Speaker 1:

In an extraordinary video revealed tonight for the first time, new light is shed on the forces that are gathering against him, forces that have been cloaking themselves in the gentle words of democracy.

Meeting:

Suffice to say that for all appearances, ultimately this meeting never happened.

Speaker 1:

Forces plotting to eliminated Mugabe, not at the ballot box, but to murder him before the upcoming election, and to launch a coup d'etat.

Meeting:

Why? If you believe the press, Mugabe is going to win the election, and I think we've certainly proved that fact to be wrong today.

Do coffins win elections?

We are to proceed to implement a plan of introducing a transitional government through the termination of Mugabe.

Speaker 1:

We expose the plan to kill Robert Mugabe. We reveal the people behind it and the most troubling part of this plot, their motives. Why kill Mugabe when there's every chance of defeating him at an election in just a few weeks' time?

Just about everything that Mugabe has said over the past few years has been met with disdain and disbelief in the West. But in one respect, he's closer to the truth than anyone, even himself, could have dreamt.

R Mugabe:

Tell me, who is being oppressed in this country?

Interviewer:

They're the  MDC. I mean, you-

R Mugabe:

MDC? MDC being oppressed, where? Tsvangirai is on record as having said that he was going to remove the President by violence.

Speaker 1:

Much has been made of Tsvangirai's fine principles in the capitals of the world, but perhaps his true principles were on display recently and secretly in Montreal.

December 4, the offices of Dickens & Madson, a firm of political consultants with extensive experience in Africa. Present are three staff members of Dickens & Madson, a gentleman whose identity has not been established, a British citizen and former Rhodesian who allegedly set up this meeting and Morgan Tsvangirai.

Meeting:

The MDC represented by the top man who's sitting here tonight now, commits to let's call it whatever you want to call it, the coup d'etat, to the elimination of the President.

Speaker 1:

Ari Ben-Menashe, Dickens & Madson.

Meeting:

Okay, Mr Mugabe is eliminated. Now what?

Are you in a position basically to ensure a smooth transition of power?

M Tsvangirai:

Yes. I have no doubt about it.

Speaker 1:

Dickens & Madson have issued this statement. They claim that they were contracted by Tsvangirai to kill Robert Mugabe. The Montreal meeting, which they filmed, was to discuss how to instal Tsvangirai into power after the assassination. They advise that they had no intention of fulfilling the contract, that they have now informed the Zimbabwean authorities of the plan and have recently been engaged by that government.

But four months ago, when this story begins, they were free agents in the political consultancy market. In October, one of the principles of Dickens & Madson, flew to London to meet Tsvangirai. A contract was on offer. The meeting was arranged and attended by an associate of Tsvangirai's, identified only as a former Rhodesian and now British citizen.

According to Dickens & Madson, Tsvangirai requested the assassination of President Mugabe at their first meeting and a deal was struck. In early November, in the civilised environs of the RAC Club in London, the details of the deal to kill Mugabe were thrashed out, $500,000 and the promise of future government contracts from President Tsvangirai.

Meeting:

When I came here, that was my feeling, my understanding that the second meeting would be to brief me about the transitional mechanism. What's going to happen if we move towards this. That's how I understand the phases to be moving. And this meeting was supposed to be talking about, okay, we have moved so far, we can now definitely say that Mugabe's going to be eliminated. But what is the transitional arrangement that you have-

That's exactly why we're here.

No, I think let's ... there should be more this time around.

Interviewer:

So had been discussion amongst opponents of the government to assassinate Mugabe?

M Tsvangirai:

Why should we? He's a 78-year-old man. Crazy as he is, but we have no reason whatsoever to make any harm to him.

Speaker 1:

Tsvangirai's transitional arrangement is to seize power with sections of the military, override parliament, suspend the elections and then reschedule them when time and circumstances suit him.

Meeting:

And who's going to call the emergency? Who is going to call the suspension of the constitution and the emergency?

No, they don't have to. All they need to do is to tell the acting Vice President, "Look, we have got a crisis, we cannot proceed immediately after the head of state has been eliminated." To me, that's the fundamental issue. That plus how the two forces, the MDC on one hand and the army on the other, can work together to ensure a smooth transition towards democracy, through an election process, even if it means delaying the election.

M Tsvangirai:

We are not going to abandon this struggle. We are not going to boycott this election. We are going to go all the way.

Speaker 1:

All the way indeed. While making his speech, Tsvangirai still believes that the Dickens & Madson contract will be executed, that Mugabe will be killed before the ballot in a few weeks' time.

Meeting:

Let there be an understanding, because we have their support, but we will lose the election because of all sorts of reasons.

Speaker 1:

It would seem that Tsvangirai may have the overwhelming support of Whitehall, Canberra, Brussels, and Washington, but not that of his own people, not enough to guarantee his victory. It appears that Mugabe is to be killed not because he is a threat to democracy, but because the democratic process threatens to reinstall him, validating his actions and threatening land tenure across Africa.

Meeting:

If we were to see Mugabe perhaps die of a heart attack in the next week or so, obviously you would need some funding?

Yes.

And to strengthen the party itself. Where would we send it? How would we deliver it?

It will be sent through, if you don't mind, through BSMG in London. They are the conduit.

Speaker 1:

Whatever the best-laid plans of Tsvangirai and his backers were, if Mugabe is killed and a coup attempted, the likeliest result is a civil war with thousands dead. Even if it succeeded, Tsvangirai's transitional arrangement would inevitably involve the slaughter of Mugabe's supporters, and there are millions of them.

Interviewer:

Well, you have accused the MDC of being a terrorist organisation.

R Mugabe:

Organisation, yes.

Interviewer:

Now, this is a party which has garnered nearly 50% of the popular vote at the last ... is that a responsible term for a party that half of your people presumably support?

R Mugabe:

The tone reflects what is on the ground. They have declared themselves, by virtue of their actions, as terrorist. If they undertake terrorist activities, mustn't we describe them as terrorist?

M Tsvangirai:

We have been actually at the receiving end of the terrorist actions of this government. Not that we have initiated anything to warrant those kind of labels.

Speaker 1:

So far in Zimbabwe, a lot of property has been lost but not a lot of lives. There's still some chance of reconciliation here. The honour of smashing that chance, starting the mass blood shed that's been so long predicted may not belong to these supposed dictator, but to the democrat and his friends.

For millions who dreamed of a new era in Zimbabwe, a new style of government through Morgan Tsvangirai, it's not just his principles that he has betrayed.

Speaker 8:

After the break, the story behind the story, the plot, the former Israeli spy behind it, and what the Australian journalist didn't tell you. Is this as an elaborate hoax or the awful truth? Don't go away.

Welcome back. Now that you've seen the core of the allegations, let's take a look at some of the questions that have been raised this past week.

The two men at the centre of the plot are MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai and Canadian political consultant, Ari Ben-Menashe. Tsvangirai says the tape is a hoax and he was never given a proper opportunity by Australian journalist Mark Davis to defend himself.

Tsvangirai explains that he approached Ben-Menashe to lobby for him in North America. We interview Tsvangirai in Zimbabwe and Ben-Menashe in Canada in the very room where the secret video was recorded, below the very air vents where the camera was installed.

Ari Ben-Menashe:

The first meeting I had with him was in London, England. We met at the Hilton Hotel in Terminal Four in Heathrow Airport. And they wanted to hire us straightforward to eliminate a president and to help them organise a coup d'etat.

M Tsvangirai:

How can you talk about assassination with a lobby group? Are they an assassination group or some mafia? It never occurred to me that such an issue would be relevant.

Ari Ben-Menashe:

In order to gather more evidence, we asked him to come here. And that's where the video tape was done.

M Tsvangirai:

There was no need to keep and even to mistrust them because remember I was going in the meeting with a group that we had appointed as our ... it's like going to your lawyer. Do you suspect that your lawyer is actually putting some peeps around you?

Ari Ben-Menashe:

Question marks came up in my head. Why us? That's the first thing. We do political consultancy and advice, but we don't have a history of doing violent things like coup d'etats and things like that

M Tsvangirai:

In fact, for the whole hour, we were talking about the scenario emerging in Zimbabwe's political discourse. How about if Mugabe refuses to accept the results? How about if he collapses dead? How about if he ... and it went on and on and on.

Ari Ben-Menashe:

And they obviously came through the wrong door because not only that we reported the matter, but we also had a relationship with the Mugabe government for a long time.

M Tsvangirai:

It was getting to a stage where he was talking about these scenarios. How about if the president is eliminated? How about if he collapses dead? How about if he refuses to accept the results? How about if you take over and the military refuses to accept that? That was in that context.

Ari Ben-Menashe:

Yeah. It was very interesting for me especially because we had a relationship with the president of Zimbabwe. It was very useful information for the president.

M Tsvangirai:

Well, after we left, I came back and said, "Look ... I was briefing [inaudible] and others. I said, "I'm not happy with the meeting I had. It would appear these guys are raising so many questions outside the mandate." So we started investigating. He's never broken off from links with ZANU-PF. And then we said, "Oh, if that is the case, we have had three meetings with these guys. Let's back off. If they fail on this assassination plot to dent the political image of the MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai in particular, they will have just one [inaudible], which is to terminate, eliminate Tsvangirai."

Speaker 8:

What the Dateline programme did not reveal is the shadowy background of Ari Ben-Menashe. Today he presents himself as a political consultant and runs a company called Dickens & Madson in Montreal, Canada. It's to this company that Morgan Tsvangirai allegedly turned for help with the plans for assassination. But Ben-Menashe is a man with a dubious past. He came into the limelight in 1990 when he made fantastic claims about the twilight world of spying, gun running and abductions.

He also claims to be a senior former Israeli intelligence operative. And by his own admission, he's had a long close association with Robert Mugabe for the past 15 years.

Ari Ben-Menashe:

We feel that even though he's not perfect, nobody is perfect, he is on the right side of history. He liberated the country from a nasty apartheid regime. And now what he's trying to do is do land reform, take away land from 4,000 white settlers and distribute it to landless blacks.

Speaker 9:

Ari Menashe is a fantasist. He is by nationality Israeli. And he, for some years had a fairly lowly position in the Israeli intelligence. He was a translator as far as I recall and he found this not too exciting. And so, he in fact got fired I think from the Israeli intelligence, for essentially delusional behaviour, and started basically going and ... as far as I can see, making a full [inaudible] as a fantasist.

Speaker 8:

Journalists like John Barry and publications like Time Magazine and the New York Times investigated Ben-Menashe extensively. He'd made startling allegations in connection with two political scandals in the United States in the early 80s. They were dabbed Irangate and the October Surprise.

Ben-Menashe and others alleged that Ronald Reagan's campaign team had tried to make a deal with Iran to delay the release of American hostages until after the presidential elections in 1980, thereby denying the then president Jimmy Carter credit for their release. Ben-Menashe also claimed to have known of plans to send arms to Iran as part of the deal.

Speaker 9:

Newsweek investigated this. We spent months investigating it and we travelled half way around the world to do so. And one of the people we clearly had to interview was Ari Ben-Menashe. And so, we flew him from Australia to New York and we put him up in New York. And we questioned him at great length.

Ari Ben-Menashe:

My background goes back to Israel and so on and so forth, the Iran-Contra, arm sales to Iran.

Speaker 9:

But first of all, he didn't know anything about what he was talking about. I mean, he claimed to be an arms dealer, for instance. So we asked him questions about arms and he flunked. I mean, he just didn't know. We went and checked everything he'd said. We checked mandates. Just nothing stood up. And we came to the conclusion he was complete and utter fantasist, a conclusion, by the way, which his wife or possibly his ex wife in Israel agreed with. She said, "You can't believe everything he says. He's just a compulsive fabulist."

Speaker 10:

The joint hearings of the House Select Committee, the investigate corporate arms transaction with Iran, and the Senate Select Committee on secret military assistance to Iran and the Nicaragua ...

Speaker 8:

Ben-Menashe failed a lie detector test about his Irangate allegations. A subsequent American Congressional investigation into the scandals found his allegations to be total fabrication. Ben-Menashe claimed to have seen George Bush senior at a Paris meeting with Iranian officials in October 1980. It was later established that on that date, Bush was in Washington addressing a meeting. He also lied when he said he was a commander of the Israeli raid on Entebbe Airport in Uganda, and that he had planted a spying device in Iraqi nuclear installation. And now, the Zimbabwe assassination tapes have appeared.

Speaker 9:

I know nothing about the alleged plot. I know of Ari Ben Menashe. Anything Ari Ben-Menashe is involved in [inaudible] a scam. The tape would be terribly grainy. He wouldn't have a clear tape with clear evidence. It would be very grainy and he'd have to say, "You've got to take my word for it. This is really what's on the tape." Well, don't take his word for it.

Speaker 8:

The Zimbabwe minister of security has now announced an investigation into the alleged assassination plot. Obviously, the plot also received huge publicity there. This is how the Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation reported the story.

Speaker 11:

The alleged assassination plot by the MDC is characteristic of its violent nature, similar to that of the notorious Rhodesian Selous Scouts, some of whom are now active members of the party. And Australian network yesterday broadcast a video clip showing MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai discussing a plot to assassinate President Robert Mugabe.

Ari Ben-Menashe:

Our sympathy and our personal sympathies always was on the side of the colonisation of Africa, African liberation, and the liberation of land. Africa's for the Africans and not for the colonial powers. And I believe we're on the right side of history. And Mr. Tsvangirai is basically a black face for a new Rhodesia.

Speaker 8:

We know about Ben-Menashe. But now it's also emerged that the second man on the tape, Alex Legault, is wanted in the Unites States on $13 million fraud charges. Why did Australian journalist, Mark Davis, not give us the backgrounds to these men? Why did he not tell us about the long-standing relationship between Ben-Menashe and President Robert Mugabe? He was asked about this on CNN's international correspondence.

Speaker 12:

Okay, John Sweeney ...

Speaker 13:

This is not something that I have been ...

Speaker 14:

But as a reporter, don't you have a duty to your viewers to tell them the source of your information? And the truth is the source of your information ...

Speaker 13:

John. John.

Speaker 14:

No, no, no. You have not said.

Speaker 13:

Please.

Speaker 14:

You've not said the character of these people. It's a fantasist and alleged fraudster, and who are in the pay of ZANU-PF.

Speaker 13:

What is Morgan Tsvangirai doing dealing with this company? Please give me that explanation.

Speaker 14:

Okay.

Speaker 12:

The question here really is whether or not you in some way are being manipulated. And we, just in talking about it, are being manipulated.

Speaker 13:

I'm hardly being manipulated on this. This tape, if people ... and if Morgan hasn't realised this, I should say very clearly, this material was coming anyway. The Zimbabwean authorities have, according to Dickens & Madson, all information and more. I'm aware of other information that I have not presented.