the rollback of south africa's biological warfare program

investigation phase ended.
Initially, TRC investigators had little information about Project Coast. A
top-secret briefing to a few commission members in 1996 revealed only that
South Africa had a CBW capacity in the past, but only a “defensive” one, and
that it was dismantled prior to the 1994 elections. The TRC continued with
low-level investigations, but had so little information at their disposal that it
seemed unlikely that anything new would emerge. 183
This expectation changed suddenly in January 1997 when Basson was
arrested during a sting operation on charges of fraud and the possession of
illegal substances based on his alleged effort to sell 1,000 Ecstasy tablets. 184 A
subsequent search of Basson’s friend and business associate, Sam Bosch’s
home, uncovered five or six trunks and a couple of suitcases that contained
secret documents related to Project Coast that were thought to have been
destroyed when the CBW program was dismantled.
The senior TRC researcher, Dr. Villa-Vicencia, rushed to Pretoria after
Basson was arrested in order to represent the TRC. He was joined by Mike
Kennedy, the representative of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), and
representatives from the Office of Serious Economic Activities, and the
Gauteng Attorney-General’s Special Investigation Team. Together they went
through the contents of these trunks. After some initial squabbling, an
agreement was reached that the NIA would take control and responsibility for
keeping these documents secure. Before the documents were turned over to the
NIA, the contents of the trunks were inventoried. 185 These documents
contained the core of information, which formed the basis of the TRC’s
investigative work over the next 18 months. The TRC called in Professor Peter
Folb, University of Cape Town, to serve as their scientific and technical
adviser.
In March 1998, Chandre Gould, another TRC investigator who had
access to the documents, and the TRC’s Commissioner, Wendy Orr, looked at
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