Radiolab - Breaking Bongo

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

Deep fake videos have the potential to make it impossible to sort fact from fiction. And some have argued that this blackhole of doubt will eventually send truth itself into a death spiral. But a series of recent events in the small African nation of Gabon suggest it's already happening.  Today, we follow a ragtag group of freedom fighters as they troll Gabon’s president - Ali Bongo - from afar. Using tweets, videos and the uncertainty they can carry, these insurgents test the limits of using truth to create political change and, confusingly, force us to ask: Can fake news be used for good? This episode was reported and produced by Simon Adler. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. 

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W. N. Y. C. See?

Yeah. Hey, I'm Chad. I'm Moomrod. I'm Robert Krollwitch. This is Radio Lab. And today, all right. We are on the corner of third and 42nd heading east. We're talking about, what are we talking about? We're talking about your ex-pat. Rebellion.

Yes. Okay, I like it. And as you just heard, it comes from our producer, Simon Adler. And a quick warning, if you've got kids listening, there are a few curse words in this story. So just be warned. Okay, here's Simon. Right. So.

All right, another police checkpoint here. A month or so back. Have your bags open. See if I can get through. I went down to the United Nations looking for this group of activists. Okay. I was walking down Second Ave. And that morning, the UN General Assembly was in session.

So security was super tight, lots of guys with guns, and they had cordoned off everything within about a block of the UN building itself. After getting searched, I'm at the entrance here. I ended up on 47th Street, which is a block that security had designated as a protest corridor. So on this one block, security had divided the street into a dozen or so quadrants. Each quadrant occupied by a different protest group yelling at the U.S. And so I was suddenly thrust into this frothing technicolor mass. Let's move.

All right, let's go, let's go. Okay, and this seems to be protest alley. Of people shouting, waving flags, and shaking placards. I mean, you could pick any cause, any issue on the planet, you would like to protest. Show up, and there will be at least seven other people protesting it along with you. Really? So who, wait, who is out there? Oh, you name it.

My issue is Palestine, Israel. Folks who were pro-Palestine against the Buhari government. Anti-Nigerian government, climate change activists. Most groups had their own little 10-foot by 30-foot area marked by police barricades. And so every few steps, you'd encounter a different cause. I mean, on 47th Street, on the 4th Street, on the 4th, far left side of it, you had these Egyptian Americans just going wild. We are for Egypt and for the President Sisi.

Chanting in support of President Sisi. Stop there ishurti! Well, just 60 feet away on the other side of the street, there's an anti-Sisi Egyptian protest going on. And then smack dabbed in the middle of all of this chaos are the Fulon Gong protesters, probably 100 of them, decked from head to toe, in bright yellow, standing like statues, perfectly still and silent.

This is a buffet of discontentedness. All of the protesters were facing the UN, yelling in that direction, trying to get the attention of the media, or presumably of the diplomats walking in. But this one group... Okay, let's see if I can find my... The group I was there to see, in fact, they had their backs turn to the UN. They were taking a totally different approach because their audience was actually halfway around the world.

Ah, and here is a friend. Joel. How are you doing? Good to see it, man. Hi, how are you? They're from Gabon. It's a small little country on the west coast of Africa. And the reason these Gabonese folks had gathered around the UN

was to protest against their long-time, quote-unquote, president-dictator Ali Bongo. Like B-O-N-G-O? Bongo, like the drum. Anyway, they were this sort of, of eclectic group. Simon is here. One of them Joel was wearing a Gabonese flag as a cape.

The best dressed activist of the whole lot. Another Uric was in a suit. Coming from work, right? You guys expecting more people to show up? Well, awfully so. And there were only like seven of them there. But one of them always had their phone out. One is just live.

Shooting video. Alright, all right, all right. Somebody want to say something. And live streaming it. Because we live. Africa is watching us. This was why I'd come to see them. Because, well, everybody else at the UN that day

was trying to get the media or the people around them to take notice. These Gabnees activists were broadcasting directly to the people of Gabon. Through videos and tweets and Facebook posts, they were fighting a dictatorship thousands of miles away, finding that this distance was surprisingly empowering, but also perilous, because it sent them down this path to creating an alternative reality that would crash them straight into the limits of using truth

to create political change. But how, exactly? Check, check, one, two, three, four, five. Well, let me back up a little bit. The first time I met this group of Gabonese activists was at this annual vigil. Do you mind telling me where we are and what we're doing here? Okay.

Excuse me. For the church, where are we in the church? Which church is that again? Here in New York. St. Alois. Okay. So we are in St. Alois Church. This is Frank Schachten.

It's a Catholic church in New Harlem. Hallam, yeah. St. Alois in Harlem. And I met him in the entryway of this huge Roman Catholic cathedral on 132nd Street. And I think we're going to go. We'll talk more. Okay, we'll talk more. We went inside and there were about nine people there.

Otherwise empty church? Otherwise empty church. The service is beginning. Everyone was gathered in the first couple rows of pews. The whole thing was in French, and it was basically just a Catholic Mass. Because we see the life, and we see our love, oh, Lord, and we bringer us in your love. But then this woman, Elvine Anjambay, in a red blouse and black slacks, goes up to the lectern and starts reading out these names.

Abag Mvé Innocent. And who are these people? Well, they're the names of several dozen men and women who were killed by Ali Bongo's government. And what happened? Why were they killed? Well, I mean, you know, there are consequences for Japanese people going against the regime. This is Elvine, the woman you just heard reading those names. Elvine Anjimbe and, yeah. Elvine is an activist by night, academic by day.

I work as a researcher for NYU looking at sexual behavior, sexual health, and I live in Harlem. She moved here from Gabon in 2006 and she says, on the ground, back in Gabon. Protesting openly is impossible. Anybody that has been outspoken is threatened and arrested, you know, by the Bongo regime. And to understand how Gabon got to this place, she says, Oh, wow. How far do you want to go? You go as far back as you want here. You've really got to go back to the beginnings of the country.

Okay. Gabon was colonized by friends in the 1800s, and they governed Gabon until 1960. When the French pulled out and shortly thereafter handed power over to a man named Omar Bongo. Omar Bongo, President of the Republic of Gabonese. Ali Bongo's dad. And Omar, Papa Bongo, who had no political experience. I don't know when we're in court, ruled the country between 1967 and 2009. Totaling.

42 years. This, by the way, is Brett Carter. And I study politics in Central Africa. Now, over the course of these four decades, Omar Bongo served the interests of the ruling Gabonese elite and the French elite, not average citizens in Gabon. Papa Bongo basically made himself and his cronies wealthy, while the rest of the country crumbled. Gabon is an oil-rich country, and while they were pumping thousands of barrels of the stuff a day,

next to none of that revenue was invested in things like roads or schools. Of course, he controlled the army, he cracked down on the press, bought off and killed off political opponents. And while Omar was busy with all this, running the country into the ground, his son, Ali, was busy trying to do that. trying to get his disco career off the ground. Now, his career as an entertainer didn't work out, but... In 2009, when Omar Bongo died. Omar Bongo of Gabon and died in office last week.

And the Japanese lived their whole lives under his presidency. Ali found another call. Ali Bongo became the dictator, so-called president, as you would hear it, of Gabon. Okay, so it's Bongo, followed by a Bongo. Bongo Bongo Bingo Bongo. Okay. And now there was an election in 2009 that put Ali Bongo in power, but... There's obvious electoral fraud on behalf of the Bongo regime. The election was marred with paying voters for voters' cars giving citizenship to foreigners in exchange for votes.

So he's elected, but it's not an actual election. And when Ali took over, the country continued to spiral. Thousands of Bongo's allies were put on the government payroll. but never expected to work. A third of the country remained stuck below the poverty line, all while Bongo was adding to his collection of hundreds of luxury cars and scores of French villas. And along with this came violence.

Well, my brother... Again, Frank Jokten. A little brother of mine was politically involved with one of Ali Bongo opponent. And right away, Frank says, Bongo cracked down. You have people entering his house in the middle of the night, terrifying his children, by the police.

And I mean, my mother was calling me, for example, crying and stuff like these. Like, she was actually afraid that your brother could be killed for his political positions. That is correct. That is correct. So I felt that she was asking me to help to help out. But at this point, Frank was already living here in the States. He'd arrived in 1991 and was working in IT. You know, I was so far from the country. And so what I do is go to Twitter.

made a profile and typed in. Gabon is not a country with good governance, something like that. Then I put the hashtag Gabon, White House, CNN, and I sent my first tweet. I mean, there was nothing else that I could do. And well, he never heard back from the White House or CNN.

No, they didn't really respond, but what it did is connect me to other Gabonese people who, when they saw the tweet, they tweet back. And in that moment, Frank tapped into this digital Gabon, this diffuse online network made up of... Gabonese, people living abroad...

People like Elvine. In Europe, Barcelona, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., posting videos, sharing their frustrations, and all basically saying... We do not agree with what's going on in Gabon. We need to stand up and the Bongo regime. And this digital Gabon, they set their sights on the 2016 presidential... election, when Ali Bongo would have to run to hold on to power. We all decided, okay, we're going to win this.

This is Uric. Uric Ayum. And what am I supposed to say again? He's also an activist. So, they're pinning their hopes on having a free and fair election, which they have never had. Well, yes. If you know that the dictator's hellbent on winning come what may, I wonder why that is even plausible.

Well, first of all, plausible or not, I think these Gabonese folks live, outside of the country felt a real moral imperative here. Like, we're not subject to the same risks as people living inside the country. We thought because we're a diaspora, we have the responsibility to influence the political game in Gabon. They believed they could do things, campaigning and politicking that would have been very dangerous or even impossible on the ground. And second of all, they had a plan.

So electoral campaigns have been officially launched. First, first of all, what we started to do is that 13 candidates are in the run to replace Alim Bongo on Dimbab. We put pressure on the opposition to fund us one candidate. Opposition parties say Bongo has done. And thank God. But protracted negotiations led all the key challenges to pull out. They heard us and coalesced behind the candidacy of Jean-Ping.

Again, Brett Carter. I mean, there was a sense that, you know, Jean-Ping was somebody who would implement a much more transparent government. And ultimately, represented change. And this coalescing was important because... One of the ways the Bongos had always won while maintaining the sort of appearance of democracy

was because there would be so many different opposition candidates splitting the vote. The vote would be a two horse race. And so this was going to be the most competitive Gabonese presidential election in Gabonese history. The diaspora started flooding social media with pro-Jongping posts. And then on top of that, as the election got closer, they set up this network of people throughout the country to go to polling stations on election day where they would film on their smartphones as the votes were being tallied. So when they count the votes, we can film everything, post it on social media.

Nobody's going to cheat us anymore. And so. The people of Gabon began voting. Day of the election comes, Jean Ping versus Ali Bongo. Yes. Were you in Gabon or were you in New York at that point? I was here in New York. I was at the consulate.

We started getting results. and it becomes very, very clear. Jean-Ping said he just announced that he thinks is winning. That Jean-Pin is winning. And seemingly by a lot, according to their election monitoring videos and early results, I mean, it looked like out of the nine provinces in Gabon. Seven had voted predominantly for him. And meanwhile, online...

Oh! Oh, he moved away from Virginia. Elvine found a flood of video clips coming out of Gabon. People actually out in the streets celebrating. They were crying. People were opening champagne. You know, this is it. We're done with the Bengal regime.

We did it. And here, as members of the diaspora, there was just, there was a lot of, of joy everywhere. But. Exactly. So we're starting to think, okay, something is not right. They're going to do something.

Gabon is tense. As the results of the presidential vote remain unresolved. The result started to delay. Specifically because they weren't getting the vote counts from one final province. Deal took with the last province. So we're waiting. A day goes by,

then a second and a third. And then finally, After four days of waiting, the Electoral Commission declared a 99% turnout in Ouguay province. They announced that basically everyone in this province voted, which was significantly higher than turnout rates in the rest of the country. And of the 99.9.93% of people that voted... 95% cast their ballot for Alibongo. The equivalent of like every single person in Wisconsin voting Democrat. Results that are just not true, but are just enough to give Bonne go the victory over Jean-Ping.

Just enough so that he would remain president and dictator of Gabon. And I mean, come on. What can you possibly do? I mean, it's blatant, so blatant, so obvious, there is no way. Yeah, this is a profoundly fraudulent election. You know, no one thought that the 2016 election would be at all fair. But this sort of obvious electoral fraud was basically unprecedented. We reached out to the Gabonese government to get their side of all this.

They did not return our request for comment. And so when the results are announced that Gabon's incumbent leader, Ali Bongo, has just scraped to victory in the weekend. Videos start popping up online. But this time they show people getting furious. The announcement has, as fear, sparked violence in the streets of the campus. And now riots started. I mean, he was chaos.

Clashes broke out in the capital of leader. His opposition supporters claimed election fraud. Watching from Paris, New York, D.C. The diaspora, we don't know what's going on. Other than what they can see in these videos, it's being uploaded. People were sending us videos of people in the street. What the army was doing to the people. The Assembly National Brune.

The National Assembly was set on fire. We hear that the building of the General Assembly is burning. Oh my gosh. And then... Elvin ends up on the phone with her brother-in-law, who is at the headquarters of Jean-Pin. And he says there are soldiers trying to get in. We could hear shots. We could hear him saying, okay, they're coming up.

They're coming up. And then at some point... His cell phone died. So now we're thinking, okay, he's going to die. And right around then, as well, the internet and the entire country is shut off. So these people living outside the country who are, who feel like they're sort of in the action, basically, mediated by a phone screen, obviously, but they're, it feels pretty live and real, are suddenly cut off. The powerlessness, yes, it's the feeling of powerlessness. There's nothing, absolutely nothing that you can do.

You feel like a puppet, essentially. It's really, you have this kind of double consciousness that you function with. It feels unreal. I'm not in Gabon. This is what's going on there. But at the same time here, and personally, I am a teacher. And I have to talk to my students about psychology, about sex and gender, about stats.

So you're just overwhelmed. You don't know what to do. You don't know what you can do. Do we know what happened there? Well, they didn't know anything for several days. But when they were able to get back in touch, in the case of Elvine, they found out that her brother-in-law was okay. He'd been arrested, but was okay. And more broadly, they learned what happened was...

Bongo basically ordered his Republican Guard, which has a series of sort of, like, you know, fighter helicopters armed with missiles, basically. And they opened fire on Ping's headquarters. Jesus. Filled with people both in and outside. Now, the death toll from that helicopter assault is unclear. We still do not have the full count to this day. But at least two dozen, three dozen. And named a logo Jean Messman.

Jerry, A, Kede be Calais Ulrich Michel, Condé Simons, the Congo, Haminou. And so, this is what they were gathered at that church to commemorate. Unconu, Anconu, Anconu. I thank you.

Now, Ingabon, after these attacks, Life is slowly returning to normal in parts of the city. We see more people. basically went back to that cemetery piece that we've always had. Things went back to the way they were before the election with Ali Bongo in power and the people of Gabon really unable to do anything about it. But Alvin, Frank, and other activists living outside the country, they had seen what an effect they could have,

that they could move people in a way that they hadn't been moved before. But they also were confronting the limits to all of that power. And so it felt like a decision point. I don't want to call it an emergence, you know, or an awakening, you know, but there was a sense that this was a watershed moment. There was no longer a candidate to support, you know, election to watchdog, but they thought the least they could do is to try to get the UN or the Western media to pay attention to what had happened.

We are here because of an injustice in Gabon. The form this usually took was a couple of these activists. Going out in front of the Gabonians. embassy in Paris or D.C. We had a tyrant called Alibono. And they just sort of give a monologue and live stream for 30 minutes, hoping that CNN would do some story

on them or the UN would pass some resolution. But it didn't really work. At first, we were very naive because we assumed, okay, people are being killed in Gabon. Obviously, the United Nation is going to react and do something and then we very quickly discovered, oh, you, poor thing.

Nobody in the West was paying any attention. But back in Gabon, people were. With the help of a reporter in Libreville, the capital of Gabon, we talked to lots of people, people whose names were not using out of concern for their safety, who said they were tuning into these videos the activists were posting. Because in the wake of the 2016 election, everybody was terrified to talk about what happened. for obvious reasons.

But then they'd come across these videos the diaspora was posting and how people were killed, but also condemning it. And it was revelatory. They heard someone giving voice to feelings they had, but couldn't say. But that was not the end goal here. I mean, we wanted to end the Bongo regime. They felt like they hit the limit of what this sort of media they were generating could produce. He was timid because he was at his infancy, right?

By the way, I just want to let you know that Alan is here too, so he just stepped in. Oh, great, Alan, welcome. Yes, I do you. Welcome to have me here. Alan Serge Obama is an activist as well, and together he and Frank were putting out a lot of these videos. playing around with different ways to try to spark some change. Yes. Until the hotel when it blows up.

So in this video that was filmed and streamed live, the first thing that you see is a straight-on shot of Alan's goate face, big smile. Hello, saliv, Fredo. Peering straight into the lens of a phone camera that he's holding out at arm's length. He swivels around. That's how you get. Hello. Points the camera at Frank and introduces him, along with a couple other folks that are there with him.

And then you notice that there is a reception desk and that they're inside of this swanky hotel lobby. We're there at a four-season hotel. It was the four-sision hotel? One of those most beautiful, the most luxurious hotel in D.C. Marble pillars, plush chairs. And the reason that they were there was because a Gabonese official, actually the woman who signed off on Ali Bongo's election, was staying there. The president of the Constitutional Court.

And we decide just to let her know we're not happy with the decisions. They're just milling around the lobby, hoping to bump into her, I guess, when you hear the Tambour of Allen's voice change. And you see as he trains the camera's lens on this man walking down a hallway towards them into the lobby. You shove the camera right to the camera right to the lobby. the picture of the camera right up into the guy's face, who's actually their target's husband.

And we started to have an entire interaction with him. And now you see him making a B-line for the elevator. P pushes the button. But it's not coming. And we started to scream at him. That you kill people in Gabon and stuff. At this point, call security.

called security. We can't, please ask him to go. Okay, no problem. Moments later, these black-suited men start ushering them towards the exit. This guy is a criminal. He killed people. Through the revolving doors.

Fucking criminal. We could. Just now you're out in the rain, and at this point you think they're done. Like, they made their point. They're not going to be able to get back inside. But no. Instead of ending it right there,

we told the Gabonist people that's where the hotel, where she is, posted the hotel's phone number. And said, blow the phone line. And thousands of miles away, people in Gabon saw it. People like this guy. He was a student at the time, says he remembers it well. It was right around 11 p.m. Despite not speaking very much English, he says, he dialed the number.

The receptionist picked up, and he told her that the hotel should not be housing terrorists, which she promptly responded to by hanging up. But the thing is, this guy wasn't the only one. No, people from France, people from Gabon, people from the United States, started a call and jammed the... The, how do you call that? The, what, the line. The telephone line.

And suddenly, the receptionist is just being bombarded. Oh, my God. They docked the hotel. Wow. To the point that the chief justice no longer felt comfortable. And so, she goes to a second hotel. We did the same thing. She leaves that one.

She goes to a third hotel. And they do it again. Eventually, she ends up staying in, like, the apartment of her daughter, who lived somewhere in D.C. I was good. I thought you were going to say, like a Motel 6 in Newark. Yeah, with no phone line.

Yeah. And for the folks back in Gabon who had been involved in this stunt, they saw how such powerful people in Gabon could be humiliated like this. And they didn't just see it, this act of political expression. I mean, they were actually able

to safely and consequentially take part in it. In fact, one woman in Gabon described the experience and the feeling as, there's more limit of space. The very evisceration

of time and space. And when we saw that effect, we enjoyed and we say that that's what we're going to do it from now on. This, they realize, is the move. And so every time a Gabonese official would show up

in the States or in France, We will track them. Live streaming as they show up wherever the person's at. And begin harassing them. If the Peninsula Hotel should not host murderers and killing. And shaming the hotel. And a couple of times, it actually worked. We tracked down the cabinet director.

They kick him out. In Paris, they track down Ali Bang with father-in-law. and posted a video of themselves going into the Gabonese embassy and swapping out the framed photo of Ali Bongo hanging on the wall for a photo of Jean-Pin. They even docks the hotel of Alibango himself. This is going to Gabon, this is going to Paris, this is going to Italy, to Brazil.

This is an international movement. Fuck you. And these videos staged and filmed by members of the diaspora, back in the bone, they were firing people up. There's even people who are fans of activists. Do some of these people get to be well-known? Yes, they became celebrity. One person referred to them as celebrities inside the country.

Oh. Which, even at a distance, could be dangerous. This is something I talked to them about when I was first meeting everyone at this barbecue. Do you mind just introducing yourself on tape? Oh, okay. My name is Inneson. innocent, someone who's not guilty, so, yeah. Pretty much all of them told me that they and their families had at some point been targeted by the Bongo regime.

Everyone here, almost all our families back home. And to be honest, there are worries. My mom told me to stop it. She called you. She said, no, I don't want you. I don't want you to be part of that. You got to stop it. My family back home, I don't call. This is fellow activist Joel Mamsie.

You don't call them from your own cell phone number? No. No. It's been three years. I cut it off. To try to keep them away from trouble. That's why I keep myself away. And what's totally off-limits, it seems, is going back. I mean, that's going to be dangerous. Yeah. There are people who went back home because of the election, you know, and he got arrested. What's his name? Landry? Landry, yeah. Now, Landry, it turns out, is actually the brother of Alan Serge Obama.

Yeah, and Landry was like a superstar of videos. In fact, he was one of the first activists to really be making videos, all the way back before the 2016 election. At the time, he was living in Miami, working as a businessman, and was a huge Jean-Ping booster. He went back to Gabon right before the 2016 election to support John Ping and do the campaign. But when his plane touchdown in Libraville, the capital. When you get there to the airport, they kidnap him. Twelve people kidnap him.

And it was a long time before I heard from him. Hello? You can hear me? With Alan's help. You can hear me? Yes, I can. Hey, hey, okay, we're recording. Okay.

Okay. I was able to talk to Landry. My name is Landry, Washington. Call him from the prison set in Liverpool, Gabon. How are you calling me right now? They have a social service here at the prison where we can make a phone call. Does the prison guards or does anyone know that you're talking to me? They probably listen to all my phone conversations.

And there is certain things that you understand that I cannot see over the phone. But trust me, the condition are not very, very, very difficult. And just to be clear, you are an American citizen, yeah? I am an American citizen. He's a U.S. citizen and he's just being held? Yeah. Someone from the U.S. embassy visits him every two weeks or so. Oh.

So he's got folks in the West keeping an eye on him. I see. And probably that, plus the Bongo regime, trying to maintain some appearance of democracy and the rule of law is why he can even talk to me at all. Because, you know, a detective, they want to hide and pretend that it's a democracy, this and that. But that being said, I was concerned.

given everything I'd heard about broadcasting his voice, about broadcasting any of this. And I raised that with him. I'm not worried at all. As a matter of fact, I really want you to do that. I know who I'm dealing with. Well, and why aren't you worried? Simon, listen to me.

My right has been violated from the beginning. At this point, I cannot be scared now. Just do what you have to do. Okay. Yeah. Landry has been in prison for over three years now. He shares a small little cement cell with a mattress on the floor. And he told me that after they grabbed him at the airport...

I didn't know. I didn't really know what was happening. And that took me from there to the local police station. And he found out that charges were being brought against him. Incitement of violence. And outweger of the president. Asserting that he was a threat to the Gabonese people and to the president, Ali Bongo.

All based on his social media posts. They went to the internet, to my Facebook page, print everything that was. writing, all my video, everything I was said. Things that I've done basically expressing my freedom of speech while I was in the United States. And this is the thing that they was using against me. All stuff he'd posted from Miami. That was the evidence.

And now, I can't say that I've watched every minute of every video that Landry has ever uploaded, but the stuff that I have is pretty tame. I mean, Rush Limbaugh or even Rachel Maddow is more likely to incite violence than this guy. But when his case finally went to trial, I was fine guilty. And the judge, she said you can spend the rest of your life in prison. He said you can spend the rest of your life in prison? Yeah, that's what you told me, the judge. That's what you told me. What is the American government doing to help you at the moment? I don't really know what exactly they are doing. I'm American. I'm an American, and I'm still here.

living on a condition, on a very hard condition for almost four years. For what? For what? For what? For what reason? Who spent four years? Who spent four years in prison? For speaking up in mind? Who? As for what's going to happen to Landry, we reached out to the State Department. One of the most important tasks of the Department of State is to provide assistance to U.S. citizens who are incarcerated or detained.

And they gave us a written statement that, they were willing to read to us. Counselor officers have sought to provide Mr. Washington all appropriate counselor assistance. The gist of it was they know he's there. They've spoken with the Gabonese government, but there's not much more they can do. And so I can't ask any follow-up questions. That's what we've got to work with, huh? Yes.

I'm sorry about that. But that's all I can talk with you about on the record for right now. We also gave Landry's Congresswoman, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a call. multiple times, in fact, and sent multiple emails. And she did not return our request for comment. I don't know what's going to happen. Because nothing was normal. Nothing is normal.

They're just trying to keep me here as much time as they can, thinking that I'm going to get down, they're going to break my mind. No, I die for my right. I'm American. I won't give up my right for anything, even if I had to give my life. They inspect me, maybe to change.

to give up a virus. I won't do that. I don't care how long you're going to take. I'm still going to be the same. I'm going to speak up my mind. We're going to take a quick break. Hey, my name's Laurel. I'm calling from London. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Chad, Robert. Radio Lab. Back to Simon. Right. So at this point, we've got a brutal dictator, a series of scam elections, people murdered, and a U.S. citizen imprisoned. And a diaspora doing what they can from a distance. They've gotten some traction, but the Bongo regime is fighting back, threatening their families. And I should say, sometime in 2016, these activists stopped just doing political stunts to rile people up. They also started providing facts. As was explained to us, freedom of the press in Gabon really isn't a thing. The Bongoids have a long history of suspending publications

and banning journalists who report things they don't like. That's actually why we're not naming the journalist who helped us conduct these interviews in Gabon. And so folks like Frank essentially became news broadcasters. Yes, so I was using the platform that I have in order to spread the information, yes. Like what kind of things? Everything from palace intrigue, inside the Bangor regime, two things like if a riot was being quashed in Port-Jeantile.

They'd report that. They'd report that. How would they know that if they were living in the District of Columbia? Well, inside of the Bongo government, there's people who do not like that system. So they call us and they contact us, sometimes even the international press. And also, I mean, I have people on the ground. They tell me what they see, what they're here. After he'd get this information, Frank says he'd usually make a video, sometimes send a tweet,

And boom. Thousands of people would know about. And then the audience gets now to actually see what's going on in their own country on a bounce from Canada or America or France. Exactly. It's looking across the ocean to see what's going on in your own backyard. Yeah, wow. For people like this businesswoman, this was a big deal.

She says at the end of the day, after she's put her kids to bed, she sits down for what you call... Gabon. Gabon time. 30 minutes or so where she scrolls through what the diaspora is posting. And at this point, she really relies on them for facts.

And so one of my fear is to relate what Donald Trump will call fake news. And because of that, yes, I have to be like a journalist. I have to really dig deep and make sure that my sources are legit and make sure that what they're saying is true. They were basically these remote news

rooms. But then things got complicated. I was home. I was surfing the internet. I think sometime around 8, 9 p.m. Again, this is Elvine on Jembe. I come across a tweet from a reporter from the Washington Post, Chavano Grady, saying, I've heard rumors that Ali Bongo is dead. I've heard rumors that Ali Bongo is dead. And, um... Like what goes through your head first? Um, shock. There was no indication that he was sick or anything, and that just seemed too easy. Is that possible?

Is that a thing? Are we just free from dictatorship just like that? Academic Brett Carter was equally confused. Yeah. At that point, my sense from communicating with people incidentally on Twitter was that Ali Banga was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a conference, and he suffered some kind of health crisis. But whether his heart was still beating, remains unclear. That's what we knew.

And as they looked for news of this coming out of Gabon... Nothing. Nothing. For four whole days, the government doesn't even acknowledge that anything is going on. Until... On October 28th... The president of the Republic, Ali Bongo in Dimbabu, the spokesperson of the government... Comes out and says, well, Ali Bongo felt easy,

and he went... He was taken to the hospital. and he was diagnosed with severe fatigue, severe fatigue. And that any other claims are just fake news, fake news. And your response or reaction is what? That's complete bullshit. Come on.

That's not. Of course, that's bullshit. I mean, when Omar, Papa Bongo Oli's dad died in 2009, there are people who think that there was three weeks between Omar Bongo's death. And it's a, Announcements.

Three weeks. Yes. So there's precedent for them hiding deaths. While the government claims the president. And I mean, immediately following this government press release. It was the very next day. Reuters, the media outlet, Reuters reports that... President Ali Bongo suffered a stroke.

Ali Bongo had a stroke. Totally contradicting the official account. And then? November 6th. Two weeks later. Yes. Okay. A French government official tweets...

Ali Bongo is deceased. Like an official of the French government? Yes. The municipal councillor of Lentz, we ask him questions, and he just, he doesn't say anything. God damn. Then there are reports that the Gabonese government has changed their position. The Japanese presidency admitted he was seriously ill and had undergone surgery. And at this point, it's been like a month, and there have been no sightings of Ali Bongo and no comments from him.

Bongo was totally incommunicado. And one just doesn't go days without hearing from Alibongo. That just doesn't happen. And when a couple of news outlets in Gabon tried to cover this story... They were suspended as a result. Look, I mean, everybody suspected that, you know, clearly something was wrong and the regime is hiding something. Right. Right.

He's probably impaired cognitively or perhaps dead. And online, the hundreds of Gabonese activists quickly split into factions. There were two camps. There was one camp that was saying, we need to assess the health of Ali Bongo. Like, let's figure out what we know and what we don't know. Let's still be journalists, basically. And there was the other candle. We should provoke the Gabonese people to react by saying Ali Bongo is dead.

Interesting. Let's use this information. Right. Or this confusion. And so this online conversation begins. I said that, you know, enough is enough. Our way of thinking, we have to evolve. Again, this is Frank Jacques 10.

In another word, if we don't adapt, then we will perish. And eventually, he just emerged online. And it felt like an epidemic. Frank sighed one out. We wanted them to have their backs against the wall, and so yes, we start pushing, using social media, this whole idea that Ali Bongo is dead. Ali Bongo is dead. Let's just say he's dead because it is politically advantageous for us to do that. Correct.

Let's use this uncertainty. Because remember, it could be true. There are reasons to think it might be true. And even if he's not actually dead, he's absent. And so they really flood social media with this. Thousands of tweet. Hundreds of hours of video. He's dead.

Hoping that this is going to create a ripple effect so that maybe the people will rise up and do something. And do what exactly? Essentially, they were hoping people in Gabon would demand new elections and start a revolution. So that's why we say that We will do what we have never done before. In fact, this sort of became their catchphrase.

We're going to do what we've never done before. But then, the truth got foggier. The Japanese president, Ali Bongo, will address this nation during the New Year's speech from Rabat. So, every New Year's, Bongo traditionally gives this speech. Were you expecting one this year? Were you... No, we were not. Okay.

This would be Bongo's first speech since he was hospitalized in Saudi Arabia on October 24th. At this point, it's been two months. since anyone has heard Alibango's voice or seen him in person. So of course we were all waiting for that video. So once the video is posted, I saw it on social media. She clicked on it. It starts with the sound of Gabon's national anthem and this still shot of the presidential palace.

And then, Ali Bongo appears. He's seated behind a desk in a blue suit with this strikingly pink wall as the backdrop. And then there's a flag, the country's flag behind him. And Elvine says as soon as she heard his voice, she thought, something's wrong here. The speech is slurred. And his face, the movement, the size, even the facial expression as he speaks. I mean, it looks like his face has been pasted onto something.

It's just, it looks weird. Could you have you beenis and beaunis the Gabon? Yes. Something clearly is not right. I'm very much. And some activists came out with the idea that this is not even him. Voila! The deep fakes.

That it was a deep fakes. There is growing alarm over the use of deep fakes online. So, real quick, deep fakes are basically videos where one person has taken control of someone else's face and changed what it's doing. Video or audio created using artificial intelligence. If you're curious, we did an entire episode on this and even made our own deep fake of Barack Obama back in 2017.

But anyhow, well, this video was meant to be proof that Alibanga was alive, to these activists watching online, it was exactly the opposite. The term that people used at first was, puppet, right? You know, this was, you know, this was a puppet. Is it a deep fake? I don't know. We talked to some digital forensics folks. They don't know. I mean, if Bongo did, in fact, have a stroke that could explain the speech and the face. But that didn't stop the diaspora from pushing this idea that it was a deep fake. I mean, that became the most predominant theory of

what went on with that video. And this is where you see that the activists' tactics have shifted. And digging through their old posts, you can see signs that this was coming. Like, there were a couple other videos of Ali Bongo that had come out. They were weird as well. Like, they only show one side of his face and you never hear him speaking. But that said, he looks alive. And yet the activists said those were fakes too. Do you think that was him in that video?

It wasn't him. It wasn't him. I doubt it. It wasn't him. It was a body double. A body double, like an impersonator. This is my strong belief. Halibongo we see, that's not the real Halibongo we know about. And a lot of people believe that.

And your thought, you think he's dead? I think he's dead. For me, it's dead. Right now they just use fake guys. We wear a mask and then do all this stuff they do right now. And to prove that Alibango is dead, they start posting these new sorts of videos. These shots of what appear to be a dead body lying in a hospital bed with the face blur. out that are clearly fake.

And all the while, the international press at this point, BBC, Al Jazeera, were reporting that, in fact, Ali Bongo was very much alive. They even dug up this old birtherism conspiracy theory, questioning if Bongo was even born in Gabon. Like the birth thing from the Trump campaign? It's spookily close. That's Trump 101, right there. And, like, it's hard to prove where Ali Bongo was born,

but, again, they pushed that message nonetheless. And this campaign worked. When our reporter on the grounding gabon spoke to people there, many, many of them, I can't say what percentage, but a huge number of people she spoke with believed Ali Bongo was dead. So essentially they're waging a kind of fake news campaign.

Yeah, that's one way to put it. And I found myself feeling really uncomfortable. comfortable about that. Like, yes, I'm rooting for them, but suddenly they're just straight up lying, you know, doing things that feel really similar to what the Russians did here in 2016. And so I asked Frank about all this. Like, do you, as we've talked about, the information you and other members of the diaspora are putting out people from Gabon are looking to the only real, quote, unquote, press they have access to. That is correct. You are seen as the reporters, the arbiters of truth in the country. Of course, yes. It is true that as we speak, there is a lot of people that we are

influencing in Gabon. That's pretty amazing, I think. Well, yeah, but then at the same time, you all have pushed this message that Ali Bongo is dead when in fact it's unverifiable. And yet you've pushed that. Well, personally, I haven't said really that. Alibongo is dead. I'm not, because I've been smart enough not to say that. But what I do say is that Ali Bongo is not the same. Now, people can interpret that any kind of way, and I leave it vague like that on purpose. Right. But like you all put out the hashtag Ali Bongo say more. Yeah. I relayed that information, but I personally, I never say that he was dead. Like I said, because I need a deaf certificate, okay? But of course, we live in a world where,

sensation is important. Ali Bongo is dead. I mean, it's going to sell. I mean, it attracts people because he's a head of states. But what I'm concerned about is the betterment of my people. And personally, I don't believe anymore in election in Gabon because the people in power have found ways and means to trick and store elections. And so, yes, I'm doing on purpose to incite our people to stand up for a new Gabon, a better

Gabon and force this government to to bat down. The country is wealthy as enough for them to be able to eat, educate the children, basic things. And if there is a government that do not allow them to experience this, then yes, this government for me need to be overthrown. That's what I want to encourage my people to do. But that doesn't mean that we need to fabricate stuff. Like trafficking in the hashtag Ali Bongo is dead. I could see someone interpreting that as fabrication of information, but you don't see it that way. That is, I mean, well, unfortunately, we are, we are at war. Wow, I have a lot of feelings about this.

Well, yeah, I think we all do. But before we get to them, there's one final beat to this story. I think January 5th. January 7th, actually. So one week after that quote unquote deep fake video came out. I think it was one, one in the morning. Okay. One of my sisters lives in Gabon.

And we were texting and we were talking and sending voice messages. And she was going to work. And then at some point she texts all of us and she says, I'm going home, there's a coup. I'm thinking, that's weird. What's going on? And moments later, someone sent her a link to this video. Gabonese, Gabonet.

The view of the coup announcement. It opens with a soldier sitting behind a desk, speaking into a microphone. His eyes are looking down. He's reading off a script. Behind him, he's flanked by two other soldiers, brandishing rifles. They're all in camouflage and wearing these bright green berets. And what these three men, along with four others, had done, was Storm the National Broadcaster. took over a TV channel.

And we're broadcasting this on a loop. And as Elvine is watching this for the first time... You know, I hear them saying, go if you can, get guns. And they reference the New Year's Day videos, saying that it's proof that, quote, Cabone has lost its dignity and that Ali Bongo is at best an invalid.

But despite all this, she doesn't quite know what to make of it. Should she trust these people? Is this a good thing? I mean, those are a known young man, and the whole thing is what in the world is going on. But then... The leader of the guy was reading the...

I don't know how to call that. Again, activist Alan Serge Obama, who was also watching this video very early that morning. The guy reading the manifestes, they say, We'll do what we never did. That means we need to do something's never been done before. One of the slogans we're using for years.

Their catchphrase, their words coming from the mouth of this man with a gun in Gobone telling people to take to the streets and overthrow the Bongo regime. And then, I just rewinded the videos one more time and to check it. Did he just say that? And then I saw that again. I was the tear coming off of my eye. I was like, wow. That means people have been listening to us for all this time.

And right around that time from Libraville, videos started showing up online. Showing people filling the streets. And I thought it was the end. For real. And for people like Alan and Alvin, watching. all this on their phone screens, lying in bed or sitting up at the kitchen table. You feel like you're there and you're participating. You're an actor. You forget that you're not in Gabon.

But then I think it was around 12 in Gabon, so it must have been like 5 a.m. or something here. I was texting family members and all of a sudden they could not receive my messages anymore. That's when I knew that, okay, they shut down the internet again. And she suddenly, again, has no way to know what's happening. Maybe Gabonese people are standing up, maybe they're in the streets, and maybe we're putting an end to all of this. Or are they shutting down the Internet because it's another bloodbath? Later that day, the Gabonese government announced that the coup had been quashed. Gunfire had been exchanged.

Two of the men involved in the coup had died, and the rest were arrested. But we're not exactly sure of the details. And actually, they're not even sure it was a real coup. Was this a legitimate coup? You know, even now, like, I think that's kind of profoundly unclear. Wait, really? Yeah. Yep.

Maybe this was a fake coup, right? And that has happened before. We had a fake attempt a month before that. In this case, a man also went to the national broadcaster. And said, hey, we've installed bombs all around the country. for every day that Lake Bongo stays in power, one building is going to blow up. And it turns out that was not true.

That was not the case. And after that, they stormed the headquarters of Mr. Jean-Ping again. So most of us just saw it as a pretext to attack the headquarters of political opponents. So, yeah. Is this really true? Is this really the Gabonese army

doing what we've wanted them to do for so long? Or is it another fake out? I don't know. By the time we're at the end of this piece, I don't know what. What the heck is going on, honestly? Nobody knows anything. You notice this?

Right. And that is a day-to-day experience in the country. The fog is, to a certain degree, impenetrable. But why would, if this were a good guy, bad guy story, the good guys, the ones I'm rooting for are the people who are against the dictator and who had for a while a cause, and a just cause, and who was speaking truthfully about what was going on in their country. all of a sudden they've kind of made it a little murky by lying outright and telling you that the lie was saleable. Like that guy said, hey, bongo is dead as a great hook.

But also, I think that they showed up to what they initially thought was a knife fight to find that the other side had a machine gun. So what, what? I don't know what you do if you don't do this. Here's what you do. When the president disappears in Saudi Arabia and no one says boo, You say something fishy is going on. And then the Internet goes, what is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?

You say, we don't know. That's what you do. But I mean, when the other side says, oh, he's fine. Nothing's wrong. That is such a blatant lie that to counterbalance it. With we don't know. Yeah, we don't know. It just puts you at the fulcrum.

It doesn't put you on the other side of the spectrum, allowing you to balance out opinion. I would stay at the fulcrum because as soon as I start lying to get the, that I start making up something that they to counter what they've made up because theirs is vivid and mine has to be equally vivid then we're in a whole new ballgame.

Sure, because we're journalists. But maybe for an activist, especially in a situation like this, maybe they should have a slightly longer rhetorical leash. That's, I mean, ultimately, on some level, the deep, the deep troubling is that, like,

even if you agree with what these activists are doing, that it's right, it still feels like just another example of how there is no longer true or false, there is only what is expeditious, what you can use and what you can't use. But I mean, at the end of the day, their message, and I think they really captured this in this video they recently showed me, it's very clever. Just first them zooming in on someone outside of the UN in a Trump mask and an orange prison jumpsuit with a sign that said like prison bound or something. And then it pans over and there are two police officers just standing there. And so the story they're telling here is like, here is a man who is openly mocking the president, and the cops are just going to stand there and not do anything.

That at least for now, America is a place where you can have freedom of speech, and that from all of that speech, hopefully, the truth will emerge. Our story was produced and researched and reported by Simon Adler. Edited by Pat Walters. Special thanks to Lawrence Dong, Anastasia Cavada, Luis de Waist, Marion Runeau, and Lara Atala for their translation help. And also thank you to our anonymous reporter in Gabon, who got all that tape on the ground for us. I'm Chad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krollwitch. Thanks for listening.

Hi, this is Daniela calling from Chicago. Radio Lab is created by Jad Abumrod with Robert Krollwich and produced by Soren Wheeler. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Suzy Weptenberg is our executive producer. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Becca Bresler, Rachel Cusick, David Goebbels, Tracy Hunt, Matt Kilty, Annie McEwan, Latif Nasser, Sarah Kari, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Shima Oliari, Dubu Hare Fortuna, Sarah Sondbach, Melissa Donald, Neil Danisha, Marion Reno, and Paloma Moreno Jimenez.

Our fact checker is Michelle Harris. Thank you.