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Jack Abramoff's Past As A South African Spy
by Wayne Madsen
(Posted here: Jan 22, 2006)
 

January 21, 2006 -- EXCLUSIVE -- Jack Abramoff's past as a South African spy. According to South African intelligence sources, convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff was a long-time intelligence asset for South Africa's apartheid era security services. The revelations from South Africa help to explain Abramoff's connections to white supremacists who use Confederate heritage organizations to mask their true agendas (see article directly below).

In 1985, Abramoff launched the International Freedom Foundation (IFF) in Washington. In fact, IFF was a front for South African military intelligence, code named Pacman, and a major front for South Africa's international propaganda efforts. The IFF was a joint project of Russel Crystal, currently a Democratic Alliance official in South Africa, and a former apartheid South Africa top spy, Craig Williamson. According to South African intelligence sources, Abramoff was first recruited by Crystal and Williamson during 1979 and 1980. Crystal and Williamson were both paid agents of the Apartheid Security Police (SAP (V)). Money paid to Abramoff initially came from SAP(V) accounts. South African intelligence files also show:

•           Abramoff’s take-over of the College Republicans National Committee (CRNC) in Washington, DC was directed by both Crystal and Williamson and similarly funded. In fact, Abramoff was mentored by them, being trained as a political operator, apartheid style -- the emphasis was on carrying out political dirty tricks with non-attribution through fronts, screens, and dupes.

•           Before Crystal worked for SAP(V) as a right-wing student agitator at Wits University in Johannesburg, he was suspected of being an employee of the Bureau of State Security (BOSS), the apartheid spy agency responsible for foreign operations, including hit squad work, disinformation, and bombings. By the time of the establishment of National Students Federation (Crystal was its leader at Wits, Williamson having been exposed as an SAP(V) spy after arrests of anti-apartheid students in the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS)). A question arises as apartheid monies paid to Abramoff came from the specific account of the sections employing Crystal -- this indicates that Abramoff received foreign intelligence service money from BOSS. This was certainly the case when Abramoff's benefactors were in SAP(V) and later, when they left to join Military Intelligence (MI), which became the pre-eminent apartheid intelligence service after the rise of former defence minister P.W. Botha to the Presidency. It is clear that Abramoff received SAP(V) and MI monies for services rendered. Abramoff visited South Africa in 1983 to forge links between Crystal's National Students Federation (NSF) and Abramoff's CRNC.

•           Abramoff projects with IFF included provision of U.S. armaments to Southern Africa, including Stinger missiles to UNITA in Angola and the apartheid military; stopping the Congressional Comprehensive Anti Apartheid Act and lobbying for Reagan’s veto (this was the only Reagan veto overturned by Congress). As part of South African intelligence's Operation Babushka, Abramoff helped monitor anti-apartheid lobby in USA: Randall Robinson of TransAfrica was a major target as was Coretta Scott King and Jesse Jackson.

•           Abramoff also hooked IFF up with some representatives of the U.S.-based World Church of the Creator – a white supremacist, neo-Nazi group, which had a branch in South Africa.

•           The Democratic Alliance in South Africa is the official opposition to the African National Congress. Its leader is Tony Leon, a colleague of Crystal and Williamson at Wits University who bankrolled him in his student election campaigns as they did Abramoff in CRNC. They then financed Leon's year-long visit to the U.S. to teach law. Abramoff administered all of Leon’s U.S. arrangements. Abramoff liaised with the DA and Leon in Washington, DC and New York City.

•           Abramoff, schooled in the SAP(V) front-tactics, worked through an American named Duncan Sellars, who was also connected with Crystal through offices on the Ninth floor, Noswell Hall, in Johannesburg, across the road from Wits University. Abramoff visited Noswell Hall on a number of occasions. Sellars was chairman of the IFF in 1993.

•           The Abramoff-Crystal anti-communist camp in Angola was an MI project designed to frustrate Chester Crocker’s diplomatic initiative under Secretary of State George Shultz to get the apartheid forces out of Namibia and the Cubans out of Angola.

•           Williamson applied and received amnesty for a number of his apartheid-era crimes (killings [including Ruth First, the wife of South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo], bombings, maimings – including children), Crystal did not apply or appear before the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Crystal was more than “politically tied” to Williamson  -- he was also “operationally tied” as was Abramoff, though Sellars and Crystal were often merely cut-outs. The letter bombing fatalities of anti-apartheid activists in Angola and Mozambique are said to have been made by another Crystal-Abramoff confidant, John Adams. Crystal-Abramoff-Williamson are reportedly responsible for compiling the hit-lists on anti-apartheid activists outside South Africa.

•           Abramoff introduced Williamson to Grover Norquist and they became friends. This relationship assisted South African intelligence's Operations Longreach and Babushka, essentially pro-apartheid influence operations in DC. One propaganda operation was Abramoff's movie Red Scorpion, based on UNITA guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi, a movie for which South Africa provided military equipment, vehicles, and extras.

Abramoff's files from his days as a South African agent emerge: Details of his ties to anti-black, racist groups like World Church of the Creator (insignia on far right -- where have we seen that logo before?) and South African propaganda operations -- Babushka and Longreach -- provided exclusively to WMR. From left to right: Abramoff, Williamson, Leon, and Crystal [excluded].
 

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