DIS report on opposition is fake
INK Centre | Friday July 28, 2017 18:00
Soon after the opposition, Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) returned from a violent congress in Bobonong, the media was awash with a document - code named Tholwana Borethe - claiming to reveal a secret plot by the spy agency to disrupt the opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) from toppling the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) in 2019 general election.
INK Centre analysed the document with the help of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) software engineer, Matthew Caruana Galizia and other local experts on intelligence and metadata and established that the Tholwana Borethe was done in a haste and carried serious and elementary errors.
Metadata tells no lies
The metadata inadvertently left on the purported intelligence lucidly exposed the authors of the documents. The most interesting finding is that the document was created a few days before the last BMD congress in Bobonong, not in 2016 as previously stated. The report was created on two different dates in July. The first document, which was first sent to Botswana Guardian, was created on July 10, 2017, at 9:17pm and was last saved on July 12, 2017 at 09:29am.
The document was created from a desktop computer at a Gaborone suburb, which the metadata identified as using Microsoft Word 2001 – 2004. The total time for editing and writing the document is 139 minutes, according to the document’s metadata.
The other report, which was later passed to Mmegi, Sunday Standard, Business Weekly and Botswana Gazette was created on July 12, 2017 at 12:46pm using the same computer. The PDF document also offers hints about its authenticity and origins. It was created using MS Word 2001 – 2004, and later by the latest MS Word 2016, the metadata left on the PDF document show. The document was later converted to PDF using Adobe 1.5 (Acrobat 6.x) version.
Furthermore what is emerging from the Tholwana Borethe documents are the stark and obvious inconsistencies regarding the fake dates the report was prepared to the DIS Director, Isaac Kgosi. The dates do not correspond with the dates left on the metadata.
The first report passed to Botswana Guardian was allegedly authored by DIS Special Task Team ‘director’, Tsosoloso Mosinki on February 28, 2016. It is not clear why the report passed on to other publications on the same report claimed that the report was produced on June 28, 2016. A security and intelligence expert engaged by INK Centre concluded that, “Clearly the report was manufactured by amateurs. They failed the basic test of covering their tracks.” Another commented, “It is possible to forge the creation date, but I don’t think there’s a logical reason for them to have done that.”
Grave plagiarism – newspapers duped
What is emerging from the analysis of the report is that unlike most intelligence reports, which rely on newly obtained intelligence gathered from sources within political movements, the report was an act of plagiarism that further missed key and basic facts. While the intelligence communities often use open source intelligence (OSINT), the level of plagiarism on the report raises red flags. For example, at least 80% of the contents of the ‘intelligence report’ are picked from news articles by Mmegi newspaper. The report also plagiarised articles by Gabz FM and European Times reporters.
Parts of the 2010 three-series interview of the BMD leader, Ndaba Gaolathe under the heading, “Ndaba’s Burden” are reproduced as they are. For example, the report reproduced the following interview which appeared on Mmegi newspaper, dated December 10, 2010: “In 2002, Delele made a proposal for Botswana Insurance Fund Management to pioneer the same idea Ndaba had of forming a venture fund with the giant pension managers. Photon was a joint venture between Delele (Pty) Ltd and Bifm, the largest fund-manager in the Botswana market with more than US$1 billion under its management.”
The report’s authors mistakenly reproduced the interview to the extent that they forgot to delete a conversational dialogue between the Mmegi reporter and Ndaba. “Delele crossed into South Africa. We ended up doing large projects there,” he explains, face turning serious,” read part of the report giving a clear demonstration that the quote was cut and pasted from a previous story. At least 95% of intelligence about Ndaba was picked and plagiarised from Mmegi articles.
This is not all; the report also relied heavily on plagiarised materials when compiling intelligence about Duma Boko and Dumelang Saleshando. At least 98% on the intelligence obtained on Boko came from Mmegi, European Times, and Gabz FM news stories. The authors also picked wording from Boko’s Linkedin account. What is even surprising is that the authors plagiarised an account by one of Boko’s friends, Boingotlo Toteng in his 2014 interview with Mmegi and turned his account into their ‘intelligence about Boko’. The initial story ran on Mmegi dated October 23, 2014 under the title “A Mahalapye boy with a typewriter”.
The authors also plagiarised another story dated October 23, 2014, under the headline “Dumelang through the eyes of acquaintances”. At least 90% of part of the intelligence obtained on Saleshando was plagiarised from the Mmegi story. For example, this was picked from the story and turned it into intelligence: “He started his primary school at Rachele Primary School in Kanye. He briefly moved to Lobatse where Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) employed his father. In the early 1980s Dumelang found himself in the copper mining town of Selebi-Phikwe where his father had found employment at BCL mine. The family eventually settled in Selebi-Phikwe”
Fake as they come
One of the greatest blemishes in the Tholwana Borethe report is that it missed key facts. For example, it missed facts about Saleshando wife Dineo’s employment. The report says that Dineo works for Standard Chartered Bank as head of Retail, Credit Policy for Southern Africa. In actual fact Dineo left Standard Chartered Bank more than five years ago, and now works for Barclays Bank.
Quiet queer, it will be strange how the DIS could have missed this information, considering that they were involved in vetting her for the current job in 2014. In his recent interview with Botswana Gazette, Kgosi pointed out that Mosinki, the purported author of the report, is not the director of Special Task Team. The format used by the authors of the document is wanting. Intelligence reports are often laced with secret code names. In the intelligence world, this is policy. At least two sources consulted by INK Centre have confirmed.
The agents who put together intelligence reports often do not identify themselves, but rather use code names, or code numbers in the internal reports. The Tholwana Borethe report identifies the writer and also his national identity number, something, which is strange in the intelligence community.
The three leaders of opposition, Boko, Saleshando and Gaolathe are also identified by name and mug shot pictures. A former senior government officer with knowledge of the intelligence commented, “There is nothing new in the said report that shows fresh information on the individuals [concerned]. All information used is publicly known,” he said.