Gordon Winter
In Lobster 18, dated October 1989, under the headline: ‘Inside BOSS and After‘, you wrote the following:
‘Gordon Winter is an Englishman who was recruited by BOSS. His 1981 book Inside BOSS, was the first (and only) inside account of South Africa’s intelligence agency.
We still think this is one of the most important political memoirs. Even if elements of the book were included to disinform, as some believe, Inside BOSS still contains an invaluable piece of the covert history of Britain in the sixties and seventies. Winter described offensive intelligence operations inside the UK on a massive scale.
The book is extremely hard to find second-hand (1) but libraries will have it – or will get it. It should be read. In the meantime, here are some of Winter’s reflections on the book its reception, and his life since it appeared. (This piece was written at our invitation.) To our knowledge, this is the first time anything of Winter’s has been published in the UK since the book was published. We may prove to be wrong, but for the moment we are still of the opinion that the British liberal-left ditched Winter too quickly.’
Anyway, you have been proved quite right. Two South African publishers now wish to bring my book out in a special South African edition entitled Inside BOSS and after. (So you even got that right!)
There are four main reasons for their interest in my book.
One is that when my book was published in Britain by Penguin in 1981, it was immediately banned in South Africa (because it exposed so many state secrets), so most South Africans have not seen it.
Secondly, when the apartheid regime crumbled in 1994, the various South African intelligence operations found that they had mainly lost the vicelike grip they had previously enjoyed over the SA media, which resulted in SA journalists starting to do their homework.
Which led, thirdly, to 15 of the most important disclosures I made about South African Intelligence in my book being proved to be true.
Springing Mandela
But the most important ingredient is that in Inside BOSS there was a chapter entitled The Escape Plot, which told how I infiltrated a group that was planning to rescue Nelson Mandela from jail in South Africa.
In 1998, because he was compiling his authorised biography of Nelson Mandela (published in 2000) Anthony Sampson wanted to include details of my Mandela Escape Plot. Having been close to Mandela since he was the Editor of South Africa’s biggest black magazine, Drum, in the mid-Fifties, Sampson knew from Mandela personally that what I had written in Inside BOSS about the Escape Plot was quite definitely correct.(2) And so Sampson sent his researcher, Dr. James Sanders, to interview me. James Sanders interviewed me at great length over several weeks; and, after I had satisfied myself that James Sanders was an OK guy, I supplied him with dozens of documents and letters (dated between 1969 and 1972) which proved:
- That, while I was working for South African Intelligence in London in 1969 (I was officially deported from South Africa in 1966 so that I could spy for BOSS in Britain) the head of BOSS, H. J. van den Bergh, assigned me to infiltrate an extremely furtive underground political group based in South Africa which was known to have links with a group in London.
- I succeeded in infiltrating the group in South Africa – so well that within one year, I was appointed as the leader of the group in Britain!
- That the mastermind behind the plot to rescue Nelson Mandela from Robben Island Jail was a white man named Robert Gordon Bruce who was based in Johannesburg.
- And, as mentioned above, that BOSS had arranged for me to recruit a warder on Robben Island who would allow us (the group) to arrange for Mandela to escape. South African intelligence arranged this for me, not just to enhance my infiltration, but also because BOSS wished Mandela to escape so that they could shoot him dead as he boarded a light plane flown by the ace British solo pilot Sheila Scott who was to whisk him out of South Africa to freedom.3
When James Sanders returned to London and presented Anthony Sampson with all the above incontrovertible evidence, Sampson then sent Sanders to interview Robert Gordon Bruce (still living in South Africa) to make an absolute double check on my claim that Bruce was the ringleader of the plot to rescue Mandela from jail.
James Sanders flew to South Africa and when he showed Robert Gordon Bruce the dozens of letters Bruce and I had written to each other (using code names and various cover addresses) between 1969 and 1972 on the subject of arranging for Mandela to escape from jail, Bruce confirmed that everything I had disclosed about the Mandela Escape Plot was absolutely true.
Over the next three years Dr Sanders investigated several other disclosures I had made in Inside BOSS and, after interviewing the people involved (in both Britain and South Africa), he was totally satisfied that everything I had told him was correct (and he signed a letter to me to that effect).
Since then
Some of the claims I made that were confirmed were:
- Heart surgeon Christian Barnard confirming my claim that the head of BOSS had asked me to write an article protecting Barnard against an allegation of being unfaithful to his wife while he was in America.
- Churchman John Rees admitted my claim that he had given information to BOSS about a plot to kidnap Harry Oppenheimer.
- My disclosure in Inside BOSS that a black woman named Cynthia Montwedi had been tortured by members of the Johannesburg Special Branch. (As a result, she was awarded an out of court payment of approximately £7,000 as compensation ).
- My disclosure in Inside BOSS that a journalist named Roland Hepers had been framed by South African Intelligence in league with the South African Information Department. Hepers won an out of court payment of more than R70,000 after I sent him documents (from files I had taken from the headquarters of the South African Information Department in Pretoria) proving that he had been framed.
- Martin Dollinchek, alias Martin Donaldson (a BOSS agent who was captured when the CIA, MI6 and BOSS mounted a joint attempt to invade the Seychelles in an attempt to bring Boss’s agent of influence James Mancham back to power, to rid the island of Marxist control) confirmed that I had been a full-time BOSS operative and that he had worked with me on assignments in Johannesburg.
Z Squad
And, of course, the disclosure I made in my book that South Africa had a ‘Death Squad’ known as the Z Squad. This claim was ridiculed at the time my book was published, but the top Death Squad killer, Eugene de Kock (the former Vlakplaas Commander now serving a lengthy prison sentence in South Africa) has recently confirmed that I was the very first person to expose the fact that the Death Squad existed and that the disclosures I made about the Death Squad in Inside Boss were ‘very accurate’.
A retired BOSS operative confirmed to Johannesburg’s biggest evening newspaper, The Star, that documents (which I admitted I had stolen from BOSS headquarters in Pretoria over a period of several months) had, indeed come from BOSS headquarters which, the BOSS operative pointed out, meant that I must have been a very high level agent to have been given access to the library at BOSS HQ in Pretoria. That really was a great boost for me because, confronted with much proof that I had been one of their agents, South African Intelligence were saying: ‘Well yes, Winter did work for us, but he was only a low level informer.’ In addition to the above, two former members of BOSS (who are still living in South Africa) have recently confirmed to James Sanders that statements I made in my book relating to them and others, were true.
Notes
1 It still is. When I looked at <www.abebooks.com/>, the biggest second-hand dealer network on the Net, in October, there were two copies, one of them $99 ed.
2 Mandela knew this because BOSS planted a warder named Gideon Huisaman on him – see page 275 of Inside BOSS – in the Robben Island Jail and the warder, in league with me and BOSS, had told Mandela that he was willing to help him escape.
3 At that time, I was unaware of BOSS’s counter plot to kill Mandela. I only discovered about that counter plot later when the Escape Plot was cancelled by BOSS because British intelligence (MI6) had found out about it and ordered BOSS to call it off.