The Jordan Harbinger Show - 760: Bradley Steyn | Undercover with Mandela's Spies Part One

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Bradley Steyn (@bradley_steyn_) is an expert on risk mitigation, operational support, and racial injustice. He is the co-author of Undercover with Mandela's Spies: The Story of the Boy Who Crossed the Square, a memoir of his time as a double agent working for Nelson Mandela during the dying days of South African Apartheid. [This is part one of a two-part episode. Keep an eye out for part two later this week!] What We Discuss with Bradley Steyn: Bradley shares his observations as a white kid growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa. How, as a teenager, Bradley bore witness to the brutal Strijdom Square massacre, in which white supremacist Barend Hendrik Strydom calmly took the lives of eight People of Color and injured 16 with a 9mm pistol. The PTSD, nightmares, anger issues, and emotional distress Bradley was forced to cope with in the aftermath of this horrific experience — and still deals with more than three decades later. How Bradley was recruited for undercover duty by the feared security police of the Apartheid government while working as a bouncer at a Pretoria gay bar. What led to Bradley's dedication to the anti-Apartheid struggle and his service as a deep cover double agent within the Department of Intelligence and Security under the directive of Chris Hani's and Nelson Mandela's paramilitary wing, uMkhonto weSizwe. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/760 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss our two-part conversation with ex-Al-Qaeda spy Aimen Dean? Catch up by starting with episode 383: Aimen Dean | Nine Lives of a Spy Inside Al-Qaeda Part One here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we start this show, I want to let you know it has some adult themes in it, so no kids in the car for this one. And if you leave the kids in the car and you still play the episode, don't blame me when they have nightmares. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. I needed to try and stop the blood, so I saw blood squirting and I stuck my fingers in his bullet holes, because I didn't know what else to do, but I thought that made sense. And I turned up to him and I said, whocom dunya did? Why are you doing this? and he said, I've done it for the tocoms for white South Africans, which means I'm doing this for the future of white South Africans.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have end-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional organized crime figure, arms dealer, economic hitman, or cold case homicide investigator. and each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, we've got these starter packs that we set up there either on the website and or on Spotify. These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of what we do here on the show. Topics like persuasion and influence China, North Korea, abnormal psychology, scams and conspiracy debunks, crime and cults, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us anywhere in your Spotify app to get started. Today, a really interesting friend of mine that I've been meaning to interview for close to a decade now.

He grew up in South Africa and almost 40 years ago when he was 17, he ended up in this mass shooting situation. And that, of course, sets the stage for the rest of his life here. It's a very famous event in South Africa and it prompts him to join the South African Navy and ends up joining what's called the security branch, which is kind of an apartheid-level secret police intelligence agency, and ends up joining something called D-section as a classified government enforcer. Now, if you're not from South Africa, all you need to know is these guys were kind of bad news.

If you are from South Africa, you know exactly what I'm talking about here. But at that time, events are changing fast. Nelson Mandela, if you've heard of him, which I assume you have, walks out of prison, and there's this sort of third force, which, and I hate using this word, but the deep state of military intelligence, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, they're sort of aligned against the ANC and Nelson Mandela. And there's about to be a huge civil, bloody race war,

and South Africa has to make a deal with Nelson Mandela. Now, there's internal resistance to this. Bradley, our guest today, ends up having to infiltrate this neo-Nazi, white supremacist, military-industrial complex network to avoid civil war in South Africa. and he goes undercover to help unravel the extremists' master plan here. And it's just an incredible, incredible, incredible story that results in a lot of surprising findings, stuff that you won't hear discussed on the news here in the United States especially,

and that you might not know even if you're in South Africa. It's just an astonishing true life thriller, full of dirty secrets of a dirty war fought by Nelson Mandela's side, the government of the day. This is really, really quite a tale, and I think you're going to love it. So here we go with my friend Bradley Stein. So we met when you punched me in the face. That's true.

I was actually driving up from Los Angeles to San Francisco yesterday. And my wife actually said, hey, how do you know Jordan? Because I've heard his name over the years. And I said, yeah, we met in a Muay Thai class in Los Angeles. And we was doing very light sparring. And Jordan stepped into one of my stiff jabs. Yeah. Yeah, I blocked a punch with my face, and it was a remarkable amount of blood.

Like, the pain level was low, but I still was like, something's definitely not right. And then to add insult to injury, my nose started bleeding everywhere. And of course, then the whole class has to stop, like, oh, what happened? Well, I got punched in the face. So, that's me makes a friend. Well, no, you stepped into my punch. I didn't punch you in. That's true.

You just held your fist out lightly, and I rammed my face into it as hard as I could. How many years ago? That's at least 12, 12 years ago. I think it was. probably about 10 years ago, maybe a little bit less, because I hadn't met my now wife, mother of my 1.5 children. So it's been a while. You grew up and came of age in South Africa in the 80s, 90s. What do you remember most about everyday life in apartheid South Africa? Well, you know, I remember going to high school and then two days a week we had to wear cadet

style military uniforms, khaki shorts and khaki shirts, and we had to go and do drill marching on the rugby field. And, you know, we learned songs while we running Swapu Swapu, which was a terrorist organization in Angola. Why are we running ANC, ANC? Because the propaganda they were feeding and instilling into us is the white youth of South Africa. was that there's something called Swart Gefar, black danger, and the Roye, fear, red danger.

So they put it together and said the communist threat and the black threat was going to rise up if we didn't be proactive and chase us all into the ocean. Wow. That's scary when you're like 12.

Totally. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, when you have that fed to you, it's the realization that, you know, I need to do something to protect myself. But the flip side of the coin was I'd go home and my parents were very...

Were they like hippies? They were like hippies, exactly. They were creatives. My mother was in the theater world. My dad was a bespoke tailor of sorts and, you know, they were very creative people. And so I got home and, you know, my parents had black friends. that would come and sit on the... And that was rare, right?

And that was rare in South Africa, because I'd go to another friend's house for Breyer, barbecue. You know, they'd be treating their staff terribly, and, you know, the racist ideology was pretty radical. So in your school growing up in South Africa in the 70s, there are no, like, black people or people of color in your school or anything? No, no, no, not at all. Growing up in South Africa, the way,

The apartheid government had learned how to fortify themselves and defend against, you know, the uprising of people of color, of black people. They actually got a lot of this from the Nazis' playbook on how to protect themselves. For instance, they created segregated communities, which were called townships. And for instance, the biggest one that most people will know about is sort of. Weta just outside. Yeah, I've heard of that. Yes, correct. So just outside Jobu. And basically what they would do is have a big sort of wall around it and have one entrance in, one entrance and an exit out. You could use them to enter in and out of, but if there was upheaval or civil unrest in that area, they could block those two entrances and then fly over with Roy Falk helicopters and just take everybody out or whatever they

needed to. It was also like a big concentration camp. Exactly, but, you know, obviously they needed to let, and they were strategically built outside of white neighborhoods and they would build train tracks to them so that, you know, we could still have our cushy lifestyles by, or our privileged lifestyles by having our maid or housekeepers or gardeners jump on the train and then they would come to town, but they could only commute from the train station to my house, for instance, during a certain time. Everybody had to have a passbook as well. So you couldn't walk around freely if you were a person of color in South Africa,

and that was violently enforced. So you couldn't just be like a rebellious teenager and be like, I'm not doing that shit, and that you would get beat up by the cops or something like that. You would get the life beat out of you. You would get dogs put on you. It was pretty gnarly. I have an example of the first time I sort of experienced that was when my folks had just come and picked me up from rugby practice. I was a youngster, and we were driving down the road.

And my father didn't like confrontation and conflict. My mother on the other side was a very assertive woman. She is a powerful woman. And we were driving down the road. and we saw this white guy beating this black guy up on the side of the road. And my mother said, stop the car, Herman. And dad said, honey, let's just keep going. We don't want to get involved.

As we were driving by, we heard somebody scream. Mama Daff, my mom's name was Daphne. So my mother grabbed the steering wheel, pulled it, car went onto the side of the road. My mother jumped out of the car, and it was Al Gardner, Philemon, who was getting beat up by this white guy. And my mother jumped in there, shoved this white man off Philamon, picked Philemon up, and walked him to the car,

put him in the back seat next to me. And Philamon's now crying and he's got blood in his face. How old was he? He was 19, 20 years old. He was like a kid too. He was like a kid as well. So put him in the car next to me. I'm completely shocked.

I don't know what's going on. And he's crying. Herman, my dad's just saying, it's okay, fill him on. And I turn and I look through the back window of our old Pugé, and I see my mother sticking her finger in his face. In the white guy's face. In the white guy's face. And I can hear her saying, what's your problem?

And the guy turned around and said he hasn't got a passbook. So my mother said, you're not a police officer. And then the wife of this guy jumped out of the car ran up to my mother and shoved my mother. My mother shoved her back. The guy moved forward towards my mother. And I remember my mother slapping him against the face and knocking this man down. My mother was a big lady.

So that's how I was introduced to racism, I guess. So before that, you weren't really sure about it. You just didn't think about it because you were too young? Well, yes. Like I said, we have had a privilege. privileged lifestyle in South Africa. We lived behind these high walls with security systems, and we lived in this almost like bubble or Stepford Wives kind of society

where everything's picture perfect. But on the outskirts in the townships, fires were going, riots were going, people were burning tires, et cetera. People were desperate. People were just trying to fight for their... human rights. Now, tell me about Streatom Square. I'm not going to get the R role in there. Yeah, no, that's Streatum Square. Yeah. Again, rugby, my passion and my love. I just finished rugby practice. My mother worked at the state theater, which was the National Theater in South Africa,

and we were going to go see the opening of Giselle, the ballet that night. I'd caught the train, So I had my rugby kit bag with my tuxedo folded nicely in my rugby kit bag and I was listening to my Walkman walking down the street and, you know, during business hours, you know, there's all different walks of life. So white people, black people, everybody's walking along the streets and there's this one particular place on Stratum Square where people get to sit and eat and have their. their lunch, et cetera. I was just crossing over Stratum Square to go to the state theater.

All of a sudden, I heard two loud cracks. I knew they were gunshots because, you know, recreationally, we used to go target shoot. And all of a sudden I saw the sea of chaos of people just scattering and running everywhere. And I saw these people, black people, running towards me with their eyes as big as sources and the complete and utter fear and terror, the look of fear and terror on their faces.

You know, then I saw in the distance this tall, skinny guy with camouflage fatigues, and I thought, oh, maybe he's a security task force guy, which was the domestic counterterrorism unit in South Africa, maybe there's an incident and he's catching some bad people. And then I saw him walk up to this heavyset black lady that was carrying some grocery bags and he shot her execution style. And that's when I came to the realization that, you know, this person was evil and this person was out to hurt people. He then turned into this little garden area which had this little pathway with little benches and I ran up to a wall that sort of surrounded this garden because I wanted to see, you know, what was going on. You know,

I was 17 and, you know, I thought I was a tough guy and I hid behind this wall and I stuck my head over the wall and I saw him shoot somebody else. And then at that point I heard, somebody go, pss, pst, hey, hey, claying bars, which means little boss. And I turned around and I saw this young black guy with kind eyes. I call him kind eyes. Gesture me over and call me over. So I went and I hid behind a bench with him. He was taking cover behind a bench.

And there were a few other people behind that bench hiding and taking cover and somebody jumped up from that bench and ran away. And as soon as they did that, that guy with the camouflage turned around and started shooting in our direction. And I can still remember that it was a marble bench, the shards from the ricochet from the marble bench, still hitting the back of my neck and stinging the back of my neck. Like pieces of marble? Like pieces of marble. And it's just, it's one of these memories that I've just carried with me for so long.

And then, kind eyes and I looked over the bench again, and we saw him shoot somebody else. And I think something snapped in Kindeyes, and he jumped up. And he rushed towards the sky while he's backwards towards us. And I picked up my rugby kit bag, and I followed him to try and see if I could maybe help. And as I turned around this corner of that little wall, the low wall, in the bushes in that garden, I heard two shots. This guy in the camera had shot Kindeyes twice. I ran towards Kindeyes.

The guy with the camera saw me running towards him. He raised the gun in my direction. And then hesitated and saw I was white and lowered the gun. I got down on my knees. I picked Kindey's head up and I put it on my lap. and I saw he was struggling to breathe, and I needed to try and stop the blood. So I saw blood squirting, and I stuck my fingers in his bullet holes, because I did know what else to do, but I thought that made sense.

And I turned up to him and I said, whocom dunya did? Why are you doing this? And he said, I done that for the tocoms for Witts, South Africans, which means I'm doing this for the future of white South Africans. He turned around and he jogged off a brave black guy that was a taxi driver, followed him later, distracted him, took his gun away from him, and they overpowered him and arrested him. Oh, wow.

That's a gutsy move. Oh, yeah, big time. But that incident was on the Stratum Square on the 15th of November, 1988. and the guy in the camouflage, his name is Barant Hendrik Stradom. He calls himself De Wittvolf. He was a failed police officer that got fired from the South African police for actually posing in a photograph with a decapitated black man's head. So he's a sick psycho, obviously. But his father was in the AWB, which is the right.

It's like the Nazi party in, you know, in Germany. It's called the Afrikaner Wierstant Bebeche, the Afrikaner resistance movement, and they were a militant right-wing organization. So what I learned from that is racism is taught, you know, races, you aren't born a racist. So, you know, because if I look at, he could have been my brother that guy. You know, we looked similar, we blonde.

He was a few years older. than me. But my parents taught me kindness and humanity and his parents taught him hatred. I know your mom later found you with like a whistle. She whistled for you? That's right. Yes. While I was sitting there and there's a famous photo in South Africa, which was on the front page of the newspaper with Kindey's head on my lap and my mother was up in the state theater, looking down with some of the ballet dancers. They were looking at the chaos and I think she saw me from the top. She went downstairs and she started running.

We had this family whistle that went, and I heard her, and I was like, oh, thank the hunger games kind of. Exactly. Thank God my mother's here and she doesn't take no bullshit. So, yeah. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Bradley Stein. We'll be right back. Hey, if you're wondering how I managed to book all these folks for the show, these authors,

thinkers, creators, spies. It's because of my network, and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Now, this course, it's all about improving your relationship building skills and inspiring other people to want to develop a relationship with you. The course does all that in a super easy, non-cringe, what I'd like to think is a down-to-earth kind of way. There's not cheesy, awkward tactics and strategies.

Just practical exercises that'll make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, a better peer. Six minutes a day, not even that. That's all it takes. And many of the guests on our show subscribe and contribute to that course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company.

You can find the course at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Now, back to Bradley Stein. Did you teach the family whistle to your daughter? Yeah, essentially. It's kind of a good idea. Jen, let's get a family whistle. Make it write that down.

We might use some takeoff of the Hunger Games. Yeah. So this screwed you up. You get PTSD, nightmares, you were an angry kid by all accounts. You didn't really do so well in school after that. Correct, yeah. I've only really been able to tell this story only in the last 10 or 15 years because it was just so hard for me to talk about this story.

It still obviously messes with me, but I've had a lot of closure since then. I actually got a lot of closure in 2000. 2018 when I went back to South Africa with a documentary film crew, actually for the first time opened up those old dossiers and old files that hadn't been opened up since the late 80s. I still remember opening up these and the paper was brown and still crinkly. Police files or something? Police files and reports to figure out what the names were of those people that died on the square that day.

Oh, right, because maybe it seems like we see this a lot where the victim's names aren't mentioned, especially if they're considered less important by the society that they've been in, right? Exactly. It even went as far as me finding photographs, and it just shows the mindset of the apartheid or the National Party government's way of handling and dealing with the deceased, for instance. There were some people that were on these still goni type of things in the morgue. And then there were other people that were half lying on the floor. They just sort of discarded them and didn't care about them much just because of the color of their skin.

Yeah. I mean, the whole regime was set up that way. Yes, exactly. And there probably wasn't a whole hell of a lot of counseling back, grief counseling for somebody who was your age back at South Africa. Yeah, you know, and that's the biggest problem with PTSD. or mental illness is, you know, especially in a society like a South African society where, you know, we had one of the most powerful and strongest military forces in the world for a small country like that.

We developed seven atomic bombs. Our special forces back then, the Rikis were on the same paths, the British SAS or, you know, the Navy SEALs kind of thing. Who trained them? Was it the United States and Britain? The British. The British, you know, were involved in that and the former Redisian Salu Scouts were involved with training.

But South Africa was a very powerful military force. But point is that the male society will just, you know, slap you on the back and say, you know, pull yourself towards yourself. Get your shit together. Stop being such a wuss. Get over it. You know, that's the sort of mentality and societal

band-aid for dealing with something back then. But my parents obviously sent me for therapy, but I was so distracted and I was so angry and confused. I couldn't really focus. The problem is, you know, my therapist at the time was gorgeous and I, and, you know, being a young boy with your hormones, I couldn't concentrate. That was a poor choice. They should have given you like an old, dude. Exactly. Exactly.

Like, focus, man. Exactly. Oh, I'm focused all right. So your mom or your parents enlist you in the military at this point, right? They throw you in the Navy? Yeah, because I struggled at school now. You know, I excelled at rugby. I did great at rugby because it's a contact physical sport where I could get rid of my frustrations.

But, you know, I struggled at school with discipline after that, you know, and I'm constantly beginning into fights and not. taking orders very well from teachers and I punched my woodwork teacher. Jeez. That's a low stress subject in school, I would have. Like, of all the teachers to get frustrated with woodworking, not at the top of my list. Exactly. Because, and the reason, you know, why I punched him was in South Africa, you get a rule.

There's a rule. They'll cane you because we used to get caned at school. Oh, wow. But you cannot get more than six canings a day. So there was a limit to six canings a day. Okay. I won't even ask why, because the whole thing is this nonsense. I guess at some point you're doing more damage with the cane?

I have no idea, but, you know, I was so broken after the stage. My woodwork teacher gave me six canes, and I turned around, and I said, is that all you got? And he gave me another cane. So now he had broken the law, and I turned around, and I just popped him on the jaw, ran to the bicycle shed, got him up. BMX and road home. Thank God I didn't get expelled because my dad was the head of the

parents' teachers' associations. Oh, yeah, model child, you were. Hey, I need to call in a favor. My kid knocked out the woodworking teacher. Exactly. Jeez. So, okay, so you belonged in the military. Yeah, so my parents, I was supposed to go out to Paliborah, infantry, to the army, but it's going to be my call-up

because in South Africa, there's a national... Compulsory service? Correct. So there's national compulsory service, similar to Israel. So my call-up papers were for an infantry division up in Palibuwa, which is up north in the country. We then changed and I joined the permanent force and I joined the South African Navy. So I got put on a train and I got sent down to Soldana,

which is the basic training camp for the Navy and I excelled there and I did well there, actually. You mentioned in the book that there were like fake Russian fishing boats? What's that all about? That's kind of interesting. Yeah, so after the fall of the Berlin Wall and after the Cold War and the CIA's war with the KGB, the emphasis now switched to sub-Saharan Africa because of the incredible mineral resources and because of the idealism that a socialist idealism that could be ingrained into a desperate population, being the black population in South Africa that were oppressed.

So the KGB had started an alliance, or the Russians had started an alliance with Nelson Mandela's, Freedom Fighter Movement, the African National Congress, specifically within Imkonto-Weis-Sizwe, which means the spear of the nation. So the Russians were giving training and aid to this. Back then, it was still seen as a terrorist organization to the African National Congress. So during the Navy, there were Russian trawlers off the coast communicating secretly to small communication hubs within the townships. They'd given them equipment, et cetera. So, you know, that's part of that clandestine warfare that was going on.

White people didn't go into the townships, I assume, for any reason. No. No. For the most part, the only people that you would find in the townships were policemen with their dogs or with their what we call it's a shambok. It's a big long plastic, a whip kind of thing. A whip? Well, it's like a fiberglass stick.

It's almost like a fiberglass stick. But it whips. If you take a black plastic trash can and you melt it into a long stick type of thing, thick in the bottom, thin on the top. That's what they used to beat people within, black people within South Africa and do riot control. Oh. I feel like I've seen those in the video. You ever see those videos where in India there's a curfew for COVID and if you're caught out, the police are just hitting you with this like plastic thing? Exactly. And it looks like a rubber hose kind of deal. Yeah. Exactly. So it's

that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Nasty. So those are, you don't go to the township because there's a great soul food restaurant or whatever in the area. No. Or a good bar. No. It's a, some kids would go and buy some Durban poison or Malawi gold, go buy some flower or marijuana in the townships. But for the most part, I remember sneaking into the township in my teens to go buy beer because, you know, we could go to the legal bars and buy beer. But the only reason I did that was because the lady that worked for us, her son later on had one of these. And so you could, I had an inn, I had safe passage.

You had the hookup, yeah. Jeez. Okay, so you're in the military and you get stationed, was it in Angola or near Angola? No, I was, I went to Angola for a while. That was later though, right? Yes. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's going on in Angola in this time? Because all people really know about Angola generally in the United States is shitload of landmines, civil war, insurgency. And if that's if they even know. Diamonds and oil. Right, diamonds and oil. Okay. The biggest tank battle in the history of the world actually happened in Angola. The CIA were very active in Angola, as were the Cubans.

The Cubans came and gave support, military support, to the Cubans. To the Angolans. Yeah, I'm sorry, to the Angolan's. And that was called the Bush War. It was a nasty war and the craziest battles that were fought. a lot of white South Africans that didn't believe in apartheid and didn't believe in joining the South, or doing military service for the South African government, they had to leave. So they'd go to the United States or they'd go to England, for instance, because they'd be

arrested if. Like draft adging. Correct. Yeah. So that's what was going on there because of the incredible natural resources there are. specifically oil and diamonds. Angola is an incredibly rich place for that. And the Angolans were also giving refuge to Nelson Mandela's political freedom fighters within the African National Congress. And this is like a Cold War relic type situation, right? It's like there were communists and there

was the Unita insurgency that was funded by CIA, probably South African military, so South African Defense War. So this is just like a nasty, dirty civil war that's sort of pretending to be communist, very anti-communist, but it's really just about natural resources, probably. Ultimately. Yeah. Yeah. So you get booted out of the army for assaulting an officer,

which should surprise no one. And then you become a bouncer in a gay club, as one does, right? After being a badass dude, you know, hey, let's... Well, if I could just say my father had just had a heart attack and my base commander would not allow me to go see my father. Right. This is a shitty move, yeah. Exactly.

So, you know, I was really upset because I was very close to my old man. I actually got honorably discharged from the South African Navy. Yeah, so you knocked him out, but you did it for a good reason, but still get the hell out of it. Exactly. Yeah. But, you know, I was, again, PTSD. I was very conflicted. I was very depressed.

I thought about suicide at that stage. You know, things were, I had this big gray cloud following me constantly. And I had this very short view. So things weren't working out well for me. And my godfather that my mother knew from the theater had a boyfriend that had a gay club in Cape Town. And I didn't know what to do. I needed to make some money. And the conservative South African society really shunned the gay community at that stage as well.

They were incredibly religious, very conservative. and so, you know, I got a job as a bouncer at a gay club called Blondes. Blondes? Yeah, Blondes. That's a very gay club. Gay club name. And they had this big blonde kid at the door. Yep. There's a lot we could dive in there, but I'm going to resist the urge because it's just a funny sort of juxtaposition.

Like, it's big, tough guy, ex-military, like, all right, put him at the front door, good advertising. But it's also like your mom's friend's boyfriend. It's just a, it seems like this weird sort of glitory. glamorous turn for a guy that had a rough upbringing. And now look, this is sort of nearing the end of apartheid, right? Yes, correct. Yeah, so basically what happened was I was actually working at blondes at the door. And there's a local transfer site.

Her name was Coco. She had just walked up the stairs and she was leaving. She gave me a peck on the cheek and walked down the street. And then a few minutes later, one of the little black. street kids, which I call twilight kids, came running up to the door and said, Uncle Brad, Uncle Brad, they're hurting Ms. Coco, so I ran around the corner. And as I ran around the corner, I didn't know this at the time, but a car had pulled up to a corner store called Cadiz.

Out of that car stepped a guy called Neil DeBere. Inside that car was the head of the security police in the Weston Cape, a high-ranking member of the security police in the Western Cape called Major Andy Miller and they were in the car. Fast forward, I'm running down the street with the Twilight Kid to go and find these guys that are beating Coco out. I get there and there's these two white, Africaner, conservative guys thought Coco was a girl. They found out that Coco was a transvestite and started beating her up. So I just let loose and beat the hell out of the day.

these guys. And the major was sitting in the car, apparently saw me through the window. When Neil De Beir got back into the car with these guns and smokes, he went to buy him smokes, the major said, I want that guy, go and recruit him, get him to come and work with us. So yeah, that's how I ended up joining the security police. So this SB security branch or whatever, give us a picture of what this is, because it's not, it's not the FBI, it's not the CIA. It's a combination of the two, I guess, but it's the enforcement arm of the intelligence community. But still remember, folks, the apartheid government, right? So they're kind of like doing shady shit. Correct. Yeah, absolutely. That's where all the black ops and gray ops, all that stuff

happens through the security police. It's a little bit like the Stasi, right? The East German Shazzi. Okay. Yeah, that's spot on. So at the time, Neil DeBeer approached me. I knew who he was because he had recently started this outfit called Project Group. But I thought Project Group was just a security company that used to take care of nightclubs and take care of international guests coming into the country and security, etc. But I didn't know that it was a proxy front for the security branch. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Bradley Stein. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do,

which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. All of those codes and URLs and deals are on our deals page, Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can also go to Jordan Harbinger.com and search for any sponsor using the search box right there on the website as well. Thank you so much for supporting those who support us. It really does keep us going and makes it possible to continue creating these episodes week after week. Now for the rest of Part 1 with Bradley Stein. Okay, so they're kind of doing off the book stuff for the security branch.

And they send you to find this web, this like, well, I don't even think you knew at the time. You ended up finding the Soviet weapons cash. That's right. Like a bathtub full of grenades, basically, and guns is kind of how it sounds. Yeah, so. Stinky guns. You said it smelled. That was a part that was confusing.

Like, how do the guns smell? Well, the whole operation smelt. It was off. The whole thing was dodgy. Oh, you didn't mean. Oh, I thought you meant they'd love. literally smell. No, no, no, no. Okay, in the book, it's a little unclear. It sounds like it smells in the bathroom where you found the guns. I might want to rewrite that paragraph. Exactly.

So one of the first operations that we were involved with, well, not one of the first, actually, a ways into it. At this stage now, I get to finally meet Major Miller. I get to sort of understand that, you know, we're actually doing work for the government. So don't be concerned, Bradley. We've got your back. Right. It's all on the up and up. It's all on the up and up.

It's all on the up and up. It's all on the up and up. It's all on the grenades you found. Yeah. Exactly. But we didn't know that there was a cash say of arms. He told us to go and retrieve classified documents from a safe house that the African National Congress, Mandela's party, was harboring there. Okay. And we went and we got the.

docks, we put the docks into this 7-series BM and we sent it up to Johannesburg, 12-hour's drive. Then we went into this bathroom in the staff quarters, which was locked. We broke in, we got in there, and we found a cachet of Russian-made RPGs, hand grenades. Wow. AK-47s, a ton of ammunition, etc. I guess that Major Miller told us that that stuff was there, we perhaps wouldn't have gone in there and done the operation. Because you would be worried that you would get shot if you went in there, if they had AK-47s, right? Well, just that the risk of the operation is a lot higher, correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So, but the interesting thing is, is that Major Miller got this intel from the CIA. The CIA told him that there's a secret cashier.

of arms that could potentially shoot an airliner down and they were located right next to Cape Town International Airport. Oh, so they would have shot a bird out of the sky straight from the backyard of this industrial office. Right, yeah, you're thinking like they're going to blow a passenger plane down and it's going to be a huge terrorist incident. Exactly. And was that the plan or was that? That ultimately was the plan. Oh, that's here. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, we, ended up now so Neil DeBeer and myself keep this part away from the four other guys that are on this ops with us we send those other guys with the Twilight kids that we were using as lookouts we send them all away everybody's gone now we take this cachet of arms we loaded into

the back of a vehicle and then we need to obviously hide it somewhere. Yeah, what do you keep it in the garage? So, exactly, do we just take it to public storage? Exactly. Put it in my aunt's house. Yeah, my car's giving me some problems. The clutch is not working.

Can I leave it there? No, so I decide to take it to my old Navy base because I know it's on a secure Navy base. They're not going to ask any questions if you show up with a trunk full of weapons. Well, they're not going to know there's a trunk full of weapons in there. So I had a mate that was at a barracks, had a, medium to high security presence at the barracks. My mate walked us straight in. We drove the car in and I left the car there until we figured out what plan B was. Oh, okay. I would like to think that it's

not that easy to do that here in the United States, but I just don't know. Like nothing surprises me anymore. But it seems like they should have been, there should have been a little more oversight as to what's in the trunk of the car that you're going to park in the base. I guess so, 100%, but not when your mates, you know, running the security for that, yeah. And at this time, you're running these little side missions, right? And one of them was you put a grenade or a fake grenade in someone's wife's purse. You wanted to intimidate them. So she found the grenade freaked out, obviously.

And you break into houses, take photos of yourselves with masks on, with people's pets, to show them that you can get to their house. You spiked someone's toothbrush with LSD to get them to open up during an interrogation. Is that accurate? Not to open up during an interrogation. interrogation, but rather just to psycho-log- Oh, just to scare them? Just to scare them.

Because I guess if you didn't know you were on LSD, you would just think you're having a mental breakdown. Exactly. That's somehow worse. But, I mean, is it weird talking about this knowing, you know, your daughter's going to read this book? Because I'm kind of imagining, you know, well, honey, daddy used to be a bad man

and punch people in the face for money. And, you know, now that's how daddy makes friends, right? I mean, it's just kind of a weird thing to put all out there. It's vulnerable to put that in there. Your wife's going to read this. Maybe she already knows. No, and she does. But, you know, the circle that my life has taken, you know,

there are bad things that need to be done in this world and some people that just need to do that stuff. And I'm not proud of a lot of the things that I've done. But, you know, my biggest mission in life at the moment is to try, for instance, in my homeland, South Africa, and that's why I'm actually. on my way back to South Africa, moving back to South Africa, after being away for so many years. 25 years, right? 25 years is to fight for change and to expose what we discovered.

And this is a good way to sort of segment into what that was. Is the book selling well in South Africa? The book was a best seller for six months in South Africa. Because you never know. Like, people could go, I don't like this at all. This is terrible. I don't want to hear about this. So it was released in 2019 and it stayed a bestseller for six months.

Apparently, that's pretty good. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. I mean, just hitting any list is good. Yeah, yeah. So, no, it was number one, I think, for a month or two. And then, you know, it stayed on the top 10 for six months, which is unheard of from what I understand. You had some other areas where you drew the line, right? You were sent to poison someone and then you replaced the poison with an

other product, which I guess that was a little confusing in the book, but it sounds like you went to the store. If the poison looks like Cheerios, you bought some fruit loops and you replaced the, you sort of switched it up so that you're, whoever you were working with thought you were going to poison this person. Yeah, so that's towards the end of the book, but maybe if we can just take a step back. Yeah, yeah, let's just take it. By the way, for those who don't know what fruit loops are, fruit loops is a cereal with a bunch of different colors in it, which are all mixed together. Pretty much the opposite of apartheid South Africa, actually. Exactly. So I basically swapped out ricin with castor sugar.

Oh, okay. Like a form of a sweetness sugar kind of here to avoid the poisoning of the water supply to Haman Skrall, which is a segregated black township. They were going to poison everyone in the whole township. They were going to poison. So there's like a terrorist attack. Yes. Oh, that's horrible. Yeah.

And that was by Wham, the Worldapartheid movement. Which is sort of like a neo-Nazi. Party. They were involved for the political killings, a few political killings inside. Gotcha. Okay. So there's links to them being behind the assassination of our, our Che Guevira, which was our commander, Chris. But there's so much in the news about this as well, right? First of all, the taxi wars, this is a little bit of a non-sequit, it's a little bit of an aside, but this is insane. So when I heard taxi wars, I thought, oh, well, you know, we have Lyft, we have Uber, they're a competing, they're always doing different coupons and prices. That is not what the taxi wars are.

This is, that is not the same thing. No, it's basically, if you think about it from an American point of view, if you think of Jimmy Hoffa and the unions. So the taxis were unions in South Africa, but the apartheid government used to politicize it and fuel it with racism between these different tribes, etc. Because South Africa, because South Africa, is a fascinating country. It has 11 official languages. It has a few different, very powerful cultural tribes, for instance, the Zulu, yeah. Which Sanko Zulu's, the former king and the descendant of the Zulu nation is the powerful war type nation. And that's where the local civil unrest in South Africa that's just occurred now in the month of July 2021 has sparked a massive amount of civil

unrest across South Africa because one of the most corrupt members of the South African government, former members of the South African government and former president, Jacob Zuma, Mshulazi is supposed to be standing for trial at our constitutional court, but he has been charged with contempt of course and refused to go to jail. Right. And now the whole country's on fire. I've got some thoughts on this episode. But before I get into that, here's a preview of my conversation with one of Al-Qaeda's

most respected bomb and poison makers who swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden himself. Here's a quick listen. We took so many prisoners. 80 of them were taken to a clearing. And it was decided there and then that these people will have to. pay for the crimes what they did, seeing the bloodthirsty nature of people who, just until a year ago I used to see them as sweet, tender, decent, good people, suddenly basically became people who would use chainsaws to dismember these people alive. How could one year in Bosnia, one year of

ugly conflict turn these wonderful souls into ugly, bloodthirsty individuals? When I went to sleep that night, all I could think about was, how could I unsee what I've seen? None other than the mastermind of 9-11, Khalos Sheikh Mohammed, he said to us, you should go to Afghanistan, where the training camps are reopening, to become good at bomb-making, to become good at urban warfare, to become good at assassinations, at kidnapping, a new kind of war that will never be fought in the mountains anymore, but it will be fought in every urban center from the pole to the pole. Suddenly, you know, I thought that the nature of the war is changing from, you know, fighting in the mountains of Bosnia. I mean, basically we are talking about gassing people

in cinemas and nightclubs and trains. Of course, that was unsettling, but I thought this is just the ranting of one insane individual. Al-Qaida carried out its first serious attack against American interests. Everyone was jubilant in the camps. They were firing bullets into the air, you know, in celebration and shouting Allahwakbar. We are no longer just a bunch of freedom fighters. We are now bona fide terrorists. To hear why and how Amund Dean eventually switched sides from being a jihadi to spending eight years as an MI6 spy trying to take al-Qaeda down from the inside,

check out episode 383 on the Jordan Harbinger show. That's it for part one, part two coming up in a few days. Links to all things Bradley are going to be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Transcripts in the show notes, videos on you. YouTube, advertisers, deals, and discount codes, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. I've said it once. I'll say it again. Please consider supporting those who support this show. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or just hit me on LinkedIn. And don't forget, I'm teaching you how to connect with great people using the same software

systems and tiny habits that I use every single day. That's our six-minute networking course, and that course is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm teaching you how to dig that well before you get thirsty. And as I said, many of the guests on the show subscribe to the course, contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company. This show is created in association with Podcast One.

My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who would really be interested in this story, somebody from South Africa,

somebody interested in South Africa, share this episode with him. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks, the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not, the through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews

because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.