QUOTATIONS RELATING TO MILITARY INTELLIGENCE DIVISION

"We learned that this lobbying campaign was directed by Americans working for the military intelligence directorate of the SADF. The South Africans (civil and military, official and corporate) never had a problem finding capable lobbyists. One of the top South African lobbyists (earning a reported six-figure fee) was Stuart Spencer, one of Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign managers! Bill Casey, another campaign manager, had replaced John Sears, another South Africa lobbyist."

Chester A . Crocker

Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs

"While National Intelligence did not possess the clout of the SADF's military intelligence directorate on regional military issues, it offered a distinct viewpoint on both regional and global issues (such as Soviet and Cuban intentions):"

Chester A . Crocker

Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs

"I don't think he (Pik Botha) was on the American pay roll, but he was a terrible attention seeker and completely untrustworty"

Lt Gen H. deV. du Toit SSA, SM (Former CSI)

The following all from Gen George Meiring

Former Chief of the SADF and SANDF

"Our communications interception system was the best in the world at the time"

"Over 90 per cent of the intelligence we operated on during the war came from interceptions"

"Electronic warfare is an exact but tiring science"

"While the South Africans were listening, so were the Cubans and Angolans. There is no doubt they intercepted us, but they were not as good as we were because our equipment at the time was much more sophisticated. The Cubans and Angolans were very good at aerial photography and could respond very quickly. In that area they had better equipment than us, as they had in-flight photo interpretation capabilities. We had to bring our material back to base for interpretation. We were also worried about satellite photography"

"In Pretoria , at Intelligence Headquarters, there was a division called Special Tasks. Their aim in life was to support UNITA and Renamo"

"I hold Savimbi in very high esteem, but he was not very well accepted by some people. General Geldenhuys did not like him at all. The two of them did not get on at all. As a politician Savimbi is better than anyone I ever came across, but he is not very clever militarily. He was being led by the nose by his staff officers because of the African curse - you don't tell your boss things you think are bad for him. As a result we had to tell him what was going on"

"I don't like Pik Botha at all. I think he's a political entrepreneur. Just look at him now in the ANC camp. He works for nobody other than Pik Botha"

The CCB, per se, did a very good job"

"If you remember correctly we never actually fought the ANC. We as the military never really fought with them. There was the odd occasion where we bombed a place in Maputo and a base near Lusaka, but we never fought them in battle. They were hit and run , they came and placed mines and they were really terrorists at the time in that they instigated terror amongst the black population, more than anything else, and planted the odd mine and so on. So we actually assisted the police in many cases in maintaining law and order, more than anything else. We had good intelligence situation about them, but there was no occasion like when we fought SWAPO. It wasn't the same thing as meeting SWAPO."

"After the inauguration I was asked to sit at the table of the President. I don't know why I was selected. FW de Klerk also sat at the main table - he said to me while watching the fly - past and other proceedings:

'We really needn't have given in so easily' - his words. I said to him:

But you never used your strong base to negotiate from, you never used the military as a base of strength, which you had available to you, you never wanted to use it. He just stopped (speaking) and we didn't speak after that any more"

All the above from Gen George Meiring

Former Chief of the SADF and SANDF

"There is absolutely no doubt we won the military war. We never lost a major battle. Our victory in Angola had a direct bearing on the collapse of the Soviet Union. The USSR collapsed in 1989. There is no doubt economic attrition had something to do with that, but militarily they lost on three major fronts. One was the Middle East, where Israel played an important part. The other was Afghanistan, and the third was Southern Africa, where we played the major role. Those three military theatres actually caused the downfall of the USSR"

The above by Gen J. J. Geldenhuys SSA, SD, SM Former Chief of the SADF

"A guy in Military Intelligence who was an SSO, a hell of a good intelligence officer, gave a briefing to South African military attachés who were back in the country for a short conference. He briefed them on what was going to be the outcome of elections in Namibia and the route Namibia was going to go. We (Military Intelligence) cleared the briefing around an intelligence conference table and it refelected our evaluation. His words were exactly what we wrote in that briefing. The words were:

'There is nothing South Africa can do to avoid SWAPO winning the elections in Namibia'.

Only a fool at the time could differ from that."

"De Klerk's wife once told me how Mandela, just before the elections, would at every meeting he had with De Klerk, present accusations about MI's involvement in a third force, about third force activities inside the country and that the brains of the third force were inside MI. This was all part and parcel of the building to what made De Klerk act the way he did. His wife after their divorce, she came to the Die Werf (the restaurant Gen Thirion owns and runs) - explained to me how he was hammered by Mandela. De Klerk himself didn't trust the security forces all-out. So in a sense he started believing Mandela. Mandela wasn't producing any details that could be investigated, but De Klerk came to the point where he decided it was no use us investigating these allegations because we were masters at wiping out and leaving no tracks. He said so in newspapers."

The above from Major General Chris Thirion former MID member and Deputy CSI

"On certain projects, like the Freetown operation, close operational links existed between NIS and the SADF. Dr Opperman and the SADF Chief, General Kat Liebenberg. Military Intelligence established a covert base in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, which is on the island of Bioko (formerly Fernando Po) in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Cameroon."

Certain southern African statestradionally opposed to the white South African government and aknowledged as staunch supporters of the ANC, still co-operated with it through intelligence channels."

"Through Neil Barnard and Mike Kuhn, Directorate K became a mirror image of the National Intelligence Service and the private intelligence service of President PW Botha and his inner circle. An example was the surveillance ordered and executed on Minister of Foreign Affairs Pik Botha. Despite what might have been said to the contrary, there was no love lost between the two Bothas. Pik's heavy drinking habits, the perception that he behaved badly around women and his loyalty or lack of loyalty of PW's leadership, became suspect. Directorate K was ordered to monitor his activities. The bugging of his telephones was conducted by K22 from its Midrand listening post. All the minister's telephone conversations were recorded, transcribed and passed to Mike Kuhn. There seems little doubt that the end product ended up with President PW Botha."

"Directorate K had a military helicopter at its disposal and one of its officers was an ex - SAAF chopper pilot."

"In an amazing twist, the operator who acted as Directorate K's pilot turned up in Botswana and worked as Price Charles' pilot during his private visit.

The Botswana Intelligence Service, to say nothing of Britain's MI16, must have slipped up badly during their screening process."

"Continued military co-operation with Israel secured South Africa's nuclear capability which led to the testing of a device in the Indian Ocean in the early 80s - vehemently denied at the time."

"There was a fairly widespread suspicion amongst intelligence and military personnel that Pik Botha might have had links with the ANC and could not be trusted. Perhaps that belief was vindicated when he later became a member of that organization"

All the above by Riaan Labuschagne an undercover field officer in the National Intelligence Service.

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