Boss “set up fake robbery to frame anti-apartheid chief'

Press, 2 July 1979, Page 9

Boss “set up fake robbery to frame anti-apartheid chief'

NZPA-ReuterJohannesburg A South African journalist who has said that he was a top-level spy in the South African Bureau for State Security, Boss, has said that Boss initiated attempts to discredit the leader of the British Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe, and the ante-apartheid compaigner, Peter Hain.

The journalist, Gordon Winter, said in an interview with London Weekend Television that he had been an agent for Boss for the last 16 years. The interview was splashed across early editions of Saturdav’s “Rant Daily Mail,” the liberal paper which has been in the forefront in exposing the misuse of millions of dollars in secret deals by South Africa’s now-dis-banded Information Department. Winter was a leading journalist on the “Citizen” newspaper, itself secretly fun ed by tha Information Department.

The ‘ Daily Mail” said that Mr Winter had told the television interviewer he was recruited by the Boss chief, General van den Bergh, who resigned in disgrace last year, in

1963 and that his "handler” was a General Koos Kemp. Winter was reported by the "Daily Mail” as saying on television that Boss had been involved in the Jeremy Thorpe affair and that he had been in contact with Norman Scott, who alleged he ha 1 carried on a homosexual relationship with the former Liberal leader. Mr Thorpe was recently cleared of conspiring to murder Mr Scott. Winter also said that Boss was behind the London bank robbery in 1975 for which the anti-apar-theid campaigner, Peter Hain, was prosecuted but later cleared. Mr Winter sa<d Boss had employed a “double” of Mr Hain to carry out the robbery.

The journalist also said that Keith Wallace, a newspaper reporter who worked in Johannesburg before moving to London was murdered by Boss because he knew too much.

"He was an agent who knew too much,” Winter said. “He was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and was beginning to talk.” Winter said in the television interview that he had tried to exploit allegations involving Jeremy Thorpe to influence the

outcome of the 1974 British elections. The intention was to keep the Conservative Party in power as the South African Government would prefer them to Labour. London Week-end Television said the interview was filmed at Mr Winter’s European hi eout, but did not identify the location.

Winter said he had originally gone to live in South- Africa in 1960, but had got into trouble with the authorities when a

gun belonging to him *■* useu to commit a murder.

He had been ceported, but using this to give himself respectability among Liberals and Leftwingers in Britain, Mr Winter said he had been “spying at very top level in Britain." Winter said he had returned to South Africa in 1974 but fled recently with his wife and son after a change of heart after the torture of a daughter of his son's black nanny. He had left with tapes and documents concerning Boss operations and the agency was after him. The former Boss chief. General Hendrik van den Bergh, has dismissed Winter’s claim* a* “absolute nonsense.” The “Rand Daily Mail” sai General van den Bergh had confirmed that Mr Winter had been a se-curity-police informer. “He was an informer but nothing more than that,” the former Boss chief said. “As to his claims about South Africa b- ing involved In the Jeremy Thorpe affair, the Peter Hain bank robbery incident, and the death of the former South African journalist, Mr Keith Wallace, these claims were absolute nonsense.”