By Scott Stewart
Al Jazeera ran an exclusive story May 28 reporting that the FBI had spied on former South African President Nelson Mandela during his first trip to the United States in June 1990. Mandela, who had been found guilty of terrorism-related charges in 1964 and sentenced to life in prison, had only just been released from a South African prison in February 1990.
During his 1963-1964 trial with nine other leaders of the African National Congress, Mandela admitted that the armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe, committed acts of sabotage as a form of political protest. But he denied wanting to overthrow the government by force. In June 1961, Mandela had sent an open letter to South African newspapers warning that a campaign of armed sabotage would be launched unless a constitutional convention was held.
Despite the ANC's ties to terrorism, Mandela became an iconic protest figure during his years in prison for his efforts to end South Africa's racist system of apartheid. Upon his release, he made an international tour to raise additional support for his cause, and that tour is what brought him to the United States in June 1990, where he visited several major cities.
Al Jazeera's story grabbed my attention for two reasons. First, at the time of the visit, I was assigned to work as the protective intelligence coordinator for the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service detail tasked with protecting Mandela during the U.S. portion of his world tour. I spent long hours before, during and after the trip coordinating with other agencies and governments to investigate the many potential and actual threats directed against Mandela. Second, I was amazed that anyone would be surprised that the FBI was collecting intelligence during such a visit, given its context.
Background
First, it is important to remember that while the ANC is now the ruling political party in South Africa, it had engaged in a long struggle that was not only political but also included the use of civil disobedience and armed resistance. Politically motivated acts of violence meet the statutory definition of terrorism under U.S. and international law. Because of this, at the time of his June 1990 trip, Mandela and the ANC were on the U.S. terrorism watch list. (They were also listed on the terrorism watch lists of several other countries.) In fact, due to the difficulty of getting people removed from that list, it was not until 2008 that Mandela and other ANC leaders were removed from the U.S. terrorism list -- 15 years after they had entered the political mainstream.
There was also a great deal of international interest in the political changes underway in South Africa at the time of the trip. Negotiations to end apartheid began in 1990 but were not completed until 1993. All countries, even those that had imposed economic sanctions against the apartheid regime (such as the United States, which passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986), were unsure of what was going to happen in South Africa. They were frantically collecting intelligence on all the parties involved in the process to determine what the outcome of the negotiations, and the future of South Africa, would be. Indeed, even most South Africans were uncertain of their nation's future and did not know if democratization would proceed, or if someone or something would throw it off track.
There were numerous questions regarding the internal workings of the ANC, and Mandela's role in it, following his release from prison. During Mandela's confinement, a number of other ANC leaders had emerged, and in June 1990 it was unclear if Mandela would prove able to establish himself as the undisputed leader of the party. Some of the other ANC leaders had agendas that differed from Mandela's, and therefore these ANC politics could hold a great deal of significance for South Africa's future. Because of this, understanding the internal party dynamics was a priority for intelligence collection for many intelligence services at the time, including U.S. agencies.
There were also questions about Mandela's strained relationship with his then-wife, Winnie. The Mandelas were separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. By 1990, Winnie had become a high-profile and powerful activist in her own right and was one of the ANC leaders with their own political following and agenda. Her personal security group, the Mandela United Football Club, was known as a group of brutal criminals. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission later noted in its final report that Winnie was politically and morally accountable for the gross human rights violations the members of the "club" committed.
Winnie had charged the outfit with providing security for Mandela's 1990 world tour, but they were untrained and highly unprofessional. They also had no legal government status or experience coordinating with other security services, and they quickly ran into trouble. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had intercepted a trunk containing several AK-47s that the football club was attempting to smuggle into Canada in violation of strict Canadian gun laws. The football club was also a concern for us when Mandela and his entourage entered the United States from Canada.
As reflected in the internal government memos and teletypes Al Jazeera received under a Freedom of Information Act request and then published, the Mandela visit was assessed to be a high-threat protective detail by the Diplomatic Security Service. This was due to the large number of threats made against Mandela. These threats originated from a range of sources, including the South African Afrikaner Resistance Movement, American neo-Nazis, white supremacists and Klansmen along with mentally disturbed individuals. White supremacist figures such as Tom Metzger and William Pierce had made statements about the visit carefully calculated not to cross the legal line separating protected speech from criminal acts, but their menacing messages were still quite disturbing, and we were concerned they would incite one of their followers to violence.
The Diplomatic Security Service Protective Intelligence and Protective Liaison agents worked very closely with its counterparts at the FBI and other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate these threats. (Due to the "wall" between the FBI's criminal and intelligence operations, the FBI agents we worked with while investigating the threats against Mandela were not the same agents who collected intelligence during the visit.) It was a great relief for all of us when the trip ended without incident.
Collecting on Mandela and the ANC
Given this context, it should be clear why the FBI was collecting intelligence during Mandela's 1990 trip. As a member of the U.S. intelligence community and an American domestic intelligence agency, I would have been shocked had they not assigned agents to gather intelligence regarding a trip to the United States by a person appearing on the U.S. terrorism watch list. Clearly, Mandela was no bomb-thrower, but the visit still would be akin to one by Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal or Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah today in that it involved a visit by a political leader of a group appearing on the U.S. terrorism list. There were also individuals traveling with Mandela who had closer ties to terrorist violence, such as the members of the football club.
Beyond the terrorism angle, all governments, including the U.S. government, collect information on foreign political parties to include ruling, opposition and dissident parties -- especially during a time of transition when the course of a nation's future is uncertain. Policymakers do not like to be surprised, so they demand that their intelligence services keep them apprised of the latest developments. Governments do this using their foreign intelligence services when the target is abroad, and they use their domestic intelligence service when the target visits their country. Again, all internal intelligence services conduct this type of collection on visiting foreigners of interest, whether the Russian FSB, the Chinese MSS, the British MI5 or the FBI.
During my government career, I was part of the U.S. secretary of state's security detail on many trips, both with and without the president. When the U.S. president or secretary of state travels, it is clearly understood that foreign intelligence services are collecting on the trips along with the domestic intelligence services in the countries they visit. The same thing goes for traveling members of the opposition political party or political dissidents.
This type of collection is simply what intelligence agencies do. It is one of their fundamental missions and the reason governments spend so much money to fund their activities. They gather information on political figures and parties to help decision-makers in their respective governments understand the political dynamics of the country the traveler hails from. Such collection involves intelligence reporting on overt meetings conducted with the target, interactions with his staff and electronic monitoring of his communications. It often also includes bugging meeting rooms and hotel suites to collect on private conversations the target has with his staff or with host or third-country nationals who will not report their meeting to the host government.
Intelligence services collect information on the target's policies and his feelings toward the incumbent administration and other figures in his party. They also are charged with collecting on his political aspirations; his health; his mental state; and any vices, such as extramarital affairs or drug addictions, which could be used for blackmail purposes or to help recruit the target as a spy -- the Holy Grail for any intelligence agency is successfully recruiting a high-level politician or member of his staff as an asset or an agent of influence. But even in cases where two governments have a gentlemen's agreement not to recruit each other's citizens, all sides still conduct overt and clandestine intelligence collection on each other. As Ronald Reagan famously said in a 1987 press conference with Mikhail Gorbachev to mark the signing of an arms control treaty, it is important to "trust but verify."
Because of all this, it would have been more of a story if the FBI had not been collecting on Mandela and his entourage during his June 1990 trip than the news that it had.
Mandela's 1990 U.S. Tour Highlights a Reality of Government Surveillance is republished with permission of Stratfor.
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