If Norman Spector really slammed anything or anyone in his testimony before the Commons ethics committee it was the National Post which he singled out for spiking the Mulroney/Schreiber story at the outset. He suggested that there was a cozy relationship between the Spot and Mulroney who appointed Conrad Black to the Privy Council and who subsequently intervened on behalf of David Milgard, a pet cause of the Aspers. Strangely enough, not a word of this made it into the Spot's reportage of Spector's testimony.
Spector had promised to drop bombshells in his testimony before the committee but his ordinance turned out to be a dud. He mainly expressed concerns in his capacity as a citizen and not very much in the way of hard detail about the dealings of the Schreiber and the former P.M.
One interesting remark from Spector's opening remarks came in a reference to the late Frank Moores, head of the lobby firm GCI, which represented Airbus on the Air Canada deal and which, according to Schreiber, received $20-million in bribe money.
7 comments:
Spector raised important questions, but bombshell? No; but then, why haven't his questions been pursued with vigor? There's something wimpish in response to abuse of power (for sure) and an apparent fraud of $20 million in grease-money.
One cutting edge issue that the wimpy Committee has avoided is "Did Mulroney interfere with the RCMP investigation?"
How did Mulroney find out about the Swiss investigation? Did he have a mole in Justice?
And there's the Olympic-sized irony of Mulroney the lawyer, a guardian of truth and justice, lying through his teeth as he signed the settlement for $2.1 million. God will get him for that one.
You're onto something there, 203. The whole business about who leaked the Schreiber translation of the "letter of request" to the National Post is really important. It suggests the very cause of action itself could have been wilfully contrived. If Mulroney or his agents set out to fabricate a notional defamation to sidetrack the investigation and shorthop the government into an embarrassing settlement, sealed by Mulroney's false sworn statement about only seeing Schreiber for a cup of coffee, then this needs to be exposed. Phil Mathias and the National Spot were instrumental in "breaking" the RCMP/libel letter yet they spiked the scoop about the Schreiber payments when it was handed to them later. C'mon, that makes no sense. Worse, it reeks.
Re David Milgaard: Lloyd Axworthy addressed the Parliament: "...I wish to speak of a travesty of justice. I speak of the plight of David Milgaard who has spent the last twenty-one years of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. Yet for the last two years, the Department of Justice has been sitting on an application to reopen his case…. But rather than review these conclusive reports, rather than appreciate the agony and trauma of the Milgaard family, the Minister of Justice refuses to act."
Why would you call this "a pet cause"?
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