TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 6

Subsection 7

Spies in the newsrooms

93 State operative John Horak explained that there were four basic categories of media spies: agents, informers, sources, and ‘sleepers’. Craig Williamson confirmed this. An agent was a professional police officer with a job to do. Informers gave information either voluntarily or were recruited. He identified two categories of informers: those who were ideologically totally opposed to what the organisation was doing and those who did it for the money. There were also those who did it to get at colleagues for reasons such as competing for promotion. ‘Sleepers’ were long-term plants, people who knew things but would only provide information if their consciences were bothering them.

94 Vic McPherson, initially an intelligence officer, was Unit Commander of Covert Strategic Communications in the SAP from 1989 to 1990. According to him, the police became involved in the media during the 1980s and 1990s because the ANC and other opposition groups had launched a “venomous attack” on the South African Police (SAP), bringing it into “disrepute”. The objectives of the media operation were: image-building for the police; promoting the successes of the Security Branch in the media; counteracting enemy propaganda, and giving media prominence to attacks against the community.

95 To achieve these objectives, McPherson said the SAP recruited journalists who supported their cause. This enabled them to place prominent articles and carry into effect the objectives of discrediting organisations and individuals and uncovering negative aspects (such as corruption in their ranks) in order to destroy public sympathy. He had forty journalists who were his contacts: two were police informers, four were paid journalists, four were informants whom he paid on occasion, ten were friends and twenty were used without their knowing it.

96 Williamson provided documentation on how the state, in an attempt to discredit UDF patron Allan Boesak and diminish his political effectiveness, exposed his affair with Ms Di Scott.

97 Pat Sidley said the subject of spies in newsrooms was one of great concern, total distaste and impotence, as journalists were unable to persuade newspaper management to share their discomfort. In its defence, management said its lack of action against suspected spies was because there were constant whispering campaigns and rumours, all of which could not be taken seriously. The Commission, however, drew attention to John Horak’s testimony, in which he said he was a spy in the newsroom for almost twenty-seven years. He called himself a “listening post”: people could come to him, and he could put them in touch with other people. Throughout his testimony, Horak asserted that he felt sure that management at the time knew he was a spy, even offering examples where it must have been clear to them that he was a state operative. A previous editor, however, said that he had confronted Horak who had flatly denied that he was a spy.

98 Although the media-room spies denied ever having being involved in gross human rights violations, poet and writer Don Mattera said that Horak had started whispering campaigns, suggesting that certain left-wing journalists were informers. He even suggested that Mattera was a CIA agent. Mattera said Horak’s work was to vilify and destroy. For Mattera, this resulted in almost 350 raids on his house and 150 terms of detention. He added that Horak carried a gun and was allowed to bring it to work at The Star.

99 John Horak was the first journalist at the hearing openly to admit that he had been a spy. The second was Craig Kotze, who had constantly denied being a state operative while working on The Star. Unlike Horak, Kotze said he had never concealed where his sympathies lay. He openly attended military camps and wrote in a manner that reflected the SAP in a positive light.