I spy …

The Mail & Guardian lodged a complaint with the inspector general of intelligence this week following sustained evidence that its journalists were snooped on and harassed by state agents.

The M&G wants the inspector general, Zolile Ngcakani, to investigate, inter alia: M&G journalists and the outgoing editor featuring on the ‘Zuma tapes”; M&G journalists being falsely accused of receiving the original leak of the Browse ‘Mole” report, using or selling drugs and one being an apartheid agent; a plan to plant drugs on one M&G journalist; and the abuse of specialised police capacity, including a police intelligence front company, to investigate the M&G on a trivial complaint.

The Intelligence Oversight Act empowers Ngcakani to investigate abuses of power by the intelligence services.

In a 25-page letter to him we highlight incidents spanning six years that undermined the freedom of the media and the public¹s right to know.

Ngcakani¹s office said he would respond formally after considering our complaint, details of which include:

The Zuma Tapes
The M&G has information that journalist Sam Sole, outgoing editor Ferial Haffajee and probably other M&G journalists feature on the spy recordings leaked to President Jacob Zuma’s attorney, Michael Hulley.

The intercepts apparently involve conversations beyond those immediately relevant to any conspiracy within the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) against Zuma. Conversations between M&G journalists and Philip Dexter, now a Cope spokesperson, as well as late ‘information peddler” Bheki Jacobs allegedly also feature.

We ask Ngcakani for ‘full disclosure of the application for the interception directive, which resulted in M&G journalists’ communications being monitored and intercepted”.

NPA ‘leaks”
In July last year during the trial of former National Intelligence Agency (NIA) boss Billy Masetlha it was revealed that police intelligence and the NIA had drawn up a report on leaks from the NPA.

The report was not made public but we were told that it associated Sole with leaks, including setting out contacts he allegedly had with NPA members.

The report also included what our complaint terms ‘the false and extremely damaging claim that Sole had been an apartheid security agent”.

Sole has placed on record that during his compulsory national service in the defence force he wrote a first-hand account of brutality in the townships, which he passed on to the End Conscription Campaign. It was published internationally and later formed part of the Truth Commission hearings on conscription.

During his national service Sole attended a two-week intelligence course. He was invited to transfer to military intelligence, but declined. He completed his two years as a rifleman, eventually refusing to serve in the townships.

He had no other association with the apartheid security services.

Browse ‘Mole”
In May 2007 Sole and his colleague Stefaans Brümmer received leaked copies of the controversial Browse ‘Mole” report, which alleged illicit foreign funding for Zuma. The report was produced by Ivor Powell, then a Scorpions investigator.

The copy received was the same as one already leaked to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).

But formal investigations later sought to blame Powell for the original leak — to Sole.

A July 2007 presidential task team into the Browse saga included the claim that a different version of the report had been leaked to ‘a journalist”.

A follow-up investigation by Parliament¹s standing committee on intelligence blamed Powell and ‘members of the media”. The M&G subsequently learned that the official claim was that Powell had handed it to Sole at a coffee shop in Cape Town.

‘This allegation is blatantly false,” says our complaint to Ngcakani, pointing out that Sole did not meet with Powell, as alleged, and that investigators had not taken up an offer from Sole to provide an affidavit.

Drugs and tape recorders
Following the M&G‘s 2006 exposé of police national commissioner Jackie Selebi’s relationship with mafioso Glenn Agliotti rumours, appearing to emanate from police headquarters, started circulating that Sole and Brümmer used or sold drugs.

During this time Brümmer was approached by ‘X” (name withheld for legal reasons), involved in private intelligence and security.

During two meetings it appeared that X was a plant, on a fishing expedition to extract information: what Brümmer thought of Selebi, whether Brümmer used drugs, and so on.

Brümmer got the impression X was recording the conversations – later corroborated when a police source said recordings had been played at police headquarters in which Brümmer discussed Selebi.

When X sought further meetings Brümmer was warned by a source acquainted with X that X had been instructed to entrap him with drugs.

Another source, connected with both X and police intelligence, told Brümmer: ‘[X] was going to plant a present for you in your car. [The police] would have hit you.”

Our complaint to Ngcakani states: ‘The overwhelming impression created … is that crime intelligence (or some other SAPS entity) set in motion a deliberate plan to gather intelligence on and smear the M&G journalists involved in the Selebi/Agliotti exposé.”

Oilgate
After the M&G exposed in 2005 how Imvume Management had channeled R11-million in state oil funds to the ANC we were targeted in a ‘completely disproportionate and excessive” police investigation backed up by a police intelligence front company.

The investigation followed charges by Imvume that we were in contempt of court following an interdict barring us from disclosing its bank records.

While the interdict was in force an excerpt from an Imvume bank statement, already in the public domain, remained on our website — a technical contravention, if any at all.

Contempt of court in civil matters is usually handled by the courts and not the police. But the complaint was taken up by the police headquarters commercial crime unit, where a commander hinted to us that the orders had come directly from Selebi.

We chanced on the involvement in the investigation of police intelligence front company Y (name withheld for legal reasons) specialising in electronic eavesdropping.

Our complaint states: ‘We are of the view that the investigation into the contempt of court charge was no more than a front to conceal the true motive for the investigation: namely, to discover, using the covert techniques available to [the police] in its undercover structure, who the M&G sources were and what further damaging information the M&G might have.”