Former African National Congress (ANC) intelligence operative Mo Shaik keeps a database of more than 880 suspected apartheid government spies, it was revealed yesterday.

Shaik told the Hefer commission which is investigating allegations that Scorpions chief Bulelani Ngcuka was an apartheid spy that the ANC had investigated these people during the liberation struggle as suspected informants.

This was done as part of Project Bible, which was aimed at combating government infiltration of the then liberation movement.

Shaik commanded Project Bible in SA and reported on the matter to Jacob Zuma, who is now deputy president.

During cross-examination by the commission's evidence leader Kessie Naidu, Shaik admitted the database was still in his possession. It is kept on a computer and accessed with a secret code.

When Naidu suggested that such information should be protected by the intelligence agencies, Shaik said he had informed the agencies of the database.

He had not informed President Thabo Mbeki, but the president was aware that he had commanded Project Bible.

Shaik said he regarded the information on the database as belonging to the ANC. Only when they instructed him to hand it over would he do so.

In December last year he used the database to reconstruct an intelligence analysis, concluding Ngcuka was "most probably" an apartheid spy.

This analysis was based, among other things, on intelligence reports stolen for Shaik from the former security police.

By analysing these reports and other intelligence during the late 1980s, Shaik for the first time concluded that Ngcuka had been a spy, he testified.

He had since obtained more information, which confirmed this suspicion, and added it to the reconstructed analysis.

This report Shaik handed to journalist Ranjeni Munusamy, who wrote an article in which the allegations against Ngcuka first surfaced in public.

When Shaik drew up his original report in the late 1980s, he relied on two intelligence reports submitted by security branch handler Karl Edwards. One report dealt with a meeting of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (Nadel) in January 1988.

In his reconstructed analysis of the report, Shaik concluded that the source must have attended this meeting. Shaik said he now had doubts that Ngcuka attended this meeting because it was put to the commission on Wednesday by Marumo Moerane, counsel for Ngcuka, that he did not attend.

Naidu said he had an affidavit from self-confessed spy RS452, Vanessa Brereton, saying she gave information to the security branch about Nadel.

Naidu put it to Shaik that the information in the report probably came from Brereton, which Shaik conceded. Shaik is also relying on supporting intelligence, which includes a brief encounter he had while he was posted in Hamburg.

He sa id he was approached by Justice Minister Penuell Maduna, who asked him whether he investigated Ngcuka as a possible spy.

Shaik has also raised apparent discrepancies in Ngcuka's passport documentation, a subject on which he has not yet been crossexamined.

The Hefer commission continues today.

With acknowledgements to Tim Cohen, Sapa and the Business Day.