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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 18, 1972)
( World Mews Secret Police oversee South African politics JOHANNESBURG — A white South African journalist here says he always packs a suitcase and takes it into the office with him every time he is working on a story which might involve people who could get him into trouble with the Bureau Of State Security, known as BOSS. “Of course, I know if they really wanted me badly enough I probably wouldn’t have time to pack anything,” he said. “But at least when I do it I feel that I am not just sitting back waiting to be picked up.” Despite the publicity its ac tivities inside and outside South Africa get overseas, to most South African whites BOSS is about as relevant to their lives as an earthquake in Patagonia. The elderly Jewish owner of a small ieatherware shop in Loveday Street who emigrated to South Africa from I London’s East End in the ‘30s just as the first Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were moving into his neighborhood -offered the sort of (comment you might have ex pected a good living German of the period to make about the Gestapo. "I don’t think about politics much. There are all these sub versive elements, you see, and they have to keep an eye on them. Really, this iB god’s own country, you know -a great country for a young man ” But during the last few days not even the most complacent white South African could be unaware of the extensive and complex secret police machinery that plays such an important role in maintaining the status quo in his country. A three-volume report on state security has just been presented to Prime Minister Balthazar John Vorster by Justice H. J. Potgieter. It took Justice Potgieter, a one-man commission set up by the government, 14 months to make his report, which recommends giving BOSS more powers and generally increasing its status within the government framework Justice Potgieter says that BOSS, which was formed in I96B. should have sole responsibility for telling the Prime Minister what the entire national in telligence picture is “in regard to the threats to the survival of the state “ This would mean that Gen H. J van den Bergh, head of BOSS, would be in the all powerful position of collecting and DAIRY-ANN 343 2112 1810 Chambers Breakfast served anytime Complete dinners and luncheons Homemade pies and soups Best burgers in town! LS" ^ analyzing all intelligence material collected by other government agencies such as military and police intelligence. But, obviously not unaware of the doubled-edged dagger he could be creating—for it is thought that most of the report’s recommendations will be ac cepted—and possibly with his eye on some future South African Bay of Pigs — Justice Potgieter adds a cautionary note. He says: "I do not discount the possibility that one body which has been established to preserve the security of the state, from an intelligence point of view, might in itself pose a threat to the security of the state.” Neither have South Africa’s white liberals, who are all con vinced that their activities are closely watched by one security agency or another, found the report entirely without comedy, particular amusement being provided by the recommendation that “postal articles and telephone conversations may be intercepted only in the interests of the security of the state.” “That would be a bit of retrospective legislation if ever there was,” said a member of an anti-Apartheid church group. Otherwise, most people op posed to the government’s racial policies find precious little to laugh about in the report, which Gen. van den Bergh has already described as “excellent.” The atmosphere in what might loosely be termed the "radical white opposition" has grown steadily more wary since the Security police’s famous November swoop when 45 known arrests were made and the Indian schoolteacher Ahmed Timol mysteriously fell to his death from a lOth-story window at police headquarters in John Vorster Square while undergoing interrogation. Now Vorster’s announcement that he wants the National Union of South African Students, the University Christian Movement, the Christian Institute and the South African Institute of Race Relations investigated, is regarded as further evidence of a hardening in the official mood The distrust is not confined to the public. Rivalry between the Police Security Branch, which has power of arrest denied to BOSS, is said to have reached quite bitter proportions. The main reason for this seems to be the feeling that BOSS is staffed by a bunch of whiz-kids who have not had enough experience of hard detective work. BOSS, on the other hand, believes that the security police are a bunch of plodders whose methods are dated and often crude. The Rand Daily Mail recently devoted almost a whole inside page to details of torture allegations by people who have been arrested by the security police. The judge says that apart from aptitude, dedication and being well versed in the techniques “peculiar to intelligence func tions,” he must be “a man of great intellectual integrity.” “This means,” adds the judge, “that first and foremost he must have the courage to give the true picture—not the picture he thinks the authorities would ” Los Angeles Times Washington Post News Service News Roundup From AP Reports MIAMI BEACH — Labor leader George Meany said Thursday that President Nixon is going to Communist China to help boost his own re-election chances, and that “he might leave a tab over there for the American taxpayer to pick up.” But Meany, leading a stepped-up AFL-CIO political campaign aimed mostly against Nixon, said he didn’t disagree with Sen. Henry Jackson, who wished Nixon success on the trip. Jackson, one of the large field of Democratic presidential contenders, said after meeting in closed session with the AFL-CIO Executive Council that he hoped Nixon could get Red Chinese help to end the Vietnam war. HONOLULU — President Nixon set off on his “journey for peace,” to China Thursday—a historic mission he said he was un dertaking for all mankind in search of a common ground with the long hostile and isolated Asian Communist power. The President arrived here on a clear sun-drenched day for a two-day stopover before con tinuing on to Guam and then to China. The President’s jet touched down at 8:30 p.m. EST at Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station after a ten-hour flight from Washington. SAN JOSE, Calif. — Superior Court Judge Richard Amason rejected defense motions Thursday to move the Angela Davis murder kidnap trial and have the state pay defense costs. He then set a Feb. 28 trial date for the black revolutionary. Asst. Atty. Gen. Albert Harris Jr. announced that Amason had set the date and rejected the motions after emerging from an in-chambers conference with the judge and defense attorneys. Miss Davis is charged with murder, kidnap and conspiracy in the Aug. 7, 1970 escape attempt at the Marin County Civic Center in which Superior Court Judge Harold Haley, two con victs and an accomplice were killed. McCloskey accuses President of using trip as ‘gimmick’ WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Paul McCloskey, R-Calif., criticized President Nixon’s China trip Thursday as a “gimmick” while another presidential hopeful, Democratic Sen. Vance Hartke, expressed concern about the trip’s potential impact on U.S. imports and employment. McCloskey said in a radio in terview in Berlin, N.H., that the trip was “a gimmick to divert people’s attention just before the election away from the problems at home,” and ne warned it may backfire. “I think the Chinese are smarter than we are, and they are going to take advantage of this visit. They’re going to drop Mr. Nixon’s trousers neatly around his ankles and he may never even know it,” said Mc Closkey, challenger to Nixon in the March 7 New Hampshire primary. Hartke voiced his concern in a challenge to Sen. Edmund Muskie, D-Maine, to take a public stand on the possible reper cussions of Nixon’s trip, as pertains to U.S. employment. “I have not gotten a peep out of Muskie on my plan to close the tax and tariff loopholes that are German AUTO SERVICE INC. >4fl| VOLKSWAGEN &SSLJ MERCEDES & PORSCHE OATSUN A TOYOTA FACTORY TRAINED EXPERTS GUENTER SCHOENER 2045 FRANKLIN BLVD. Bus. Ph. 343-2912 Eugene, Oregon 97403 helping export American jobs to Taiwan and other low-wage countries,” Hartke said in a statement released in Man chester, N.H. “Now that the President is on the verge of opening the gate to a whole new flood of goods produced by Communist slave labor, I think Muskie has an obligation to the voters to take a stand on something meaningful to American wage earners,” he said. The senator did not address himself directly to Nixon, nor did he elaborate on what he thought the trip’s impact might be. Gov. Ronald Reagan, mean while, said California would send two delegations to support Nixon at the GOP national convention— a broadly based voting group «nH a 96-member honorary delegation. In the regular delegation, Reagan said, about 30 per cent are women, 14 per cent are persons under 30 and 9 per cent represent minorities. The honorary group includes actors, industrialists and top party contributors. Muskie, a leading cm tender for the Democratic nomination, was home Thursday following the death of his son Steven’s mother in-law. He planned to rejoin the campaign circuit Friday in Florida. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, meanwhile, released a letter from Muskie in Fitchburg, Mass., containing his response to their query regarding his stand on amnesty for men who refused to be drafted for Vietnam. “I think the time to consider the amnesty questions is after the war is over,” said Muskie. “All In The Family” 13 comedy selections from the television program. Tonight — 7:59 p.m. KWAXf.m. 91.1 FIND OUT ABOUT THE NAVY NAVAL INFORMATION TEAM 15 • 18 February ERB MEMORIAL UNION Room to be posted