Betrayal. Jonathan Ancer
that he received payment from the Soviets. The GRU’s policy was to pay all their agents. They reckoned that taking the financial stress away gave their ‘assets’ one less thing to worry about. But Gerhardt rejects the accusation that his motive was financial.
Ronnie Kasrils, the former head of MK intelligence and Minister of Intelligence in the second Mbeki cabinet, is adamant that Gerhardt’s motivation was ideological, and that it’s ‘psyops trolls’ who spread disinformation about him.15 ‘Gerhardt spied out of idealism and a hatred of apartheid. The SADF and apartheid regime tried to spread a smear story that his motive was purely monetary. That was utter nonsense. It was a blatant attempt to hide their great embarrassment and discredit a thoroughly decent human being. Dieter and his [second] wife Ruth are clearly humanists who are revolted by racism and the exploitation of human beings. Nothing in their modest lifestyle has ever reflected a love of money or greed,’ says Kasrils.
Ronen Bergman, the Israeli investigative journalist and an authority on espionage, believes there is nothing to suggest Gerhardt wasn’t an ideological spy.16 ‘I’ve spoken to a lot of spies over the years – a lot – and there is always more than one motive. I didn’t get deeply into Dieter’s personality but there was nothing to contradict that his motive was at least partly ideological.’17 Dieter’s first wife, Janet Coggin, also believed there were a number of reasons why her husband became a spy, saying that he liked the way of life, the power and money, and the feeling that he was fooling people.18
The motives of people who become spies have been summed up by the acronym MICE: Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego/Excitement. Once in a session with South African spy recruits, Gerhardt went beyond the MICE framework and listed as an algebraic formula seven common characteristics that motivate people to be ‘Treacherous’: A + M + R + B + F + S + I > T. A is Access, M is Money, R is Resentment, B is Blackmailability (or coercion), F is Flawed Character, S is Self-Satisfaction (ego), and I is Ideology. Not all of these elements have to be present.
In Gerhardt’s own understanding, there were a number of both small and big incidents in his life that led to his boarding the London-bound train in 1963. It all started when, while studying in England, he lived, trained and socialised with people from a range of backgrounds, and started questioning South Africa’s racial policies. After he and Janet returned to live in South Africa, he had a confrontation with the man working in his garden, which had a profound impact on his thinking. ‘I was extremely angry and ready to give him a punch. He looked at me and said: “Moet dit nie doen nie, Baas. Ek is mos niks werd nie.” (Don’t do it, Master. I’m worthless.) This particular statement paralysed me. I was shocked and ashamed of myself. That evening I sat down and thought through the meaning of that statement. The man was 47 years old, separated from his family and had now reached a level where it appeared that everything, including his own self-esteem, had been lost.’19
Gerhardt also witnessed a so-called coloured woman carrying her sick child who was refused permission to board an empty ‘net blankes’ (whites only) bus travelling to Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town’s pouring winter rain.20 ‘I gradually came to the conclusion that what we were confronted with here in this country was an extremely inequitable political system.’21
In addition to these ‘small’ incidents, the ‘big’ events were the massacres at Sharpeville and Langa, which haunted Gerhardt. On 21 March 1960, at Sharpeville, a township south of Johannesburg, police shot into a crowd of thousands of people protesting against the pass laws, killing 69. When defiant crowds gathered in Langa, Cape Town, a few days later to protest against the massacre at Sharpeville, the police once again opened fire and killed three of the protesters. For Gerhardt the turning point came when he realised that he was part of the military establishment responsible for killing his country’s citizens.
But why the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? Gerhardt, an agnostic with a Lennonesque approach to life (‘imagine no religion’), was not a Marxist and didn’t have any communist sympathies. There are two likely reasons. Firstly, he had been in the armed forces long enough to know that the United States and Britain were cooperating with South Africa’s military and helped the apartheid government survive. Secondly, Gerhardt had approached the South African Communist Party (SACP) leader Bram Fischer to discuss what he could do for the struggle against apartheid. The SACP was banned and operating underground. Fischer suggested that Gerhardt go directly to the Russians because they were the local Communist Party’s mentors. That is what he did.
For his first task the Russians told Gerhardt to buy a Minox camera, which was small enough to conceal in his hand, and photograph handbooks that came into his possession and leave the film in the back seat of an unlocked car – a small silver Hillman – parked in Kew Gardens. If he needed to meet with his handlers, he would send theatre tickets to the Soviet Embassy: the date of the show would be the date of the meeting, and the venue would be in Kew. He was told not to worry about money, which would be provided. His first attempt at photographs were not up to standard, but his photographic skills improved and over the next few months he was able to satisfy a number of Soviet requests for specific material on sonars, radars and fire control systems.
That was, more or less, the modus operandi for the next twenty years. Gerhardt would be given a list of ‘essential items’ of information that the Russians required, and he would then go in search of the material. They never told him how valuable the material was that he was providing or thanked him; they just gave him more tasks. Because Gerhardt was an agent in place he had certain advantages: there was no need for him to establish a legend – a spy’s cover story – which is always prone to weak links; he had access to information; and he was able to operate without a spy network.
Gerhardt received training in spy tradecraft and espionage techniques from the Soviets. He was taught to memorise information and to crack safes. He was trained to use miniature photography equipment: how to develop film and encode it in microscopic negatives that he would place in fullstops and commas in letters he sent to various European addresses. He was also given instruction in Morse code, using a scrambler phone known as a one-time pad, an encryption method that could be used only once; and he was taught how to send secret messages and decipher his orders. He learnt about the art of surveillance: how to do surveillance and, if he was the one being surveilled, how to detect that he was being watched and then shake off the tail. He also learnt how to cope during an interrogation and to confuse a polygraph test.22 Photographs were taken of him in various disguises, which were used to make false passports for him.23
Gerhardt returned to South Africa with his wife Janet in 1964. The eighteen months he had spent in Britain had made him a valuable asset for GRU, for the British trusted the naval officer and granted him access to its sensitive systems.24
When Gerhardt returned to the country Bram Fischer was arrested and put on trial for treason. One of the witnesses against Fischer was Agent Q018, Gerard Ludi, a member of South Africa’s Special Branch who had penetrated the Communist Party. As a result the Russians re-evaluated the South African security police’s capabilities. They decided there would be no local go-betweens: Gerhardt would work directly with his handler, Gregorii Shirobokov, who had been a spy in Nazi Germany in the 1940s.25
Gerhardt was appointed to a post in the navy’s Directorate of Technical Services as a weapons staff officer. It was at this time that he became privy to a piece of information that made him swallow hard. A call had come for two 114 mm gun barrels plus breech blocks to be sent to an Atomic Energy Board facility near Stellenbosch. The matter was considered so secret that it was to be ‘forgotten after completion of the delivery’. Gerhardt believes this call signalled the start of South Africa’s research into developing its own nuclear weapons. From that moment Moscow told him to keep an eye on any development in the nuclear field. The subject was so important that it was never mentioned again; it was just understood that one of Gerhardt’s essential ongoing tasks was to find out about South Africa’s nuclear capacity. Gerhardt had to compromise South Africa’s nuclear programme, without compromising himself.
In his new role Gerhardt was careful to avoid any sudden and unexplained influence, and not to draw attention to himself. He knew that to live his second life