BOSS
 BOSS  (Intelligence agency)   | |
|---|---|
| Successor | State Security Agency |
| Formation | 1969 |
| Extinction | 1995 |
| Headquarters | South Africa |
| The main South African state intelligence agency | |
The Bureau for State Security (BOSS) was the main South African state intelligence agency from 1969 to 1980. From 1980 until 1995, BOSS changed name to the National Intelligence Service. Associated with the Apartheid era in South Africa, the National Intelligence Service was replaced on 1 January 1995 with what eventually became the State Security Agency.
Like other parts of the Apartheid security forces, BOSS has been implicated in human rights violations, political repression, and extra-judicial killings both at home and abroad.[1]
Blackmail
According to Horst Kleinschmidt, a leading anti-apartheid campaigner and former head of the London-based International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa between 1982 and 2001, BOSS would use compromising information to pressurise individuals to be less opposed to the apartheid regime. "Whether they did this in Europe I wouldn’t know, but it certainly happened extensively inside South Africa".
"Blackmail is part of the modus operandi of any intelligence organisation", said Arthur McGiven, a former intelligence analyst in BOSS who defected to Britain in 1979.
