during this period when you were in Johannesburg?

MR WILLIAMSON: I may well have Mr Chairman, as I have said I don't have any specific recollection of going and making specific reports, no Mr Chairman. I had a procedure that I used on my reporting and I deny absolutely that I was being used at that trial to feed evidence to the State or whatever. I was at that trial building up my credibility and my association with the accused and the other people that supported them.

CHAIRPERSON: What were you supposed to be doing at that time Mr Williamson? What did you tell the people you were doing?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I was a full time - I believe I may well have at that stage already been the vice-president of NUSAS, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: But where were you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well NUSAS, it was a full time organisation.

CHAIRPERSON: Was that a full time job?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: And would that be based in Cape Town?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct. NUSAS head office was in Cape Town. I could well have been elected vice-president after the trial but I was a senior ranking, I was executive member of NUSAS, it was my full time job, was member of NUSAS and we used to travel around the campuses organising NUSAS and student solidarity and everything NUSAS was doing so my, it would have been very strange that in my position in NUSAS that I just didn't come to the trial of the NUSAS leadership. In fact Mr Chairman I think when the people were detained I had interviews with the Minister of Justice as the NUSAS representative, objecting to their detention so I was one of the highest ranking NUSAS officials at that time who was not on trial.

MR BIZOS: So you managed to deceive the Minister of Justice as well?

MR WILLIAMSON: No I didn't Mr Chairman because the Minister of Justice knew exactly who I was.

MR BIZOS: Oh, so you had become sufficiently important at that time for the Minister of Justice to know who you were and sit through a charade, you appealing as a friend of the accused?

MR WILLIAMSON: I went to the - as part of a delegation to the Minister of Justice to demand that the accused were charged or released and I was at that time, I believe, a Warrant Officer and I was being promoted to Lieutenant and I was informed that the Minister had in fact been told that, if I can put it this way, the demonstrator who is talking to the Minister on behalf of NUSAS is going to be promoted to Lieutenant in the security police and it was regarded as somewhat amusing, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, well the answer to the question which was the Minister took part in a charade that his officer was coming to plead alleviation of suffering by the accused, the answer would be yes?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I'm not going to argue - yes.

MR BIZOS: Well don't, just answer the questions and we'll get on much quicker. Now did you, when you were elected as vice-president of Nusas and before actually being confirmed in that office, go overseas with Mike Stent?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, the president elect and the vice-president elect of the organisation was sent overseas in

1975.

MR BIZOS: Yes and were you sent to numerous donors of NUSAS who were funding the humanitarian organisational and other activities of NUSAS?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman I was.

MR BIZOS: Including the I.U.E.F?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And you managed to deceive them that you were a proper vice-president of NUSAS who had come to ask for money for these lawful and worthwhile causes?

MR WILLIAMSON: The question is in two parts Mr Chairman. Yes I managed to deceive them but on the second part, I don't believe we were in fact asking for money, I think there was money available and the problem at that stage was exactly how it could be given to NUSAS in the light of new legislation which had been passed, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: In 1976 did you have two bosses, General Johan Coetzee, as he later became and a boss handler J.J. Claassen?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes from the later 1976, that is correct, Mr Chairman. There was a suggestion that I should be seconded or transferred from the South African Police across to the Bureau of State Security which later became the National Intelligence Service and it was decided that I would remain an officer of the South African Police under the command basically of, through General Coetzee, well who was not at that stage a General but the commanding officer of the security police and the Commissioner of the South African Police but for operational purposes particularly where it related to my activities outside the country, I would have an operational handler who was J. J. Claassen from the Bureau of State Security.

MR BIZOS: By 1976 did you already consider Johan Coetzee as your mentor?

MR WILLIAMSON: I never thought of it like that at the time, Mr Chairman, but yes I mean he was the senior officer from whom I took guidance and advice and who assisted me in achieving what I managed to achieve in my career, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, you have had contact with him for over five years from 1971 to 1976?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Now ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: But again I must add, for some number of those years I was in Cape Town and I was being handled by different people, that he remained the overseer of the operation Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well, after the acquittal of the NUSAS five, did General Coetzee, with your assistance, set up structures within university campuses in order to sow division amongst students?

MR WILLIAMSON: No I don't know what is being referred to now, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well, were conservative student groups created and financed by the security establishment in order to introduce divisive behaviour on the campuses?

MR WILLIAMSON: Again, Mr Chairman, I must answer the question by saying yes, conservative organisations were financed by security forces and I believe at the time that in fact that it was not in fact the South African Police, I think the main player in that area was the Bureau of State Security so that did happen but it was not done by General Coetzee and secondly I did not understand the purpose of this tactic as being to sow division, I understood it as being to create a counter weight or a counter force to the left-wing student movement which was being manipulated and used by the ANC and South African Communist Party.

MR BIZOS: Yes, do you deliberately, almost invariably speak of the ANC : Communist Party designedly out of habit or it just falls more easily to your tongue? Why do you always join the ANC and the Communist Party, Mr Williamson?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I served in the security forces related to intelligence and to the ANC and Communist Party from 1971 until 1987 and there are very few documents or discussions about the ANC/Communist Party Alliance in which they were not described as the ANC/SACP Alliance, it was seen as one organisation in the same way as at the Armed Forces Committee Hearing I was asked by the Chairman why I used the word eliminate while I was talking. This is terminology that came about in more than twenty years of this struggle between us and the ANC because it wasn't only between us and the ANC, Mr Chairman, it was between us and the ANC/Communist Party. They themselves described themselves as an alliance, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: So it's really out of habit?

MR WILLIAMSON: It's out of habit Mr Chairman and it's in context of speaking about the ANC/Communist Party Alliance at that time. If I was speaking about the ANC or the South African Party today I would use the terminology differently Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, now let us just very briefly finish your history of deception, Mr Williamson. You went overseas, you persuaded the director of your employer, Mr Ericsson. Have I got the name correctly?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, Mr Lars Gunnar Ericsson.

MR BIZOS: Ericsson. That you were a person who had identified himself with the struggle of the oppressed in South Africa?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You met people in the ANC in the highest possible positions and you persuaded them that you were one of them, is that correct?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And let us just round it off by you eventually meeting Mr Mac Maharaj the present Minister of Transport whom you hoped to persuade that you were on the side of the oppressed in South Africa?

MR WILLIAMSON: He and others Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Were your meetings with Mr Maharaj towards the time of your revealing yourself as a policeman? Wouldn't you to attempt to get Mr Mac Maharaj to the Seychelles?

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't believe I ever attempted to get Mr Maharaj anywhere Mr Chairman. If there has been a suggestion that we go and have a meeting with Mr Maharaj somewhere, that's possible.

MR BIZOS: Yes and try to get him to meet you in Swaziland?

MR WILLIAMSON: That's possible Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And other countries in which the South African Government had operations going which the killing of Mr Mac Maharaj would have been easier and with less consequences?

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't believe that at any time up until I returned to South Africa during 1980, I was involved in any programme or plan to lure Mr Mac Maharaj anywhere in order that he be killed. I was involved in working with him and other members of Umkhonto weSizwe on specific tasks which they wished to have carried out in South Africa and in furtherance of my task and my mission which was to gather as much information about the organisation as possible.

MR BIZOS: I don't want to spend too much time on this, I will put the question to you directly. Was the main reason for your exposure as a policeman, a meeting at which you pretended to be together with your two friends, loyal ANC members and that Mr Mac Maharaj indicated from his knowledge of your two colleagues that he well knew that he, that they were policemen and was that a clear indication to you that Mr Mac Maharaj knew all about your true self?

MR WILLIAMSON: That would surprise me Mr Chairman, he never mentioned these friends of yours or any other friends of mine or members of the South African Police and you are all spies or they are spies and therefore I suspect you. I remember a meeting in London with him, with certain other members.

MR BIZOS: Who were they? Edwards and who else? Was Edwards there?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe one was Mr Edwards and I believe one was Mr Asmorsen.

MR BIZOS: And did they have other names?

CHAIRPERSON: Who was the second one?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Asmorsen.

MR BIZOS: Did they have other names?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, they've got christian names Mr Chairman, Carl Edwards and Paul Asmorsen.

MR BIZOS: Were they introduced to Mr Mac Maharaj by their correct names or there so-called underground names?

MR WILLIAMSON: I'm not - I cannot remember Mr Chairman. The procedure in Umkhonto weSizwe was and in our covert procedures as well as the ANC/Communist Party covert procedures was to allocate code names. Mr Maharaj and his associates like Mr Kasrils allocated me a name "Newman" at one stage and I believe that Edwards and Asmorsen may well have had nome de guerres as they were termed, but I don't remember them.

MR BIZOS: Well Carl Edwards was known as Charles.

MR WILLIAMSON: Charles, that's correct.

MR BIZOS: And what was the other man called?

MR WILLIAMSON: Peter, perhaps.

MR BIZOS: Or whatever and I didn't suggest to you that Mr Mac Maharaj boldly announced that he knew that you were policemen or a police agents. He started - you're looking down and your face has gone particularly red, Mr Williamson?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chair, I was just surprised because that's what I heard you say.

MR BIZOS: Yes I see. Well wait until I finish.

CHAIRPERSON: That's what all of us heard you say Mr Bizos?

MR BIZOS: I beg your pardon?

CHAIRPERSON: That is what all of us heard you say.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: That he did say he knew they were policemen.

MR BIZOS: Yes, that he did not directly say that but started making references to their private lives and habits which gave you a clear indication that Mac Maharaj was not being taken in?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I believe this meeting that is being talked about now was in London and was in 1978, '77 or '78 and I recall - first of all the purpose of the meeting was not only to discuss the activities that my, I mean I had another unit now, I mean I had an ANC unit that was supposed to be carrying out ANC activities inside South Africa and obviously I didn't have any genuine ANC members in this unit, I only had members of the Security Forces in my unit so I got instructions from the ANC, please do X,Y,Z and I had to get my ANC Unit which wasn't really an ANC Unit, to carry out these instructions and the purpose of the meeting was to co-ordinate and discuss what we were doing and in specific, Mr Chairman, the purpose of the meeting was for Mr Maharaj and other members of the ANC to hand over to Peter, I believe his code name was Mr Asmorsen, certain components of pamphlet bombs which were to be carried by him back to South Africa and I do remember Mr Maharaj complaining to me about the amount of liquor that Edwards and Asmorsen consumed and that he believed that this was, that Edwards was a womaniser and that both of them drank too much and that this was a security risk. I don't believe that he indicated to me at that time or gave me the impression at that time that he believed them to be members of the security forces or me, to be members of the security forces and Mr Chairman, I do have a document which I can show the committee, which shows an instruction, a written instruction in Mac Maharaj's handwriting dated November 1979 of - sensitive instruction to me of things he wished me to do which was two or three years after this meeting, Mr Chairman. So his relationship with me or that meeting as far as I'm concerned didn't cause any major problem in the relationship.

MR BIZOS: So you did keep your instructions Mr Williamson?

MR WILLIAMSON: I kept some of them yes, Mr Chairman, where interesting things like letters from high-ranking members of Umkhonto weSizwe, the South African Communist Party, the ANC. I've gone to great lengths Mr Chairman throughout the TRC process to produce whatever documentation I can that is relevant and if we mention Mr Maharaj, I just happen to remember that I do have a letter from Mr Maharaj addressed to me.

MR BIZOS: The letter that we're talking about took place two or three weeks before you broke your cover Mr Williamson and not years before.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, if it was the meeting with Asmorsen and Edwards and me it certainly didn't take place two or three weeks before I broke my cover because that would have been 1980 and then we have a memory problem and it's not on my side Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well was there a meeting two or three weeks in London before? It may be that we do have the information as to what happened at particular meetings wrong, but was there a meeting two or three weeks before you broke your cover?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe there was Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Between you and Mr Maharaj?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe so Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Did you try to persuade him to go to countries at which he had, South Africa had access and where it could kill people?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, Mr Maharaj was at that time, if I can put it this way, my commander in the ANC/Communist Party and he was in charge of me and the activities that I was carrying out on behalf of the ANC and he wished to co-ordinate and to deal with members of my unit and there were all sorts of issues and problems that had to be discussed and he wanted to have another meeting in particular with Edwards and there was a discussion about where such a meeting could possibly take place.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: And there was a range of possibilities mentioned which would be countries to which Mr Maharaj and I could go but would also be countries to which Mr Edwards would easily be able to go.

MR BIZOS: Well I want to cut this short. I'm going to put to you that Mr Maharaj by that time, two or three weeks before your break in your cover was completely persuaded that you were a police officer and it was a view that he had for some time before that and that you were trying to get him to country where you could kill him and that he suggested to you that if he was to meet you anywhere other than London, it would have to be in Angola. Do you remember that?

MR WILLIAMSON: He may well have suggested that because Mr Chairman I was in fact at the time that my so-called cover was blown as they put it, I was in fact on my way to Moscow and from Moscow to Luanda.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: And I just want to say Mr Chairman that if I ever planned to kill Mac Maharaj, I would tell you that I planned to kill Mac Maharaj and I did not plan to kill Mac Maharaj and if I wanted to kill Mac Maharaj from the period from 1970, late 76/77 up until 1980 I had numerous opportunities to do it Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: In countries where South Africa had the sort of relations that they would look the other way at an assassination?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well I don't know which type of countries is meant by that but if we'd wanted to kill Mr Maharaj during the course of the operation we could have easily have done so and we did not and it was never planned and it was never even suggested and never even discussed.

MR BIZOS: ...[inaudible] get any advice as to whether you should take the job in Geneva or not from anyone?

MR WILLIAMSON: By anyone either in the ANC or in the South African Security Services I believed I discussed it with a range of people.

CHAIRPERSON: Is this a new topic that you're going on to Mr Bizos?

MR BIZOS: No Mr Chairman, but it is a convenient stage I should think.

CHAIRPERSON: Very well, we'll take the adjournment until 11 o'clock.

COMMITTEE ADJOURNS

ON RESUMPTION

CRAIG MICHAEL WILLIAMSON: (.s.u.o.)

MR LEVINE: Before my learned friend Mr Bizos continues, we've occupied the last twenty minutes prior to the adjournment with an exchange of questions and answers in matters put to my client regarding Mr Mac Maharaj, the Honourable Minister, and I would like to enquire of my learned friend, through you Mr Commissioner, whether it is intended to call Mr Maharaj as a witness?

MR BIZOS: Mr Williamson's attorney must wait and see Mr Chairman.

MR LEVINE: I shall wait with baited breath.

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR BIZOS: (continued)

Did you go to London in frantic search of Mr Mac Maharaj two to three weeks before your exposure as a policeman?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I don't believe I went to London in frantic search of Mr Mac Maharaj.

MR BIZOS: But you go in search of him?

MR WILLIAMSON: Amongst other things Mr Chairman, I believe that shortly before I was exposed, if I remember correctly, Mr Maharaj and Mr Thomas Nkobi, who was at that stage the Treasurer General of the ANC, were in Geneva and visited me there and that I then at a later stage went to London and the reason I went to London, Mr Chairman, was to attend the wedding of my sister and to take leave - it was the end of the year and the beginning of 1980 and I think I did look for Mr Maharaj but I particularly believe I was looking for Mr Ronnie Kasrils.

CHAIRPERSON: Who were you looking for?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Ronnie Kasrils who is at present the Deputy Minister of Defence, Mr Chair.

MR BIZOS: Did you seek General Coetzee's advice as to what to do whilst you were in London?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman because the events which finally led to my exposure had already transpired and I think for sake of clarity I'd better give some information. That is that a member of what was then the National Intelligence Service had - I don't know whether we could use the - whether the word or term defect is correct, in fact I don't think it is but basically because of disagreements he had either politically or personally with the National Intelligence Service, he had left South Africa and he had taken with him numerous documents relating to the South African Intelligence agencies and the individual concerned had, during my years at the University of Witwatersrand, also been on the Student Representative Council. I did not know at that time that he was working for what was at that time the predecessor of the National Intelligence Service, the Bureau of State Security, but subsequently I had become aware of his role and I'd become aware that he at a later time served under cover, I think something to do with South Africa's external radio station and then ultimately ended up in National Intelligence Service Headquarters where he was a desk officer or an analyst dealing in particular with the type of affairs that I was reporting on and I was aware also that this individual knew who I was, he knew I was an agent of the South African Government and unbeknown to me at this time, Mr Chairman, this individual had the problem with the Intelligence Service, left the country, took documentation with him and it was only when I was in London in 1980, in January 1980 in fact Mr Chairman, that on a Sunday, probably the first or second week in 1980, that I heard on the news - when I woke up in the morning, I heard something about South African spy, this, that, the next thing. My wife drew my attention to the news item and I reacted by saying, brushing it off and saying "Ag, this is probably nonsense" and it was only later when I purchased the newspapers that I suddenly got a shock and saw this individual's photograph on the front page, the fact that he'd come to London, the fact that it had a lot of documentation and that is when I knew I had a serious problem and in fact Mr Chairman, it was only a week later, the following Sunday, where he named the organisation which I was employed with, the International University Exchange Fund, that I realised that in fact we were now - I took that and I think that he has confirmed subsequently in things I've seen him say in print that that was a shot, as it were a shot across my boughs, he was warning me, he didn't want to just name me, he wanted to give me a chance to get out and so he named the organisation and said this was an organisation which had been infiltrated by the South African Government. Now if we took that entire organisation and we took all the people employed by that organisation, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist, Mr Chairman, to find suspect number one. We had Craig Williamson who was an ex-policeman and then we had of all the other South African's there, people of the Deputy President of South Africa's wife was working in the organisation, Mr Chairman, high level people were working in that organisation, people who would not be the first suspect if it was said there were South African spies in that organisation. I would have been, so this was in the middle or first, second week of January 1980. Before that time Mr Chairman, I didn't have any major problem about being a spy and I wasn't running around looking for people etc. I was just getting on with my normal activities, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Were you advised to go to Zurich?

MR WILLIAMSON: Now, Mr Chairman, we get to the situation which subsequently developed.

MR BIZOS: Please answer the question. Were you advised to go to Zurich?

MR WILLIAMSON: That's what I'm attempting ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Yes or no and then you can give any explanation that you want if I ask you for it or anyone else asks you for it.

CHAIRPERSON: Let him answer the question Mr Bizos.

MR LEVINE: Thank you Mr Chairman.

MR WILLIAMSON: I was advised to go to Zurich.

MR BIZOS: Thank you.

MR WILLIAMSON: And why I hesitated with the answer is that I believe that the suggestion that I go to Zurich in fact came from my side and then it was agreed that I should go to Zurich, yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Were you met by General Coetzee at Zurich.

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Why would the Commissioner - was he Commissioner or Head of Security Police at that stage?

MR WILLIAMSON: At that stage he was the Commanding Officer of the Security Branch.

MR BIZOS: Why would the Security Branch head personally come to Zurich to escort you back to South Africa.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, the purpose was not initially to escort me back to South Africa. The purpose was to consult with me and to try and see whether there was a way to limit the damage that the revelations made had caused. Whether there was some way in which we could at least salvage something out of a situation which appeared to be getting very complicated.

MR BIZOS: Did you try to compromise the director of your employer organisation that if they did not assist you in further covering up your activities that you would embarrass them by disclosing financial irregularities in your employer's organisation?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, what we did was to decide that if possible we would try and create a situation whereby I could remain in Europe. Obviously it would be impossible for me to remain in the I.E.U.F., it would be impossible for me to remain the director, the deputy director of the I.E.U.F. but we thought perhaps I could go and study further at a European or British University and take a lower profile, perhaps get a scholarship from the I.E.U.F. and then see what the future would bring. In other words, perhaps I could handle other agents in Europe or the first priority was to see whether my cover could be kept in tact and whether I could stay in Europe. Whether there was a suspicion or not, what was important is to see whether we could stop an actual allegation being made and it was decided secondly to attempt to go for broke basically and say that if it were possible to recruit the director of the International University Fund, we would do so.

Now, we were in a situation where there was another process going on, I believe, which I do not know about and I did not know about but I knew there were attempts being made to make sure that the person who had left the National Intelligence Service, I do not believe at that time had a political motivation so there were attempts being made to prevent him from revealing personal, damaging information about me. So in tandem with that, we decided to try and recruit the director of the I.E.U.F. and the recruitment ploy would be done on the basis that number one, Lars Gunnar Ericsson was not a communist, he was not a supporter of the Soviet Union, he was a member of the Social Democratic Party in Sweden and he was in fact a member of an international democratic socialist organisation that was opposed to the Soviet Union and there had been many rumours about Mr Ericsson in the past, about his links to intelligence services in his own country, about links to his intelligence to American intelligence services and to other European, Western European intelligence services. So the idea was to explain to him that there was a communality of interests that we were essentially investigating and involved in information related to the ANC and the South African Communist Party in their alliance with the Soviet Union and their onslaught as part of that against South Africa and that there was some common ground between us on this and that if the story came out about who I was, what I was, it would destroy the I.E.U.F. and in addition that if the whole truth was going to come out, part of that truth was going to be the fact that there had been financial misappropriation of money in the I.E.U.F.

Mr Chairman, that first, General Coetzee and I discussed in Zurich and at a later stage I organised a meeting between General Coetzee and Mr Ericsson.

MR BIZOS: The answer to the question is yes, I suppose?

MR WILLIAMSON: That's the answer to the question, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Now the suggestion coupled with a threat to his organisation and to him personally was rejected out of hand by Mr Ericsson?

MR WILLIAMSON: It was not rejected out of hand, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Oh, did he accept?

MR WILLIAMSON: He did accept at the time Mr Chairman, yes.

MR BIZOS: Did he give effect to it?

MR WILLIAMSON: He didn't give effect to it for very long Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Well, I suppose threatening to expose an organisation and an individual for the purposes of recruiting him was but a small transgression of morality in your and General Coetzee's way of doing things.

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, we can go into a long philosophical discussion of the morality of spying and of international intelligence organisations under cover, manipulation, penetration. It isn't the most moral profession in the world, they say they're not sure which is the oldest profession in the world Mr Chairman and they're also not sure which of the two oldest professions are the most, is more moral than the other.

MR BIZOS: Yes but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine which is the other profession, Mr Williamson.

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, prostitutes and spies are the two oldest professions, Mr Chairman and in a war situation and in the cold war situation that we were in at that time, this was what was going on.

CHAIRPERSON: Before you go off, is this the International University Exchange Fund?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Were you responsible for any of the financial irregularities there?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I was responsible for monitoring them and reporting on them back to my superiors.

CHAIRPERSON: Is there any truth in the allegation that the farm Daisy was bought with money that you had transferred from them?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe that is true, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: It is true?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: You transferred monies from the International University Exchange Fund which bought the farm Daisy that the security police used in this country?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, the way that that was done Mr Chairman was that the International University Exchange Fund had funds available for support of what they termed student leadership projects and at a certain time most of those funds were going to NUSAS and at a later stage a lot of those funds were going to the so-called Black Consciousness Movement, student movement involved there, SASO and the BPC, the Black Peoples Convention and the South African Students Organisation. Now at a certain time Mr Chairman, legislation was brought into force called the Effected Organisations Act and certain organisations were prescribed in terms of that Act from receiving funds from foreign organisations and at this time instead of sending to funds to for example NUSAS, the funds were sent to individual projects which were established in South Africa by different people and a cover project for student, so-called student leadership was established which was controlled at that time by the South African Security Police and a base, a type of a conference centre was acquired for this project and at times during the years from 1977 to 1988, sorry 1980, foreign individuals involved with the donor organisations who were monitoring and who were checking on the type of co-operation between the I.E.U.F. and youth and student groups in South Africa, came to South Africa and Daisy was on several occasions used to show them that this was the base of this student and youth organisation that was in opposition to the Government which was actively continuing the work that had been previously done purely by NUSAS.

CHAIRPERSON: And who was on the farm Daisy?

MR WILLIAMSON: It was people who were these student and youth organisation members but they were all members of the security forces of one nature or another.

MR BIZOS: I want to read to you a short passage from a newspaper. I don't propose handing it in at this stage, it's a short passage, Mr Chairman

"The General" that is General Coetzee "used both persuasion and blackmail to try and recruit Ericsson in to help and protect his man's cover. He argued that Ericsson as a social democrat was essentially on the same side in the anti-Communist struggle and at the same time he threatened to release incriminating documents showing Ericsson had misappropriated I.E.U.F. funds. Ericsson defied him and went public paying heavily for it. The I.E.U.F. was subsequently closed and Ericsson died a broken man after the General carried out the blackmail threat, leaking the incriminating documents in Holland."

Is that a substantially correct statement of what you and General Coetzee did to your employer?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman we could say that it is substantially correct but there are errors in it and if by blackmail one understands that there was some type of a threatening pressure placed on Mr Ericsson, then it's incorrect because that would have been counterproductive and secondly, the release of the incriminating documents in Holland was not in fact orchestrated by us and the South African Police, it was in fact orchestrated by a member of the staff of the I.E.U.F. who resisted a cover up by the I.E.U.F. after my exposure, of the financial irregularities that had taken place and by financial irregularities, Mr Chairman, to clarify I'm not talking about the deceptive use of funds given by the I.E.U.F. believing that these funds were for anti-government activities in South Africa and in fact the security police used the funds for obviously pro-government activities, I mean the use of funds had been given to the I.E.U.F. by donor governments for personal expenditure by the director, Mr Lars Gunnar Ericsson, but also his use of these funds as a type of a slush fund to give personal funds to all sorts of members of various organisations, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, I suppose you're going to tell us that whoever actually handed over the documents in Holland did it without your knowledge and consent?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well, Mr Chairman, I will tell you that yes because I know exactly who handed the documents over, I know gave it and at that time we were being accused of being behind the misappropriation of the funds. We were making plans and attempts to get the true story out and when this happened it was manna from heaven. I remember it very clearly because I said to General Coetzee: "Oh well, now somebody in the I.E.U.F. who actually knows what's going on is refusing to go along with the cover up and it's very, very unfair to that individual to make any suggestion that that person was linked with us in the South African security forces because he was not".

MR BIZOS: You see, what I want to ask you in relation to all this was despite the fact that Mr Coetzee was the head of the security police and despite the fact that there may have been a chain of command, your personal relationship with Mr Coetzee was such that he took a personal interest in what you were doing and a personal interest in cutting a deal for your survival and an operative and in order to continue deceiving people?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman as I understand General Coetzee and I understand him at the time, he was the single individual in the South African Police and probably in the entire South African security forces who, through a number of operations over a number of years, had probably been mainly responsible for countering the onslaught against South Africa by the ANC and the Communist Party and he did this by putting into place various successful operations during his career one of which was the operation which I was carrying out and his effort in coming to London, in coming to Zurich and in working with me there and in having a meeting with Lars Gunnar Ericsson, was not so much as to save me or to save my cover but to make sure that the operation in some form could go ahead and that the information that we were getting could continue to flow.

MR BIZOS: We will deal in due course with what was happening in Botswana before you were exposed and the role that the Schoons played in causing you to be exposed. I merely mentioning it now to give you an opportunity to think about it and to what extent it influenced you to send the bomb that killed Jeanette and her daughter. But let me go on to something else, Mr Williamson. You wallow in the description of you as a super spy, do you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman quite frankly I wish I had never heard the term.

MR BIZOS: I'm sorry I didn't hear the last - have you finished your answer?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, I said quite frankly I wish I had never heard the term.

MR BIZOS: I see. Wouldn't an equally apt description be a master of deception?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I really don't know what - if you read the literature on spies and as I said it goes back to the Bible. We can apply the saying that one man's terrorist is another man's hero, one man's master of deception can be another man's super spy. These epithets are applied throughout the world in different political contexts to people who did the type of work that I did.

MR BIZOS: I - we are talking about you and the attempt in which you tried to influence this Committee into believing certain things, in putting before them the first video, Mr Williamson. Did you try to deceive the Committee by allowing that video to be shown to the Committee without making any disclosure of what you knew about the correctness or incorrectness of some of the things that it portrays?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman I have at no time in any forum of this Committee or the entire TRC tried to mislead anybody or to deceive anybody. I am, besides the rank I've held or the position I've held or the jobs I've had to do, at the end of the day I'm Craig Williamson, I'm an individual and I'm sick and tired of this war that I've been fighting for 26 years and I made a decision that this TRC process was going to be the process to which I came and I finally said my say and got through all the rumour, the innuendo, the urban legends I hear everyday, all day, I read newspapers what Craig Williamson did and what he did and he murdered Prime Ministers overseas and this and that and the next thing and Mr Chairman, I know of all people what I did and I've come here to tell the TRC what happened in those years and what I did. The videos that I showed, Mr Chairman, were the only videos that I could find, because Mr Chairman, it appears that at the SABC there's been a cleaning process and a lot of the videos that I would have liked to have shown are missing and these videos, Mr Chairman, go to show an atmosphere that existed and the first video, Mr Chairman, at the time I saw the video, when I looked at it at home, when I discussed it with my legal advisor, when we showed it here I was not sure until it was brought to my attention that the arms cache in the video was a Stratcom and Mr Chairman, I am glad that that video was shown and that it was a video relating to a Stratcom because it doesn't weaken my case, it doesn't make me a deceiver, it shows my case Mr Chairman because that Gabarone raid that we discussed was the so-called E.P.G. raid. There were two Gabarone raids on those videos and the problem is Mr Chairman, as we had a confusion about the Matola raids with General Coetzee, here we have a confusion about Gabarone raids. The Gabarone raid of June/July 1985, I was involved in. The E.P.G. raids including Gabarone, the next year I was not involved in because I was no longer in the police. But the point remains that I was trying to make a distinction in this Committee between covert and clandestine activities and attacks and overt, open military attacks and why, why did the State make sometimes make open military attacks and sometimes order covert and clandestine attacks, what was the purpose and the only conclusion that I can come to, Mr Chairman, from my involvement in the security forces and then watching videos like that is that at that time there was a political purpose behind the ordering of the E.P.G. raids. I don't know what it is, I can suspect what it was but somebody ordered the security forces to carry out those raids and somebody ordered the security forces to create a false reason for those raids so this goes to make my argument that there was a political purpose behind this type of high profile, over the border attack even more believable as far as I'm concerned, Mr Chairman, so I'm very happy in fact that that video contained more than I believed it contained when I presented it to this Committee and it goes purely Mr Chairman to the fact that as far as I'm concerned the State was carrying out clandestine, conspiratorial types of attacks across the borders and it was carrying out public, big public attacks. But at the end of the day, the purpose was the same, the order was the same and the objective was the same.

MR BIZOS: May I ask you a question after all that? You told us yesterday that you knew before that video was shown that the cache, the large cache of the arms of war that were displayed on the screen were not ANC arms but they were arms which had been delivered by Mr de Kock from Vlakplaas to security police for the purpose of making a false statement to the people of South Africa that a large cache of wars of arms, belonging to the ANC, had been found. Do you agree that that is the effect of what you told us yesterday?

MR WILLIAMSON: The effect of what I told the Committee yesterday was Mr Chairman, was that I had heard that there were Stratcom's employed and in fact Mr Chairman, when I answered Mr de Kock's legal representative's question, I in fact was talking about the first Gabarone raid and I had heard that in the first Gabarone raid or I had believed that perhaps somewhere somebody had said that there was a purpose, that there was a Stratcom action behind the first Gabarone raid. I'm not sure, I don't know, I was not involved in the Stratcom actions, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: The answer given to my learned friend Mr Hugo was in relation to what appeared on the screen?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct.

MR BIZOS: And not something else?

MR BIZOS: That is correct and the answer I gave was then at the time that we discussed it and that's when I realised, yes it appears to me this raid, this is the E.P.G. raid and this is the Stratcom - and Mr Chairman please, you know, the only answer I can give is anybody thinks that I would come and show a video about an event that Mr de Kock has written a book and try and pretend that this isn't the same or I didn't know what it was - really, I just wouldn't have done it, but there was some confusion about which Gabarone raid that was about Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Was there confusion in your mind when Mr Hugo asked you the question to which you gave the answer I quoted?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I remember saying clearly to Mr Hugo that when he started questioning me, saying that ah, this was a Stratcom and I also remember saying at the end, suddenly coming to the realisation that this was the E.P. - when he in fact asked me some questions that this was the E.P.G. Gabarone raid because the damage shown on that video Mr Chairman was the July 1985 raid not the E.P.G. damage, so the SABC or whoever made the video has mixed up the arms cache because that story was made at the time of the E.P.G. raid and then there was a general thing about damage and ANC bases and attacks in the neighbouring States.

MR BIZOS: Mr Hugo asked you a very clear and simple question. The arms shown there were not the arms belonging to the ANC but were delivered by Mr de Kock.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, I ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: There was only one occasion on which either in his book or in your high intelligent preparation of this case there would have been only one occasion on which Mr de Kock delivered the Government's cache of arms to the Stratcom people in order to make false statements on television?

MR WILLIAMSON: Fine, Mr Chairman, I accept that. I was not there.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Now, but you produced it after you had heard about the delivery of arms to falsely allege to be the ANC's before you allowed the video to be shown?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I really think that we're looking for a deep sinister motive behind a video that was one of four videos that I didn't even choose, I asked are there any videos in the SABC archives that deal with cross border raids and I was at that time and I remain absolutely willing to discuss in the greatest detail all the implications of anything said in those videos or anywhere else because this is the history of the past and whether there were false arms caches and false reasons for attacking across the border or whether like in the case of the 1975 Gabarone raid the reasons given for the raid were in fact genuine or not, is all part of what we are working about the conflicts of the past and Mr Chairman, I just repeat that this was the opposite to trying to deceive or trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes or to be a master of deception, this was trying to create, give information, give background which we could then focus on, discuss and try and understand what was happening.

MR BIZOS: Well let us see what the side that you were fighting on was prepared to do?

MR WILLIAMSON: Certainly.

MR BIZOS: And how much respect it had for the truth. We are told that the reason for the Gabarone raid was the Eminent Persons Group was here ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Was this Gabarone raid one or two?

MR BIZOS: No the one that was discussed, that the arms were shown to have been found shortly before that raid took place. Don't get me into ones and twos, that's the raid that I'm talking about. The raid that the video ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: That was Gabarone raid two.

MR BIZOS: The video that you produced that shows the raison d’être of the raid on Gabarone. Call it number two if you like.

MR WILLIAMSON: In which General Kat Liebenberg was talking?

MR BIZOS: Yes, so that we have the SABC and I'm prepared to say in defence of Mr - who was the presenter, a well-known, Freek Robinson, that he too was lied to and Ms Rudman was lied to when they produced this cache of arms. Landman, Landman - I'm sorry, not Rudman. Yes, the first lie is that there were ANC arms. You accept that?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes I'm sure they weren't ANC arms, they were SWAPO arms.

MR BIZOS: Well, SWAPO didn't give it to them?

MR WILLIAMSON: No - yes.

MR BIZOS: They were under the control of the Government

MR WILLIAMSON: It appears so, yes.

MR BIZOS: And they were at Vlakplaas?

MR WILLIAMSON: It appears so.

MR BIZOS: And SWAPO was not at Vlakplaas.

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Are you embarrassed by your previous answer? But anyway let's proceed.

CHAIRPERSON: Or as Askaris?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes that's what I was considering saying, it depends how we define it, but no, as SWAPO, no.

MR BIZOS: No. Or as Askaris. Askaris didn't have control of their arms that they fought with?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I don't want to argue, these were arms under the - they were arms of Soviet origin or other East Block origin under the control of the South African Security Forces.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes and they were of a quantity, of a substantial quantity in order to underline the lie that there was a war going on with which these specific arms were going to used by the ANC?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, that was the purpose in the same way as showing the explosions, the blowing up of the shops, the vehicles that had been blown up, the Benmore Shopping Centre explosion ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Let's confine ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: These were all done by somebody's weapons Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Let's confine ourselves to this please, Mr Williamson ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: No but the two are related.

MR BIZOS: Now they may be related but then your counsel will ask you questions to bring out all related matter, just listen to my questions please so that we can make some progress.

MR WILLIAMSON: Good.

MR BIZOS: Now that was the big lie upon which the head of the army, based on a lie, as the immediate cause of the lie by the head of the army, to inform the public of South Africa of the reason why the raid took place.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, Mr Chairman, this is ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Yes, let me proceed please?

MR WILLIAMSON: This is what was happening.

MR BIZOS: Yes. It also is used in order to influence three apparently learned professors to express the view that if these arms, said to belong to the ANC, to support their reasoning that South Africa is in the circumstances - was in the circumstances justified to carry out the raid? Yes? This information was communicated to the professors in order to get a view from them that if the ANC has this amount of arms, then take it possibly together with other reasons, the Government is entitled to do this raid?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, as I said at that time I was no longer in the Police, I was not involved but from my opinion and my job that I'd done over a number of years and knowing about Stratcom, what I believe, the answer is yes - but, that was an effort to give dramatic effect to a number of other incidents and information that was also given to the public but this was the dramatic visual effect, saying to the public "You've all heard about the ANC, you've all heard about the bombs that they're blowing up, you've all heard about the people that they're killing, now look at this arms cache, this shows that they're really even more serious than they've been before and we went to Botswana and Harare and everywhere and we went and destroyed them" and that is exactly what was happening ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: That it was what we lawyers call the causa or causans of the raid?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, I need that - as I - in this case if I just accept what causa or causan means then I'll be like the people who think that "elimineer" didn't actually mean kill so I need to know what it means.

MR BIZOS: You're not prepared to sink that low?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, no, I'll actually have to ask what that means.

MR BIZOS: Oh I see.

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't want to come back and say sorry, I didn't know what it meant.

MR BIZOS: The immediate cause - you went to St Johns and you did Latin didn't you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, but I just wanted to be absolutely sure, Mr Chairman, so we don't have an "elimineer, neutraliseer" problem with terminology.

MR BIZOS: No, I am ...[intervention]

MR LEVINE: I think the correct terminology is the approximate case not the immediate cause.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well you see Mr Chairman, here we already go.

MR BIZOS: I want to thank Mr Levine for supplying the synonym and we can proceed Mr Chairman.

And it was also a reason for Gillian Bekker, this expert on international terrorism, to support the South African Government's position that they were justified to make such attacks?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I've got no idea to what degree that particular arms cache influenced Gillian Bekker. I had some idea of Gillian Bekker's research into international terrorism and I think it's far more wide ranging than one arms cache Mr Chairman and I think in fact also if we had the opportunity to ask Gillian Bekker, she could perhaps even explain more eloquently than me what Stratcom is and psychological action in guerrilla and warfare and counter-guerrilla and counter-insurgency warfare.

MR BIZOS: Now let us just deal with Ms Gillian Bekker. Do you know whether she wrote anything?

MR WILLIAMSON: I know she's written at least one book on international terrorism.

MR BIZOS: Called "Hitler's Children".

CHAIRPERSON: Are her views really relevant to our decision here?

MR BIZOS: Yes Mr Chairman. Yes Mr Chairman, because I'm going to suggest to the witness, Mr Chairman, quoting documents and other matters in which he was involved that their definition of who is a terrorist is a definition of the lunatic right rather than any reasonable persons, Mr Chairman, in relation to the identification of target, Mr Chairman, to which the witness was a party and helped to kill, Mr Chairman. May I proceed? Thank you Mr Chairman.

Now she wrote a book called "Hitler's Children" which is on terrorists in Germany called the Bader Meinhof Gang?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe so Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. That is her research on terrorism.

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't believe it's the only research.

MR BIZOS: Well there may be others and she does not see any difference between a gang of terrorists in a democratic country that can exercise the vote in order to influence their Government's policy and people that have taken up arms in order to liberate their country from oppressors. Do you think that there is a distinction or do you share her view that there is no distinction?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, there's obviously a distinction in their motivation. There may well and I accept be distinction in their justifications but at the end of the day if the Bader Meinhof Gang blow you up or shoot you and the ANC blow up or shoot you, you're still dead Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: The British considered the Boers terrorists. Would you subscribe to that British view?

MR WILLIAMSON: I've never seen the Boers described as terrorists Mr Chairman. I know they were described as guerrillas and in fact in military history the first Anglo Boer War was the - it was in fact a very important war in terms of military history because it was the first time in fact really that guerrilla warfare was used successfully against a modern conventional army but I don't - it certainly is a study, that there's been a study made of both those wars, that was first and second war relating to the guerrilla tactics used by the Boer forces but I must say, unless I'm wrong, I haven't seen the word terrorist applied to them.

MR BIZOS: Yes well, it's in our law reports in which a Mr Foster, a leading journalist of the United Kingdom, describes them as such which led Mr Justice Clowser to write a letter to South Africa that his people should kill British soldiers. But anyway, let us just - we're giving it by way of example.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, the British called Menachim Begin also a terrorist Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: There's two of you for a moment and ask the people sitting above you to be careful when they stick their feet out.

MR BIZOS: Above me? What does he mean? Oh I see.

CHAIRPERSON: Carry on Mr Bizos.

MR BIZOS: You've to us that there was a terrorist book.

MR WILLIAMSON: Terrorist album, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: A terrorist album?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Do you know whether it's still in existence?

MR WILLIAMSON: I've absolutely no idea Mr Chairman, I haven't seen it since 1985.

MR BIZOS: Was everyone mentioned in it and whose photograph appeared there a terrorist?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: But people who used the book may have thought so Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: No, we're talking about you.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes I was in the book and I wasn't a terrorist Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: But that doesn't mean that my colleagues at the time in the security forces who didn't know who I really was wouldn't have thought that I was a terrorist, Mr Chairman, that was a risk I ran.

MR BIZOS: Yes. You were in danger, you were in danger of being eliminated by some energetic and zealous security policeman if your name and picture were there if they were not proper safeguards at headquarters?

MR WILLIAMSON: Correct Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You were prepared to take that chance or were there procedures which would have prevented the overzealous policeman on his own or his little group from taking the initiative in assassinating you?

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman, it's difficult to comment. I would say that if I knew that the possibility existed that somebody went off on a frolic of their own at a low level, I could be a target, I knew that but I had faith that this was not in fact what happened that there would be some control and I wouldn't have to be dodging my own side as well as the enemy.

MR BIZOS: Right but then ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: On one occasion I - it's not important Mr Chairman but it did come close.

MR BIZOS: Unless of course your killing of two women and a child might have qualified you to be called a terrorist?

MR WILLIAMSON: Again Mr Chairman, we're getting into semantics about what one side sees and calls the other side, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: But now let us see what you called Ruth First. You handed in Exhibit M?

MR WILLIAMSON: Do you recall what you said why you were handing it in?

MR BIZOS: This was to illustrate what the South African Party and the ANC said about Ruth First and ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: No, M, M, this one page here.

MR WILLIAMSON: Oh, sorry the ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Yes. This is what your side said.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, that she was in - my point of handing that document in was to show that she was in the terrorist album but more importantly that she was under the name of Slovo.

MR BIZOS: Yes. But, yes she in under the name of Slovo but also did you say it shows that her name being there she was regarded as a high profile person to qualify to be put in the terrorist book?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, it showed that she was of a level, she had an S number, she was regarded as an important member of an enemy organisation or whatever one likes to term it.

MR BIZOS: She was sufficiently important to be regarded as a terrorist and that is why you handed in the document?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, not everybody who had, yes Mr Chairman, but not everybody who had an S1 or whatever file was in the terrorist album. The only people who were in the terrorist album were people who were externally and about whom there was information that these were active at a high level, either militarily or at high political level. These were terrorists.

MR BIZOS: Yes and did we understand by clear implication from your evidence that if you were in this book you were a potential target for elimination?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I wouldn't say that this was now a book of targets for elimination, I would say that it was a factor and that it goes to show the level at which the individual was regarded by the security forces, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: By inclusion of his or her name in this book?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well the inclusion of his or her name in this book, Mr Chairman, was not put in this book in order now, this was not a hit list or which now was issued to people, anybody in this book if you see them we want them alive or dead. This was a book of people that was - it was essentially a book used as part of an intelligence gathering process. Photographs of people and what they were doing and where they were and so on, could work through it when you had anybody. As I said, either a source or a captured member of the ANC or whatever, that you could work through this book, work through all these photographs, say: "Do you know that person" - "Yes I saw this person in such and such a camp and such and such a date and he was trained in mortars or he was in the engineering section or he was a cook" whatever, so that this could all be collated and added to the general information. But at the end of the day, Mr Chairman, what I tried to say is that there was an implication - if you were in the terrorist album you were a terrorist and I was in the terrorist album at a stage, yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You were a terrorist yes. Will you please look at item S263 at the bottom of the left hand column?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: M.K. Doris alias Sophie? May I proceed Mr Chairman, has Mr Chairman got it? The last name in the left hand column. This person is described as Sendani, S.N., M.K. Doris alias Sophie. She was recruited in 1979 by the main camp in Matola. She became pregnant and thereafter she was sent to Dar es Salaam where Lipele, the person that was giving the information, saw her again in 1980. She lived in Morogoro, she was still in Morogoro in 1981 but she received no military training. Would she be a terrorist?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, this person - now as I said this document doesn't come out of the terrorist album.

MR BIZOS: I thought it did? It comes annexed to an affidavit, an extract from a page of the terrorist book annexed to an affidavit?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, Mr Chairman, let me try ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: And you said that it comes from the terrorist book.

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I never said that Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Oh, you did.

MR WILLIAMSON: Let me explain what I said.

MR BIZOS: Yes?

MR WILLIAMSON: There is or was a terrorist album and in that terrorist album there would be a number of pages with a number of photographs on every page with a number under each one. No name, nothing else. S219, S228 etc. etc. When at any time any person who had had any exposure to the ANC was debriefed, interrogated, questioned, made statements. Part of the intelligence gathering process would be that they would work through the album. This is a statement made by somebody who had been working through the album so that means that there was a file existing on Ms Sendani, file number S4/54327 kept at the Northern Transvaal division of the Security Police and there would be all, a range of information about this individual in that file and there would also be a smaller file, the most important information from the divisional file, if I understand it correctly, would then be at security headquarters. Now when this individual who was questioned on the terrorist album came to photograph number S263, he said or she said "Ah, I know this person, this is Ms Sendani and her M.K. name is Doris but they also sometimes call her Sophie and I was with her in 1979" etc. etc. So this is information then added. Now this shows how the system works Mr Chairman and in fact what happened here is the information that in fact this person had not been militarily trained at the time that the person who made this statement made was put in - this was part of the information, but this doesn't mean that there wasn't other information saying that she was a terrorist and a reason for her to be in the book.

CHAIRPERSON: You said in your explanation that the person looking would have said "Ah, Sendani" but looking at this page it appears to me as if the names and the numbers are all taken from the records?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: But what the person probably said was "Ah, that's Doris, also known as Sophie?

MR WILLIAMSON: That's Doris, or it depends what, how that person knew her, might have know her real name, might have said it's just Doris, yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes but on the page we have of Exhibit M, each one is a number and then a name, initial, another number and a district and that appears to come from records and not from someone had told you.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes because - no and that's right and then there's a, there was another book, a type of an index to the terrorist album so if somebody said to you yes, like here, number 251: "Oh, I know him, he's Lobster, Lobster Ntebeni" then you would look up 251, who is Lobster Ntebeni? Unless it was for example somebody well known like Joe Slovo, everybody knew Joe Slovo but these other people, maybe the person doing the interrogation wouldn't know so it just depends how. In fact sometimes if you see, Mr Chairman, at S219 the first one there's M.K.? so it's possible that this person said "Look I've seen this guy but I don't even know his name, but I've seen him and he was in 1978 X, Y, Z and then he did this and he was in the assassination squad of the ANC under command of Solly Simalani" etc. etc. But he may not have known who he was but the person drawing up the report now knows because he goes to the index and says "right, J. Shabangu has been identified by this person and this is the information he's given." So that's how this worked, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well, it may well be if that is true, destructive of your previous evidence because Lipele may have been shown Ruth First's picture and said "Oh, that's Mrs Slovo".

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, Lipele may have been shown that photograph and just said "I don't know who that lady is but I saw her in Maputo and I remember she was killed in a bomb" and then the security policeman in the case of Mrs Slovo, being of the profile she was, would probably know from the photograph who that person was, he wouldn't have to look to the index to see who it was.

MR BIZOS: Now if you have a look at S270, is it Lipele's statement or does the file say, the whole of it

"Lipele saw her in 1981 in Dar es Salaam in 1981"

That's probably the information he gives?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, so S270 - he would have been going through the file, he would have got to S269 which is Ruth Slovo, then he got to 270 and he said "Ah, I know this person, his or her name is Sipukasi and I met that person in 1981 in Dar es Salaam, it's a woman and yes she went to Cuba for further studies in nursing and I know she's married and her husband's in Lesotho", so that's all he could say about that person.

MR BIZOS: Well how do we know that that didn't come from the file?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well, Mr Chairman, I'm just trying to explain what this type of document is, I mean it would be of very little purpose if somebody was now debriefing or interrogating somebody in the terrorist book and then went and put the information in the report that came already from the file. The idea of this process was to get some new information to put into the file. So this information was on it's way to the file.

MR BIZOS: Now in relation to Ruth First, were there files on her?

MR WILLIAMSON: There were files on her Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Where are they?

MR WILLIAMSON: I have absolutely no idea Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Have you tried to look for them?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I haven't and ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Well, why didn't you try to look for them when you say you became reformed and you still, again that files may have been in existence still?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman I think, and I don't have any personal knowledge, I think we all know that the files were destroyed Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Why?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman again, I don't know that the files were destroyed Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Why?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman again, I don't know, I can make the same assumptions as everybody else in this room. To me it's reasonably obvious why they've been destroyed and that is I would believe they've been destroyed to get rid of all the type of information in them that may have incriminated people.

MR BIZOS: Did you look, did you make any attempt at any stage to find the files of Jeanette Schoon and Ruth First in order to support your contention that there was information that they were involved in activities which would make them targets for elimination?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I made no effort to get files that I am personally convinced no longer exist because that would have been a fruitless exercise. I also make absolutely clear that when it comes to the type of information about people like Ruth First and the Schoons that them being regarded as high profile targets for the security forces would start with the positions that they held in the organisations that they were working for and then would be added to by more detailed information about specific activities of those individuals, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: When you became a security policeman at the Security Police Headquarters what year was that?

MR WILLIAMSON: During 1980 Mr Chairman,

MR BIZOS: During 1980? And when did you attend the first Sanhedrin meeting?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I would imagine relatively soon.

MR BIZOS: Thereafter?

MR WILLIAMSON: Probably in the first, sometime in the first quarter of 1980 or mid 1980.

MR BIZOS: And how often did the Sanhedrin meet?

MR WILLIAMSON: The Sanhedrin was - I think there were basically two Sanhedrins. One was a more in depth one on a weekly basis but I think, if I'm not wrong Mr Chairman, that's what was termed the Sanhedrin and then we had a daily meeting as well.

MR BIZOS: The daily meeting which was a junior Sanhedrin?

MR WILLIAMSON: I would - yes I think, but here I stand under correction but I think it could be the junior Sanhedrin.

MR BIZOS: The junior Sanhedrin, yes, very good. Now tell us who were the ex official members of the main Sanhedrin?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman as far as I know this was a meeting of the staff officers of security headquarters which would then be the commander, the deputy commander.

MR BIZOS: No, just give us names from 1980 to 1984 please when you attended the main Sanhedrin meetings?

MR WILLIAMSON: I would imagine 1980, certainly General Coetzee.

MR BIZOS: Did he preside over the main Sanhedrin?

MR WILLIAMSON: At times.

MR BIZOS: Regularly?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes.

MR BIZOS: Yes and who else would be there regularly?

MR WILLIAMSON: The deputy who at that time was Brigadier du Preez.

MR BIZOS: Du Preez, yes?

MR WILLIAMSON: And then group heads and some section heads.

MR BIZOS: Give us the group heads that were there at the time please, from 1980 to approximately 1984. There may have been changes we understand but the familiar faces on the main Sanhedrin?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I'd have to get some type of an organogram or something to get all the names but I'd say obviously my group head, Brigadier Goosen, would be there.

MR BIZOS: Brigadier Goosen would be there, yes?

MR WILLIAMSON: And then as I said, if I go down the passage ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Let me help you. Let me help you.

MR WILLIAMSON: Thank you Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Colonel Heuér?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, possibly.

MR BIZOS: You see there's not all documents ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, can you repeat that name?

MR BIZOS: H-e-u-é-r. His initials are A.N. Heuér, Heuér, Brigadier, sometimes called Colonel or it's Brigadier. You see not all documents were destroyed. Then F.W. Schoon?

MR WILLIAMSON: That's correct, he would be there.

MR BIZOS: Yes and then B.F. Kotze, Brigadier?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, I'm prepared to say yes, Mr Chairman, I remember him vaguely.

MR BIZOS: You remember him vaguely, alright. Colonel later Brigadier J.C. Broodryk?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, he was the legal section.

MR BIZOS: Then Brigadier C.J.W. du Plooy?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, he was training section.

MR BIZOS: Colonel H.J.J. Smit?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, I think he was also in the training section in the library, I'm not sure.

MR BIZOS: Yes, we had a representative from Namibia here for the sake of completeness didn't we?

MR WILLIAMSON: In the Sanhedrin?

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, we had also military intelligence.

MR BIZOS: Yes, we'll come to them.

MR WILLIAMSON: We also had Railway Police.

MR BIZOS: But here H.J.J. Smit was from South West Africa - I beg your pardon, he was dealing with the South West African section?

MR WILLIAMSON: He was South West African, yes.

MR BIZOS: Yes, thank you. Yes, yes I must be careful.

Lieutenant Colonel Joubert of Group H?

MR WILLIAMSON: Ja, I - was he Church? Churches?

MR BIZOS: No, no I don't see that but everyone that was head of a group was there?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes the group heads were there, would be there but there would also be section heads.

MR BIZOS: Section heads?

MR WILLIAMSON: At times.

MR BIZOS: And you were a section head?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct.

MR BIZOS: At times. How often did you attend this Sanhedrin meeting?

MR WILLIAMSON: I often attended the weekly meeting because there was something called the "Insum", the "inligtings summary" and I presented ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Yes so you would then - you presented that to the ....[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Not the whole thing, I would present something from my side.

MR BIZOS: From your side?

MR WILLIAMSON: Which then would be ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: So ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Listened to by the meeting and a decision would be made as to whether this was believed by the meeting to be accurate and then it would be approved basically for transmission up the channels.

MR BIZOS: And what was the day on which the Sanhedrin met? What day of the week?

MR WILLIAMSON: I wanted to say immediately Friday, Mr Chairman, but I'm sure one of my colleagues can easily tell me.

MR BIZOS: Yes, well it doesn't matter really for my purposes at this stage, it met regularly every week?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes.

MR BIZOS: And it was probably the most important co-ordinating meeting of the Security Police that was to be held and generally speaking it was presided over by General Coetzee or if he was not available for some reason or other, his deputy?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, it was presided over by General Coetzee or whoever else was at the time the commanding officer.

MR BIZOS: Yes?

MR WILLIAMSON: So between 1980 and the end of 1985, General Coetzee would only have presided over it ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Until 1983?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct.

MR BIZOS: Did you attend the daily Sanhedrin meetings?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, on occasion I attended them but that was, ja, I think I often attended.

MR BIZOS: You often attended and to which Sanhedrin meeting was the death of Ruth First reported?

MR WILLIAMSON: I have no idea Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You don't remember?

MR WILLIAMSON: No.

MR BIZOS: Very well.

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't know whether it was a daily one or the weekly "Insum" meeting.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Please tell us in your own words and for as long as you like what was the main function of these Sanhedrins?

MR WILLIAMSON: Sanhedrin.

MR BIZOS: Sanhedrin, okay.

MR WILLIAMSON: It was - the name Sanhedrin was a nickname, I'm sure there was an official name but everybody referred it to Sanhedrin: "Jy moet vanoggend Sanhedrin toe gaan of more Sanhedrin toe gaan". I believe that the main purpose of the meeting in my experience was to get input from the section heads and group heads dealing with various problem areas on what had occurred either the day before or the week, in the past week, so obviously at the weekly meeting this would be a broader discussion. At the morning meeting it was just a discussion about "Last night they blew up Sasol -what happened, who went there, are there any clues" da-da da-da because - and then some type of a report was drawn up which, once that meeting had given that report, it was really a report back.

That meeting was, I would imagine, formerly reporting to the head of the Security Branch and he then would report to the Commissioner, the Commissioner to the Minister, the Minister to the Cabinet and obviously also on a weekly basis there was a document, the "Insum" was a written. I think maybe even everyday there were also - yes there was but it was on an A4 paper type of report but on a weekly basis there was a little booklet brought out, an A5 booklet type of thing which had a much more detailed basic summary of what was going on and in particular what could be expected to be going on in the next week and my responsibility from intelligence was to put my input and the people listening to the input and whichever people were there or this wasn't only a report by all of us, just to the commanding officer who would then go up to the top structures, it was also so we could each be informed from the different desks what was going on.

MR BIZOS: Yes, you told us about Sasol being blown up. What about the other way, what about the successes of the "manne" during the week or during the day against the enemy?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, what about them?

MR BIZOS: Wasn't there a report about that?

MR WILLIAMSON: There were at times I'm sure reports about that.

MR BIZOS: No, don't say I'm sure, you were there, you attended the meetings regularly.

MR WILLIAMSON: Absolutely, I mean if there had been - how would one term it, some type of a confrontation or a shoot-out or contact yes, it was reported.

MR BIZOS: Or elimination?

MR WILLIAMSON: No. To my knowledge no clandestine operation would have been reported, no.

MR BIZOS: Why not? Particularly in the weekly Sanhedrin?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I don't even know whether the question's actually really serious because you know it's just maybe, the culture is just so different but I spent all these years in this culture of intelligence in security and it was need to know and if this wasn't such a serious matter it would actually be laughable to suggest that any member of the Sanhedrin would come to the meeting and say: "General, yesterday in Maputo we blew up a car and six ANC died". It may have come as a factual report: "Yesterday there was an explosion at the corner of such and such a street in Maputo and such and such a member of the ANC is believed to have died or was injured" etc. etc. That was - a report would have just come through in that way.

MR BIZOS: Let us question you on that basis, Mr Williamson. How many reports were made either to the big Sanhedrin or the small Sanhedrin about ANC activists, who you would have called terrorists of course, were killed in the country and outside the country. How many reports of deaths were made to the main and/or subsidiary Sanhedrin?

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman, there's absolutely no way that I could put a number to it. When it came to deaths outside South Africa in the area for which I was responsible to gather information, I for example remember specifically reporting on Joe Gwabe's death.

MR BIZOS: Yes?

MR WILLIAMSON: So it was done Mr Chairman and I used to hear from the South West Africa desk, there was a contact, so many people were killed. That was on a daily basis what was going on.

MR BIZOS: Let us just expand that, let us expand that a little. How many chief representatives of the ANC's death were reported to the Sanhedrin in your presence? We know that the Swaziland head of mission of the ANC was killed, was that reported?

MR WILLIAMSON: I didn't report it, I believe it should have been reported yes. We can accept it was reported.

MR BIZOS: No I asked, and it - we can accept that within this culture with which you were so familiar and which we are so unfamiliar with, that that would have been reported.

MR WILLIAMSON: I accept that it's one of the things that ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Yes, we know that the ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: It would have been extremely important, certainly?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, that is the type of thing that would have just been flowing the whole time, that type of information.

CHAIRPERSON: I don't think Mr Bizos is talking about the little man, he's talking about the important people whom the various sections would be keeping under observation would be keen to know what they were doing, where they were, where they'd moved to and if they were killed, they had died?

MR WILLIAMSON: That's right, Mr Chairman, but also I don't think it made any difference whether they were little men or big men in terms of their involvement. When it came to that type of report, if ANC members were killed or there was some problem with the ANC expelled, arrested, anything of that nature was reported Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And also, how they were killed, whether they were shot or whether they were blown up or whether they were abducted or, you know, some circumstances of their deaths, that was known?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, now we're are getting into - this process was a very, if I can use the word brief and short process, it would have just said, given a fact, it would be talked about, somebody's been abducted and the press is worried that it's us and stuff like that.

MR BIZOS: No, this is our information as well that it was brief and to the point and it must be over in half an hour because it was an overall situation and the head of the security police had a lot of work to do and the section head had a lot to do so that it had to be over but, let me just ask you this. Would you agree and you were present during our examination of your mentor, Mr Coetzee, that hundreds of such deaths of the enemy, in your terminology, were reported at the Sanhedrin?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well again Mr Chairman, I really - I said before, I can't go into numbers, you know I didn't keep score, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: Deaths were reported on an ongoing basis as they occurred, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Dozens, fifty, seventy, a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred? How many would you say such deaths of the enemy were reported to the Sanhedrin?

MR WILLIAMSON: I have absolutely no idea how many. All I can say is a number, many.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Would you accept the figure that was given by my colleagues amounted to approximately a hundred of the enemy that were killed for political reasons, inside and outside the country?

MR WILLIAMSON: I think we're talking over a period of years which came down to forty or fifty in a year and you've got to understand that these weren't the only deaths that were being reported in this. The South West African war was on, the deaths there were being reported so there were probably much more than that reported.

MR BIZOS: Yes. And this hundred do not include those killed by Mr de Kock's Vlakplaas unit, which is now being counted and we will put on record, but numerous deaths of the enemy were reported.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well I don't know whether it wouldn't have included, Mr Chairman, because if one of the intelligence gathering units somewhere was doing his job and something happened in Swaziland or Lesotho or wherever it was and some ANC people were killed, and a source reported that being, even if that source is for example, a police officer in that country, gave information and said X,Y,Z incident happened but without reference to Mr de Kock or anybody else that information would have come in because the incident happened. It wouldn't have said there who had done the incident, it was just a very short sharp thing: "Vier mans is, vermoedelik aan die ANC verbonde is in 'n ontploffing in Swaziland dood".

MR BIZOS: Let me ask what I consider the vital question and I hope that you will give us an answer, an honest answer Mr Williamson. The members of the Sanhedrin could not have believed that forces other than their own were mainly responsible for the elimination of their enemy?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, first of all I must say I can't tell you what other members of the Sanhedrin should or should not, or did or did not believe. During my time in the Security Forces, I certainly was of the opinion that it was as I've said before, not only in this forum but publicly, that I didn't believe that it was the fairies Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: And I believe that there was a co-ordinated counter-insurgency strategy being applied against the enemy and this co-ordinated strategy included not only my or our organisation's Security Police, it included numerous other agencies of the state.

MR BIZOS: Which co-operated and co-ordinated ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Which worked together and which sat at that Sanhedrin or representatives of it sat at that Sanhedrin, so theoretically if somebody got killed somewhere at it was the Railway Police who'd done it, theoretically the person who was sitting there from the Railway Police would fit into the description you gave, yes.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Let us take Mr Joe Gwabe as an example. You knew that he was a close associate of Ruth First in the '50's and a couple of years of the '60's whilst newspapers on Ruth First were still allowed to be printed.

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I knew he had a - how should I put it, he was one of the senior members, he had a background from the '50's, he wasn't a new person on the scene.

MR BIZOS: Yes, and yet he had served five years on Robben Island for recruiting people and then when he came out he continued the struggle, he was convicted at the Old Synagogue in Pretoria, he got 12 years imprisonment, he went and served it on Robben Island and he came out.

Shortly after he came out he was appointed the Chief Representative of the ANC in Zimbabwe, you knew that?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And he was then killed, shortly after his appointment.

MR WILLIAMSON: That's correct Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: In your honest opinion, did you believe that he suffered that fate at the hands of the officers commanded by the people who attended that Sanhedrin the following, the appropriate day after his death?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I believed when Joe Gwabe was killed that an element of the South African State, a unit of one of the Security Forces had killed him.

MR BIZOS: You believed it.

MR WILLIAMSON: And I - in which case a member of the overall organisation of which this small unit would have ultimately been part was probably at the Sanhedrin.

MR BIZOS: Represented at the Sanhedrin.

MR WILLIAMSON: But I must say that I don't believe that the South African Police were involved in that operation.

MR BIZOS: Well, as long as they were all represented. For the purposes of my question we can continue with ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, that's why I'm saying, for purposes of the question, somebody at that meeting would have been a member of an organisation of which the unit was part that was involved in that attack.

MR BIZOS: Very well. And of course it would have been a betrayal of the trust that the head of the Security Police head in all the other members that attended the Sanhedrin Meeting, to keep him in the dark?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman. Need to know clandestine operations had nothing to do with betrayal of trust Mr Chairman, and there's no way, and in fact I doubt, I seriously doubt that if this, the unit that killed Joe Gwabe was one of the units of the South African Security Forces and that there was a member of one of that organisation present at that Sanhedrin, whether that person would have known that his organisation had ultimately been responsible for the murder of Joe Gwabe.

MR BIZOS: Well but let's take about those immediately under the command of the Commissioner. What would have been - I can understand the need to know vertically downwards or horizontally, but what would have been the purpose of keeping the man having the responsibility of securing the country, being kept in the dark about what his "manne", I think that's the expression which was used in those circles, were doing?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I think I've said before that the purpose of need to know was a defensive, need to know was a defensive policy. It was to protect the integrity of the organisation or the operation, and there was no question of, need to know meant need to know, and it in my experience had absolutely nothing to do with betrayal of trust or keeping in the dark or treating like a mushroom or whatever.

MR BIZOS: The main reason for the need to know is for the operation not be insulted because someone may talk about it.

MR WILLIAMSON: Absolutely. To maintain the integrity ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: There was no reason for anyone under General Coetzee to want to keep secrets from him for that reason?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, you couldn't have a rule like need to know and say: "Look we'll apply strict need to know except this person or that person". The fact is that at the end of the day, when we're talking about the type of clandestine operations that we're talking about, that I would imagine that the attitude was, and I'm saying I would imagine the attitude was, that what the commanders at that level and the politicians above them needed to know was the result of the operation and nothing further.

CHAIRPERSON: But surely the Commander would need to know, not the other people but that the commander would need to know that this operation had been executed by his ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Which Commander, the ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Head of the Security Police, would need to know that this had been a Security Police operation. He might not need to know who did it or how but for him to be able to take steps to safeguard the Security Police, he would need to know that they were involved, surely?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, you know this is where we get into the difficult area of whether these commands were in fact just strictly line functioned via the Chief of the Security Police or whichever unit it was.

I at my level have no information except to say that the way that the system worked was that you had not only your line function but as we've discussed before, there was the Secretariat of the State Security Council structure which was more particularly responsible with strategies.

I think I can go so far as to say that obviously had more information been required, need to know is or applies to a large extent to information that is volunteered, but there would be no case in which a Commander would come to a sub-ordinate and say: "I want to know X,Y and Z" and then got told: "You don't need to know". That wasn't the way it worked.

So I think when we are talking about need to know we're talking about that there would not be any open talking and discussion about an operation or information but that didn't mean that the command structure didn't in fact know.

MR BIZOS: There was also a Target Identification Committee - that's a translation, you remember the ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Trevits: "Teiken Identifikasie".

MR BIZOS: "Teiken Identifikasie". There was such a Committee. Were you on it?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, as I said: "Teiken Identifikasie" in my time was an ad hoc function.

MR BIZOS: Right, tell us about who had ad hoc committee meetings for: "Teiken Identifikasies", that you were present at.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well I wasn't actually present at very many "Teiken Identifikasie" meetings.

MR BIZOS: The ones that you were present at Mr Williamson.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well, I'm trying to remember Mr Chairman, whether I was present at any.

MR BIZOS: Oh?

MR WILLIAMSON: I was present or I was involved in the process where I delegated members of my staff to attend such meetings.

MR BIZOS: What was the purpose of the "Teiken Identifikasie" Committee?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well what would happen was that an order would come to, in this instance now myself, and I would get told there is a possibility or there is consideration being given to an attack on the ANC in X,Y or Z area because of whatever was particularly going on at the time, whatever information was coming through, and: "We require your input". Again Mr Chairman, I'm putting it so that it's understandable but I wouldn't have been told that: "We require your input" ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Doesn't the name ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: I would have just been told: "There's going to be an operation or there is a possibility of an operation, your people must assist with the target identification". And that would mean to me that I must then get my, depending on the area, I would select my men or women that were responsible for that area, that had the most information on that area and I would delegate them to attend that meeting and to work with the group which would be made up of Military National Intelligence Police or whoever else.

MR BIZOS: What were they to be targeted as?

MR WILLIAMSON: Targets to be attacked.

MR BIZOS: To be eliminated, to be killed?

MR WILLIAMSON: Destroyed, killed ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Inside and outside the country?

MR WILLIAMSON: Outside the country ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: But why?

MR WILLIAMSON: I never had any involvement with target identification inside the country. My mandate was outside the country. I had no target information inside the country, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well was this a special identification, target identification for everybody to be attacked or only for those outside?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman, as I said it was an ad hoc process, so when there was a decision, for example they'd come and say: "We - there is a recommendation or an idea or somebody is suggesting that there be an attack on the ANC in Gabarone", then I would know I must send my Africa section people who deal with Gabarone to that meeting.

MR BIZOS: Alright, but let's come nearer home.

MR WILLIAMSON: Or they would come to my offices.

MR BIZOS: Let's come nearer home. Was there - were the names of Ruth First and Jeanette Schoon given to the Target Identification Committee by you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Not to my knowledge, it was never ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: But you - that would require the external intelligence of which you were the head?

MR WILLIAMSON: Not necessarily Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Mr Williamson, do you suggest ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: I was not - the Maseru Raid, I wasn't asked one word.

MR BIZOS: No, no, let's just deal with Mrs Schoon and Jeanette Schoon and Ruth First. Are you suggesting that these two targets, people whom you knew and people whom you knew were to be eliminated, you do not know whether or not the Target Committee approved of the elimination or not?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I'd go further than that. I don't only not know but I have, it was never ever mentioned to me that there was any target analysis or I was never asked to participate and select and to even give my opinion.

MR BIZOS: Let's come back to it a little later. Let me round off this Sanhedrin situation. Do you who was responsible for naming these meetings, the Sanhedrin Meetings?

MR WILLIAMSON: For naming them, Mr Chairman?

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: You mean for coining the term: "Sanhedrin"?

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: Absolutely no idea.

MR BIZOS: Did you ever - wasn't your curiosity aroused as to why they were called Sanhedrin Meetings?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, as I said, you know I've absolutely no idea, I never bothered to even think about it, that was the name. You know, we called Section A,B,C,G, whatever you know, that was the name. I've got no idea. It's an Afrikaans term that even today I'm not entirely familiar with. I believe it's some type of an upper structure in, referred to somewhere in the Bible.

MR BIZOS: Well you see, whoever gave it that name was spot on for what we will suggest you were doing.

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I can't comment. I'm sure the term: "Sanhedrin" probably existed when I was a child, that it was even then called the Sanhedrin.

MR BIZOS: Oh, much longer than that Mr Williamson, much longer.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well the original Sanhedrin, obviously much longer but I'm talking about the Security Police Sanhedrin.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Well it must have come along, it must have been adopted when you were a bit older than a child, when they decided to become a sort of superior court.

MR WILLIAMSON: Superior?

MR BIZOS: Court.

MR WILLIAMSON: Court or Port?

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: I want to hand in Mr Chairman, from the 1963 edition of the encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume 19 and page 946A, what the Sanhedrin was and whoever chose the name may have known more than the witness is prepared to tell us.

"Sanhedrin, sometimes incorrectly written Sinedrium(?) ...[intervention]

ADV DE JAGER: Do you suggest the Security Police actually went to the encyclopaedia, Britannica or did they look at what or the Afrikaans ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: No, Mr Chairman, what we are going to argue is that they chose the name. Usually people that choose a name try to find an aim which represents more or less what they are doing, and whoever did it knew what it meant, Mr Chairman.

"Sanhedrin, sometimes incorrectly written Sinedrium or Sanhedrin, the Supreme Rabbinic Court in Jerusalem during second commonwealth era. The term is a hybridisation(?) of the Greek Sinedriun meaning assembly. The term also is used for the Hieropegus in Athens".

Do you know that the Hieropegus was the highest court established by the Gods?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman, I don't have your advantage in terms of Greek mythology.

MR BIZOS: That's a pity. Rabbinic sources speak of a great Sanhedrin of 71 members and smaller Sanhedrin trial courts of 23 members judging criminal cases or violations of Jewish law.

Now you will agree that the Security Police, never mind who had what knowledge, had set themselves up as the Judges of who could live and who could die?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I can't agree to that at all Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well, they had a meeting to which reports were made, they had a Target Selection Committee and they allowed their people, like yourself, to arrange for the elimination of people. Now why do you quarrel that the name was deliberately chosen as suggested by the person who wrote the article for this encyclopaedia, Britannica.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well I don't see any reference here to the Sanhedrin passing Judgment and deciding who must live and die, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Judging criminal cases.

MR WILLIAMSON: That's not deciding who's going to live or die, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well, in some criminal cases the decision is made as to who should live and die, and certainly during the period that you were a security policeman.

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I - this is very interesting information but I really have absolutely no idea who coined the term Sanhedrin, who decided it would be what the committee was called, Mr Chairman. It wasn't even a committee, it was a group. I really can't make any further statement or suggestion.

MR BIZOS: Yes. It is further described lower down

"Dalmoedic tradition pictures the great Sanhedrin as the highest legislative and judicial court".

When a person decides that Ruth First and Jeanette Schoon must die as with a letter bomb, isn't that like a sentence of death that the highest court has the power to impose?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, I certainly - again there was never any such decision or sentence passed at any Sanhedrin that I was present at, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: I'm going to put to you Mr Williamson, that your description of this fleeting communications between members is so highly improbable that the only conclusion that we will ask the Committee to draw is that the conspiracy of silence that there was at the time is continuing with you, without wanting to disclose who really decided, what preparations were made by whom, and who executed it, for the purposes of protecting your colleagues or erstwhile colleagues and more particularly, General Coetzee.

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, all I can say is that all I can do is say what I know happened when I was involved in what happened. I cannot comment on Sanhedrins and passing of sentences, things that you know, might be something that comes from the fiction around, and by fiction I mean the writings in fiction, around spying and these types of operations.

But the reality was different Mr Chairman, and I do not believe that a conspiracy of silence - if remember the Sanhedrin and the assembly that we had ever morning and the number of people who were there and the number of different people who were there on different occasions and the number of different organisations that were there and the number of different individuals to whom they went and reported, I believe that this would have to be a rather incredible conspiracy of silence to maintain, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well we only have now your word. And what I want to ask you before the adjournment Mr Williamson, have you got any yardstick which you can suggest to the Committee that it should use as to whether you can be believed or not, having regard to your admitted deceptions almost throughout a lifetime?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, Mr Chairman. All I can say is that this Committee and nobody else would have known anything about these operations if it hadn't been for me.

MR BIZOS: You're giving yourself too much credit Major Williamson.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well.

MR BIZOS: Others spoke before you and you know that.

MR WILLIAMSON: Other spoke about these operations before me?

MR BIZOS: No, about the manner in which people were eliminated, killed, brutalised, assassinated.

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, nobody spoke about these operations before me and nobody would have known anything about these operations if it hadn't been for me.

MR BIZOS: Oh. So you had absolute faith that your colleagues would ...[indistinct] the conspiracy of silence?

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't understand how that follows what I said, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. You only spoke about them when it became clear to you that you may have to go to prison for these acts unless you could manage to persuade the Committee or the Commission even before you spoke, to give you amnesty, to try to trade your information for your freedom. You didn't do it out of any sense of humanity or devoid of personal interest.

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I'm not saying that I did it because I'm such a great humanitarian and that I am disinterested in my own fate. I did what I did in terms of political decision that was made in this country, in which we stopped the war.

And Mr Chairman, I am of the opinion that if there had not been an agreement by people such as myself and the people above me to stop this war, that the war would still be going on. And there was - the ANC and the Communist Party Alliance had absolutely no chance of overthrowing the South African Government in the near future.

It was a political decision that we all made, and part of the political decision was, we would stop the war, we would have an election, which I knew the ANC were going to win, even though some of my political colleagues disagreed with me, and the decision was that as part of that process all of us, people from the ANC and the Communist Party and people who blew up and killed people, innocent victims in South Africa, all of us would come to these forums and say what we'd done. And that is what I did Mr Chairman, I participated in the system.

MR BIZOS: Yes. The gravamen of my question was in answer to you who said: "If I had not spoken about these matters, no-one else would". What I'm going to suggest to you ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I didn't say that Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You didn't say that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I said I was the first, I was the one who spoke about these matters. I was asked how can I come and tell this Committee in the light of my history as a deceiver, that what I'm saying here is the truth.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: And I said: "Well all I contribute to that Mr Chairman, is that this wouldn't, perhaps not even have been before the Committee if I hadn't raised the issue, if I hadn't started the process Mr Chairman".

MR BIZOS: Well, before this process started, do you know who sent Ms Gillian Slovo to you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Somebody in the ANC or Communist Party I assume, Mr Chairman, and that was after the process had started.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Before you made any disclosures you told Gillian - no, sorry, before you made any disclosures, Dirk Coetzee told Gillian Slovo that you were the person who would be able to satisfy her thirst for knowledge as to who killed her mother.

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: And she told you that when she came to meet you.

MR WILLIAMSON: Well, that's absolutely possible, Mr Chairman but I still would like to know. Mr Chairman, you know as far as I'm concerned Dirk Coetzee could have said something like that but Dirk Coetzee could not have given any evidence against me.

MR BIZOS: No, no, what I am saying to you is - well, let me put to you what we will argue at the end, that you tried to buy absolution for your crimes by approaching the ANC in the first instance and approaching the Commission thereafter for the purposes of guaranteeing you amnesty in South Africa and a guarantee that you would not be extradited. That is why you spoke.

MR WILLIAMSON: That is as I said Mr Chairman, part of the reason why I spoke. The reason why I spoke was from the beginning, as I've said, to participate in the political process that had been decided upon and that many other people, not only myself have participated in ...[indistinct].

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos, it is now seven minutes past one, how much longer are you going to go on for?

MR BIZOS: Oh, Mr Chairman, for a long time with the witness. There are specifics that I have to put to him.

CHAIRPERSON: When will you come to a convenient stage for us to take the adjournment?

MR BIZOS: Could I put one more question? I'm sorry, I wasn't watching my watch, Mr Chairman.

Let me tell you what Dirk Coetzee told Gillian Slovo. That you had intimated to him at the time of Ruth First's death, that you were responsible for her death and this is why Gillian came to you. Are you able to admit or deny that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I can accept it Mr Chairman, but I don't know it changes the facts. The facts are that if I said that Dirk Coetzee was a lunatic and I didn't know what he was talking about, that would have been that.

MR BIZOS: Well except that he apparently gave Gillian Slovo correct information, and this person that you described as a lunatic.

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman, I said I could have.

MR BIZOS: Oh. Well I don't know why you then said it but anyway ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: I was giving a response, that I could have given in the circumstances.

MR BIZOS: It may be a convenient stage Mr Chairman, I'm sorry that I've ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: After the adjournment consider what he said in his book.

MR BIZOS: Thank you Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: We'll adjourn till ten to two.

COMMITTEE ADJOURNS

ON RESUMPTION

CRAIG MICHAEL WILLIAMSON: (s.u.o.)

MR LEVINE: Mr Chairman, are we going to give the encyclopaedia extract a number?

CHAIRPERSON: Do you want to put it in as an exhibit, Mr Bizos?

MR BIZOS: For the sake of completeness, even though ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: W.

MR BIZOS: Yes, thank you Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: The passage I referred to immediately before the adjournment was in Mr Coetzee's evidence book 1 headed Hit Squads which he handed in at the hearing of his application, at page 118 paragraph 5, 4, 17, 5, 1, where he said in 1982 when Ruth First was killed by a letter bomb in Maputo, Craig Williamson in the usual indirect manner made me understand that it was a Security Police Section A operation and that the envelope used was one that I had obtained with the burgling of the U.N. Office for Refugees in Swaziland.

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR BIZOS: (continued)

Thank you Mr Chairman.

Now were you in Section A, Mr Williamson?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe in the beginning 1980/81 I believe I was in Section A and then as I've explained before, there was a change to the reorganisation of the sections or groups and I went into Group G.

MR BIZOS: Yes and did you have contact during this period with Mr Dirk Coetzee?

MR WILLIAMSON: I did, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And did he in fact burgle the U.N. Office for Refugees in Swaziland?

MR WILLIAMSON: He told me he did, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And did he steal stationery from there?

MR WILLIAMSON: Possibly Mr Chairman, I have no idea what he stole except I was told some file cards of South African exiles who had left South Africa through Swaziland and been processed by the U.N.H.C. office in Swaziland.

MR BIZOS: Yes and you were in unit A5 intelligence and you were the head of that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believe so Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And you were a captain at the time?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman or I could have been a major by then as well, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes and that you were - in it was Mr D. Bruner, you colleague on the Wits S.R.C. and who gave evidence at the NUSAS trial.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, he and several others Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And G.G. Smit?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: Now the date of this being made public was the 21st April 1990, well it was written and thereafter handed in on our information to the Commission presided over by now Judge of Appeal, Harms.

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman, maybe I should just come in there, I think I best suited to relate the correct facts. It was drafted initially for purposes of that commission but it was never handed in at that commission. It was then subsequently, subsequent to the commission it was made public and then it was then the first formal forum it was actually handed in was the TRC. Thank you Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: When did you first hear that Mr Coetzee had implicated you in Ruth First's murder?

MR WILLIAMSON: I do not remember specifically when, but it was in the early '90's or, and I think there was a book if I remember correctly. I'm trying to remember which book it was, interviews with various people including Dirk Coetzee and I think the allegation was made in that book, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well it was sometime before this was made public to the TRC?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Now part of the Stratcom on Coetzee was that he was a silly madman.

MR WILLIAMSON: That is some time before this now, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: When he corroborated Nofomela that Griffiths Mxenge had been killed by the Security Police?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes in probably '89 or thereabouts when he went public in, I believe, the Vrye Weekblad, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Did you take the allegation against you seriously?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, I was aware number one there was an error in the allegation that is that the stationery used by him or allegedly stolen by him and brought to security headquarters was used and secondly he had said in the usual indirect way I had intimated to him and I became aware of that, yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. But you knew, never mind the detail about the envelope, you knew that the substance of the allegation was true?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, Mr Chairman and I knew that I had intimated to him.

MR BIZOS: Did you intimate to him?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: What happened to the need to know rule?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, as I said that in certain circumstances and especially in social communication between colleagues involved in the same type of operations, there were breaches of the need to know rule and I don't think even Mr Coetzee alleges that I came and gave him chapter, verse of the operation. I intimated to him in the way that he says in his book and he's given evidence before about the way that things were spoken about in security circles which relates also to the need to know rule.

MR BIZOS: This was in the corridors of your offices?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, so I in fact was guilty of a breach of the need to know rule.

MR BIZOS: It was on the day that Ruth First's death was announced at the Sanhedrin meeting?

MR WILLIAMSON: Probably Mr Chairman, I think we had both probably been at the Sanhedrin and were probably walking back to our offices or met in the corridor after the Sanhedrin meeting, yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Mr Coetzee was not at the Sanhedrin meeting.

MR WILLIAMSON: I said it was probably when we were coming back or when we were walking in the corridor after the Sanhedrin meeting. I do not know whether he was definitely at the Sanhedrin meeting or not but it was probably when I was coming back or walking in the passage, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: What section was Mr Coetzee in at that time?

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman, maybe I should just interrupt here because there's going to be some confusion. Mr Coetzee was no longer in the Security Branch in 1982, he left at the end of 1981 but he still remained in close contact with many of his colleagues. I think that correct perspective must just be placed on record.

MR BIZOS: Thank you, I'm indebted to you.

MR VISSER: Yes and before that he was in - sorry that's all I need to say, thank you.

MR BIZOS: Yes. But now what I want to ask you is this. Why would you have told Coetzee about this and remained silent about it to your commander, General Coetzee?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I can't remember offhand when Griffiths Mxenge was murdered, probably '81, but anyway ...[intervention]

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman, again if I could just be of assistance, it was November '81.

MR BIZOS: Thank you.

MR WILLIAMSON: And Mr Coetzee had intimated to me that the Security Forces were involved in the Mxenge killing and I knew Captain Coetzee well, we worked in close proximity in head office during 1981 or before he was removed from the Security Branch and it was purely because of my personal relationship with him and my belief that he was also involved in, or had been involved in similar type of operations that I made a very cautious intimation to him that the Ruth First incident was a successful operation and as I said it was a breach of the need to know, it was purely on the basis of my personal relationship at that time with Captain Coetzee and by no stretch of imagination would I have been walking up and down corridors of security head office telling everybody that I met or intimating to everybody that I met that we had been involved in such an operation.

MR BIZOS: The question was: why would you tell someone who was not even in the Security Police any longer and keep it a secret from your commander, General Coetzee?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I kept it a secret from a lot of other people besides General Coetzee, I didn't mention it to anybody. I made a mistake, absolutely, I breached the need to know rule, I did mention it to Captain Coetzee, maybe because I felt in some way not sorry, but I was sympathetic to Captain Coetzee's position at the time in his conflict with the upper echelons in the Security Branch and he probably felt at the time and I think I felt sympathetic towards him on the basis that he was being in a way pushed out of the family as it were and perhaps, I'm just speculating, that this was, in some way I was still trying to include Captain Coetzee in some way in the family or you know, in the secret organisation because to be removed and to be sent out of the Security Branch was an extreme censure, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: I would have thought that what you have said would have been very good reasons for not speaking about a crime that you had committed to a person that was on his way out from the cabal.

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, as far as I was concerned, Mr Coetzee's loyalty to the organisation and to South Africa and to the task we were tasked with doing, was very high at that time. Captain Coetzee had a reputation for his actions in regards to the ANC in Swaziland and the Eastern Transvaal in the Security Branch and again, as I say, it was a breach of standing procedure and he says that I said it in a way, I just intimated to him. I should not have done it and I believe, thinking back on the incident, that is was probably why I did it, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: What would have made Dirk Coetzee believe that you would have kept quiet in relation to your superiors about a crime that he had committed inside the country?

MR WILLIAMSON: Because Mr Chairman, we didn't - again, I didn't know any details, it was intimated to me that there was that the death of Mxenge was security force action and that is the atmosphere that existed in the organisation and in the country at that time Mr Chairman. I would not have if somebody intimated to me, a member of the Security Forces intimated to me that they'd been involved in a strike against an ANC target or an ANC related target, this wouldn't have come to me as a great shock, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Coetzee must have been confident that you, even though a policeman, obliged to report crime more than any other citizen, would not go to the investigating officer investigating Griffiths Mxenge's murder and say: "Look at Coetzee and the Security Police, look at our protectors for the murder of the deceased." He was confident that you wouldn't do that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I'm sure he was confident that I wouldn't do that, yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And his confidence was well justified because people in that cabal, that knew about murders of activists, would all keep quiet about it?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, as I've said, I don't know anything about a cabal that was involved in murders of activists in a general way. I, like all the other people around me in the Security Forces and I, became more and more convinced that there was an active and co-ordinated operation against the members of the ANC and the ANC/South African Communist Party, basically the revolutionary alliance and that they were, as I said, not being killed, people were not dying because some passing gangster had killed them or some fairy had killed them. Mr Chairman, I've said that, I was convinced in my mind that this was part of the war that was going on.

MR BIZOS: Was Coetzee fired from the Police because of you?

MR WILLIAMSON: At the end of the day, Mr Chairman, Mr Coetzee was fired from the Police because of many things he did. At the end of the day, the only thing that they managed to prove that he did was something that he did with me. There was in the police regulations something called a "Doringdraad seksie" a very general section about conduct unbecoming and that was what was the final official result of the departmental trial but I think Captain Coetzee will tell you and the record of the trial will tell you that a number of other allegations were made against him that were far more important than the one relating to which I was related, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: No, the question is a direct one, did you ever claim to anyone that the reason why Coetzee was fired from the Police was because of you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I have said and it's a matter of record that I was probably, I was the witness who gave evidence at the departmental trial that finally led to his discharge from the Police and I believe still today that Mr Coetzee has never forgiven me for that, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: But nevertheless you accept that he spoke the truth in relation to your admission?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I've told the Committee that I intimated to him as he says in his book that the Security Police that we were involved in the strike against Ruth First and I said that the second part of his allegation relating to the stationery, I do not believe is accurate and I've nothing - in fact I know it's not accurate, I never even saw even stationery that he may be have brought...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Well we'll come to the question of the envelope and the stationery. You've said that, when I asked about Mr Coetzee's knowledge, I want to read a number of statements made by, to the Committee and I want you to please tell us whether you agree or disagree with him?

"Williamson had no authority from me to do an illegal act."

Is that true or false?

MR WILLIAMSON: Are these statements by General Coetzee?

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: That is relating to inside the Republic of South Africa, that is true.

MR BIZOS: No, he said "Williamson had no authority from me to do an illegal act."

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, I was given authority by General Coetzee to carry out the London operation, so if that was a legal act then the statement is true.

MR BIZOS: But for the London bombing, you had no authority from him to do an illegal act?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Do you accept that your killing of Ruth First and Jeanette Schoon, Katryn Schoon, were illegal acts?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, that is why I've applied for amnesty and I accept that in terms of the rules, regulations, the Police Act, the Defence Act, the Constitution of South Africa, these were not properly authorised strikes across the border which would have made them legal so therefore they were not legal.

MR BIZOS: Yes. So you would agree that in relation to these acts that you had no authority from the Commissioner to do them?

MR WILLIAMSON: I did not ask or seek the authority of the Commissioner to do them, Mr Chairman, so I had no direct authority from him to do that.

MR BIZOS: Did you believe that he would approve of them if you asked him?

MR WILLIAMSON: I believed that these type of acts were authorised via some channel or authority and I did not ask how and I did not ask who but I believed they were authorised, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Listen to the question again, did you believe that if you had asked General Coetzee, he would have authorised them?

MR WILLIAMSON: I can only say that I believe the possibility to have existed, it didn't cross my mind to ask General Coetzee, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: It didn't cross your mind. Now, let us just examine this. I can understand the example that you spoke about in your evidence in chief of the officer that endangered himself by being out in the bush and waiting for an incursion for M.K. soldiers to come across the border and that he, in the heat of the moment, shoots them dead even though he may have been able to arrest them or take steps to neutralise them without actually killing them. I believe that may that one could have some sympathy for that person that you couldn't have the time or the inclination of fearing for his own life would not seek authority from the proper authorities. But you, were personally very close to Mr Coetzee. Were you in the same building at the time?

MR WILLIAMSON: With General Coetzee?

MR BIZOS: With General Coetzee.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, we were in the same building, Mr Chairman and I was - obviously when I came back from Europe in 1980 I was very close to General Coetzee, but as I've also said previously, that as he progressed in the ranks and as he became more and more senior, he also became more and more distant from us.

MR BIZOS: Were you on the same floor?

MR WILLIAMSON: At - when he was the - no, no in fact we weren't.

MR BIZOS: When he was the head of the Security Police?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I was ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: How far were you moved geographically?

MR WILLIAMSON: I think at one stage one floor above and at another stage one floor below.

MR BIZOS: And presumably from time to time you had tea or coffee in the same common room?

MR WILLIAMSON: Certainly not, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Certainly not, I see. He had his own tea, he had his own tea delivered.

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes.

MR BIZOS: He didn't come down with the "manne".

MR WILLIAMSON: No and every now and again there would be a social function at which I was present together with numerous other officers, many of whom outranked me and I didn't as a relatively junior senior officer then go and attach myself to the General and monopolise him. It didn't work like that Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, but we are told that you as head of the Intelligence Section had access to him?

MR WILLIAMSON: I and all other senior officers had access to him Mr Chairman but ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: We're speaking about you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, I and all others.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: It was not that I had some special channel to General Coetzee.

MR BIZOS: Did you know that he knew Ruth First?

MR WILLIAMSON: I really - if I thought about it, I would have probably known that he must have known her, yes.

MR BIZOS: Yes, but there good reasons why you - he would have known her and you would have known of her because you and General Coetzee had intellectual pretensions as academics, she was an academic, she had written about the matters that you were concerned with so that you must have known that he knew her and you knew of her?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I said if I thought about it, I'm sure I would have known he must have met or knew her but I, in fact it's only when he gave evidence in front of this Committee that I realised that there was some longer term that he had actually spent some time with her and got to know her quite well, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well, let me get an answer to the portion of the question? Were you familiar with her writings for the purposes of your studies and for your intelligence work?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, her writings were from a time many years removed from where we were engaged. Yes I knew of her writings.

MR BIZOS: You knew of her writings?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes but we spend time studying her writings, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: No, I accept that and you knew that General Coetzee had academic interests in the politics of the left in Southern Africa and Ruth First was a pre-eminent writer on that subject?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I knew that General Coetzee was busy with academic work with, I believe at that stage, his master's degree but the subject of Ruth First never cropped up, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Did you ever tell anybody at the weekly meetings of the Sanhedrin - did you say at the Sanhedrin or rather did you say to anyone that anybody or that some people in it knew Ruth First?

MR WILLIAMSON: Have I said that before here?

MR BIZOS: No, outside here. Did you say anything to anybody which indicated that there people at the Sanhedrin that knew Ruth First?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well if I'd been asked Mr Chairman, maybe I did say that. I'm sure there were people at the Sanhedrin. There was a generation of offices, Mr Chairman, that had been dealing with the South African Communist Party at that time. I was from a younger generation, I didn't, my generation didn't know Ruth First. The older generation, people involved in more the '50's and the '60's and the '70's perhaps knew her much better than I, so I could have made that comment, yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Did you tell Gillian Slovo that there were people on the Sanhedrin that knew Ruth First, her mother?

MR WILLIAMSON: I'm sure I did and she probably asked me if there were people who knew Ruth First on the Sanhedrin.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Who were they?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I assume for example, Brigadier Viktor was one of them.

MR BIZOS: Brigadier?

MR WILLIAMSON: Viktor.

MR BIZOS: Viktor, yes, anyone else?

MR WILLIAMSON: General Coetzee.

MR BIZOS: Yes, anyone else?

MR WILLIAMSON: Those are the two that spring to mind, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: There probably were numerous police officers that knew her.

MR BIZOS: Now your evidence yesterday ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Maybe Brigadier Brooderyk had known her.

MR BIZOS: Your evidence yesterday and today made it clear that anybody that would have believed that Ruth First was killed by anyone other than the South African Security Forces believed in fairies?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes you've put ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Two things together?

MR WILLIAMSON: You're putting things together.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I don't believe that anybody in the South African Security Forces or the intelligence community thought that Ruth First had been killed by anybody except the unit of the South African Security Forces in the same way as my evidence I said about what I believed about Joe Gwabe's killing.

MR BIZOS: Yes and presumably Griffiths Mxenge's killing?

MR WILLIAMSON: Exactly, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Now did anyone, when Ruth First's death was reported, ask any questions?

MR WILLIAMSON: No to me, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: At the meeting?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Why do you think that was? Why the silence about a person that was high profile, that was known to them, what would have been the reason for their not asking?

MR WILLIAMSON: Because at the meeting, Mr Chairman, the Sanhedrin was not a social gathering.

MR BIZOS: Oh.

MR WILLIAMSON: Sanhedrin was an assembly at which reports were given and it, they have been described both by Mr Bizos and myself, correctly, as very sharp, short, succinct reports. There was no big debate about anything unless somebody had an objection to an opinion that had been drawn and a recommendation that was being made. People sat and listened to what information was coming in and then there was a decision about, basically the information was being given to the commander or whoever was the head of the meeting and I've no doubt that after the Sanhedrin and I can remember participating, after the Sanhedrin when everybody stood up and everybody moved out on the way to the offices, now and again points that had been raised officially in the report might have been discussed and I've got no doubt that people may, knowing Ruth First, might have then discussed the fact that she'd been killed, but nobody asked any questions and nobody discussed it with me, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: If you made the report, were they correct in assuming that you must have had knowledge as to who had done it, precisely when and possibly how?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I did not make the report, I sat there and heard the report and as I heard the report, Brigadier Goosen looked up, looked me in the eye and just nodded like that and then continued with his work. That was what it was Mr Chairman, I was not making the report.

MR BIZOS: Could she have been killed without an intelligence report from you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well, Mr Chair, I have to answer that obviously.

MR BIZOS: Why would you have been bypassed in obtaining an up to date intelligence report before she was killed?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, it wasn't that I was bypassed. We have to understand that there was a very large organisation with very many sections, structures, divisions, branches and for example, there are many, many, many examples that can be given, Mr Chairman, where action was taken in Mozambique, outside the country, across the borders where sometimes I was asked for my input and other times I wasn't asked for my input, either personally or my section's input and really it's not a matter that every single thing or every action that was taken by either the Security Police or all the security organisations in the country were first run by Craig Williamson just to get his input or approval.

MR BIZOS: You've already told us that operational intelligence had to be most recent and presumably accurate?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: That would have been wherever there were any plans to assassinate?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I didn't say that, I said that if one was going to carry out an operation, there would be two types of intelligence required. Number one would be the basic political information and the basic information behind and number two would be the tactical operational intelligence, an order actually to physically carry out that operation and if there was an, what is termed an assassination attempt, obviously there would have to be some intelligence from somewhere about something.

MR BIZOS: Were you asked whether there was any intelligence where her office was, precisely where her office was?

MR WILLIAMSON: I was not asked anything, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Whether she shared an office with anyone?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: You were not asked?

MR WILLIAMSON: No.

MR BIZOS: Whether her mail was delivered directly to her or whether it was left in a central depot?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I've said I was asked absolutely nothing.

MR BIZOS: Who else would have been able to give vital information of firstly a political point of view or operational point of view. Who was in the better position than you to give that information?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I would not know who was in a better position but I would know who was in at least an equal position and I can go through them. The Intelligence Section of security headquarters of which I was the commander would obviously have been gathering information in Mozambique or in Maputo. Then the Eastern Transvaal branch of the Security Police would have been running operations into Mozambique and Maputo. Then the Army Intelligence or Military Intelligence operators would have been operating in Southern Mozambique and in Maputo and probably also either Army Intelligence and then units of the Directorate or the Chief of Staff Intelligence, the people that they call Wesfront, sorry Oosfront, would have been operating in South Mozambique and Maputo. The National Intelligence Service would have been operating in Southern Mozambique an Maputo so I think there would have been at least five different intelligence operations running in that area, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Specifically, who was reporting on the doings of Ruth First? Give us the name of the person that was submitting information in relation to Ruth First?

MR WILLIAMSON: I have absolutely no idea, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well you were the head of intelligence?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well I have no idea, we were not submitting on a regular basis any information, we were not running an operation against her, we were not monitoring her on a day to day basis, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: But whoever was getting that intelligence had to put it into a file and you would obviously be interested to know what you considered to be such an important person was doing?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I cannot recollect exactly again the number of times but I, if I refer to Ruth First's file once or twice in my entire career, that was a lot Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: How long before her death had you look at her file?

MR WILLIAMSON: I really cannot remember and I do not believe that I was looking at her file at any time relating to her death, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: I see. Now before a decision was taken whether she was to live or die, presumably it would have to go to the "Teiken" Committee.

MR WILLIAMSON: No, you said that before Mr Chairman and I said that I had no knowledge of this operation ever going to a Teiken Identifikasie Komitee.

MR BIZOS: Why not? Why when you were asked to act as a sort of by the way messenger to the people making bombs, why didn't you ask whether or not the proper committee that identified the victims, or the targets as you would call them, had decided and on what basis?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I've tried throughout this hearing to sketch the atmosphere and the situation that pertained at the time, not only politically but within the organisation in which I was working and all I can say is that it is inconceivable to me that as a major or as a captain that if I was order by a colonel or a Brigadier to carry out an act to instruct an expert on my staff to manufacture an I.E.D. that I would go, start going into some type of a detailed questioning of those orders. It's just -it would - it may be very, very difficult to understand to anybody whose never been in that type of hierarchical military organisation and in particular, a hierarchical military organisation of a clandestine nature. It just wouldn't have been done. The only time that I might have given or questioned something that if it had been intimated to me that the target of the weapon that was to be manufactured was somebody that I did not regard as falling into the target category which I and everybody else that I worked with, apparently assumed to be targets, then I obviously would have perhaps found some way in which to question. For example, if somebody had said to me "Get this I.E.D. made, it's going to Bishop Tutu" then I think my attitude might have been different, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: We'll come to Bishop Tutu and your evidence to try and destroy him and the South African Council of Churches in due course but let's leave that aside for the moment, Mr Williamson.

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman, I just want to place on record, with respect, that I have never heard any evidence and I'm sure we're going to hear it now, but I just want to place on record that I have heard no evidence of any attempts or plan to destroy Bishop Tutu at all. I just want to place that on record insofar as it may reflect on any of my clients.

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman, I didn't say when I meant destroy, not in the sense of killing but destroying him as a person of, as the head of a religious organisation, the South African Council of Churches and the South African Council itself, Mr Chairman.

MR VISSER: Well my learned friend has said, he meant eliminate, then I would have understood, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, well I don't have to fall into that category of person, Mr Chairman.

But let me ask you this, Mr Williamson, Mr Goosen was a discredited policeman, was he not?

MR WILLIAMSON: Not as far as I'm concerned, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Oh, I see. So that the condemnation of practically the whole world about his treatment of Mr Biko left you, like Jimmy Kruger, cold?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I was not in South Africa when the Biko affair happened. Obviously I read all sorts of propaganda that came out, some true, some propaganda, some twisted and I can only comment on the Brigadier Piet Goosen that I knew and he was, I thought, a fine officer.

MR BIZOS: Well, do you still believe that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I still believe that Mr Chairman and I can just refer you for example to Mr Joe Slovo's book where he says a very similar thing about Stalin and he says that for years people asked him or in his - when Mr Joe Slovo was asked: "how could you have for years believed in Stalin and the Stalinist system?" and he said: "Because in those years I didn't know, it was only later that I came to know", Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: But in 1977 you learnt that he had manacled ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, like Mr Joe Slovo didn't believe the stories about Stalin and what Stalin had done, I in 1977 certainly didn't believe the stories about what Piet Goosen had done.

MR BIZOS: Even the portions that he admitted in evidence?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I was not in the country, I was not reading his evidence, I was not following the case, I was not here.

MR BIZOS: Even what Professor Loubser had found about the condition of Mr Biko, you didn't believe any of that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I didn't believe it Mr Chairman, I believed it was propaganda.

MR BIZOS: I see. Why do you think he gave you the instruction that he did?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I cannot - all I can say is I got an instruction and I, obviously I can surmise that the reason I gave the instruction is that after the London incident and after the successful completion of the London attack that he believed that Warrant Officer Raven would be capable or would perhaps be capable of constructing the type of I.E.D. that was required.

MR BIZOS: Did Mr Goosen tell you who was to be the intended victim?

MR WILLIAMSON: As I've said, Mr Chairman, I believe that he intimated to me or said to me or mentioned and said: "This piece is going to Slovo" or something of that nature, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: So he told you that this was intended for Slovo?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, to the absolute best of my recollection I believe that I was certainly at the time and afterwards under the impression that this was on it's way in some way to Slovo.

MR BIZOS: Joe Slovo?

MR WILLIAMSON: I didn't ask whether it was Joe Slovo, I made the assumption that it was Mr Joe Slovo, yes Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Then it must have been an absolute shock to you eventually when you heard that it killed Ruth First?

MR WILLIAMSON: It wasn't really a shock Mr Chairman, because I believed that this was, I mean obviously I was surprised, but then when I thought about it, the only explanation that I could give and I didn't go to the Brigadier and discuss it with him and ask him had something gone wrong or where did it go or who was it really sent to or even was this the device that we manufactured, Mr Chairman. I remember at the time my biggest interest, theoretically at that time, was the, my assumption that a communication channel of the ANC had been penetrated and when the bomb exploded, I in my mind made the assumption that this was in some way, it was somewhere along the line of communication of this ANC communication that this thing had then exploded and I was not shocked but surprised when I read about or was informed about the explosion which killed Ruth First because I had thought that I was going to hear that Joe Slovo would be the victim of the explosion.

MR BIZOS: Did Goosen mention Ruth First's name at all to you?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, he did not Mr Chairman, if he had I would tell you, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Nor did he mention the name Mrs Slovo?

MR WILLIAMSON: As far as I'm concerned, Mr Chairman, he mentioned the name Slovo: "This parcel is going to Slovo, can Gerry manufacture an explosive device which will fit into this?"

MR BIZOS: So the person that you thought was going to be killed was Joe Slovo?

MR WILLIAMSON: I made that assumption, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And is that the reason why there was no intelligence report called for in relation to Ruth First?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, there was no intelligence report called for in relation to Mr Joe Slovo either, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well that would ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: And I may say that we have already discussed here at length the attack on Matola and the potential targeting of Joe Slovo and at that time and in that operation, while I knew about it, I was not asked for one single iota of information about Joe Slovo. So obviously, that information existed without asking me for it, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes, particularly in relation to Mr Slovo I think we can accept that for the time being. But now tell me, you were also given these envelopes and you graphically described how using a pen as a lifting instrument, you went as far as to see that it was for somewhere at Edward Mondlane University?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: In Maputo?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Right. You didn't see the name Slovo or First or anyone else that may have been at the Edwardo Mondlane University?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I have racked my brains about this incident and I cannot say that I absolutely saw and know the name that was on that envelope. I believed that it was going to Slovo, I assumed when they said Slovo, the Brigadier meant Joe Slovo. I handed in a document that we discussed earlier this morning to show that perhaps he may have been talking about Ruth Slovo because it was the, obviously the use in security head office also to call her Slovo. Now if I had seen the name on the envelope was Ruth First, I would tell the Committee I saw Ruth First's name, it was going to Ruth First and there would have been, I still would not have been surprised it was going to Ruth First. If it was going to Joe Slovo I would have been even less surprised, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Now I want to refer you to page 3 of your application and in which you say that

"With the best of my recollection, the mail item in the large envelope was A4 or larger sized envelope with the logo of an international organisation thereon, possibly U.N. related and was addressed to: Joe Slovo, care of Ruth First or Joe Slovo and Ruth First at the Edwardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique."

Do you say that that is true or false?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, that is - I'm not saying that I saw the address, Mr Chairman, I'm trying to explain that I knew this was addressed to Joe Slovo ...[inaudible]

I didn't go into the narrative here Mr Chairman, in the detail that we have now of exactly the words that the Brigadier said to me and the assumptions that I made, Mr Chairman. The fact is that I've also, I've discussed this with the, I think it was Gillian Slovo and in fact I believed, Mr Chairman, that she was the person that first started me really thinking about was it possible that this had in fact been addressed to Ruth First and not to Joe Slovo. I believe up until that moment I was convinced that it was being sent to Joe Slovo and I think it was her that started me thinking that perhaps I had made a mistake and that it wasn't addressed to Joe Slovo ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: For a person of your intelligence and ability it must be obvious that what the evidence that you gave here and what stands there is contradictory, Major Williamson, do you agree?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I don't agree Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well, do you say that "I didn't see any name but only saw the University is not contradictory to, to the best of my recollection, the mail item in the large envelope was addressed to Joe Slovo, care of Ruth First, or Joe Slovo and Ruth First." You say that there is no contradiction, Major?

MR WILLIAMSON: No I don't Mr Chairman and I'm not a major, I'm a Mr, if you wish to address me by my military rank, then please do with the correct rank.

MR BIZOS: What is your correct rank?

MR WILLIAMSON: Colonel, sir.

MR BIZOS: Colonel, oh yes. By the way, by the way, you are the one that made up this Stratcom story, are you not, that Joe Slovo was a Colonel in the KGB?

MR WILLIAMSON: I think I had a hand in that but can I address this ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Yes, let me finish with what I ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: No but can I not answer the question that I've already been asked?

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't see a contradiction. What the purpose of this application was, was to attempt to give the story. I accept that perhaps this is loosely phrased and instead of saying addressed, I could have said "sent to" and then there would have been absolutely no contradiction. The fact is that at the time, when this was sent, my clear impression was that it was going to Slovo, I assumed to Joe Slovo and at a later stage, many, many years later and approximately 1990, I started thinking seriously about the possibility that it had in fact been sent to Ruth First. It was definitely sent to Edwardo Mondlane University and I assume that there was some ANC or Communist Party communication system that was going between Lesotho and Maputo, probably between the two universities and was being used as a communications method, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well, you say that if you had used other words there might not have been a contradiction, I'm going to put ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: I said one other word, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. I'm going to put to you that it is contradictory but let us deal with the probabilities of the matter. Why were you shy not to lift just one line further, the envelope that you were doing and this trying to open in this primitive way in order to see who in fact it was addressed to? Why didn't you just bother to just push the pen a little bit further?

MR WILLIAMSON: Because Mr Chairman, at the time, it was 1982, it was just after the London bomb, after we'd successfully carried out that operation and I don't know how to explain to many people sitting here that had never been in the situation that if a superior officer, this wasn't in my line function, Mr Chairmanto send explosive devices to people all over the place, this was something unusual and I perhaps and I've thought about it many times, Mr Chairman, I passed on an order and I didn't want to get very involved in this operation, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: If your evidence is - sorry ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Williamson, my problem is that if you look at what you say in your application, it starts in the first paragraph saying

"The official envelope came with instructions for me to discuss the contents with Brigadier Goosen."

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Presumably to discuss the contents, you would want to know what they were?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, Mr Chairman, I ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: So why didn't you look to see, why did you do the secretive little lifting?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I did look, Mr Chairman, I opened it up and I saw that there was a, what I assumed to be an intercepted postal device inside.

CHAIRPERSON: Why not take it out and look at it?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman, because the way that it was done, if - you see Mr Chairman, I think I have to explain that I have some or I had some specific knowledge about the handling of intercepted postal items because during my underground or undercover operations, I was given specific training in the interception of post, the interception of communications and how the system works and during my time in security head office after I returned from overseas, I had never in fact seen what one would term the original of an intercepted item, I'd always seen a photocopy of a envelope and the actual contents of the item. It was highly, highly unusual that there would be an actual postal item that had been intercepted because normally they would be intercepted, copied and sent on their way. So when I received this with instructions to go and discuss it with Brigadier Piet Goosen, I immediately assumed that there was some special reason for this instruction and the envelope was also in fact closed up. I opened it and just had a look at it when I went to the Brigadier's office and when he told me we want the contents of this envelope replaced by an I.E.D. I then realised why this was a large official envelope which was closed up in order to protect the contents thereof. Now often, Mr Chairman, if stuff was sent to you in our internal mail system in Security Head Office, most of it was open, written on top "Major Williamson - discuss with me". When something was sent to me closed up in an envelope, there was something very different going on, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: I still don't understand why you didn't look to see what it is. You say it appeared to be an intercepted mail item. Why didn't you look to see?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I did look to see. When I went to the Brigadier, I went with it and then we - he said to - this is a "posstuk" I'd opened it by then, I looked in, I saw it and I didn't want to touch it, Mr Chairman, because once he said to me this is this and I saw this is an actual, the original object, I didn't want to touch it.

CHAIRPERSON: What was it? An envelope?

MR WILLIAMSON: An envelope with documentation with the envelope, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: What sort of documentation?

MR WILLIAMSON: The contents of the envelope.

CHAIRPERSON: So the envelope had been opened?

MR WILLIAMSON: That's correct.

CHAIRPERSON: And you say it was to be filled, you've just told us contents which will be removed which must be filled with an explosive device.

MR WILLIAMSON: The contents - I was asked could, would it be possible to make an I.E.D. to replace the contents of the envelope at which stage I then definitely didn't want to touch the envelope, Mr Chairman, because of the, mainly the possibility of fingerprints and evidence, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: So you looked, you saw there was an envelope, some documents which you had to go and discuss with your commanding officer but you didn't bother to see what they were before you went there?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman, I took the sealed envelope back to the Brigadier.

CHAIRPERSON: What sealed envelope?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman it was - when the envelope was sent to me it was stapled at the top, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: But you could look into it?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I couldn't, I would have to break it open to do that Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: There was a large official envelope which contained what appeared to be an intercepted mail item?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: So you could see that?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I couldn't, I couldn't until I went to the Brigadier and then I opened the envelope and we discussed the contents.

CHAIRPERSON: Well all this in your application appears that you saw all this before you went to the Brigadier?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well, I said the official envelope came with instructions to discuss, to the best of my recollection. I'm sorry if I give that impression but the, my recollection came after I went to discuss.

CHAIRPERSON: "The mail item was an A4 or a larger envelope with the logo of an international organisation thereon, addressed to Joe Slovo care of Ruth First or Joe Slovo and Ruth First at the university."

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct.

CHAIRPERSON: The postal item had a cancelled stamp.

MR WILLIAMSON: That's right and I saw ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: That's all you saw and then you go on to say "I took the envelope to Brigadier Goosen." It's quite clear isn't it Mr Williamson?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes Mr Chairman, no it is.

CHAIRPERSON: You looked at all this, you saw all this and then you took it to Brigadier Goosen?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I think ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Well that's what you've written?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well you know, unfortunately, in the time that this took place, I remember that I was "katvoet" to use the word to touch and look at this because I didn't and the only reason I can give, an absolute reason I can give, Mr Chairman, is I did not want to get my fingerprints on this item.

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman, maybe I can just make a point here? That is the reason why in cross-examination I tried to distinguish between an intercepted mail item and an official envelope because this whole story gets very intricate and very difficult with all the envelopes and with respect to you, I think that there may have here a misunderstanding in respect of what envelope was opened. I myself have difficulty in understanding it, so perhaps one should distinguish between the two, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman, may I appeal to my learned friend to keep out of this whilst I'm busy cross-examining and particularly when you, Mr Chairman, are asking questions?

CHAIRPERSON: Well I have no further questions on this point. Carry on Mr Bizos.

MR BIZOS: Thank you. I would have thought that it would have been obvious to you, Mr Williamson, that at the time that you were looking onto the envelope, you had not been given any information as to what purpose the Brigadier wanted you for. The question of exercising great care would only have come to your notice after you responded to the Brigadier's request to go and see him?

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Bizos, the problem is that the thing doesn't indicate that there were a request from the Brigadier. If you look at the application it says

"I received an envelope through the SAP Security Branch internal mail system and I was asked to discuss the contents with the Brigadier."

Not that the Brigadier had sent it to ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Yes well I'm indebted to you ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: But it seems that someone else - to take to the Brigadier which is what caused me to wander why he would not look at it before he takes it to his commander.

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I think, ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: I would suggest an additional reason, Mr Williamson ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, if I can just say the normal instruction as we've seen on top of some of these documents was "Major Williamson - discuss with me" signed by the Brigadier. That was how the instructions came.

MR BIZOS: Yes, but let me make the point that I want to make, Mr Williamson. Here it says, after you had said what you looked at and limited amount of looking you did and the fear that you had of contaminating it with anything, up to that stage, on your narrative on this page, you did not know what the Brigadier wanted to do with the - to discuss with you about this. For all you knew, he wanted to discuss the contents of the envelope, as the Judge has requested of you, why didn't you take the contents out and say well, let's see this document that the Brigadier wants to discuss with me?

MR WILLIAMSON: Very simply, Mr Chairman, as I've tried to explain that if this document has just been sent to me with a normal cover sheet saying "Major Williamson - discuss with me please" that was one thing. Many hundreds and hundreds of documents came to me like that including intercepted postal items but photocopies of those items. When an envelope was sent to you, whatever it contained and this was a closed envelope, there was something that had to be kept clandestine, it was a need to know operation otherwise it wouldn't have been in an envelope, Mr Chairman. So if you are somebody in that type of job, doing that type of job, the last thing I would have done is rip the envelope out, put my big hands inside and pull everything out, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: The big envelope would have been presumably ...[intervention]

ADV DE JAGER: Mr Bizos could I?

MR BIZOS: Sorry, I beg your pardon, you're on the side and I ...[intervention]

ADV DE JAGER: I would have expected a note from Goosen "come and see me".

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, that's right, written on the envelope.

ADV DE JAGER: But why on the envelope" Why didn't he keep the envelope with him, it was a clandestine operation, documents included, which he wouldn't like to send around. If he knew about what was in the envelope and had any idea what he wants to do with it, I would suspect him to keep it with him and pick up the phone and say "Williamson, come here, I want to discuss something with you."?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, that's possible Mr Chairman, but also what happens normally and routinely with everything that came across the persons desk, it was all just booked out to us and one of the standard ways of doing, if you were dealing with a file or something, everything was kept together and somebody was responsible for it and I don't - obviously that he could have done that if he wished to do it but it was completely normal the way that he sent it to me. This would have been a way that it was sent to me in the internal, it was just sent, it was sent with a clerk from, our clerks used to go walking up and down to the Brigadier's section, picking up everything that was there Mr Chairman and I think probably, well one way was as safe as the other way and also Mr Chairman, there's one other I think - certainly my offices were probably quite a lot more secure than the Brigadier's offices. The Brigadiers office had a lot of traffic through it, my office had no traffic through it, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: How far was your office from Brigadier, the Brigadier's office?

MR WILLIAMSON: It was one floor away, the Brigadier's office was the sixth floor and mine was fifth floor.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Now you know, I am going to suggest a possible reason for this involved account of yours, Mr Williamson and that is that you want to put distance between you and the Brigadier about discussions and the decisions to murder Ruth First?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, if this matter had taken place in a simpler way, if the Brigadier had called me and sat me down with a cup of tea and said "look do you think we can kill Ruth First?" da-da, da-da, da-da, I would say it, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: On your version, Mr Williamson, if the Brigadier was still alive, he would have been able to say "Well I didn't intend to kill Ruth First" because he never told you that it was intended for Ruth First. Is that correct?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And isn't this part and parcel of the "dekstorie" that the police were accustomed to putting out that you must be able to make a plausible denial if the trail led to you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Sorry, what is part of that, Mr Chairman? MR BIZOS: Well, you surely, a person so steeped wouldn't have failed to know that you were asked whenever you planted murders or other illegal acts to be ready with a plausible denial. Does that come as news to you?

MR WILLIAMSON: Ja but I don't think that - the Brigadier certainly didn't ask me to prepare a plausible denial.

MR BIZOS: No, no, no, what I'm asking you is that the reason why you are not telling us the full truth as to how the decision to kill Ruth First was made was because it is a story that you have invented so that if the Brigadier were still alive, he would have been able to say "But I never authorised the killing of Ruth First, because I never told Williamson that and I never opened the envelope and I didn't know" and this is why this big envelope is used and this is why you are saying that you only saw portion of it's contents?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, so I made a cover story to - in case the Brigadier was alive and would come and say that he didn't tell me something?

MR BIZOS: No, this an example of it. This is an example that you make up stories which will compartmentalise your crimes so that each one of you can make plausible denials in order to get out of it?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman. The compartmentalising of this operation and others was not of my making, Mr Chairman.

ADV DE JAGER: Do you know when Brigadier Goosen died?

MR WILLIAMSON: It was a long time ago, Mr Chairman, probably, maybe 1987, 1988.

MR BIZOS: Would - was there any intelligence available to you that anybody within the ANC or the Communist Party or his family ever wrote to Joe Slovo? Anybody?

MR WILLIAMSON: Was there any intelligence?

MR BIZOS: Anybody writing to Joe, to any known address with the name of Joe Slovo, addressed to Joe Slovo?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well I would assume somebody must have written to Joe Slovo, I don't know, I never wrote to him, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Didn't the intelligence, your intelligence tell you that anything addressed to Joe Slovo was pulled aside?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well I would imagine, maybe not everything but it would have a very good chance of being pulled aside, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. So addressing something to Joe Slovo would have, may have proved, or with Joe Slovo's name on it, may have proved most counterproductive?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well, that's precisely the point that I was very interested in if this was a communication to Slovo, exactly where it was going from and where it was going to and it's why I looked at the stamp, Mr Chairman. Because my interest was the communication method that perhaps might be being employed.

MR BIZOS: Now, what do you say, you as a person who takes responsibility for the death of Ruth First, was it addressed to her or wasn't it addressed to her?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I have to say that I do not know specifically who it was, it was addressed to the Slovos or a Slovo, Mr Chairman and it could have been Joe or it could have been Ruth.

MR BIZOS: Now if I were to tell you that there will be, if need be, evidence from Mr Pallo Jordan, Ms Sue Rapkin and Brigitte O'Lochlan who were there when it was opened, that it was addressed to Ruth First, would you be able to deny it?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, that's why I said in my application that it was addressed to Joe Slovo care of Ruth First or to Joe Slovo and Ruth First or to, and I've said it could be, I know it was, from what I was told it was on it's way to a Slovo, I don't know which Slovo, it could have been addressed to Ruth First. I did not look at the name Ruth First. If I had seen the name Ruth First I would have said it was addressed to Ruth First.

MR BIZOS: Are you able to deny that evidence?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, of course not, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Now would you please tell us who, if that evidence is correct, decided that it should be addressed to Ruth Slovo and that it was really a bomb for Ruth Slovo if it wasn't you?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I - sorry you'll have to run that by me again.

MR BIZOS: Who would have written the name Ruth First on the envelope that finished up killing Ruth First?

MR WILLIAMSON: The person who addressed it, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Who would have been the person who addressed it?

MR WILLIAMSON: I've absolutely no idea, probably somebody in Lesotho, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: But now who in Lesotho?

MR WILLIAMSON: The person who wrote the letter, Mr Chairman, or posted the letter or sent the letter.

MR BIZOS: No, no, no - oh you mean it was not, the envelope was not changed, the same envelope was sent down, is that what the assumption you're asking us to make?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, we were not asked to prepare a letter to send to Ruth First or to Joe Slovo. This was an intercepted item of communication between Lesotho and Maputo. As far as I knew it was an intercepted communication between Lesotho and Maputo and if it was going, if was addressed to Ruth First, still somebody reading Ruth First, could have called her Ruth Slovo and used the word Slovo. I don't know, Mr Chairman, perhaps there was some, this was part of an agreed communication channel between Lesotho and Maputo, I have absolutely no idea who addressed the envelope. If I had addressed the envelope I would have remembered the name and the address on the envelope.

MR BIZOS: I'm sorry, I became confused with the various versions of the various people and the number of envelopes. Do we have it from you that what exploded in Maputo and killed Ruth First was the opening of the envelope that came from Lesotho in which the contents had been substituted with an explosive? Is that the position?

MR WILLIAMSON: I can't say. What I can say is that I do not believe it would have exploded when the Lesotho envelope, the outer envelope was opened. I believe that it would have exploded when the inner envelope was opened.

MR BIZOS: Do you have a sense of shame, Mr Williamson, that in this heroic struggle that you took part in, you managed to kill two women and a child?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I don't think shame is an adequate word, Mr Chairman. I'm - Ruth First and Jeanette Schoon I accept were our revolutionary enemy. The killing of a child can never ever in any forum, anywhere be justified Mr Chairman and that includes the killing of a child of an ANC official or the killing of any South African child Mr Chairman. And I mean when I say a South African child I mean a child on our side during this war, Mr Chairman, which also happened.

MR BIZOS: Yes. Mr Williamson, isn't this convoluted story of your about the pen and gingerly holding up portion of the envelope really a stratagem on your part from admitting outright that you sent a bomb to a woman which made it worse when yet another woman was killed as a result of your efforts and that this whole non-looking for the name or not paying attention or not remembering, is an attempted moral justification on your part, that it was really intended for Mr Slovo and not for Ruth First?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, there is no way to make any moral justification. The only thing to do is to say what happened. If what happened was convoluted and it was convoluted, that is how it was in those days. We thought in a convoluted way, Mr Chairman. Everything was done with smoke and mirrors and deception and hiding, Mr Chairman, that is how it worked and I don't even know, I mean I could easily get asked to make an I.E.D. to fit in one envelope and it was then fitted in another envelope, Mr Chairman. This would be standard procedure, I could be completely lied to and told "make an I.E.D. it's going to go to X.Y.Z. and it actually went in completely a different direction, Mr Chairman. This is how things worked and what I said in my application, what I've said previously in my evidence is that I received the large envelope which contained another envelope together with the original, that was an original envelope and the original contents of that envelope. This envelope had been sent to me and was in such a way that obviously something unusual was going on, Mr Chairman and if I had actually manufactured the device without any reference to an original item coming from Lesotho, or to Maputo, on instructions to go to Ruth First of to Joe Slovo, I would have said so. Mr Chairman, what I'm saying here is what I recollect, some sixteen, seventeen years after the event, that happened. Up until the time that I had discussions with Gillian Slovo, I was of the absolute opinion that this device was on it's way to Joe Slovo. In fact I think it was, if my recollection is not wrong, it was in fact her that put into my mind that the possibility was that the South Africans wanted to kill Ruth First because of her involvement with the, or her opposition to co-operation between the South African Government and the Mozambican Government and that for us to become more involved with the Mozambican Government would have perhaps have been easier if she was not in the way.

MR BIZOS: Let me ask you this about this envelope.

MR WILLIAMSON: About?

MR BIZOS: This envelope, this intercepted postal item. Was it addressed in the ordinary way with the address in the middle?

MR WILLIAMSON: As I remember, Mr Chairman, it was standing - it ....[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Yes, you're thinking about the difficulties you're going to get in?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I'm thinking ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: There's nothing, there's nothing so difficult as to whether it was addressed in the middle of the envelope like everybody addresses envelopes. What's so difficult about that?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I was trying to remember which way it was actually upwards in the envelope actually, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes? Yes?

MR WILLIAMSON: It was either standing up or on it's side, Mr Chairman and it was probably addressed in the middle, yes.

MR BIZOS: Yes and you looked at the middle and if it was -if you looked at it in a way in which it was easy to read and not sideways, do you remember whether you had to strain your neck with it to read it or whether you just read it? Do you remember that?

MR WILLIAMSON: I remember I was holding the big envelope in one hand and I looked in and the main thing that I remember, Mr Chairman, was the logo and the Lesotho stamp.

MR BIZOS: Yes, in order to look at the logo which is usually on the left hand side and in order to look at the stamp which is usually on the right hand side, you had to look past the full name and address?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, because the contents were being blocked, the contents were blocking, the envelope had been opened, it had been taken to pieces. Everything was apart inside the big envelope, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: But you see the stamp which is normally on the top right hand corner?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, but that is why I could see the stamp, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: And you could read the rest of the address, the university and Maputo which would be under the names?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes, but that is ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Well why couldn't you see the names?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I couldn't see the name and that is when I moved the paper, I saw the address Maputo and Edward Mondlane, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: And that would be below the names?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes and that's how I'd moved the piece of paper.

CHAIRPERSON: You could see the names, you could see the address, you could see the stamp but somehow you never saw the names.

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman I have absolutely no recollection of what was the name on the envelope, my interest at the time was where it was going to, I mean the city it was going to and where it had come from.

CHAIRPERSON: You say that was more interesting than who it was going to? Please, Mr Williamson.

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman, I already - I assumed it was going to Slovo.

CHAIRPERSON: So you'd seen the name Slovo?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I had been told the name Slovo, Mr Chairman, so I wasn't looking for the name Slovo, I was looking where it was going from and where it was going to. I knew it was going to Slovo or I made that assumption.

CHAIRPERSON: Well how did you know it was going, who told you?

MR WILLIAMSON: The Brigadier, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Before you went to the Brigadier, you didn't know it was going to Slovo?

MR WILLIAMSON: No.

MR SIBANYONI: Mr Williamson, the fact that the Brigadier wrote a note that he wants to discuss the matter with you, will that not make you to be more thorough, in other words prepare yourself for the pending discussion with the Brigadier so as to not only to know where it came from but also to know everything about this envelope which the Brigadier wants to have a meeting with you?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, the fact that the Brigadier wanted to discuss something like that which was unusual and which was in a closed envelope, made me know that there was something that he wanted to tell me and that I had to go and discuss but not that there was anything that I had to prepare.

MR SIBANYONI: Did it ever come to you that maybe he was going to ask you some questions about it therefore you need to know?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman, if he'd wanted to ask me about the contents they would have sent the normal photocopy of the contents which was normal standard procedure so the fact that I'd been sent the original meant something different to me Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Just by the way and for the sake of rounding this off, Mr Chairman, I take it there was no intelligence that Mr Slovo was a part time student at the university or a part time lecturer or anything like that?

MR WILLIAMSON: Not to my knowledge, Mr Chairman, but ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Yes, I'm sure not.

MR WILLIAMSON: But Mr Slovo's wife was working at the university Mr Chairman and if Mr Slovo was using his wife as a communication channel that would not surprise me, Mr Chairman. In fact that would be very useful information.

MR BIZOS: Or you're not going to suggest as it was originally suggested by Mr Raven that Mr Slovo was using Ruth First as a bomb disposal unit?

MR WILLIAMSON: No I don't say that Mr Chairman, I say he was using her as a ....[intervention]

MR LEVINE: No Mr Chairman, there was never any such suggestion whatsoever.

MR WILLIAMSON: As a communication channel.

MR BIZOS: As a communication channel? Did you know, did you know that Ruth First was only known apparently as Mrs Slovo to the Security Police and I'm told possibly by her hairdresser but she was never in academic or personal or sisterly institutional organisations that would write to her, never as Mrs Slovo but always Ruth First for no other reason than her feminism by the way.

MR WILLIAMSON: No but Mr Chairman you know, that's the point that I've been trying to make is that it could have been addressed to Ruth First but that the Brigadier, when he talked to me and talked about her, because of the Security Police habit, would have referred to her as Slovo, so I agree with you, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Before you were of any assistance in relation to sending of any bomb, did you not consider it your duty to make sure that it was addressed to the correct person, to the target that had been approved of by the target committee?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I didn't send the bomb.

MR BIZOS: You helped to have it sent.

MR WILLIAMSON: I ordered it to be manufactured, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Knowing that it would be sent?

MR WILLIAMSON: Assuming that it would be sent, yes.

MR BIZOS: Assuming that it would be sent? Didn't you want to know that it reached the right person that was to be eliminated and that there should be no misunderstanding or mistakes before you made yourself party to making the murderous weapon?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, if I had been given that task I would have carried it out. I was not given that task.

MR BIZOS: So you brought into being a murderers weapon without knowing who it was going to?

MR WILLIAMSON: Ja well Fabriek Nasionale in Brussels or in Belgium also make weapons everyday and they don't know where they're going, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: I see, so you saw yourself in this situation as a worker on a assembly line in a munitions factory, is that how you saw yourself?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, not exactly Mr Chairman, I ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Well then why do you tell us about what the Belgian worker does.

MR WILLIAMSON: Because Mr Chairman, you were saying that because I had or ordered a weapon to be manufactured, it was then my responsibility to make sure that that weapon was used in the right way and to be used against the right target. That is not the instruction I was given, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: If I were to put to you that what you referred to as a unit was nothing more than a branch of the ANC in Maputo, what would you say?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Mr Chairman, I'd have to get a definition between a unit and a branch, I would have thought a branch was senior to a unit, but anyway.

MR BIZOS: No, what I am saying is that outside the country, what would have been called a branch in South Africa under the structures of the ANC was called the unit outside, small unit, a branch?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes.

MR BIZOS: And that is all she was. She was not involved in M.K. are you able to deny that?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I've no specific information, I said that I was not gathering information on her.

MR BIZOS: So you can't deny the proposition that she was not an M.K.?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman, I can't. I said that she was a member of the central committee of the South African Communist Party.

MR BIZOS: Up to when?

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't know Mr Chairman and was a member of the, of a unit or branch, a unit I think is the word I used of the ANC in Maputo.

MR BIZOS: Yes, until was she in the central committee of the Communist Party?

MR WILLIAMSON: I've no idea, Mr Chairman. Probably, I've no idea.

MR BIZOS: When was the Moragora Conference?

MR WILLIAMSON: In 1969.

MR BIZOS: Was she there?

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't know Mr Chairman. In 1969 I was in the Police College.

MR BIZOS: You said that she was - did you say that she was a member of the central committee of the Communist Party?

MR WILLIAMSON: I said I believed so, Mr Chairman, at one stage I'm sure she was.

MR BIZOS: How long before you decided that she should be killed?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I never decided that she should be killed.

MR BIZOS: Well why are you applying for amnesty?

MR WILLIAMSON: Because of my participation in an operation that resulted in her being killed.

MR BIZOS: Alright, put it a long way if you like. How long before your participation in her killing do you say she was a member of the central committee of the Communist Party?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I've said many, many times, I have absolutely no idea. She was not the focus of intelligence gathering of my section.

MR BIZOS: And in relation to her academic activity, would that have made her a possible target?

MR WILLIAMSON: I have no idea, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: If I were to put to you that she ceased being a member of the central committee of the Communist Party in 1964 would you be able to deny it?

MR WILLIAMSON: I don't know, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: '64 Mr Chairman.

And in relation to your differences - I'm sorry, in relation to what you say were differences between her and what Mr Coetzee told us, do you know that her public stands and her complaints against the Communist Party and the African National Congress and Umkhonto weSizwe was primarily because it did not give a proper place to the participation of women and that was her real complaint against them. Would you be able to deny that?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Now if these facts were known to you, would you still have considered her a legitimate target for elimination in 1982?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, I never sat down in a committee or one and one and discussed and debated whether Ruth First was a suitable target, Mr Chairman. As far as I know in my involvement in intelligence at that time, she was active in Maputo, she was involved in the Communist Party and she was involved not only in the Communist Party but in the unit of the ANC and at that time as we went into great detail, Mr Chairman, the 1981, 1982, the involvement in the ANC, the involvement by the ANC in Maputo was intense and the instruction and the strategy by the Security Forces at that time was to attempt to drive the ANC and the Communist Party out of Mozambique and specifically out of Maputo and this was more or less achieved after the two Matola Raids and then later on with the success of the Komati Accord.

MR BIZOS: You knew that there was a Stratcom on her, to use your shorthand and that is that Stratcom had been putting out that Ruth First was a dissident?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes I believe so, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: And of course ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: I think they were saying she was a Trotskyite.

MR BIZOS: Yes, well those who knew her would hardly have described her as that but Stratcom's business was to just take a grain of truth and amplify it and distort it for it's own purposes irrespective of what the facts were?

MR WILLIAMSON: Well Stratcom was part of psychological warfare, Mr Chairman, and obviously they would take anything they could and try and create the impression that they wished to try and create.

MR BIZOS: Please respond to my question and not to your euphemism of psychological warfare. That they would take a grain of truth, that they would distort it and abuse it in order to sow dissension in their enemy camp. Was that what Stratcom was doing?

MR WILLIAMSON: That's not only what Stratcom was doing, Mr Chairman, it was not necessary. Stratcom wasn't something that only worked if you could take a grain of truth and distort it etc. etc. Stratcom: Strategic Communication was a part of psychological warfare and one of the methods of operating through Stratcom, would be to take as you said, a grain of truth etc. etc.

MR BIZOS: Yes.

MR WILLIAMSON: But I can't just give a blanket yes to the answer.

MR BIZOS: I see. It was doing what I had suggested to you, they did in relations to matters such as sowing dissension among people in the same organisation on the same movement?

MR WILLIAMSON: That is correct, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Yes. I'm going to put to you that the Trotskyite and ...[indistinct] and other things were Stratcom fairy tales and not based on fact. But there were differences, the difference that I have put to you. You're not in a position to deny it?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: If there were these differences between her and the movement, she could be hardly be sufficiently important to be eliminated?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I don't believe that follows, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Well I would suggest to you ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: And I don't believe that a difference on the role of women would have in any way - well maybe if I'm being told that this meant that she was no longer committed to the ANC's aims and objectives but she wasn't ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Nobody suggested that.

MR WILLIAMSON: Then she, you know ... [intervention]

MR BIZOS: She was a member of a unit?

MR WILLIAMSON: Yes she was a member of a unit which ...[intervention]

MR BIZOS: Do you say that members of a unit were legitimate targets?

MR WILLIAMSON: Members of a unit in Maputo in 1981/1982, Mr Chairman, I believe would fall into the category of legitimate target, yes.,

MR BIZOS: Now about this, the once Intelligence Section not knowing what the other Intelligence Section was doing, or that somebody like a Brigadier on his own or with an unknown person, decided to eliminate Ruth First - I want to put a hypothetical question to you. Whilst Brigadier Goosen was busy making a bomb to kill her, how did he not know that another Intelligence Unit was arranging or had got information or broke codes or something like that, that Mr Slovo was going to meet Mrs Slovo at a holiday resort somewhere in Mozambique for a weekend and that they were ready to spring in order to kill Joe Slovo, or both of them, if there was not liaison between the various services and the people there and the one or other or both of the Sanhedrins did not play an important role together with the target identification committee, how could these mistakes have been avoided?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I'm sorry Mr Chairman, that, you'll have to run that by me again.

MR LEVINE: Mr Chairman, Mr Bizos prefaced his remarks by saying "let me put a hypothetical question to you" and this is the follow through of his hypothesis. I don't know how the witness can be asked to answer hypothetical questions put in this manner.

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman, let me make the question clear. Hypothetical questions can under circumstances be put in order to argue the probabilities at the end of it as to whether the witness is telling the truth or not, Mr Chairman.

The hypothesis that I am putting to you that if your evidence is true that there was no co-ordination ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: Sorry, I don't remember saying that at all, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: What?

MR WILLIAMSON: That there was no co-ordination.

MR BIZOS: Yes, you say that you don't know what other intelligence, what other intelligence did and you did not know as the Chief of Intelligence what the target committee did. What I am putting to you ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: No, Mr Chairman, I'm sorry, I've never said such a thing, in fact I've gone out of my way to try and say that there was co-ordination.

MR BIZOS: And that nobody would be killed without the target committee know about it?

MR WILLIAMSON: Not that nobody would be killed without a target identification committee knowing about it, I have no knowledge that a target identification committee approved the operation on Ruth First. I could well have happened, Mr Chairman, but I was not there.

CHAIRPERSON: As I understand it, you went to the target identification committee, you wanted their assistance with respect to the target?

MR WILLIAMSON: No, I was ...[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: Not you, I mean other - they were not a governing body which determined targets?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, there was no such thing that I was a member of, I mean I was called on occasion ad hoc to give my input to a target selection process and later a target identification committee, a formal one, did become but that was after this time, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: Let me put it on a much simpler way in order to meet your attorney's objection. Was it possible that whilst you were assisted in the preparation of a device to kill Ruth First, that another group in the Security Police had information and was about to kill both Mr Slovo and Mrs Slovo or Ruth First when they were together for a weekend in Mozambique?

MR WILLIAMSON: Hypothetically, of course, that's possible, Mr Chairman.

MR BIZOS: This is why I have put to you ...[intervention]

MR WILLIAMSON: It would surprise me but I must say hypothetically it's possible.

MR BIZOS: Yes, this is why I suggest to you that the story that you and others give of a compartmentalised little participation without discussion as to when, how and why is so highly improbable that it is not true?

MR WILLIAMSON: No Mr Chairman, I can't agree. It just does not accord with the practices of the time. The suggestion that at every level from the General right down to the foot soldier, that everybody was involved in co-ordinating the planning and everybody knew the operations that were going on, it's just not so, Mr Chairman. There could have been co-ordination and planning.

MR BIZOS: In relation to the suggestions in various form coming forth that two envelopes would have to be opened by Ruth First, do you consider that a probable proposition?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, you know, I'm not the expert. You can have a long discussion with the expert but there would as far as I am concerned, she would not only have to open both envelopes but she would have had to as far as it has been explained to me, actually remove the contents or start to remove the contents.

MR BIZOS: Now let's deal with the two envelopes. Don't you think that if she opened one envelope and she saw another envelope in it, her suspicions may have been aroused?

MR WILLIAMSON: Mr Chairman, hypothetically it's possible.

Obviously they weren't.

MR BIZOS: Mr Chairman, may I with respect, even though there are a few minutes left, for personal and other reasons ask you to adjourn at this stage?

CHAIRPERSON: Could we at this time draw the applicant's attention to Mr Raven's application where he describes what he prepared and says if the envelope was opened from either end and the contents removed, the circuit would be closed and the detonation would take place? It's at page 51. There's no suggestion in Mr Raven's version that there were two envelopes.

MR BIZOS: Thank you, Mr Chairman. May we take the adjournment?

CHAIRPERSON: You want to take the adjournment?

MR BIZOS: Please.

CHAIRPERSON: Till when?

MR BIZOS: 9 o'clock tomorrow morning.

CHAIRPERSON: ...[inaudible]

MR BIZOS: No, earlier would be difficult, later maybe.

Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Very well, we'll now adjourn till 9 o'clock tomorrow morning.

COMMITTEE ADJOURNS