Craig Williamson

Craig Michael Williamson (born 1949, Johannesburg), is a former South African Police major, who was exposed as a spy in 1980, and was involved in a series of state-sponsored overseas bombings, burglaries, kidnappings, assassinations and propaganda during the apartheid era.

In the late 1970s, Craig Williamson had inveigled Lars Eriksson, director of the International University Exchange Fund (IUEF) in Geneva, into employing him as deputy director and help in the award of IUEF scholarships to African students. He was thus able to infiltrate the banned African National Congress (ANC) and, at the same time, make high-level contacts in Sweden which provided most of the funding for the IUEF. Williamson's networking through prime minister Olof Palme's office in put him in touch with a number of Palme's close associates including Pan Am Flight 103 victim, Bernt Carlsson, who had become secretary-general of the Socialist International in 1976 and was based in London until 1983. In 1981, Williamson recruited the woman who would become South Africa's best-known female spy, Olivia Forsyth.

The same source accused Williamson of syphoning off IUEF funds to establish a dirty tricks operation in Pretoria known as "Long Reach" in order to target apartheid's opponents both in South Africa and abroad. This dirty tricks operation also involved arms trafficking.

Again using IUEF funds, Williamson set up the South African News Agency to recruit and use journalists for apartheid South African counter-intelligence purposes. Williamson also attempted to infiltrate the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF), though he was successfully deflected by Phyllis Altman, general secretary of IDAF. His cover was finally revealed by Arthur McGiven who reported his activities in the Observer.

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