The South African Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 197

Reviewing the documents from RRL during the trial of Wouter Basson,
Dr. Daan Goosen, the first managing director of the company, said that of
the 203 project files found in trunks after Basson's arrest in 1997, 177
dealt with research into and/or the development of chemical and biologi-
cal agents, while the other 26 represented commercial projects. Of the
177, 34 dealt with antidotes and treatment for biological agents, and of
these only 3 were final reports. Of the 34, 7 projects predated 1988; the
rest were dated from 1988 to the early 1990s. 24 It is possible that there are
other research reports that were never turned in, and some may have
been retained by the scientists themselves.
Research reports from RRL indicate an intense interest in the devel-
opment of organophosphates for covert use, particularly paraoxon (ex-
tracted from commercially available pesticides), 25 and that small quanti-
ties of the lethal chemical agents VX and Tabun were synthesized and
tested. 26
Roodeplaat Research Laboratories
It would appear that the impetus to establish RRL came from the rela-
tionship that developed between veterinarian Dr. Daan Goosen and
Wouter Basson. During the early 1980s Goosen was head of the H. A.
Grové Institute at the Hendrick Verwoerd Hospital (now Pretoria Aca-
demic), an academic research facility that had at its disposal a range of ex-
perimental animals. According to Goosen's testimony during Basson's
trial, he and Basson spent many hours in discussion about CBW. Their
shared political ideology and common scientific interests led Basson to re-
cruit Goosen in 1983 to launch the biological warfare facility.
The facility began as Interlab, with a few offices in a shopping center in
a suburb of Pretoria. 27 Goosen was the first managing director. In early
1984 Basson recruited the administrative director, David Spamer, as well
as Dr. André Immelman, a veterinarian and toxicologist from the Univer-
sity of Pretoria. Veterinarian Dr. Schalk Van Rensburg was recruited in
August 1984. 28
Goosen claims that the tone for RRL was set in 1983, when he supplied
Basson with a live black mamba snake and a vial of its deadly venom.
Goosen believed the venom was to be used to murder a conscript al-
legedly passing military information to the African National Congress