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‘The doctored bodies are in the back’

On Sunday 5 March 1978, Sergeant Chris Pessarra was stationed in his dispatchers’ tent alongside the airstrip at Buffalo Range.1 It had drizzled in the early morning, but by 2:00 pm the temperature under an almost totally overcast, thunderheaded sky had soared to over 30oC and had burned most of the remaining moisture off the runway.2 At the end of the runway, two twin-prop Dakotas sat immobile, there having been no call-outs that day for parachute fire-force squads from the Rhodesian Light Infantry or Rhodesian African Rifles.

Two pilots, a civilian Air Rhodesia pilot completing his six weeks’ flying for the Air Force reserves as a para fire-force pilot and reporting to Pessarra, and Carlos da Silveira, a Portuguese pilot serving in the Rhodesian Air Force, were trying to cool their heels in the 60% humidity along with their co-pilots.3

Da Silveira, with his big black moustache and curly locks, was a renowned Dakota pilot. Once, on a mission to Zaka, Mozambique, to recover parachutists after a fire-force drop, heavy rains had created ‘a small lake’ in a large dip in the middle of the runway. According to an eyewitness account from Kevin Mulligan, Da Silveira faced a tough decision. If he waited for the water to drain away, he risked a possible mortar attack on the aircraft as an estimated 50 guerrillas were active in the area. In the end, he decided to risk taking off through the water.

‘As Carlos would only take an empty Dak, we all lined up to watch the take-off,’ Mulligan recalls. ‘He brought those Pratt and Whitneys up to full throttle, then stomped off the brakes and let her roll. She picked up speed, rolling downhill at a good lick until she hit the water. The aircraft disappeared in a huge burst of spray, staggered out of the other end like a wet dog, and then painfully slowly picked up speed again. The trees at the far end of the runway seemed very close as he finally pulled her up and swept over the top. Carlos dipped his wings to huge cheers from the stunned onlookers!’4

Back at Buffalo Range, Pessarra’s reverie was interrupted by the arrival at his tent of his old Legionnaire mate, Jean-Michel Desblé, who told him that the Scouts needed ‘five parachutes’.

‘Obviously, Jean and I have known each other a long time. I could tell by his demeanour that something was not correct,’ Pessarra recalled. ‘I simply asked him, “Jean, where’s the sit-rep [situation report] requirements for the five parachutes from [Air Force HQ at] New Sarum?” … and he said, “There’s none; just give them to us.” Well, obviously, this is … when the war was extremely heavy and during the day, the PJIs [parachute jump instructors] would put out the para fire-forces, the RLI or the RAR … Then, if there were ops going in – usually the SAS operated out of Buffalo Range and Recce operated at Buffalo Range where they would have their ops in the evening – they would fly another Dak down from New Sarum to take care of them, or the Dak used during the fire-force would take care of them if they had a relief pilot crew … So obviously this all goes through the FAF [operations] room, the base commander there, and I hadn’t received anything.’

This was critical, as PJIs had the responsibility for all parachute-related equipment – and the safety of the parachutists until the point at which they dropped out of the aircraft.

Pessarra continued: ‘So Jean says, “No, it’s supposed to be off the books.” Well, we had strict orders at that time … and obviously I wasn’t about to turn over five parachutes for them to disappear, especially to the Scouts, and get my ass in the crack. I knew Jean, and I knew obviously something was up. I told Jean I wouldn’t do it.’

About an hour later, at around 3:00 pm, Desblé showed up again, this time accompanied by base commander Major Bert Sachse. Pessarra also gave him short shrift: ‘Bert Sachse tried to browbeat me into releasing five parachutes and I very diplomatically told him to fuck off. He and I had words and he fucked off.’

Speaking to this author 32 years later, Sachse clearly had fond memories of Desblé, calling him ‘a specialist reconnaissance-type guy … one man by himself getting us information’, but remembered Da Silveira only as ‘a Portuguese pilot that flew for … 3 Squadron’. He claimed he could not recall Pessarra at all.5 Da Silveira had allegedly been approached by Sachse and Desblé earlier in the afternoon and, concerned with the irregularity of the demand for the chutes, went to speak to Pessarra who refused to hand over the parachutes without authorisation from New Sarum. ‘My main [para fire-force] pilot … came to me … and I said, “Look, what’s going on?” and he said, “Something’s going on, they’re not talking about it, they want five parachutes but they don’t want the PJI on board …”’

‘A lot of people go under very strange circumstances’

At about 4:40 pm, Pessarra saw two Land Rovers pull up near the Dakota at the far end of the airfield. About an hour later, he wandered down to take a closer look. ‘There was a covered Land Rover that had two Scouts in the front seat … they were commercial, full-covered Land Rovers … [in the other] there’s a Scout driver. And I saw Desblé walk over and in the front seat I recog­nised one of the American intelligence officers who was unofficial in Rhodesia at this time, his name is Davis; he was not well-known but he was well-known in the trade as the person who worked for the Christians [CIA] there, getting all the information, but he operated between Rhodesia, Zambia and South Africa. I knew – he had been pointed out to me by an American intelligence officer – that I was supposed to stay away from him; they did not want him to know of my presence, but I was supposed to be aware of his, which made me suspicious.

‘In the back right-hand seat,’ he claimed, ‘was [SADF medic Major Wouter] Basson, a guy with a beard, hell of a bit more hair, he looked like a German hunter out on safari; that’s my first impression of him. I was within about ten feet from him; they saw me, I saw them very clearly.’

Pessarra’s identification of Basson at Buffalo Range is deeply controversial. Basson and his legal counsel have consistently and strenuously denied he was ever in Southern Rhodesia, claiming he was not yet in the military but still studying medicine in South Africa at this time. However, Basson testified on 31 July 1991 before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) inquiry into the apartheid chemical and biological warfare programme that he had joined the SADF in January 1975, more than three years before the Buffalo Range incident.6

‘I have the MBChB, I obtained that in 1973. I have a master’s degree in Physiology and Biochemistry in 1978. I obtained MMed in 1980 … In January 1975, I joined the Defence Force,’ he stated before the TRC.

A former medic who wishes to remain anonymous informed this author that Basson had funded his medical studies under a scholarship scheme whereby he owed the SADF two years’ service for each year of study.

Chandré Gould and Peter Folb’s official report for the United Nations mistakenly states that ‘Wouter Basson had joined the SADF in January 1979, as a medical officer … He held the rank of Lieutenant and worked at 1 Military Hospital until February 1981. During this time, he completed various courses and became a specialist in internal medicine.’7

In 1981, Commandant Basson was attached to Special Forces HQ (Speskop) as the project manager of Project Coast, the SADF’s chemical and biological warfare programme. In January 1985, as a commandant sporting a full, dark beard, he became head of the SADF’s new specialist combat medics unit, 7 Medical Battalion.

It was for his Project Coast role as a senior staff officer that over the period 1999–2002, Basson faced charges of conspiracy to commit mass murder, R30 million fraud, and other serious crimes. Acquitted on all charges, he was nevertheless found guilty in 2013 by the Health Professions Council of South Africa on four counts of unprofessional conduct related to his covert work, although this conviction would later also be set aside by the courts.

Evidence was presented at the criminal trial that Basson graduated as a medical specialist in April 1981. There are strong indications that he was both an active SADF medical officer and a medical student. It is telling that it appears as if Basson altered his own career timeline between his TRC and trial testimonies – both under oath – to try to make it impossible for him to have been involved in Rhodesia, a country that was not mentioned during his TRC hearing but to which he was repeatedly linked in his indictment via his relations with former Rhodesian pseudo-operators. However, he appears to have slipped up again in a 17 November 2011 email to CBW researcher Glenn Cross. ‘Dr Basson denies having any knowledge of Rhodesia’s CBW programme, but admits having worked in Rhodesia on “joint operations”,’ Cross states.8 The use of ‘Rhodesia’ implies Basson’s pre-independence presence in the country, before it became Zimbabwe, while the term ‘joint operations’ is suggestive of the sort of multi-unit combined operation witnessed by Pessarra at Buffalo Range on 5 March 1978.

The claim that Basson was not yet in the military was made in cross-examination of Neil Kriel by Basson’s counsel, Advocate Jaap Cilliers, SC, who stated: ‘[I]n 1979/1980, Dr Basson was still a medical student … Dr Basson was at that stage a full-time medical student for his intern exams at HF Verwoerd [Hospital] … he finalised his exams and practical period in December 1980 … then in the first quarter of the next year students received their degrees formally.’

Cilliers went on to produce Basson’s medical degree certificate, dated April 1981, and stated further: ‘I must put it to you in the seventies, Dr Basson here was a medical student and he was most definitely not part of any group visiting Zimbabwe or the then-Rhodesia.’ An undeterred Kriel riposted that he had indeed encountered Basson as a military officer in ‘the late seventies, 1978/1979, I am not sure exactly when,’ to which Cilliers responded: ‘Well, it does not matter. Till 1981 he was a medical student … He definitely did not visit Zimbabwe at that stage.’9

Basson and his counsel have failed to respond to several requests by this author to respond to Pessarra’s claims.10 Basson’s sole response over the past 20 years has been to approach this author during his trial – in defiance of the judge’s orders not to speak to the press – on 19 October 1990, after the Sunday Times published Pessarra’s allegations, saying, ‘That guy Pessarra’s mad, you know? He’s been treated in psychiatric hospitals.’

But the evidence for Basson operating in Rhodesia in the late 1970s – contrary to his denial in court – is strengthened by the interview the former medic gave for this book. He says Basson, whom he had previously met on one or two occasions at 1 Military Hospital, had visited his post at Messina in the far Northern Transvaal in October or November 1979. ‘It was a field hospital and triage set-up at Messina right next to the airport, on the runway in the grass.’ At the time of Basson’s inspection visit, the former medic was a 21-year-old national-service private.11 He later rose to become a commandant in the reservist Citizen Force and said he met Basson on several subsequent occasions at social and military events.

The field hospital at Messina had been set up in anticipation of an expected influx of Rhodesian refugees as the Bush War reached its climax. The former medic says Basson stayed for a couple of days. ‘I think he took a shining to me as I was a bit older than the other troopies and could hold an intelligent conversation.’

According to the medic, Basson asked him to accompany him as an aide on a covert flight into Rhodesia: ‘I went on one excursion sometime in November [1979] to meet with the Rhodesian security forces, but my memory fails me and it could have been October. We flew in a Dak from Messina; we were in civilian clothing – we never flew in uniform – and went in at night, flying low. I don’t know where we landed but there was no fanfare, and I wasn’t privy to the meeting as I was a troopie and was made to wait outside. We flew back the same night.’

He said it appeared as if Basson had made several such trips to meet with his Rhodesian colleagues. In addition, at Basson’s trial, a senior former Selous Scouts member, who testified on the condition that his identity be protected by the court, said that he had met Basson among a SADF delegation in the communal mess at the Scouts’ André Rabie base ‘in the late seventies …’12 Although this was challenged by Basson’s counsel, the witness was indemnified against prosecution by Judge Willie Hartzenberg, which means that the judge accepted his testimony as true. And yet, Bert Sachse strongly denied ever having seen Basson – whom he later got to know well at Special Forces HQ in South Africa – at Buffalo Range or in Rhodesia at all. Not only that, he said, but he had never seen any combat medics like Basson in Rhodesia, only the Recces themselves.13

Returning to his narrative, Pessarra indicated that there was evidently a flurry of telecommunications going back and forth at this time, presumably with the Selous Scouts HQ. The para fire-force pilot told Pessarra they wanted to have five Scouts jump out of the airplane. ‘But they didn’t want us to know anything about it, and Desblé was going to take care of the [jump] procedures and obviously bring in the [parachute lines], check in the equipment, the whole mess; just him and [a Scouts officer] and five Scouts.’

This was highly irregular, as the PJI always accompanied a parachute drop; that was his job. But Desblé was insistent – and they also ‘wanted to black out the first part of the aircraft … they didn’t want the pilots and crew seeing what was going on behind them.’ So Pessarra asked Desblé – Legionnaire to Legionnaire – what was going on. ‘Look,’ Desblé said, ‘the bodies are in the back, the terrs are in the back of the covered Land Rover; they’ve been doctored.’

‘Doctored’ was the Legionnaire way of saying they had been poisoned. However, according to Desblé, the men were ‘still alive, they’re just unconscious … they are going to throw them out on parachutes.’ Pessarra said it then became obvious to him that this was a CBW operation. The plan was apparently to drop the unconscious guerrillas, dressed and armed as Scouts, over enemy territory for them to be found by either FRELIMO or ZANLA forces, their infected bodies taken back, possibly ‘as a trophy into an echelon’s headquarters section … they are going to be taken someplace and this contamination would be continuous as they were passed down the line.’

At about 6:30 pm, the pilot informed Pessarra: ‘We’re going to capitulate, but we want you to get on the flight … and we want you to come with us and take care of our safety.’

‘Which I did. I simply got on the Dak through the navigator’s door [in the nose] when nobody was looking … [and] stayed pushed to one side; the two pilots got on, they came in, they sealed the door.’ Pessarra had said in an earlier tape-recorded message to me that the ‘aircraft interior windows were all blanked out. They had sealed the pilot’s cabin off with canvases so they could not see what was going on in the hold.’

In the primary tape, he continued: ‘And I told [the pilot] I wanted to sneak a peek … by this time, the pilot’s pretty pissed; I mean he’s been told to do this, he knows this is dangerous for the aircraft because he now knows there’s something pretty hinky; I haven’t told him that there’s five terrs there. Anyways, there’s a couple of screws on a plate that I pulled; even though they had a blanket over the door, I was able to look through the side window; saw them load the bodies, they were still unconscious.’

According to Pessarra, they flew according to a map that was given to them outside the window by Sachse. No logbooks are available for this flight, so the route is unknown. But it is most likely that they flew south-southeast, heading for a drop zone that was near Mapai in Gaza province, Mozambique, some 180 km from Buffalo Range.

Such a route would have taken them over the Hippo Valley North Estate, the Matimbi No 2 Tribal Trust land and the Sabi-Lundi Controlled-Hunting Area – this border zone was nicknamed the ‘Russian Front’ – before crossing the border into Gaza province. I am proposing a speculative drop zone near Mapai, as it was the heavily defended headquarters of the FPLM’s No 2 Brigade and the control centre for ZANLA – which perfectly fits the apparent objective of the flight: to poison the ZANLA and FPLM intelligence chains of command. Whatever the actual drop zone was, Pessarra’s tale continued: ‘They made the drop, returned to the air-field …14 They dropped the terrs out on the parachutes; Desblé pulled the stuff [static lines] in. They never spoke to the pilots again.’

Pessarra would leave the Rhodesian Army in about 1980 and, like many parachute-qualified foreigners in Rhodesian service, joined the SADF’s 44 Parachute Brigade at its Tempe base in Bloemfontein. After a brief career there in the early 1980s, which I confirmed with the retired former Officer Commanding 1 Parachute Battalion, Pessarra claims he then became a police informant on the far right, providing information on the murder of two soldiers during the theft of weapons from the Tempe base by the shadowy Die Volk (The Nation) group in June 1998. He then returned home to Texas where he adopted the lifestyle of a heavyset biker.

Asked about the Buffalo Range incident, Sachse said: ‘Jean Desblé? It’s starting to ring a bell … I know we did things like that; we actually dropped guys … I know the parachute thing, it’s ringing some sort of bell … Ja, it’s ringing a bell, but sorry, it’s not very clear. I can remember something like that in fact, but I don’t think that particular operation … on that date was actually planned from where we were [at Buffalo Range].15 We did similar sorts of operations where people were “left behind”, if one can use that expression, in various states. And this one you’re talking about now does start ringing a bell – but I’m not too sure of the facts, and why it was done … or whether they were actually dropped … I can recall an incident where we actually put guys in by helicopter … you can call them doped … it’s very hard to talk about this sort of thing … the guys who were left behind were people that were already, put it this way, gone to meet their maker, and dressed up and sorted out and disposed of or dispatched [i.e. dropped by parachute] or sent home, wherever they were sent.’

Sachse said the purpose of such operations was similar to that of Operation Mincemeat during World War II, which involved dumping a John Doe corpse dressed as a Royal Marine officer whose briefcase contained false information about a pending Allied invasion of Greece and Sardinia. The body was dumped off the coast of Spain, where it was certain to wash ashore, the intention being to divert the Nazis from the true invasion target of Sicily. Likewise, the Selous Scouts would insert poisoned corpses, people ‘of suitable backgrounds’, as chemical or biological warfare carriers into guerrilla-controlled areas.

‘They were taken out of the cages [cells] and put in those areas … but you … couldn’t keep a stiff for three or four days whilst you’re planning. The [enemy] contacts [in the Chiredzi area] weren’t that frequent that you always had “fresh meat” so to speak … you’d [have to] send them back [to their home district] the same night; the planning cycle takes time and you’ve got to have the right individuals and they have to be suitably chosen … If you want to put it in very broad terms you can say, “Ja, we found the guy in the morgue” – that’ll cover a multitude of sins. In an organisation like this, the Scouts, a lot of things went on that one doesn’t want to speak too openly about because, like any organisation, people come and go; a lot of people go under very strange circumstances – or under controlled circumstances – and that was very much part of the war and one of the responsibilities of some of the Scouts, and from there, the responsibility of SB. I for one – I will just clarify the situation now – was dead against that sort of thing and [Mac] McGuinness and their … guys, they handled that, that was their side.’

Some poisoned corpses were even left at railway lines to fake an accident with a train, he said. Buffalo Range did not keep CBW agents in its armoury, Sachse said. Such dangerous substances were rather delivered ‘by courier’ from Bindura.

The unauthorised use of the five parachutes caused great consternation at New Sarum the next day, and Air Force brass and an Air Rhodesia manager flew down to Buffalo Range to interview all involved, which led to an official board of inquiry – at which Pessarra told his tale, leaving out the part where he had sneaked on board the plane for its mysterious flight.

The Buffalo Range incident is crucial, as it ties together the elements that would soon define Delta 40: Selous Scouts pseudo-operators and South African combat medics united in a common purpose involving captured enemy guerrillas, clandestine flights, and some type of sedative and/or poison (the ‘pale horse’ of South Africa’s planned counterinsurgency apocalypse). Another element present at the Buffalo Range incident that was also linked to the founding of D40 appears to have been – as we shall see – the CIA, though the CIA later turned away from its support for the SADF’s war in Angola. A year later, these six elements would recombine – to devastating and deadly long-term effect.