Publication: The Star Issued: Date: 2007-01-19 Reporter: Fiona Forde

Blair Facing More Arms Deal Heat

 

Publication 

The Star
Date

2007-01-19

Reporter

Fiona Forde  

Web Link

www.thestar.co.za

 

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is under renewed pressure to reveal his role in the South African arms deal.

The UK attorney-general on Thursday night joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in calling for a thorough probe into the alleged bribery of foreign officials in securing contracts.

Under scrutiny is a deal dating back to 1999, when the British arms manufacturer BAe won a R30-billion contract to supply SA with arms.

It is only now emerging that Blair allegedly acted on behalf of BAe, and exerted his political influence.*1

In a letter to the Liberal Democrats, Britain's attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith said "it would be quite wrong to suppose any company in particular is above the law" and that he was "determined that we need to redouble our efforts" to tackle "the lines of investigation relating to BAe".

Later in the day the OECD reminded the British government of its role in fighting corruption.

• This article was originally published on page 2 of The Star on January 19, 2007

With acknowledgements to Fiona Forde and The Star.


*1       It seems the originally the Hawk deal was floated in around 1992 when John Major was PM.

Richard Charter told me in mid-1999 that the deal was cemented between Deputy President Mbeki and PM John Major in a smokey room deal in 1995.

This was long before Project Winchester was formulated and registered on 17 November 1997. This in itself was irregular because the acquisition had already commenced in September 1997.

Originally the SAAF wanted an Advanced Fighter Trainer (AFT) and registered Prokect Ukhosi for its acquisition. Neither the Gripen nor the Hawk 100 being offered by British Aerospace were suitable for the AFT and were also very expensive. The SAAF also wanted a Future Medium Fighter under Project Kambro.

Eventually Minister of Defence Joe Modise forced the SAAF to adopt a 3-tier system which effectively dumped to concept of an AFT and FMF and resulted in the definition of a Advanced Light Fighter Aircraft (ALFA) under Project Ukhosi and Lead-In Fighter Trainer (LIFT) under Project Winchester.

You guessed it: suddenly the Gripen was "perfect" for the ALFA role (albeit premature and very expensive - indeed unaffordable to the SAAF) and the Hawk 100 was "perfect" for the LIFT.

But not quite: while the Hawk 100 met the technical requirements for the SAAF's LIFT it was very expensive and was not quite the match of Aermacchi's MB339FD which outclassed it in terms of acquisition price, lifecycle cost  and costed military value.

But this is where Mini Bat Boy comes into a class of his own - all kinds of inducements are offered to Joe Modise and his party and friends and fellow bumiputerians and firstly the ALFA programme get pushed through despite a recommendation by the IONT to defer or cancel the programme, while Modise changes the playing fields for selection for the LIFT and, whatta boy, Mbeki, Modise et al, approve the acquisition of 28 Gripens and 24 Hawk 120s at the 1998 cost of some R15,5 billion.

It is no wonder that the AG's investigators concluded that :
"[5]3.2 Preference given to a bidder
During the investigation it became apparent that, during the technical, DIP, NIP and financial evaluations, as well as during the negotiation phase, preference was given to BAe/SAAB."

And :
"1.8 OVERALL CONCLUSION
1.8.2 There were fundamental flaws in the selection of BAe/SAAB as the preferred bidder for the LIFT & ALFA programme."

But why does the public not know about this?

Well, Shauket Fakie, claiming due process in terms of the Special Defence Account and Auditor-General Act (which is nonsense), showed his draft report to Mbeki, Trevor Manual, Alec Erwin, Jeff Radebe and Mosiuoa Lekota and they were very cross and told him they did not like his report, but preferred Stooge Selby Baqwa's report.

So Shauket Fakie sent away Advocates Stoffel Fourie of the Office of the Public Protector and Lionel van Tonder of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and they disappeared for about three weeks with their laptops and completely rewrote the investigation report and called it the Joint Report.

They dissembled the some 1 000 odd pages of the AG's draft report and 100-odd pages of the PP's draft report and 3-odd pages of the NDPP's draft report and came out with a re-assembled 384-odd page Joint Report.

And of course the Joint Report had none of the awkward findings and conclusions formulated by the trusty Advocates Charles de Chermont and Jan Swanepoel and others, but bland nothings and non sequiturs.

It also appears that Advocates Stoffel Fourie and Lionel van Tonder received some help with their diction and prose because, from being somewhat terse and to the point as is typical of forensic reports complied by accountants and lawyers, especially whose mother tongues were other than that of the medium of communication, the final report becomes flowing and flowery and mainly signify nothing of substance.

Intriguing is Stooge Baqwa's response before the joint committees of Parliament on 4 December 2001 to answer questions on the Arms Deal Joint Report :
"In conclusion, allow me to quote Tony Hertz second opinion in one Sunday newspaper of 2 December 2001 where he says "people of the EH seem to prefer to have someone else do their reading, not to mention thinking for them. Lookers and for years rather than readers. They prefer to leave off other's cognitive effort." He continues "neglect or pursuit of reading will influence the public debate over the South African Arms Conference. In past months much instant opinion has been formed by headline and little else. Now we have an orderly text to study, a load star if we take the trouble. Yet, more than a fortnight after its release I wonder how many people have actually read the Report. Ek vra maar net. In a celebrated instant judgement a politician declared it to be a whitewash or was blackwash meant?
When everyone knows that a politician could not have read it by then. Nothing more pointed to illustrate the perceived and important reading something before judging it". He says "Columnist Matata Tseto said "for a country that is just seven years into this open season we have done well." A headline summed up his feeling. "Lets close the loopholes exposed by the probe into the Arms Deal and then move on and Tseto is hardly a government stooge".
"Tony Hertz" is almost certainly one Anthony (Tony) Heard, former editor of the Cape Times and current chief of Dr Essop Pahad's editing department as well as special advisor to - you guessed it - Thabo Mbeki.

Heard often goes out to bat for the Big Elephant, viz :
" Mbeki's special adviser, Tony Heard, appealed to South Africans to put the Aids controversy behind them. "There is an overwhelming case to call a truce and get on with the battle," he said in a letter published in a Sunday newspaper N about the same time as his boss was lashing out at Achmat and the TAC."

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:k4xqxQeRVMEJ:www.healtoronto.com/mbeki/OktNovDez.rtf+%22Tony+Heard%22+whitewash&hl=en&gl=za&ct=clnk&cd=6

So what precipitated Mr Heard's sudden interest in the Arms Deal on 2 December 2001. Did he contribute to the "orderly text to study".


Two other relevant things are also without doubt :

1.      The DoD was allowed to respond on an item by item basis on the AG's draft report and the AG responded reciprocally

2.      At least some of the draft reports were edited by hand, paper and pen using classic editing notation, a skill not known or practised by many in the modern era of computerised wordprocessing, as well as by those outside of the publishing fraternity.


In support of my contentions, I quote the following extracts of the transcript of Parliament's joint committee proceedings of 4 and 5 December 2001 :
"[Mr S Fakie]
.................
They got to the right answer in any case in all of the contracts, except for the ALFA, LIFT and HAWK issue where we do very clearly spell out that it was a strategic decision on which a decision was taken. I don't know if my colleagues would like to add anything more?"
"[Mr Baqwa] Just one point. On the first question, which quotes the Auditor-General when we presented this Report as saying, views of the Executive added value. No substantive part of this Report is a reflection of the views of the Executive. That I would like to state categorically. The value that is being referred to is with reference to the format of the Report, because the Executive did comment about that. The Auditor-General talks about the 3 Sections when we were following the due process. The difficulty in the duplication that he has mentioned was that in my part of the Report I would have phrased another matter differently, and then they would say, which conclusion is the right one, or do we understand this to be similar. Because the words that the Auditor-General would use and that I would use would be different. So different people could interpret that differently. So the format changed in the sense that then it became one consolidated Report as you have before you now. But in terms of change this, don't write it this way, or something to that effect, never happened. And what is reflected here is the pure result of the Investigation."


"[Mr S Fakie]
.................
On the issue of the Draft Report being submitted to the President and the 4 Cabinet Ministers, I know this has been a matter of much controversy and questioning in the media, and I specifically tried to address this when we tabled this  Report in Parliament, and in the main the issue here is that firstly as part of due process, and the Report is very specific around this, we followed due process throughout this Report.
................
The background and the reason behind that specific section being included in the Auditor-General Act was that there may be issues of national interest that I am not aware of. And the President and the Ministers involved within the particular section are probably more aware of issues of national interest. And it gives them the opportunity to bring to my attention something that is included in the Report that may be of national interest, and I must watch. And there was nothing in this Report, I want to give you assurance, which was identified as issues of national interest that I need to take into consideration, except the fact it was stated that the detailed quotations from Cabinet Minutes, etc. are priviledged documents. We can look at those Cabinet Minutes. We can make our findings from the issues that were deliberated but the details of quotations should not be here. That is the only issue that we got input on. So it was part of due process."

And the following extract of the transcript of SCOPA's proceedings of  28 August 2003 :
"[Mr S Fakie]
.................

I think it is important to put that context in, from a drafting of the report point of view, because there have been a lot of allegations around drafts being changed, etc, and for one to understand the process that one follows in finalizing any report. Having an understanding of the above process in finalizing a Final Report, I believe that it is unfair and unfounded, and perhaps mischievous in some ways as well, to expect that the Draft to be exactly the same as a Final Report and to conclude that the Draft was edited as a cover up. Notwithstanding this, I still stand by my earlier statements where I have stated that the Final Report has not changed materially in substance to the Draft Report."

And the following extract of the Special Report of The Auditor-General Pertaining to Allegations on the Joint Investigating Team (JIT) Arms Deal Report, dated 24 June 2003 :
"The consolidation of the three reports into a single joint report dictated the elimination of duplication and technical details, specifically with a view to condensing the reports into a user-friendly format, a time-consuming effort."
........................

"Based on the evidence at my disposal I stand by the JIT Report tabled in Parliament in November 2001."

Perjury at its best (worst).