Stanley Uys's recollections yesterday of bugging and leaks in the old South Africa caused my memory to release some of my own. Two of the incidents occurred in my time, just as in Stanley's, as political correspondent of the Sunday Times - as a later incumbent of the post as I rattled around in his very large shoes. Three events tumbled out together and reminded me that the spook world worked by a curious - you might say, disturbing - mix of laughable bungling and chilling efficiency. Memory can be a genial companion but not always a faithful one. So I only claim that the following is my genuine recollection of what happened. It is not necessarily what did exactly happened, down to the last detail.

I

My first memory illustrates Stanley's point about how quickly the government agents could react to information gleaned from bugged telephones. It was back in the seventies and PW Botha was Minister of Defence. A controversy had arisen over government plans to upgrade the coastal road that ran through the Knysna forest. The environmental lobby opposed it, and there was a widespread suspicion that the government's support for the project had more to do with military concerns than transport or tourism needs. Then PW had an accident on the road.

He had been on his way to his Wilderness home and was now laid up (but not badly injured) in Tygerberg Hospital. At the time I was a young reporter for the Argus in Cape Town, and I was instructed by the news editor to go and interview PW in hospital. I set off with great reluctance as I don't think anyone relished an encounter with "the great crocodile."

I sat by his bed and mouthed some platitudinous half-question, which I hoped would get him talking. It did. He said something along the following lines: "Ja, you see, these damn enviromenter ... environment people are donnerse fools. They don't know what they are talking about. That road is unsafe. My crash proves it. The government must improve the road."

"Mm," I thought to myself. I can use this. I allowed the normal interval to lapse in which you try not to alert the subject to the fact that they have committed a newsworthy indiscretion ... and might be tempted to backtrack. Then I dashed down to the payphone in the hospital lobby, and filed the predictable story: "The Minister of Defence today claimed ...." I re-cradled the phone and made the half-hour drive back to the newspaper.

When I sauntered into the newsroom, the news editor gave me a fixed look. "The editor wants to see you." These were the most ominous words a reporter could hear, and I entered the editor's office with a feeling of great trepidation. What had happened, of course, was that in the 40 minutes or so since the story was filed, it had been picked up by a government informer in the newsroom (we all suspected who it was but never knew for sure). This person had then raised the alert, and this had prompted a call to the editor by the powers-that-be.

But the editor, who I still think of as Old Man Mackenzie, was one of the greats. He waved my copy in front of me. "Will you stand by this?" he asked gruffly. "Yes, yes," I blurted, and we ran it as it was. A few things stand out, instructively, from this memory. Among them is the sheer triviality of the issue, offset by the Stalinesque effort to ‘protect the minister'.

II

The second incident mixes history with bureaucratic cack-handedness. One of the reporters at the Sunday Times was a fellow who we were pretty sure was the security establishment's main secret link with the paper. Or at least one of them.

For one thing, he came up with stories that could only have been handed to him on a silver platter by the spooks themselves. Obviously these were stories that suited their agenda; but they were nonetheless often very good stories measured purely by journalistic criteria. From an editorial point of view, they had to be handled with great circumspection. But, since a journalist would take a good story from the devil, not so much circumspection as to let a good one get away. So, we evolved a method. The editor would say to me: "Old Boris (not his real name, obviously) has come with a potential lulu. See if you can stand it up with your sources." If I could, we would run with it.

One day it was a real lulu. It was after the ANC had been unbanned and during the early negotiations between it and the apartheid government. The story was that the ANC was secretly building up arms-caches in the country and priming cadres for possible action. If true, this would indicate a profound cynicism about the negotiations and the expectations for their likely outcome. It was big story which would later become notorious as Operation Vula. But for now it was Boris's tip off.

I tried my best, without success. It was never likely that your average government desk jockey was going to know anything about it; nor was anyone in the liberation movement going to cry: "Fair cop! Here are the details."

I reasoned that if it was true the story was big enough to have gone to the top and so, as a last resort, late on Friday (the deadline was on Saturday) I resolved to ask President FW de Klerk if he knew or would say anything.

I got FW's gatekeeper, Casper Venter (no relation) on the line. I spelled out what we had and played open cards with him: "We don't feel our sources are strong enough to run with the story as it stands, and I wondered if the president was in a position to add anything to this?"

"Just a minute," said Casper with just the trace of a tremor in his voice. "Brigadier Pruis is here, I'll ask him." If I remember this correctly, Pruis was FW's security adviser.

"It's the Sunday Times ...," I heard Casper say off-phone before he covered the mouthpiece with his hand to muffle their conversation. He then proceeded to relay pretty much what I had told him to Pruis. How do I know that? Because I could hear enough muffled snatches as I doodled on my notepad to follow the broad drift.

Then Pruis spoke for a short while. I could hear his voice but could not make out what he was saying. "No, I can't tell them that," Casper responded to Pruis, muffled yet discernable. "They already know the whole story." My pencil point snapped as it dug into the paper, and Casper and the Brigadier conferred a little longer.

Then he came back to me, having agreed on a response for the record with the security wallah. "Ag, no," he intoned, "we don't know anything about that, so we have no comment." "Thank you, Casper," I said. "You have been more helpful than you know."

III

My last incident illustrates how stupid people can be when they are playing with fire - here I am talking about myself. I had developed a relationship that was both useful and enjoyable with an American diplomat. His name was Bob Frasure, a brilliant yet unassuming man. He was political counsellor, the number three position in the American embassy. There was something else about his job, however. It was understood ... at least by me ... that the person in that post had ‘status' with the CIA - and would have read much of the CIA traffic into and out of the country. He was a very useful contact to have.

Of course, he could have said the same about me. I made it my business to be as informed as I could be, with a special interest in the thinking processes, such as they were, of the government. While expedience drew us together, we also enjoyed each other's company and there was never anything ‘improper' in our exchanges.

We would meet over lunch, or over tea in his office, and talk. I would fly a kite in front of him, and watch for his reaction. If he seemed uncomfortable, or said something like "Oh, I don't know if one could conclude that from what is known so far ..." then I would take it my story, or speculation, was unknown to the CIA. This would then inform my further moves in whatever way the particular case merited. If, however, Bob didn't respond at all to something I said, and just let it pass as if it were a given truth, then I knew that it was what he knew, too. And here I had a rule of thumb: if it was good enough for the CIA it was damn well good enough for the Sunday Times.

I phoned one day to invite myself to tea. I suppose I had his semi-direct line number, which would go through the embassy switchboard and be answered, usually, by his secretary. On this day I found myself tapped into a crossed line.

I am sure the Americans had scramblers and all manner of security devices but no secret service is a match for the old-fashioned crossed line. When I heard Bob's voice, in conversation with another male I didn't ring off. I should say that I am ashamed about this, but I am a reporter. I won't lie but I can't claim to have any shame. So I kept quiet and I listened.

I stayed on the line long enough to make out that the other voice was a management type at the State Department in Washington, who was spelling out Bob's immediate future. "You'll have to be out by Friday, Bob. We'll clean up behind you." The voice went on to tell Bob that he was, presumably by way of penance, going to a posting in Ethiopia and that he should indicate to management anyone who he thought suitable to take over his South African post.

At this juncture I was overcome by finer feelings ... or I lost interest ... and I silently replaced my receiver. The next day I called back and suggested we meet for tea. Looking back, I am surprised Bob agreed.

We talked about nothing particularly memorable; then I did one of the most stupid things I have ever done. "So, Bob," I said in my best air of feigned innocence, "Friday, huh? That's quick. Leaves you very little time." Bob's face took on a look that I saw recently on Tutankhamun when he was exhumed after three thousand years. And, like Tutankhamun, he didn't say anything. So I blundered on. Had he given any thought to his successor? Maybe Addis Ababa wasn't as bad as people said it was. I can't quite remember how our meeting ended but, looking back, I can say: not well. I didn't tell him then and there that I thought I was being clever and flip.

What I didn't know, and only discovered much later; was that Bob had fallen into a tempestuous affair with a lady diplomat, a fellow American at the embassy. She was single, he was not. The affair had been discovered by South African state security agents and they had set about making the pair's lives miserable - especially Bob's. This involved the photographs-in-a-brown-envelope ploy and all the standard embellishments you've seen in the movies. Some of the harassment, however, had become dangerous and Bob had apparently done the right thing: made a full declaration to his superiors. Curiously, the South Africans appeared not to have attempted to use their leverage to "turn" Bob. Don't ask me why, I don't know.

All I do know is I was ignorant of all of this when I made my flippant remarks at our final meeting. It is not hard, however, to imagine what Bob was thinking as I did so. ‘So that's what Lester's game has been all along. The bastard. And now to come and gloat like this. I hate myself for this - I let myself get taken here. I hate these bastards. I hate them all. We wanted to help them.'

I saw Bob only once after that. It was at a political event in Washington. He had done his knuckle-rapping time in Addis and was now elevated to the National Security Council. Feeling an urgent need to set the record straight with him, I made an effort to approach him. But the look he gave me was as cold as the shoulder he turned to me.

The circumstances didn't permit me to follow up but I reckoned there would always be another opportunity. There wasn't. Not long after, the vehicle in which he was travelling with other diplomats triggered a land mine in the Balkans. Bob was killed.