S African scientist hawks apartheid regime’s bioweapons

Daan Goosen’s calling card to the FBI was a vial of bacteria he had freeze-dried and hidden inside a toothpaste tube for secret passage...

Daan Goosen’s calling card to the FBI was a vial of bacteria he had freeze-dried and hidden inside a toothpaste tube for secret passage to the US. From among hundreds of flasks in his Pretoria lab, the South African scientist picked a man-made strain sure to impress: a microbial Frankenstein that fused genes of an intestinal bug with DNA from the pathogen that causes the deadly illness gas gangrene. ‘‘This will show the Americans what we are capable of,’’ Goosen said at the time.

On May 6, 2002, Goosen slipped the parcel to a retired CIA officer who couriered the microbes 8,000 miles for a drop-off with the FBI. If US officials liked what they saw, Goosen said he was prepared to offer much more: An entire collection of pathogens developed by a secret South African bioweapons research programme Goosen once headed. Goosen’s offer to FBI promised scores of additional vials containing the bacteria that cause anthrax, plague, salmonella and botulism, as well as antidotes for many of the diseases.

Several strains, like the bacterial hybrid in the toothpaste tube, had been genetically altered, a technique used by weapons scientists to make diseases harder to detect and defeat.

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All were to be delivered to the US government for safekeeping and to help strengthen US defences against future terrorism attacks. US officials considered the offer but balked at the asking price — $5 million and immigration permits for Goosen and up to 19 associates and family members to come to the United States.

The deal collapsed in confusion after FBI agents turned the matter over to South African authorities, who were never able to charge him. Participants in the failed deal differ on what happened and why.

But they agree that the bacterial strains remain in private hands in South Africa, where they have continued to attract attention from individuals interested in acquiring them. South Africa, which built nuclear, chemical and biological arsenals under apartheid, renounced its weapons in 1993, and sought to destroy all traces of them, including instruction manuals and bacterial seed stocks.

‘‘The weapons programmes were ostensibly terminated, yet clearly they weren’t able to destroy everything,’’ said Jeffrey Bale of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, which is carrying out a study of South Africa’s weapons programmes.

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To disarmament experts, the case is especially troubling because of the kinds of terrorist-ready weapons produced by Project Coast, a top-secret biological and chemical programme created by South Africa’s White-minority government, which came to light in the late 1990s. Unlike US and Soviet programmes that amassed huge stockpiles of bombs and missiles for biological warfare, Project Coast specialised in the tools of terrorism and assassination — including ‘‘stealth’’ weapons that could kill or incapacitate without leaving a trace.

The programme’s military commanders also researched anti-fertility drugs that could be applied in black neighbourhoods, and explored — but never produced — biological weapons that the two men who brought Goosen to the FBI’s attention knew little of germ warfare but were old hands in the shadowy world of arms trading and secret deals. (LATWP)

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