How is he going to talk his way out of this one?
Until today I figured Mulroney was going to claim he earned the $300,000 he received from Karlheinz Schreiber by promoting the Thyssen/Bear Head armoured vehicle project. The story about Schreiber's pasta business seems to have turned into a pile of damp semolina, so the weapons plant seemed to be the last refuge.
Except the door on that one seems to have been slammed shut by Mulroney's own former top aide, Norman Spector. In a Canadian Press interview, Spector confirmed that Mulroney did indeed intervene to support the project to build light-armoured vehicles in Nova Scotia. The only problem is that, if he got paid by Schreiber for his services, this was long before Mulroney stepped down as Prime Minister.
Spector has added to the record being instructed by Mulroney to make Bear Head a reality. With that, Mulroney was transforming the proposal from a bureaucratic issue into a political matter. Spector also said that the sun set on the Bear Head deal when he informed Mulroney that the project would cost the government $100-million.
The ever dutiful scribe, Spector was even able to tell Canadian Press the date of the final discussion 16 December, 1990, and Mulroney's response: "In that case, the project is dead."
This seems to suggest that the Bear Head business was over, as far as Mulroney was concerned, in late 1990, while he was still prime minister.
If Bear Head is ruled out and the pasta story is just that, a story, what's left? Don't look at me, I'm not even going to say that.
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