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BY NORM DIXON

The SBS Dateline current affairs program on February 13 broadcast a special report — “Killing Mugabe: The Tsvangirai Conspiracy” — and a follow-up report on February 20, by Walkley Award-winning Australian journalist Mark Davis. The reports alleged that Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had ordered the assassination of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

A secretly filmed video of a meeting held in Montreal on December 4 — attended by executives of the Dickens and Madson (D&M) “political consultancy” firm, Tsvangirai and at least one Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) adviser — was the central evidence for the allegations presented in both Dateline programs.

The other key piece of evidence cited was a statement issued by D&M which, Davis reported, said the firm in October had been “contracted by Tsvangirai to kill Robert Mugabe. The Montreal meeting ... was to discuss how to install Tsvangirai into power after the assassination.”

The whole case against Tsvangirai rests on the assertions of D&M executives, Ari Ben-Menashe and Alexandre Legault.

Credibility

Legault is wanted in three US states on charges that include racketeering, organised fraud and mail fraud. The charges relate to a fraudulent investment scheme that robbed 300 elderly people of savings worth a total of US$13 million.

A Canada-based corporation owned by Legault, the Carlington Sales Company, was involved in a scandal in Zambia last year in which maize destined for hungry people was bought and paid for but not delivered; US$6 million went missing. The company lists Ben-Menashe as one of its “foreign agents”. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Disclosure program on December 4 revealed that Carlington regularly fails to deliver commodities after payment has been received.

Ben-Menashe, a former agent of Israel's Mossad spy service, played a peripheral role in the US Iran-contra scandal in the late 1980s until his exposure led to his sacking.

Peddling his notoriety, Ben-Menashe travelled the world contacting left-leaning investigative journalists (including Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly in 1992) to “reveal” numerous international conspiracies.

His greatest claim to fame was as a source for the “October Surprise” allegations: that Republican Party figures struck a deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime in Iran to delay the release of US hostages until after the November 1980 presidential poll, thereby thwarting a “surprise” poll advantage for incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter.

The October Surprise claims disintegrated when the central informant was exposed as having fabricated the allegations. Ben-Menashe's claims too were proven to be untrue. The US media organisations that had championed October Surprise turned on Ben-Menashe. PBS Frontline announced that Ben-Menashe's “credibility with reporters collapsed because some of his assertions proved implausible”.

Esquire's Craig Unger in 1992 even penned an article for the Village Voice titled “The trouble with Ari” in which he explained the allure and perils of dealing with Ben-Menashe: “Ari has put five or six dozen journalists from all over the world through roughly the same paces. His seduction begins with a display of his mastery of the trade craft of the legendary Israeli intelligence services... His astute analysis and mid-boggling revelations can stir even the most jaded old hand... Listen to him, trust him, print his story verbatim — then sit around and watch your career go up in flames.”

'A deal is struck'

Davis was told that “one of the principals of Dickens and Madson” (since revealed as Ben-Menashe) met with Tsvangirai in London in October. “According to D&M [i.e., Ben-Menashe], Tsvangirai requested the assassination of President Mugabe at their first meeting and a deal was struck”, Davis reported.

D&M told Davis that at a second meeting in November in London, Tsvangirai agreed to pay US$500,000 and promised the company contracts with a future MDC government in return for the hit on Mugabe.

If the D&M's spy-cam video of the October meeting is viewed with the assumption that Ben-Menashe and Legault are telling the truth, the footage seems damning.

But what if Ben-Menashe and Legault deliberately set out to entrap the opposition leader as part of a “sting” operation, at the direction of the Mugabe regime?

Dateline rejected this possibility. In the first program, Davis did not mention Ben-Menashe and Legault's checkered histories. In the February 20 program, Davis did concede that “many people have branded Ari Ben-Menashe a liar”. However, in a telephone conversation with Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly on February 21, Davis was emphatic: “I don't believe [Ben-Menashe] is a liar.”

The meeting screened by Dateline certainly reveals that Tsvangirai and D&M discussed detailed arrangements to return Zimbabwe to constitutional rule, in cooperation with a section of the Zimbabwe military, following an “elimination” of Mugabe.

However, the dialogue does not prove that Tsvangirai ordered such an act to be carried out. It is apparent that Tsvangirai does not even believe he would be the automatic beneficiary of it. Much of the discussion revolves around the preparedness of a military figure, whose name Dateline obscures, to guarantee the eventual holding of elections.

Did D&M deliberately set out to entrap Tsvangirai by falsely claiming to represent an anti-Mugabe section of the military? Did Tsvangirai foolishly agree to explore such an approach in the light of Zimbabwe defence force commander Vitalis Zvinavashe's blunt statement that the army would not accept an MDC victory in the March 9-10 presidential election? Or was Tsvangirai's discussion of hypothetical scenarios put to him by D&M taken out of context, as he maintains?

Double agents?

In the February 13 program, Davis stated that D&M “has recently been engaged by [the Mugabe] government, but four months ago, when this story begins, they were free agents”. The implication being that D&M offered its services to Mugabe only after Tsvangirai had asked them to arrange the president's death. When GLW spoke to Davis, he remained convinced that D&M had no business links with Mugabe prior to October.

However, later statements by Ben-Menashe indicate that Davis was misled. The February 14 Canadian National Post reported that Ben-Menashe told the newspaper that D&M had a “long-standing working relationship” with Mugabe and his government. “Mr Tsvangirai knocked on the wrong door”, Ben-Menashe quipped.

Ben-Menashe made similar comments to the London Daily Telegraph, reproduced in the February 14 Sydney Morning Herald: “What [Tsvangirai] didn't know was that we had a relationship with Mr Mugabe that dated back quite a few years.” Ben-Menashe told the February 14 Toronto Globe and Mail: “We had a long-term relationship with President Mugabe. Personally, I've known him since the '80s.”

The fact that D&M was working for Mugabe strengthens Tsvangirai's case that he was “set up”. In a statement released on February 14, he stated that it was D&M that approached the MDC to offer its services to build the party's image in North America. The MDC accepted and meetings were arranged.

However, Tsvangirai's claim that “at no stage during the first three meetings was the issue of elimination or assassination ever discussed” is at odds with the videotaped discussion and his later statements.

His account of the taped meeting also does not match what appears on the tape: “Mr Menashe kept wandering from the issues discussed previously. He and his team from nowhere introduced discussion around the issue of elimination and kept asking strange questions. It was at this stage that I burst out of the meeting.”

Dateline's videotape clearly shows that Tsvangirai did indeed leave the meeting after some tense exchanges, but he returned after several minutes and for the next hour discussed various post-elimination scenarios. As Davis told GLW, “Even if it was a sting, [Tsvangirai] was stung”.

Is this “evidence” that Tsvangirai ordered the assassination of Mugabe, as Dateline insists? Clearly, Tsvangirai is not telling the whole truth. Tsvangirai seems to be attempting to conceal that he was prepared to deal with military figures who he was led to believe intended to act against Mugabe.

Tsvangirai's comments to the South African Broadcasting Corporation's Special Assignment program on February 19 strengthen that interpretation. He said that in the early meetings, D&M claimed they had contacts in the Zimbabwe military, but in the meeting that was recorded, Ben-Menashe and Legault pressed the MDC about what contacts they had made in the military.

“I said, 'No, that was not the understanding ... You were supposed to initiate [contact] because you said you had the contacts'”, Tsvangirai explained. “I don't think the military was aware of what was happening, but this was the portrayal that was being given by Ben-Menashe.”

However, Tsvangirai continued to maintain in his SABC comments that the filmed meeting was a “broad scenario discussion”. In the discussion of the “scenario” of Mugabe's assassination, Tsvangirai said: “There is only one ... option: the [Zimbabwe] vice-president takes over, we will cooperate as MDC in parliament to make the necessary constitutional changes to facilitate the extension of the voting [to] March 31st, so that we create conditions of stability before the elections are held.” This is broadly in line with the recordings of the meeting.

The Mugabe regime has much to gain from a successful entrapment of the former trade union leader. Tsvangirai is a serious threat to Mugabe's 22-year reign. Mugabe and his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) have embarked on a reign of terror to intimidate supporters of Tsvangirai's trade union-backed MDC in an attempt to retain power at the March election.

The charges made in the Dateline program may provide Mugabe with the perfect opportunity to nullify the MDC challenge to his autocratic regime. Repressive “anti-terrorist” laws passed in January carry sentences of life for acts of “insurgency, banditry, sabotage or terrorism”.

Zimbabwe's minister for national security Nicholas Goche told the state-run Herald newspaper on February 15 that the allegations “prima facie suggest the commission of a number of very serious crimes. The police will obviously need to conduct exhaustive investigations to get to the bottom of the matter”.

Mugabe has resorted to similar charges in the past to neutralise his political opponents. In 1983, Zimbabwe African Peoples Union leader Joshua Nkomo fled the country after being accused of plotting to overthrow the government.

Mark Davis told GLW that he had further footage from the secretly taped meeting, but it is not scheduled to be broadcast at this stage. He refused to release the entire tape to other journalists to examine. “We'll wait and see what develops”, he said.

Full transcripts for Davis' February 13 and 20 programs are available at .

From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, February 27, 2002.
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