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Subject: S. African Military Engaged In Dirty Tricks, Panel Says; Operation Aimed at
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 04:36:11 EST
Message-ID: <47.1992Nov17.043611@AmeriCast.com>

S. African Military Engaged In Dirty Tricks, Panel Says; Opera-
tion Aimed at Compromising ANC<By Paul Taylor<Washington Post
Foreign Service= JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 16 - The South African De-
fense Force hired a convicted murderer last year to lead a covert
operation aimed at compromising members of the military wing of
the African National Congress by using prostitutes, drug dealers
and homosexuals, a government-appointed investigative panel said
today.

The dirty tricks campaign operated in 1991 from May through De-
cember, the panel said, more than a year after President Frederik
W. de Klerk made a historic move by lifting a ban on the ANC -
the nation's largest anti-apartheid organization - and joining it
in planning negotiations on a new nonracial constitution.

The disclosure, which comes less than a week after revelations in
court of a separate anti-ANC disinformation campaign launched
last April by the army, has cast serious aspersions on de Klerk's
repeated assertions that the military does not engage in partisan
politics. The ANC is expected to be the government's chief rival
when South Africa holds its first democratic election.

De Klerk was out of the country today and had no immediate reac-
tion to the latest disclosure by the Goldstone Commission, which
de Klerk appointed a year ago to investigate political violence.
Foreign Minister Roelof Botha, who is acting president in de
Klerk's absence, said only that the government would look into
the allegation with "utmost urgency." The ANC tonight called on
the government to immediately make public all covert military
operations. "It is clear that, despite protestations to the con-
trary from the most senior levels of government, the dirty war
waged against the ANC from within the state and security ap-
paratus continues unabated," an ANC statement said.

At a press conference today, the commission's chairman, Justice
Richard Goldstone, said his investigators had uncovered documents
showing that in May 1991, the South African Defense Force's Mili-
tary Intelligence Unit hired Ferdi Barnard, a former drug squad
policeman who served four years in jail on a murder and theft
conviction, to conduct a campaign to link members of the ANC's
military wing to criminal activity.  Goldstone said that Barnard
devised a plan calling for ANC military members to be "criminally
compromised" though the use of prostitutes, homosexuals and drug
dealers.

The panel's findings did not state whether any members of the ANC
military wing were compromised. They did note, however, that the
dirty tricks team had access to police department computer
records, immigration files, licensing authorities, voter informa-
tion rolls, credit bureaus, revenue office files and an indepen-
dent group of telephone bugging experts. The team also sent a
covert agent to help install the computers at the ANC's headquar-
ters, the panel reported.

Barnard was dismissed by Military Intelligence in December 1991
following a story in an Afrikaans-language newspaper, Beeld, on
some of his activities. At the time, the defense force denied
Barnard had been in its employ.

Goldstone today called that denial a lie, but said he did not be-
lieve that his commission's findings added up to evidence that a
"third force" is operating in South Africa, which the ANC main-
tains. "Third force" is used here to refer to an organized effort
within the military and police apparatus to sabotage the process
of constitutional change.

De Klerk consistently has denied the existence of a third force,
and did so again today in an interview in England with the BBC
that aired before Goldstone's press conference. "We have nothing
to hide," he said. "There is no third force. There is no sinister
cabal within the security forces."<02:37 11-17C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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