Mandela CBW Briefing Document (Top Secret)

22 April 2004

From: "Stephen P. Dresch" <sdresch@chartermi.net>
Subject: Mandela CBW Briefing Document (Top Secret)
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 00:33:59 -0400

Your readers may find the attached of interest: "Briefing to President Mandela on the Defensive Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme of the SADF and the RSA's Position WRT the CWC and BWC," Lieutenant General D.P. Knobel, Republic of South Africa Surgeon General (Marked "Top Secret") (15 pp., 4.7MB) This document, I understand, remains classified. I have complete confidence and implicit trust in the person who provided the document to me.

As I had hypothesized independently, the declaration of paragraph 34 is, I am assured, false. Also, the "Military Counter-Intelligence" officer cited in that paragraph stated to my source that he was in no position to certify the destruction of these materials; his only role was to oversee the placement of sealed barrels on an aircraft and the subsequent dumping of these barrels into the South Atlantic, and he had no idea what was in the barrels or if there were CBW materials which were not included in the barrels.

My source also tells me that the biological materials inventory assembled by Project Coast includes (present tense, not past) over 80 strains of anthrax, of which 30 are "virulent," 12 "very active" and 3 "deadly WMD," the latter of which include the Ames strain. As has been previously reported (first by the Mail & Guardian, later by the Washington Post), Barbara Martinez, FBI WMD chief, was offered the opportunity to purchase the inventory (for $5 million and a few Green Cards) but declined. The materials have not been recovered by the SA government.

So much for the Powell, Bush et al. hailing before the UN (in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq) of SA as a "model for the elimination of WMD".

SPD

Stephen P. Dresch, Ph.D. Forensic Intelligence International, LLC
318 Cooper Ave., Hancock, MI 49930; 151 Moore St. SE, Crawfordville, GA 30631
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From: Stephen P. Dresch
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 3:27 PM
Subject: SA Ames-strain anthrax

I meant to mention that I had suspected for some time that SA (Basson's Project Coast) had the Ames strain of anthrax. PC could have gotten it via several routes:

(1) Larry Ford, M.D. -- Ford turned over a satchel of biomaterials in the late '80s in Los Angeles to SA trade attache Gideon Bouwer. Although tipped off, the FBI permitted Bouwer to fly out of LA with the satchel. Also, of course, Ford made a number of trips to SA, on any one of which he may have carried the sample. Ford's sample would have come from the US defense establishment (probably not the CIA, according to one of my sources [who has long-standing and extremely close Agency connections], although Irvine Det. Lt. Vic Ray reports that the FBI established that Ford had CIA connections).

(2) USAMRIID -- Basson, in his trial testimony, claimed to have visited Ft. Detrick. Also, another Project Coast principal has claimed to have had contacts in US bioweapons circles, specifically, the following, at least one of which was of long-standing:

- Michael A. Balady, Ph.D., Defense Threat Reduction Agency, DOD, Ft. Belvoir, VA (http://www.asmbiodefense.org/progra.asp),
- Dr. Anna Johnson-Winegar, Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Chemical and Biological Defense (http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/winegar_bio.html), and
- a "Dr. Day" (whom I have not been able to otherwise identify).

(3) Porton Down -- Basson, again in his trial testimony, claimed to have visited PD and to have inside contacts there (at a time when David Kelly was head of microbiology).

My purely "speculative" hunch: The US letters' anthrax came from SA, but Steven Hatfill was the fall guy, not the perpetrator. Although SA-connected (giving the perpetrators the knowledge that he was an obvious fall guy), he would be viewed as having obtained the material at USAMRIID. The motive: Enhance the value of the Project Coast legacy stocks of anthrax and anthrax antitoxins which Daan Goosen (director of Project Coast's Roodeplaat Research Laboratory) tried to sell to Barbara Martinez (FBI WMD chief). However, there are other possibilities (e.g., the Islamist faction in the ANC).

If Martinez had gotten the SA stash, I wager that the anthrax-letters case would have been solved (via genetic fingerprints); knowing the answer in advance, she couldn't afford to take possession.

SPD