The MDMA Cook Who Tried To Commit Genocide

that good? I liked? That was fine. I think a lot of people who have their their car stereos up high in the early part of the show are maybe frustrated with you. You might have caused a car record to aggressive apologize. I was just excited. Yeah, it's okay. I'm trying to find a new way to introduce my show, and I'm clearly terrible at it. Uh. Notes. You know you're a professional introducer. I know. I'm mean, it's basically I like the way you were doing it before because

it was like the what's X in my wise? Yeah, yeah, it's catchy, and I mean it's exhausting to come up with a new one every time, but it is I do like when I feel it My favorite part is when you can feel you making it up as you go. Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely the case. Every time I was I'm debating as to whether or not to stick to a format though, but one he won't use the one I wrote as a format. You wrote one? Yeah, what did you write? I said, what's salty my ex boyfriends?

It's great? Right, no, nobody, all right, continue with your show. What's the salting your Okay? What's salt peppers? Already takes you in a direction you do not want to go off the bat. We're like, wait, what is that issue? Okay, because I don't I don't know what salting your ex boyfriends. I do know what's cracking my peppers. It's the pepper cracker that I have. Also, buy that shirt on t public. It's cute. Okay. Yeah, So we have some old business

before we get into the episode today, Billy Uh. One of those pieces of old business is that a couple of of our fans found you at a comedy show and gave you a wonderful gift for me. It's in an odd gift. They did contact me and us before on Twitter, which was nice and very thoughtful because it is nice to know to expect this gift. And yeah, it's not a kind of gift you'd want to receive at random, no God, and especially at this show was like in a house basement in Louisville, So like, the

show is in this guy's these people's basement. And then I was selling T shirts and just meeting people afterwards in their living room basically. And then yeah, these people stood in line very patiently and there like, hey, we like about a T shirt. That was cool, and then they're also here you go, and I was like, it's real and and what what what was this gift? Billy? It was it's a brown shirt, Uh, Nazi dagger and

it's it's legit and uh. They reached out to us on Twitter beforehand and explained that it was like a family heirloom they didn't want to have anymore. And he was a brother and sister. Um that was so happy to give it to me. And I don't really know what to do with such a thing. Um, it is a piece of history, uh, and and an interesting one at that. Um. Definitely not the kind of thing you want to have out just in your living room because

people will make the wrong conclusions. About it, and my wife and mother in law we're at my house when I opened it because I shipped it because I didn't want to fly with it. Yeah. Also I have blonde hair and blue eyes and I just family with it the yea. Yeah. So yeah, well, and it's the fact that it's a family heirloo of there's reminds me of

one of my weird family moments. But my my dad's dad did something spooky for the US government, Like he was doing he was always over in Vietnam during the war, and nobody seems to know precisely what he was up to, Like there's like the thing that he said he was doing, but everybody in the families like, yeah, but it was anyway, and he was never dirty, do you know what I mean? No, no, I mean it was it was so like that was what he did in like the sixties. But he was

in Germany right after the war. Um. And years after he died, we found like a little box that was just full to the brim with like Hitler youth arm bands and like penance and stuff like that, like a whole lot of them. Um. And it was always like, what the what's the story here? Like I'm certain it was. Just like he was in Germany after the war, they found a bunch of knots. He was like, oh, we should put this in a box. But it's weird. It's a weird thing to like find, right, like to find

a bunch of them. Yeah, like fund and one. You're like, I could see about someone just I won't take that. That's pretty weird. But fund a bunch of them, Like did you do something with a bunch of them? And I don't think so, but it was. It's a strange. It's a strange thing to come across um. And I'm gonna guess it was something like that for our fans where that some somebody's grandpa was over in Germany and shoot some guy or is in some house. They're like, okay,

I guess this is what I'm taking back it. Yeah, it was, I mean, I uh yeah, it's haunted for sure. Well, Billy, speaking of Nazis and speaking of racists, today's episode is about the racist chemical weapons engineer who probably cooked up the M D M A that you've used if you've done him. Yeah, So, I mean it's it's a fun one. He's doctor, so it's on brand for us. But I mean, yeah,

I'm sure he is a doctor. But I mean I always assume when you're doing certain types of drugs, like there's just there's bad people who have touched this, like cocaine for sure. Um, like m d M A is

made in a lot of different places. Like I've known some people who were, like what mad cooked m d M A in their like college lab while they were getting their PhD. Um and like I feel fine about that, you know, uh yeah, but I mean I just mean on the black market period, Yeah, there's always there's when you go to the black market, you're like, there's just that you have to accept. There's a persuage of like bad is involved in this, yeah, and bad people. You know.

It's how like most good people accidentally do bad stuff. It sounds like this bad guy accidentally did some good stuff. Yeah. Yeah, And it's like, so the extent to which this guy was selling m d m A is such that if you did ecstasy in the nineteen nineties during the height of the rave scene, or probably in the early two thousands, there's a very good chance you did this guy's ecstasy. Like if if you were if you were raving in like,

n uh and you did. You came across a batch of fucking awesome e Like, there's like the odds are really good that it was cooked by this dude, Walter Bassan. So that's the guy we're talking about today. Um, and we're not talking about his mostly about his career making ecstasy. We're talking about his career as a chemical weapons engineer trying to exterminate the black race. Always boy. Yeah, I was like, I don't know, he sounds pretty fun. Okay, okay, okay,

he's he's he's a genocider attempted genocider. Yeah. Um, So it's the story of Walter Basson is a really fucked up, an interesting one. But but to actually like tell it, Uh, there's a lot of background that I think people need about the history of chemical weapons. So we're going to talk about that a little bit. First. Do you a chemical weapons fan, Billy? No, I mean I understand them. You know, I've like all military stuff on some levels of right into it, but some of it gets real

horrific so quick. Yeah, like in the yeah, torture kind of way, do you know what I mean? Yeah, Like it's like I can enjoy, like I can I can both understand, like the horror of trench warfare in World War One and how much artillery played into that and appreciate, like looking at a piece of artillery and how it functions in the way the mechanics work. And part of that is because like you can see, like you can go to a war reenactment, you can see canons being

used and they're not hurting anybody. There's there's none of that with chemical weapons like that, there's no like displaying them, there's no appreciating the mechanics of it, Like it's purely designed to not just kill people, but to do it horribly, horribly, Like with firearms they do horrible things too, but we also get like fireworks out of that genealogy, Like there's fun things associated with Yeah, not with chemical weapons, Like this makes your insides be on your outside and you're

just yeah, blow somebody up, man, come on, yeah, honest god fearing how it's er. Yes, there's just an instant death. Yeah, yeah, instant death, and like death in a way that you know, we've been doing for a lot, Like people have always blown each other up in war and they've kept different ways of doing it. Yeah, but this chemical weapons are

like pretty new. Um, and this is actually something like we talked about in the Fritz Haber episodes, And whenever I talk about like the birth of chemical weapons, like a whole bunch of people are gonna hit me up on Twitter and be like, no, the first use was this, and the first use is that. And at those stories about like mongols catapulting plague victims over walls or like

something like that, and I get what they're saying. I don't think that stuff really counts, um, because like sickness has always been a part of war, and like cunning commanders have always found ways to spread illness among their enemies, because it makes sense. Chemical weapons in the modern sense are something really different. I think, um, just one immune mongol just running with the plague, so the first forefare

over there. Yeah, there's a difference between that and like gassing a town with Sara in my view, Um, yes, yeah, because yeah, that's just more of like, hey, this is wish works. But being like yeah, someone in that their army being like we're going to gas them. You're like wait what, no, what Yeah, it's it's it's I mean, and this is like a personal line for everybody. So people may disagree with me, but I can we It's like it's complicated when you tried to talk about like

where it all started. Like the first formal treaty that forbade something that you could call chemical warfare was probably the Franco German Treaty of sixteen seventy five, But that just banned the use of poison in war. So it wasn't really like like chemical weapons. It was more like you can't rub shit on your bullets and the shoot people. That's bad, you know. I's like that sort of thing. Yeah.

Uh in eighteen seventy four, bunch of I mean you can and ship's gonna get in your bullet wounds anyway, because there's poop everywhere and war. That's one of the eternal truths of war is all the poop. Um. Yeah. And the what in a festival like a music festival, Yes, yet music festivals in warfare have a lot in common. Um. I'm actually more okay with the use of chemical warfare on music festivals, but I'm not a big fan of

bonaru so no, it's la nation um so. In eighteen seventy four, about a dozen European states signed the Brussels Declaration, which banned poison gas and other poisons as weapons of force. It was the first time like a modern chemical weapon was banned. As eighteen seventy four UM and the Brussels Declaration was never ratified, But in eighteen nine the Hague Convention on the Laws of War was signed by every major European power and they agreed universally to avoid the

use of poison. The convention included a declaration on asphyxiating gases and explicitly forbade the use of projectiles designed solely for gas warfare. Now, the first modern chemical weapons attack on a huge scale occurred at Ipra in Belgium on eighteen April nineteen fourteen. We talked about this on the Fritz Hyper episode. German soldiers emptied cans of chlorine gas and trusted the wind to carry them into the foe um and there were similar experiments wrong on that day.

It was great, yeah, but afterwards it didn't work out so well for anybody. UM, So yeah, it's um. That was like the first kind of like modern chemical weapon attack, and by the end of World War One there's been a grand total of three thousand different chemical agents tested as potential weapons, so every side was guilty of this, even though they had signed a thing saying they wouldn't

do it. Um. Something like a hundred and twenty four thousand metric tons of chemical weapons were delivered via sixty six million artillery shells over the course of the war, causing around a million casualties, and as you might notice, this clearly violates the letter and spirit of the Hague

Convention Um. The way all the powers got around this was by arguing that their poison gas shells didn't violate the letter of the Hague convention Um because the the explosive shells they delivered them in didn't just kill people with gas since they exploded. They still killed people through explosions too, So their argument was like, well, the Hague Convention just banned shells that only dispersed chemical weapons, since our shells explode to technically technically we also, yeah, I

hate you guys so much. It's so fucking shit. Yeah, And it reminds me like, as a kid, I was a war gamer, Like I played a lot of those little games with models, and like the rules lawyering that you encounter in that hobby. It's just weird to realize, like, oh, the same thing happens in real war. Like there were a bunch of like overweight, shitty assholes standing around a table being like, no, it doesn't break the rules, because

this is amazing. Just a just a bunch of bearded dudes who have never been near a battlefield yelling about like what doesn't break the letter of the law, will like actual soldiers get gassed. It's amazing. That's what I was thinking, Like while you were saying that there's every war, it sounds like there comes to a point where like, okay, okay, you can't do that anymore, God damn stop doing that. Like every war there's like something like wait, humans just

figure out like okay, okay, what about this? And then it comes to the point where but it's like all right, it's just we gotta stop. You can't do that. Oh God, what what is that? Stop that? Every time? It's fun? So yeah, it it. World War one was ship chemical weapons made it worse. In the nine the Great Powers signed the Geneva Protocol and Asphyxiating, Poisonous and Other Gases UM, which would have banned all chemical weapons in warfare, like

without any sort of exceptions in it um. The only two major powers who did not ratify the proposal where the United States in Japan, which is interesting. The US has a long history of advocating for rules in warfare, but then forbidding or refusing to sign onto them because it will limit what we can do with war. Um. Yeah, yeah,

we should. We it's probably a good thing to sign. Um. I should say that, Like, the Geneva Convention was kind of bullshit um in some ways, just because like there was an exemption in it that if you were attacked with chemical weapons by a state, you could use chemical

weapons in defense of your country. And there was another provision that allowed chemical weapons to be used on any states or groups that had not signed the Geneva Protocol um, which meant that colonial hours could continue to deploy mustard gas against their tribal enemies. So it was like, we can't use chemical weapons on other white people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's that's basically the law that they agree on

after World War One. We're not barbarians, but we're going to keep doing this to the people we call barbarias. We do need to keep some order because yeah, the Geneva protocols also made it legal to stockpile chemical weapons, so it's like you can't use them, but you can build up an arsenal of them, and you can use it if you're attacked or if you need to suppress

people who don't have a country. So that's cool. That's like they've just given people like poker chips or you can't spend them unless you like really need it, unless you really want to. You kind of that's kind of

always how rules about warfare are. Like nobody, it's it's I guess in part because it's usually not people who have are faced those weapons who are like signing onto the conventions about them at a bunch of politicians being like yeah, in generals, all sort of like debate, but well, okay, but what if we need to well then we'll have this exception and that we can still use them if we need to. Um. Yeah, but it is that, I mean,

that is their job is to think like that. So so it's like that weird, yeah, yeah, and yeah they're all a bunch of lawyers. Now. The first nation to break with the protocols was fascist Italy and their colonial war with Ethiopia UM, which was a state at that point in time, Mussolini's troops dropped mustard gas bombs and mass on Ethiopian villagers and thirty six, killing and wounding

more than fifteen thousand people. Mussolini's actions were a clear violation of the protocol, but the League of Nations refused to do anything. This would prove to be the last time an international organization failed to take action against a fascist gassing civilians. So that's good. It's never happened again, never, not not not once. Now. No, that's what's great out international governance is that it's a thing that really happens. It's not theater. Yeah, it's not at not at all theater,

totally a real thing. Um. So, World War two wasn't a great time for anybody, um But one of its few bright spots is that in the European theater, at least chemical weapons were not deployed. Uh. This did not stop both the Axis and the Allies from manufacturing huge quantities of them um. And the failure of either side to use chemical weapons was not due to high minded ideals on anyone's part, but more due to a balance of terror that kept bare minimums of human decency in

place in this one specific field of war. Um I'd like to quote from a Carnegie Council paper on the Rise and Fall of Chemical weapons about this quote. While the Allies refined older model gases like false gene and mustard, the Germans invented a new, far deadlier category of chemical weapons, nerve agents, in one of the greatest intelligence coups of the war. The Nazis successfully kept this development secret from

the Allies until their surrender. If they had chosen to use these weapons on Allied true they might have altered the course of history once again. Germany had its superior chemical industry to thank. Chemists from I. G. Farban, then one of the world's largest corporations, stumbled on compounds of extraordinary potency while trying to develop potential insecticides for commercial use.

What became Sarah Taboon and so Man All nerve gases which caused the cascading failure of body functions, including the body forgetting to breathe and then rapid death, were developed by German scientists working with their very mocked counterparts I. G. Farban. By the way, it's bear today, So that's cool. That's cool. Yeah, you're aspirin is made by the people who invented saren cool. I mean they know what they're doing. They do, you know, I would I would argue that Sarah works better at

its intended application than aspirin. Yes, yeah, I can attest to that from what I've seen and experience. But aspirin doesn't do like when you're worth like as you develop that, did you just go home and your wife's like, how was today? You're like it was in chance. Yeah. I imagine a lot of scientists like sitting out with a beer watching the sunset, like staring at their kids playing in the yard, and just like shaking their heads. I don't think we should have done that. This might go

bad places just gonna buy us in the ass. I feel like there's all the best scientists wind up feeling like that at some point, Like we had a whole generation of them on the Manhattan Project who must have just gone home. You get this reading them where they're just sitting around being like, oh boy, maybe I shouldn't have done that, Probably shouldn't be doing this job. Yeah, they just know just enough of the I don't I

think we should do this? You get okay, all right, I'm just not Okay, Yeah, it's like everybody spreads that Oppenheimer like that that anecdote about him reciting that line from the Bog of a Gida, I become Death, the destroyer of world. And I feel like, when you're talking about when you need to change your career, if you feel the need to quote that un ironically about what you're doing, maybe you need a new job. Yeah, maybe you're not in the right field. I'm like, I'm in

over my head. I'm in over your head now. I'm gonna I just like science, that's all. I just like science. I bet his resume was fun, just like nineteen forty three to nineteen forty five. I became Death, destroyer of World's nine about me. You may have heard about me, you know, the guy who will ultimately be responsible for the end of human civilization. That was my day jobs. I figured it out. It was a problem, and I got it first. I got it right. Ah damn it.

That is I mean when most scientists, I know, it's that the whole thing is like we don't know, so we're just honestly trying to figure out everything. Is like, oh, we don't really know, and that's what happens is like you guys keep asking questions. Man, Yeah, it's like doing too many drugs. Sometimes I don't go down that Hallwaite man. Yeah, you're gonna go too far and you're not gonna be able to come back. But at least when people do that on acid, like it just leads to them following

fish around for seven years when the military doesn't weaponize it. Yeah, not yet tried, That's for sure. They have tried. It's just hard to so. After World War Two, the US and the Soviet Union embarked on a dark and secret arms race to build more varied stockpiles of chemical weapons. In By seven, the U s stockpile of saren was so vast that we started developing a new series of nerve gases. The V for Venomous Agents VX nerve gas

is probably the most famous of these. It's three times as toxic as saren when inhaled, and a thousand times as toxic when absorbed through the skin or the other. We gotta make it worse. I just make sure, and this isn't I forget, this isn't TV. I just threw my hands up and I was like, just Jesus, like,

we have too much. Let's just makes some moment. Well, and if you follow the line of thinking there, it's remarkable because like in ninety five, like we see that the Nazis have like operated the most brutal regime in history, have gassed eleven million people to death and like the fastest massacre in the history of human murder. And when were like, oh, and these same people developed the deadliest poison anyone's ever developed. I guess let's take it and

make more. That's the uh, we are so shitty, like everyone is, but even specifically the US post World War Two. Yoh, we won. We're gonna take everything. We won. The worst people ever designed the worst poison ever. Let's make it. Oh, we've made so much of it that there's no point in that's having more. Let's make a deadlier version of it, just in case somebody finds all ours. Yeah, now, Billy, you know what isn't a thousand times deadlier than Sarah

and gas. No, the products and services that support this podcast, we don't know that I do. I do. I can guarantee you that if you if you deploy the products and services that support this podcast against say, a recalcitrant rebel village. Uh, it won't suffocate them. I hope you're right. I hope you're right. I suspect I am in this case. Anyway,

here is our non weaponizable products. We're back. Okay, So Billy, we've been talking about poison gas a little bit this morning, and that's been fun um, and I should probably to talk a little bit here about what these chemicals we're

talking about do. So saren nerve gas basically turns off the off switch for your muscles and nerves, which leads to constant muscle contractions, seizures, uncontrollable convulsion, and exhaustion that can cause respiratory paralysis, which is when your lungs forget to work, and of course death. But it doesn't turn off your nerves, so you get to feel No, it's you're in a horrible pain. Oh, it's terrible. One. That's fun. Yeah,

it's it's it's good. V X nerve gas works the same way, but at lower doses and it's much faster. One leader of VX nerve gas contains enough individual doses to kill a million human beings. WHOA, that's yeah, that's that's cool. That's helpful. Good much you can give a million people with this much. And again the dudes who did that went home and like watched fireworks with their families. It's amazing. Yeah, well, guys, we made a leader of this ship time to go home for the day. A

million people. So, by the late nineteen fifties, the Soviet Union had also learned how to produce v X nerve gas, and they started making it too. Now, the USSR was in general a major distributor of horrific poisons throughout the Cold War. They sent a shipload of chemical weapons to Egypt, a nation who today still refuses to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention. In nineteen sixty three, Egypt deployed false gene and mustard gas against Yemeni forces. In nineteen sixty seven,

they again used nerve gas and Yemen. Many of these weapons were likely supplied directly by the Soviet Union. In the mid nineteen eighties, Saddam Hussein's Iraq began producing its Yeah, it was deployed extensively throughout the Iran Iraq War. Now, the US did not approve of any of this directly, nor did we directly hand the Iraqi regime v X nerve gas, but we did use our intelligence apparatus to inform Iraq of the position of Iranian military units, knowing

full well that Iraq would deploy chemical weapons against them. Um, and then we later use this as a justification for invading them. Um. I'm gonna quote from a great article in Foreign Policy quote. US officials have long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein's government never announced he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air Force Colonel Rick Francona, who was a military attache in

Baghdad during the strikes, paints a different picture. The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn't have to. We already knew. So that's cool. Yeah, So everybody's fine in the Cold War with using chemical weapons. Point cold chemicals warm people up. It's a cold war. We're not having a real war. We're just having a like, Hey, come on, it's chili. Warm up with this VX. It will make your muscles contract and that'll warm you up.

You know what they say to people having fatal seizures are never chili. Hm. They sweat a lot. They sweat a lot. Uh. So I brought all of this up as background because the stuff we're about to talk about today, Uh, Walter Basson and South Africa is horrific. But it's important to understand the context of the global chemical warfare industry

and its use in the nineteen seventies and eighties. UM. When we start talking about chemical weapons and the nations that use them, it's not a story that has any good guys, but there's definitely bad guys, and Walter Basson is one of the worst. UM. Mr Basson was born on July six, nineteen fifty seven years before the birth of the V series of nerve gases, and we don't know much about his early life. He grew up around Cape Town and became a cardiologist, and he seems to

have excelled in his career. He practiced medicine in the suburbs of that city and the employee of the South African Defense Forces. He eventually rose to the rank of brigadier and became a trusted part of the military medical establishment. UM. So have you ever heard of Rhodesia, Billy Wayne or is it an herb? It's a it's a place. UM, it was a place. Rhodesia was essentially a call. It's like modern day Zimbabwe UM, but back when white people

were in charge of it, it was called Rhodesia UM. Now, in the nineteen sixties and seventies, the European powers started to increasingly pull out of their African colonies, and this posed a problem for the parts of Africa that had sizeable white populations who had grown up basically controlling large chunks of land and ruling over large numbers of black people. Rhodesia was named after the arch colonialist Cecil Rhodes who will certainly have an episode of his own one of

these days, UM. And so for years there was like this big conflict over Rhodesia UM. And basically like actually a lot of ore, like the modern military tactics that the U. S Military uses in Afghanistan and Iraq, like counterinsurgency tactics were invented by the white Rhodesian military to suppress the black population. Well, we're just you know, taking feeling good and keep doing the good, you know, yeah, exactly. UM. If you ever heard a soldier of Fortune magazine, I have.

I used to read it when I was little, you know, I didn't know, Yeah, it was well, during like the seventies, they would put in ads for the Rhodesian military because Rhodesia would like solicit white people from America and Europe to come and fight as and become like colonial warriors, suppressing like the black population. It's super fucked up. The story of Rhodesia is incredibly fucked up. But they know where we grew up. People were like, y'all, you can go over you can go over there and get to

shoot people. You can kill them and not racist there. Fine, it was I saw it in an ad. It was then sold you're a Fortune magazine. In the back of a magazine, you can go over and kill people and it's okay. All the best militaries advertised in the back of a magazine. Um So, the Rhodesian struggle for I don't know, colonial domination um ended in the early nineteen seventies in defeat and with the establishment of the nation of Zimbabwe racist Americans that we did. We ran out

our racist I guess yeah. So that left just one power in Africa fighting for white supremacy, obviously South Africa. UM Now, the badly outnumbered white population of South Africa managed to maintain power via a brutal police state and oppressive laws that made Jim Crow look still pretty bad, but less bad. Uh, that's not the best way to frame it. It was even worse than Jim Crow, is

what I'm saying about the apartheid state. You don't want to be You don't have that argument either way, we're like, hey, we're not. It was like you you take the most racist people in America and you make them more racist, and that was the government of South Africa in the

mid nineteen seventies. Like, or maybe not more racist, but with more power to be racist is probably a better way to frame it, because I suspect a lot of racists in America in this period would have done what the South African government did, but they just weren't allowed to. They didn't they didn't have the Internet to like, you know, motivate them like, oh, they're getting it done down there. We could be more racist, I know, we wouldn't do

it enough. So, Uh. In the mid nineteen seventies, South Africa got involved in a civil war and Angola fighting on the side of anti communist rebels. And this was a very complicated conflict, but the gist of the story is that South Africa believed that the cause of white supremacy was best served by supporting the United States and its allies in the Cold War, so they backed the anti community side in the civil war in Angola. Yeah,

you can make of that what you will. So Cuba came out on the side of the pro communist and Golan government, and in short order South African soldiers found themselves wildly outnumbered and outmaneuvered by the Cuban Army UM and their forces in the Angolan Army. Uh. They were forced to withdraw from the country, But before that happened, they captured a handful of Cuban military vehicles. Inside them, they found a variety of gas antidotes and gas masks.

This convinced the South African defense forces that Cuban soldiers were preparing to use chemical weapons against them. Now, it's possible that this never happened. Everything I'm telling you now is based on war crimes trials conducted in the mid nineteen nineties, but the South African military establishment claims that fears of Cuban chemical weapons is what drove them to

start developing their own chemical weapons program. So yeah, now, one thing I should note in terms of like determining whether or not this is true and whether or not they thought there was a really real military threat that inspired them to make chemical weapons, is that right around the same time their war worth Angola went to ship, the powers that be in South Africa also felt control of the domestic situation in their country slipping through their

hands um see. At this point in South Africa, white South Africans basically held all political power in the country, despite making up only a small percentage of the population. Under Prime Minister B. J. Worcester. Throughout the mid nineteen seventies, economic growth plummeted, urban and crowding grew worse, and it became increasingly clear to everyone that the black majority of the country was increasingly less willing to take this kind

of ship. In nineteen seventy six, after the last South African troops left Angola, students in the Soetto township of Johannesburg protested against the mandatory teaching of Afrikaans and school. Now, Afrikaans is like a white kind of like I think it's a descendant of like German or in Dutch and stuff like it's it's the language that the white people in South Africa speak and black people in South Africa were not happy at being forced to learn a foreign

occupier language. Um one not imagine. Yeah, it's truly mystifying, Billy. Normally people love being forced to learn the language that the people who regularly shoot them speaks. Gonna be a fun episode. Just learn our language. Why don't you want to learn? Is it the shooting you? Is that way? You don't want to learn our language because it's because this is your country and we came here? Is that? Why are you gotta let it go? Dude? You gotta let ye so? Um. The Sotto uprisings were put down

by white police with live rounds. They killed a number of school children and it sparked an international incident. Um. So. Obviously, the late nineteen seventies was not a great time for racial awareness UH in the West, but things had progressed enough that black school children being mowed down by white cops did not play well, and since South Africa's political position was precarious at best, they really needed the support

of western nations. Um. The head of the Defense Force, General Constant Ville Jean, later testified that the diplomatic backlash convinced the government that such bloodshed had to be prevented. So it all quote focus the attention of the military on the need to develop alternative crowd control agents. So this is what starts them on the road to developing chemical weapons. As they're like, boy, it looks bad when we just shoot people. We need an alternative. We need

an alternative to shooting people. It's just democratis those were alternative crowd control. What's that mean? We can't shoot him anymore. So gases seem like a good call because you can't see those so well on a camera. What if we just put like invisible stuff that gets in their bodies and kills them that way. M hmm, Yeah, that's basically

the thinking. So after so at, the South African Defense establishment becomes convinced that a total strategy is necessary in order to defend the country from the unrest that was increasingly sweeping the nation. And I feel like a r fault to start with, but we're going to have to do something awful about it. Now there's all this unrest. We gotta do something about it. Let's let's try to be the worst thing imaginable about it. Yeah, that's basically

where this goes. So in nineteen eighty one, the South African government orders Brigadair Walter Basson, a young military cardiologist, to travel abroad and learn about the chemical and biological weapons programs of the Western world. Why a cardiologist, Yeah, I guess because he was just the best evil doctor they had. Like they looked at all the doctors in the military and we're like, you're the evilist. That's my guest. I don't know how this motherfucker is hollow and side.

Let's get him. There is nothing behind this man's He's good at stuff, but I don't like it. Yeah, so um Woter and his name is I think w O T E r Um. So I'm not Wooter. It seems more like alter, which is why I think I've called him that a couple of times. But but Wood, we'll call him Wood. Wutta was a thirty years old at this point, and he took to his task with all

the enthusiasm you'd expect of a young wunderkind. Given the chance to embark on an unprecedented project, Project Coast, as it was named, grew into one of the most ambitious and sinister weapons projects in human history. Its goals, if not its ends, may have even eclipsed the Manhattan Project and horrifying scale. So we don't fully know where Bassin traveled in order to learn the tools of his new deadly trade. The evidence we have shows he visited a

dizzying variety of different destinations. A congress on Chemical and Biological Weapons in San Antonio in May of nineteen eighty one, a visit to Taiwan to see their chemical weapons factories. That same year, he made trips to Denmark, Switzerland, and he spent more than four weeks in the Russian Academy

of Sciences in Moscow. We know he spent time working with British intelligence, and it's impossible for us to say exactly how much help or what precise sort of help these different nations provided, but it's fair to say that both sides of the chemical weapons industry, Soviet and UH and Western um contributed knowledge to voters like later development.

So that's cool, right, everybody came together. Yeah, it's like how if you don't know, if you've ever been to a gun show, like like the fair ground, it is like all the time, I know you have this is more further people. But what always makes me laugh is like it's people that hate each other it's like base a gun shows like basse where they go get their weapons and then they go fight each other outside. Yeah,

it's it's pretty fun. Actually, it's the same thing going to gun rages and like seeing the different political patches on people's like bags and stuff and being like, ah, you all like a couple of bad years and you'll be using those on each other. Yeah, but you can't do it here yet, not yet, not yet. We know who your picture and when you put those targets up.

So throughout the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties, Basson developed a shocking array of conventional, chemical and biological weapons for South Africa. He designed rifle grenades, mortar bombs, and artillery shells with biological weapons capacity. Now, this was all pretty conventional within the dark standards of the arms industry at the time, but Basson quickly went beyond preparing South Africa's conventional forces for a shooting war that just

involved chemical weapons. See Around the same time Project Coast started, the South African Special Forces launched Operation Barnacle. This was an action spearheaded by white former Rhodesian security operators to

assassinate enemies of the apartheid government. Wood or Basson wound up at the heart of this enterprise to his goal in it was to clamp down on the Southwest African People's Organization in Namibia, a group the South African government considered terrorists but most people would probably call freedom fighters. Here's how The Guardian described what wood or Basson helped his government due to the SWAPO is the acronym the

South African Southwest African PS Organization. I think SWAPO is fun. Quote. Particular favorites of his were muscle relaxings, which, when given to victims and large doses, caused their lungs to collapse and induced suffocation. The charge sheet alleges that are around nineteen eighty Basson provided the toxins to kill two hundred and Namibians SWAPO gorillas fighting for independence from South Africa. An aircraft was purchased for the purpose of disposing bodies

in the sea. Yeah, it's it's fun stuff. Like he's just like, oh you think, like he watches people be like okay, man, that's terrible. He's like just white. He gets good. They're like no, no, we're good, and he's like no, no, I just cracked my knuckles. We're just now. Then we get an airplane and we dumped their bodies in the ocean, right, Billy. You know who won't poison freedom fighters to death and dump their bodies in the ocean.

Derritos the probably Well actually they they're they're owned by I think Friedo La and I suspect fried to Lay absolutely would do that. Um, you're right, I'm with you on that. Yeah, but you know who won't are the products and services that support this show. Yes, we're back, so Billy. When we when we left off, we talked about how Bassin provided toxins that shut down the lungs of of swap O guerrillas and then they would throw them into the sea from helicopters. Um, and I'm gonna

continue quoting from that Guardian article. It just sort of what things WoT Bassin got involved with as part of this operation to clamp down on an independence movement. Quote, bass and supplied quantities of tuberine and skoline muscle relaxans, which an overdose would cause suffocation. Basson requested feedback about

the effectivity of these substances. The indictment reads Dr Jack Bothma, an orthopedic surgeon, who fled to Canada, is expected to testify that he handcuffed five minted trees and rubbed a poison gel into their body. He's on the orders of Basson, who is allegedly experimenting with new means of killing people. When it failed to have the desired result, the men were murdered with muscle relaxants. Botham has turned state's evidence

in return for immunity from prosecution for the murders. His license to practice in Canada was recently revoked after he failed a qualification exam. In many cases, the naked bodies of the victims were dumped at sea from a plane. Basson is alleged to have sometimes gone along for the ride. On other occasions, the corpses were disposed of in blast furnaces or shallow graves. So that's great, good, Yeah, So what you get from that this is obviously there were

trials about this later which we'll talk about. But this is a guy who number one, he's charged with helping South African special forces clamped down on this this black liberation movement basically, and he it's not enough for him to just help them kill people like he's he's a scientist. He's always experimenting. So he's testing out new drugs on these people to like see what works well. And there's like a kind of a perverse like like that I guess I and understand is sort of like a sociopathic

Like he's a scientist. He's going to experiment with ship the writing along to watch the corpses get thrown into the sea. That is like, okay, this is beyond just like a soulless monster like this guy gets some sort of enjoyment. There is a yeah, well to me, Yeah, to me, what made it seem pleasurable is the lungs collapsing. Yeah,

that he's really focused on that. That is a that is a thing where it's like, oh, you're gonna live and know you're gonna know you're dying, You're gonna it's like you're drowned in in the like you're just drowning outside the water, which is awful. And it's like there's also clearly um like you think about it from a tactical standpoint, and the only reason to use chemical weapons

for this is to freak people out. Is like the fear is to like scare them away from rebelling, because like you could you if you just are trying to kill insurgents, you can shoot them like you can execute people. That works very well and it's less horrible. Um. So, like there's an element of sadism present, and like the whole South African military establishment where it's like where these black people are not happy being ruled by us and we have to make we have to scare the ship

out of them while we kill them. Um. Yeah, it's fun stuff, fun story. Thanks for nice It's always a pleasure. But it is important that we talk about stuff like this because it's like Jesus, Yeah, it's it's wild. Yeah, and where where this story goes is pretty wild. So under bass direction, under Baston's direction, South African operators use poison to kill several hundred people all over the world.

Not all of his victims were in surgeons in Africa, some of them were murdered in the UK and m I five later investigated at least six people who died of suspicious strokes and heart attacks, possibly as a result of Project Barnacle. So they're not just murdering like people who have taken up arms against them. They're killing like activists around the world, people who are like a danger to the apartheid regime. So that's cool. Well they've learned

from other regimes. I mean we did empires and yeah, and they all do it. Yeah, we all do it. Um now. Bass And traveled over the world throughout the late nineteen eighties and early nineties, seemingly irrespective of the sanctions leveled against his nation. He attended conferences and spoke to chemical weapons experts in the US, Israel, and all across Western Europe, often while his agents were using his

weapons to kill people in those countries. So that's really neat. Uh, nobody stopped this guy from traveling around to learn how to make better chemical weapons, even though like multiple nations that he traveled to had sanctions against South Africa for its race. Is hum well they wanted Yeah, you think it might have been a two way street. Yeah, yeah,

I think it was like, oh, without a doubt. They're like, all right, we'll tell you some ship, but you've been practicing a lot and we want to learn some things from you that you get. Yeah, you get that feeling.

And again like there's no way for there to be any evidence of that for me, Like, I can't say that happened, but like, fuck you look into this guy's story, and I am certain there were some sketchy motherfucker's and like the CIA and the Massad and m I five probably even who are like, yeah, well let him out of the country. Wudn't hear what he's gotta say? What does what kind of is he like? Vegan? What's he like?

What does he want for lunch? Yeah? Yeah, no, I I assume that's how all that works, where at some point everything gets so confusing you're just like, yeah, I mean we're just learning how to do stuff. Yeah for him? And who's not. There's a great musician named Tom Lair who was like the weird Al Yankovic of like the fifties and sixties. I think he's a math professor at Harvard now, um, but he was like an early musical

funny man. And he wrote a song about Verner von Brown, who designed V two rockets for the Nazis and then was instrumental in the U. S Space program. And there's a line in it that I think really sums up all of these people very well. Um, when the rockets go up, who knows where they come down? That's not my Department, says Verner von Brown. Um, it's just like I think a lot of these people are like that. It's like, yeah, he's killing people in our country too,

but like that's not my problem. My problem is developing better chemical weapons. And he's good at it. So he's really good at this ship. Yeah. So, under Basin's direction, the apartheid government of South Africa developed a dizzying array of biological weapons Ebola ekoli, necrotizing fasciitis, and tracks and botulinum.

That last one deserves a bit of special discussion. See bachulenum, which is like if you have if you have like a can that starts puffing up, like you gotta get rid of that thing very carefully because it has bachulin in it um. And bachulen um is like one of the deadliest things by weight in this planet. Um. It's what we use in botox treatments and very deluded measures, um, but in slightly less deluded form. It can kill people

by the thousands. Basin's team is alleged to have synthesized roughly five grams have bauchu lenum, which is enough to murder five million people. So that's cool. You can see, like the scale of deadliness. No, though, you develop this like VX nerve gas, which a leader can kill a million people, and Bassin develops this bachulenum toxin that like the five grams can kill five million people. Um, cool,

how science works like that? And it's like yeah, yeah, everyone's trying to beat each other's like, oh they've got a million people with a leader, we can we could kill more people with less than that man. And it's it's the same thing like with your phones, where it's like we were all marveled at how quickly phones got smaller and faster, but like the same thing happens with murder poison. Yeah. Uh so Basson helped to direct the assassin Yeah, it is wild that we have. We're way

slower on that ship. Uh So. Basson helped to direct assassination attempts against a number of African National Congress activists in London, which was like a group you know, advocating for like more racial justice and reform of the apartheid system in South Africa. He was behind the assault of at least two members of the a n C in London. He developed a special poison that was launched via a

syringe described as a screwdriver. The only reason that the plot to kill these guys failed is that the scientists who tried to do the deed fucked up and almost stabbed himself instead. Then he panicked and threw the screwdriver into the Thames, so that one didn't work. Yeah. Basson was involved in at least one attempt on the life of Nelson Mandela. While he was a prisoner. Uh Wootoo developed a way to slip thallium, a toxic heavy metal

that basically melts your brain in the Mandela's medication. Uh. These attempts failed, but for his gallantry, Wootoo Basson was awarded the Order of the Southern Cross, which even sounds like a racist And I was gonna say it was just like that sounds like the most It's it's like the most racist. It's the Cross. And you're like, go, I don't like it. Yeah, it's like what we we got to come up with an award for racists, but we want to make it sound even more racist than

the Iron Cross. Anybody got suggestions? I got one. What do we just call it Southern? What do we call it the Southern Iron Cross? Now, Nelson Mandela was released in nineteen ninety nine two, the A and C was an unbanned in the face of massive unrest. Suddenly the call as a black people having basic rights was legally

legitimate in South Africa got hit. Yeah. Yeah, So basically the A n C had been like a terrorist group um prior to this, and like A and C members have definitely done some terrorism in South Africa, although it's terrorism in a pretty fundamentally justifiable cause, I would argue. But yeah, and after the A n C is like a legal political party and the cause of black people having basic rights was like legally legitimate to fight for

in South Africa. Now, as you might imagine, Wouter Basson was not happy with this, uh, and he responded by spearheading a plan to distribute poisoned beer to black people at bus stops. So that's good, stop stopping from voting if you poison their beer. Fuck he's a real piece of shit. Yeah. Now, as I relate these stories, I don't want to discount the role of the South African government or military establishment in any of this, just because

we're focusing on Wooter. His work enjoyed a broad base of support among the powers that be in his unspeakably shitty government. His work was directed and approved at high levels and supported by a variety of less technically sophisticated methods of repression. Some assemblages guys with Trunchean's beating protesters, but Wooter Basson was a unique man within the South

African military and medical establishments. He did eventually go to trial for his many, many crimes, and because of that trial we have some knowledge of the extent of those crimes. Johan Thron, one of the operators who worked for Basson, admitted personally to the murder of several hundred SWAPO prisoners along with South African Defense soldiers identified as security risks,

so they even killed soldiers in their own military. Multiple different government agencies managed Basson's chemical weapons project over the decade or so that he was active. In the late nineteen eighties, as resistance to the apartheid regime picked up, Basson's work increasingly focused on poisoning members of the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party, and the South African Council for Churches. Anyone who voiced displeasure with apartheid

was subject to poisoning. The testing process for these poisons was as horrific as you'd imagine. The rude Plat Research Laboratory where most of this work was done, conducted numerous experiments on dogs and horses. In one study, they poisoned baboons to death over the course of several days. That. Yeah, but of course the killing of individuals could only go

so far, and Wood or Bassin knew that. By the late nineteen eighties, the situation was dire enough for the government that they knew some sort of mass solution to the problem of black people wanting rights was necessary. Now it was accepted that there were too many black people in South Africa to kill. This was not a moral question. Many people in the government likely would have supported mass murder, but they simply did not have the technical capacity to

do so. We logistically, it'll be a not marry you guys. We just can't. We just we don't have enough boats. We just can't make it work. Well, like we're sitting, Yeah, we we have to let most of them live. But Billy, they didn't have to let most of them continue to have babies. And this is where Woo tour Bassin. Yeah, so under Bassin, the South African military establishment embarked on a different scheme, an anti fertility vaccine. Oh god, yeah, I mean, can't you just see some bats in the

United States want abortions? Is that what you want? We'll give you abortion. We'll give you one for laughs. Just what? No? Yeah, yeah, so fully eighteen percent of the projects Basson masterminded during his time in the military were focused on what we're referred to as fertility and fertility control studies. Scientists under Bassin later testify that they understood they were developing a vaccine which would be administered to black women without their

knowledge or consent, in order to render them infertile. Damn it. Yes, Now, the initial goal of Basson and his fellow science this was to develop a vaccine that would only work on black women. This obviously proved to be impossible because black women are genetically the same as any other kind of women, and it just doesn't things don't work that way. It's impossible to target people by skin color in that way.

So it's interesting to me, Billy that like these incredibly racist scientists start out by wanting to make a vaccine that will render black women infertile, and they realized that because black women are the same as every other kind of woman. They can't do it, and this doesn't lead them to like realize, like, oh, maybe this racism is based on nothing. Science says we're stupid. Science says what

we're doing is idiotic. But no, they never at any point so they were rational enough to accept that their plan of a vaccine to render black women infertile would not do anything. But they refuse to give up on their plan of stopping black people from having sex while

at least from having babies, and so things evolved. Uh So, one of like the scientists do worked under Bassin later testify it, as I've alluded to a few times, and one of them, a dude named Van Rindsberg, claimed the effort started back in nine um and he said he was told that the project initially existed at the request of Jonas Savimbi, the Engolan anti communist rebel leader and

Paul Manafort client who was allied with South Africa. The story goes that Savimbi was concerned that his female fighters would get pregnant and wanted an anti fertility vaccine. This is widely believed to be complete horse ship designed to provide plausible deniability to the scientists. So basically scientists were like, it seems maybe like fucked up that we're trying to render all black people infertile, and if there's ever a

war crimes trial, we're getting trouble. And so their leadership was like, no, it's not to it's it's for this guy's female soldiers. He just doesn't want him getting pregnant in battle. He needs him to because when they get pregnant, they can't do murder. Is good? Exactly better excuse Yeah, And it's like most of the scientists that were like talked to her like, yeah, we knew that was horseshit, Like it was you give people a little bit of

plausible deniability and that that's all it was. So the Non Proliferation Organization has a good write up of the ensuing court case that includes an interview with one of Basson's men, and I'm gonna quote from it now. Of course,

the scientists did not believe the cover story. Van Rindsburg testified that he could not think that an intelligent man could think we would spend a couple million on a project like this to control pregnancy, and a few of Savimbi's female soldiers Nonetheless, the project got underway and became central to work at the research laboratories. After the fall of the apartheid government, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was convened to investigate the unspeakable crimes the white government had

committed against its black citizens. And this is where, like all of our interviews from this come from one of Basson's employees, a guy named Gooson, gave fascinating detail into the plan. The interviewer was a fellow named Jerome Chas Killton. So Chas Colton said, Uh, it was decided that a front company would be formed. Uh. And he was asked, can you tell us what brief that you were given

for what this front company was? Uh? And Goosen said, our final brief, or the other brief, was a very important one was to develop a project to curtail the earth rate of the black population in the country. So Goosen was asked to give more detail on this, and he said, the person who instructed us or asked it

to do this was Dr Basson. Um. There was a lot of talk on the ethics of this, and Basson spent some time quoting to us the census figures of nineteen two or eighty one or whenever the census was. I can't remember exactly that the Census office stopped counting the black people when they reached forty five million, and the government decided that it was not feasible to make it known to the public that there were forty five million blacks. It was just too many. And this was

mainly one of our big threats. And I think the figure of twenty eight million was made known. Now, if those were true facts, I wouldn't know up till today, I don't know, but that was presented to us by Dr Basson. So basically Basson's scientists are like, we feel a little bit questionable about this. And one of the things they're told is that you're working to sterilize these guerrillas.

But they're also told that, like, there's twice as many black people in the country as the government's willing to admit on the official census forms, So like, if we don't solve this problem with black people breeding soon, we're going to be outnumbered and overwhelmed um or like com

letely overwhelmed. So like this is like the scientists being told this are both simultaneously being told you're not trying to sterilize all the black people and also given evidence that like, we have to sterilize all the black people right away or we're fucked. So it's yeah, wild, I like the arbitrary numbers. To stop counting, that's to stop stop. Yeah,

don't count anymore. We can't tell Yeah. And Goosen later testified, based on conversations he had with different South African generals, that he thought the anti fertility project was considered by the government to be the most important project for the country. So like, as a general rule, UM like the Anti Fertility Project when you like read stories about basting in his work is portrayed as like one horrible project among others. Um and generally like less awful than the nerve gases

and assassination drugs he made. Um. And I don't think that's fair because the reality, once you like dig into the documents is that um Basson and his colleagues, like what they were trying to do with these drugs was attempted genocide. UM. Like, their their goal here was to wipe out the black population of South Africa. They just

wanted to do it more peacefully than with gunfire. Um. It's like it's pretty staggering and do it silently, Yeah, silently, and like in a way that people don't realize it's happening because you're secretly dosing people with this anti fertility drug. Like that's that's the plan that's being made here, um gooson later testified by the government by the government, Yeah,

to sterilize million people or so. Yeah. Uh. One thing I can remember which we spoke about was the effectivity then of the product which needed to be developed, whether it is permanent sterilization or whether it's temporary, or whether

it's effective. You know how these things work. In fact, we discussed involving with statutions from the university, and we discussed getting them secret clearance that they can work on the project for us to work out models what will be the influence on population rate if the project was fifty effective for one year, sixty seventy whatever. So we realized that you cannot really you might not achieve a hundred percent effective sterilization, and it was not thought to

be necessary. So he's they're they're saying, like, maybe we only stop seventy percent of them from breeding, is what he's saying. Like, uh, like that they they it's but like those are the numbers they're looking at, Like, this is a real effort to stop two thirds or more as many people as possible from breeding, as many black people as possible from breeding. And I think that that rises to the level of an attempted genocide like se sterilization.

Like you know, the Holocaust wiped out like roughly half of the world's Jewish population, so you're talking about the goal was something that would have led to an even sharper decline in the population of South African black people. Like that was the end goal of this. It was a much slower project, but like that's what they're shooting for. It's pretty wild. Yeah, it's like they're they're they had a discussion over that. Well, I mean the Nazis were

just like two loud and efficient about it. Yeah, exactly. You can't kill him as fast as they did. That'll get you in trouble. Yeah, people get like real mouthy when you do it like that, So you gotta just do it. We'll get invaded. But if we can stop eight of them from having babies, well then yeah, pretty wild. Yeah.

So thankfully the anti fertility vaccine was never distributed in mass uh and We have very little data on how it was tested, but we do know that the program was wound down in the early nineteen nineties when President F. W. Tw Clerk was elected and the death knell of apartheid was obvious enough for even people like bass into here.

The new president ordered Project Coast to be gradually killed off, but he was not willing to give up on the dream of pacifying South Africa's black masses for domination by the white minority instead of sterilization or mass poisoning. Though President to Clerk started funding a kinder and gentler method of social control, he wanted Basson to test the use of quaaludes and m D m A to pacify the restless population. Uh so that's that's nice? Is it is better?

I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, howe's gonna get along be a little looser. If it was for everyone in the country, I would say that's a great plan. Um, the racism is what ruins. Okay, I missed that part. They were just giving them to black people to stop them from wanting their rights. No, no, you thought they were just giving luds to everybody. Unfortunately. Yeah, if it was just like the army helicoptering kludes and m d m A to everybody, like, I'm fine with that project. That's a

good use of the military. But no, this was racist, very racist. They always is always catch Yeah. So a scientist named Henny Jordan's um at, a company that acts as a front for Project Coast, is generally credited as the person who came up with the formula for what may have been the very best M d m A ever synthesized. Most sources suggest that it was over purity,

which is pretty exceptional. Now, I can't say for certain whether or not I or you ever took this particular strain of ecstasy um, but like it's one of those things I started going through like my memories of the best ecstasy experiences I had in the early two thousands, and like wondering, like, yeah, that was a really good batch. Was that? Was that the genocide ecstasy um? Because this stuff was initially cooked up as a crowd control drug they wanted to do really sad, really fast. Yeah, it's

real bad. Um. This was initially cooked up. They wanted to basically dose millions of black people with m d m A to like stop them from revolting and stuff. But how were what was their delivery device? Well, I don't think they ever got that far because, like they started, they cook up a huge amount of m d M A, but I don't think they ever really figure out like how to distribute it to people. Um, And then the government shuts down the project before they can dose anyone

with it. So there's such a big old tank of m d NA. Yeah. Yeah, So they have millions of doses of m d M A and no longer a government who's willing to like let them use it for anything. Um, And they kind of Basten in his colleagues all kind of aside that they should use it to fund their retirements. It's not the worst thing they've ever done. Yeah, it's definitely not. Like I prefer them selling ecstasy to people to have for fun than murdering people doing a quiet

genocide is not. Yeah. Yeah. So the data we have suggests that like at some point the priority like before the program got shut down entirely. But when they knew that Project Coast was going to get shut down completely, Assin and his colleagues stopped producing drugs for like crowd control purposes and started producing drugs to sell on the black market. Um, and what we know is that the bulk of the millions of doses of m d m A that Basson's labs cooked up wound up sold in Europe, India,

in the United States. Um. So they just are like, we only got a year or two left before the government shuts this lab down completely. Let's manufacture and sell as much ecstasy as we possibly can so that we can retire, which is cool. What were they supposed to be doing in that lab, I don't I think it was. You know, it's a government project, so I think that, like it became clear that they weren't going to do anything with their research before the project actually got shut down,

so no one was why. They were just like, we're just here for like seven more months. Yeah, how much can we make? Yeah, that's why when we yeah, where usually when government workers are like, all right, vacation starts now, but well, now we can finally get to work and makes them Yeah we can get paid now. We didn't succeed in genocide, but we can sell a lot of ecstasy.

So um yeah. Obviously, like this is not the kind of thing you would ever have expected to have much detail about, and I do wish we had more, but like, we have a lot of information about like all the different things this project was trying to do, which is weird, right. It's a special like a secret special Forces plan for genocide. You wouldn't expect the South African government to have kept any files on this ship. Um, And in fact they didn't.

So are you're wondering how all this information got out? Yeah, it's because Dr Basson was a dumb shit. Um. Yeah, So the government when the Aparthei regime fell, the government ordered all of the drugs cooked up as a result of these schemes and all the evidence of what they've done in Project Coast destroyed. But Dr Basson didn't do this,

so obviously they can and you'd like manufacturing narcotics for profit. Um. But he also kept all of his files on the project, probably as like an insurance scheme because he was afraid that the government was going to betray him and he wanted to have evidence that other people had been involved because at that time, you made me try to kill all the black people. You guys are genociders. I don't

like I feel like he'd killed me pretty easy. So Bassin keeps all of the private files for this genocide scheme in his house. And while he's keeping the ship in his house, he's hit personally, like hand to hand, selling millions of doses of ecstasy to drugs, doing a lot of the sales. Yeah, he's a he's a hands

on fella. So one of the guys buying drugs from Basson in this period is Grant Wentzel, who's a commodity's broker from Johannesburg who also sold ecstasy on the side, and he's one of the guys that Basson is selling to. And in n seven, went Zell is busted by the cops, and you know, he agrees to roll over on his source and they set him up with a wire and run him through a couple of deals to test his connections.

And then they realize, like, as they're like studying this guy, they realized that one of his connections is a kind of inexplicably wealthy cardiologist who lives in the city um and who seems to be the source of his drugs um And of course it turns out that this cardiologist is Wooter Basson. Is he still practicing cardiology too? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you gotta have a cover man. I guess, so maybe he likes it. Yeah, I mean into originally, Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,

go back to go back to basics. You know, it's the one of those things, you know, your career falls apart. You know, for most of us, it's because the industry changed or you know, some like that, rather than a genocide plan failing. But you go back to basics, you know, and you also start selling a I feel like that's identifiable. Yeah, that's smart. Actually yeah yeah. The Vice has a fun article on the bust that caught Basson, and I'm gonna quote from that now. A white Nissan CenTra pulls up

to Wintzell's car. Its occupant gets out and pops the trunk, pulling out a trash bag. Ellerson three other officers. These are South African police officers who recognize him immediately Dr Wooter Basson, the man the media would later dub doctor death for his alleged crimes and apartheid era South Africa. Basson gives the bag to Winzell, who hands him an envelope containing sixty thousand about fifty five thousand U S dollars. Basson's cut of the deal had gone down five days earlier,

when Winzel had been arrested. So at this point Ellers makes his move. Basson tries to flee by ducking tops through the pond, a tactic that ends up slowing him down enough for the cops to catch up and make an arrest. The trash bag contained red and black capsule filled with d M A M d M A that research chemist Tim McGibbon would testify at Baston's trial was created by a unique synthesis and it was more than pure. So he's not a good drug dealer. He just has a sack of his ship in his trunk that he

delivers by hand to a source. Um in a sack and in a s a trash bag. Yeah, because he's like, here's that ship, you know, going crazy about Yeah, yeah it is, but like dumber like white at least gets his gets like tries to remove himself from the hand to hand dealing. H he read some books about the business of drugs. Yeah, homeboy was just like, no here, it is not give me that monthy, Why would I care? Um?

So he gets arrested. Baston gets arrested in this bus, and of course the cops searches home which is what the cops are gonna do when they catch you trying to sell a full trash bag of ecstasy um, And the police find more drugs in his house, but they also find his insurance policy against the old government, the boxes of folders containing the details of his plan to commit genocide. And I knew that will come in handy, I didn't think it was for this. So, Billy, I'm

gonna guess. We've both had friends arrested for like simple marijuana possession, um, some of whom have done time. You would probably expect that when Wood Bassin gets caught with a trash bag of ecstasy and files in his house like going into detail about his complicity and hundreds of poison murders and an attempt at genocide, you would guess that would come with sizeable jail time, right Ah, No, yeah, yeah,

You've done enough of these shows. So in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee held a commission held a public hearing into the chemical and biological warfare program that Basson had spearheaded. This was the first trial of its kind in history, and it brought out all the information we've discussed in this episode. It was heavily based on the files they'd taken from Basson's house, but it failed

to actually punish him for any of his crimes. His official trial started in October of nine, where he was charged with sixty seven counts, ranging from drug possession and embezzlement to murdering two nine people. Basson called as the only witness in his defense himself. He claimed he had learned the secrets of chemical warfare from Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, which was at that point backed up by the U. S Defense Establishment back in like the eighties

when he was working there. He admitted basically everything we'd talked about today save the attempt at genocide, and was found not guilty on the ground that nothing he'd done had been illegal at the time. So that's cool, he's not. Yeah, he's not wrong, but also like fuck that, like so now a freeman. Basson became a popular speaker on the

international circuit. He was paid to deliver such headline events as Dr Wooter Basson a motivational talk from groups like the Kelvin Grove Club, an organization in South Africa that banns Jewish membership. So he's he's he's a hero to some people. I bet he. Yes. There have been numerous hearings in the years since as the some members of the government in South Africa have attempted to punish Wooter Basson for his numerous crimes. Uh, and he was eventually

found guilty of professional misconduct um. But none of these trials have resulted in long term charges. In March of two thousand nineteen, a high court in South Africa found that even those charges were had been made by a biased court and the results were set aside. Dr Wooter Basson remains a free and unpunished man to this day. Okay, yeah, it's super cool that he's just out there because you know, he's just chilling. You know, he's not doing anything bad. Um. No,

not at all. It's not in his nature. But here's my question, as someone that's read history and keeps up with how laws and politics and all that works. Uh, what files are they not talking about that he probably had that keeps getting him out off Like they were willing to admit the attempted genocide on South Africa's black population. What did they keep under wrap? That's the Yeah, that's my But when you're saying all that. I'm like, there's

stuff in there they're not because that's my friend. Yeah. Yeah, we did try to kill all the black people. Yes, we didn't try to. We tried to stop them all from breeding because we couldn't kill them. All that was we're this guy was trying to help us do that. But just nothing else. We didn't do anything else, nothing else, nothing else. There's nothing that's unspeakably and almost unimaginably evil waiting buried in a bunker somewhere in South Africa that

WoT Basson invented. Trust us him anything else? Ye ah, it is you kind of do think like I'm not obviously familiar with the intricacies of South African law, so maybe it is just an understandable technicality and a necessary part of the reconciliation effort that like he wasn't Yeah, that's not what my heart, My heart says, they were like this guy has an other insurance policies waiting and if he does time, something unspeakable will be revealed. And

he's so yeah, he's very smart. He got a dumb man. So if you did great ecstasy, like unbelievably good ecstasy in the late nineties early two thousand's. Uh, maybe like he made enough that it's circulated for a while after he got busted. I mean he is like a metaphor for every drug dealer, do you know what I mean? Like they're like, yeah, I mean, we know, we know what he does, but have you have you tried his have you have you tried his ship? It's crazy, I know,

I know, And don't bring your sister around it. But yeah, because he does that thing. Yeah, but he's the only got in three counties that can Yeah, yeah, I mean it is one of those things. On like a personal scale, you'll accept the fact that your your drug dealer is like creepy and like says some like weird things every now and then, and like you don't you wouldn't want to be alone with him or let other friends be alone with him. You like traveling a group to go

pick up your ship from his place. Do not meet him that guy? Yeah. Um, But like on a on a larger scale, I guess we're willing to accept genocide. I mean, nobody, none of the people buying that ecstasy knew it was genocide ecstasy. Um. I think probably there's some there's some traffickers or distributors that had a clue. Yeah, someone being like, where's this ship coming from? I don't know, South Africa. Oh god, it's probably not a good story. Yeah.

It's kind of like every time I've done cocaine, it's been like I wonder if someone was shot for this? Yes, yes, and not even like maybe where you think it's like I do I talk about that like with Heroin. Listen, it's awful, but it's also responsible for most of the most amazing music we've ever we've had, and people are not I'm like, no, I'm not saying that the singer of your favorite song, but someone that was working on that album, Yes, was on Heroin. Someone. It's someone it

helps with music. It's not good, but it does. So if you're a musician, Billy's official advice is to pick up some Heroin. Uh, Sophie, are we sponsored by No? Not just a musician, a incredibly talented musician that has not broken through yet. But don't get addicted. No, and no should we edit that last? I don't know. I'll do it on live shows sometimes I do say that, but it's a live show, so they can't. You know what though, we can say about heroin. It was not

manufactured by Wooter Basson that we know about. I don't know that we that we know about that. In fact, it very like I mean, I guess it's easier, like I think Bassin like, you don't need a doctor to make your heroin, right, No, No, you just need I think people hook cook it in their living rooms pretty regularly from what I've seen on that GEO channel. That's where that's where it comes from. Yeah, so yeah, he's

sixty nine years old. Uh, he's probably I just I just think that's I like to imagine that's how he's just living just the six raven day and night. Yeah. I think he has like a pet gerbil and it also does that dance all day, but definitely has a pet gerbil. I think he gives to as a couple of times a year with his pet gerbil. I don't know why you feel good that's because of me. If you've danced with a racist, racist South African cardiologist at Abiza, Uh it was it was Wood or Bassin. I mean,

I wonder if he ever did ecstasy. I don't like the way he was delivering it in the bag is hilarious to show should I show what he looks like. Oh yeah, he because he looks like the lobotomy doctor. Actually, this is why I said, I think he has a pet gerbil based on his face. Yeah, you can't see it, right, Yeah, see he's got a pet jerbil. He looked way cooler in my head. He's not cool. No, he's not that cool. No, he looks like he you know what, he looks like.

He makes syan gas and ship he does, right, yeah he does. He doesn't look like and he looks like he makes m D M A out of spite. I don't like his face. I'm just gonna put it out there if that makes sense. Yeah, Like he's not trying to get laid maybe by his gerbil. Yeah that's true everything. Yeah, and he looks like some on that young photo winking. Yeah, he rides in the plane to watch the bodies get jumped out. Yeah he's that guy. Yeah he does. Look

I don't I don't enjoy his I like that. My mind goes to like a softer person, but it's not what he is. Just trying to give him a bit from a doubt. I do like that. I would love to see the footage of him getting busted though with that sack of peels. Yeah, yeah, that would be fun.

I want to see him like running from the cops because you know, it was hilarious and he was really bad at Yeah, there's not in him, Like it's amazing for how smart this guy is that he would be like, well, but I'm gonna keep all of my genocide files unprotected in my in my home along with piles of illegal drugs. This seems like a good idea. Well, he does seem

very unfamiliar with drug culture and with crime. Yeah. I think it's because he was doing all these horrible things for years and he was being supported by the government, so he never worried about it. And there's like an email and memos involved. It's not like, Hey, meet me in a park and we're going to make a rocket. Yeah.

There's a real learning curve to to to crime. And while he was good at committing the kind of crimes that aren't crimes because a government tells you to do them, he was bad at committing crimes that are crimes because the government tells you not to do Yeah. Amazing Wouter Bassin. So you can go find him in South Africa, say hi, see if he's gotten the e hanging around. I bet he's friendly, you guys, I bet he's very nice if you have a certain complexion. Yeah, I'm gonna guess he's

not not nice to everyone. Um. There was like a weird story that like one of the people who was part of the prosecution against him, he gave heart surgery to like before the trial. Uh, and it was fine. Uh. But it's like, it's pretty weird. That is so weird. What has like what their boundaries are very strange? Yeah, the compartmental is it? I guess it's kind of like like Ben Carson obviously hasn't committed crimes on this scale, but he's not someone I like or think is a

particularly good person. But if I needed brain surgery, I'm sure he's like everything I hear is he's great at it. So what do you do, well, Billy, this has been a fun story about a guy who tried to commit genocide and who did make a lot of people drown in their own lung fluid, uh, and then sold ecstasy and got off scot free. I would if we're doing silver linings, someone try and fail at genocide and end up making ecstasy for everyone then someone trying to make

fun drugs and end up committing genocide on accident. I guess you could say that Wood or Basson is actually the best case scenario for someone who attempts to commit genocide, like failing to commit gent That did not make Anderson happy. No, it's a good dog, is a good jog. Yeah, Well, but I mean, like, normally, when people try to commit genocide, they kill a lot of people, and he failed to kill a lot of Well, he killed a lot of people, but then he made ecstasy, So I guess that's better

than killing a lot of people and not. I don't really know where I'm going with this. I think it is going to be one of those like if there's an afterlife, and it's like what your grandma thinks. Saint Peter's up there, He's like, Ah, you got a lot. He made a lot of people really fucked up. I'm happy that you did some killing. I mean a lot of killing. I think attempted genocide outweighs the ecstasy. But yeah,

who boy. Maybe there's not anything to learn from the story of Wood or bassin Um other than that apartheid was garbage and the South African nation under apartheid was one of the worst countries that ever existed. And I hope Wood or Bassin gets hit by a car soon. Yeah, with a bag appeals in his hand, with a bag of pill in his hand, trying to sell a trash bag of drugs and they just go everywhere and everyone gets them for free. Yeah, it's kind of the best

case scenario. Well, Billy get any plug to plug uh not? I mean yeah, I'll be on tour coming up soon. Um, we're booking all that right now. But just at Billy Wayne Davis is my Twitter and I'm on the new season as with Billies, so check that out. And at Billy Wayne Davis is my Instagram. So well, you can find me on Twitter too, and I'm not going to tell you where, but you can. I'm there, seek me out and if you're meant to find me, you will. You can also find this podcast on Twitter, at Instagram

and at Bastard's pot. You can find our sources at behind the Bastards dot com. Uh and you can hopefully not attempt to commit genocide. That's all I ask of my Audi. Don't do it. Don't don't even try, not even once. Don't you get an attempt to make excess. H Yeah, as much as you want. Really, I'm fine with that. This is a very pro amateur chemistry podcast. Unless it's genocide chemistry. Don't let me June. Try to help your parents marriage, and don't be racist about who

you give your ecstasy. To give it to everybody otherwise it's a problem that is funning. I did. Yeah, this one puzzled me. There's some science puzzles here in this one that I was Yeah, it's a thinker, It's it's a real thinker. It's a motherfucker, is what that is. Where you're just like, oh, you figured out that we're all the same, so you can't Okay, I'm gonna hear yep. All right, everybody have fun with this one. Enjoy your holidays. If this comes out before the holidays. Bye. B