As in Parts 5 & 6 of this blog article, in October 1992 while launching a civil lawsuit against the University of British Columbia and Royal Canadian Mounted Police over a dispute I had with my former boss, UBC Head of Computer Science Maria Klawe, I expressed to lawyer Brian Mason my willingness to also take up political issues challenging the conduct of then Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney; in November I sent press releases to BCTV and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, calling for the end of Mulroney’s leadership and for an accounting of his misconduct, especially in the Charlottetown constitutional reform process that had failed to pass the October 26 national referendum.
From the end of November 1992 to early 1995, I found myself struggling to survive politically motivated psychiatric oppression and criminal prosecution. As in Parts 5 & 6, the psychiatric oppression began on November 30 after I had faxed my press releases and a note to the constituency office of local Member of Parliament Kim Campbell, who happened to be Mulroney government’s Justice Minister, in which I accused that “a political persecution ordered by the PM was underway”; RCMP initiated my first psychiatric committal in collaboration with UBC, UBC Hospital and B.C. Supreme Court Justice Pamela Kirkpatrick who happened to be wife of my former colleague David Kirkpatrick, Klawe’s friend.
As in Parts 5-9, Vancouver lawyers willing to take up my civil lawsuit or legal defense against criminal prosecution were few, with Mason withdrawing by April 1993 due to my depleted financial resources and his under pressure from RCMP and the Justice Department. Worse, some lawyers I sought help from collaborated with political persecution, allowing the authorities to intensify criminal prosecution that included long detentions, escalating charges, and a forensic psychiatric regime with false and harsh psychiatric labeling to prevent my speaking out. My civil litigation and political activism were forced to stop.
But as detailed in Part 10, interestingly some of the lawyers and law firms involved in politically oppressing me soon found themselves engulfed in controversial, some quite negative, media publicities.
In June 1994 the law firm Connell Lightbody, responsible for the last criminal charge in November 1993 that ended my civil litigation attempts, was revealed to be closely representing Canadian government interests, and among the top 10 law firms receiving untendered government contracts. In British Columbia, the negative publicity was remedied by the firm’s active role in class actions to seek financial compensations from U.S. manufacturers for Canadian breast-implant victims, but those legal battles dragged on past year 2000 when the law firm inexplicably ceased to exist.
Neither the public revelation of Connell Lightbody’s government background nor its later demise changed my plights. Connell Lightbody lawyer Marion Buller, whom other lawyers had suggested for my lawsuit and criminal defense but who instead turned to Vancouver Police against me as in Part 9, since September 1994 has been a B.C. provincial court judge in Port Coquitlam, where the B.C. Forensic Psychiatric Institute kept a false conclusion of “Paranoid Schizophrenia” on me.
Another such Vancouver law firm was lawyer Jack Cram’s Cram & Associates, which in early October 1993 briefly appeared likely to be my next civil lawyer after Brian Mason’s Maitland & Co., but then said no and prodded for my civil disobedience so it could call in police, thus starting a series of criminal charges culminating with the one at Connell Lightbody; however in February 1994 when the charges were converted to peace-bond probation Cram & Associates' charge was dropped.
In April 1994, Cram became the subject of major news coverage when at B.C. Supreme Court proceedings he accused the B.C. justice system of “massive corruption”, of “aiding and abetting” a child molester, alleging a conspiracy in this regard involving B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Esson, B.C. Attorney General Colin Gabelmann, the B.C. Law Society and leading lawyers, and owners of The Vancouver Sun and The Province newspapers. Cram was forced to undergo psychiatric assessments and convicted of contempt-of-court, and in January 1995 – shortly before my probation’s end in February – gave up his lawyer license.
As in Part 10, for these cases Aboriginal politics was lurking in the background.
A former Justice Department prosecutor working with RCMP, when I sought her legal help Marion Buller was highlighted in the media as a native lawyer and counsel for a B.C. government inquiry by Judge Anthony Sarich into RCMP mistreatments of Natives in the Cariboo-Chilcotin region, although in handling me she apparently sided with RCMP.
When Jack Cram made his sensational allegations against the B.C. justice system, he was representing native lawyer Renate Andres-Auger, and rallying B.C. Aboriginals to take his hardline stand over a pending appeal of a Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en tribal land-claim case at the Supreme Court of Canada, which had been rejected at B.C. Supreme Court by, and then at B.C. Court of Appeal headed by, Chief Justice Allan McEachern, later UBC Chancellor.
Then in the biggest news story of 1995 on B.C. Aboriginal rights, a small group of heavily armed renegade Natives from the Shuswap Nation drew international media attention with tense standoffs and gun battles with RCMP in August-September 1995 – shortly after my forensic psychiatric file was closed by the Outpatient Clinic but with a hidden hard conclusion at FPI in Port Coquitlam as earlier – near Gustafsen Lake in the Cariboo tribal region, where relations with RCMP had supposedly been improved by Marion Buller’s work, her claim to fame for a judgeship at Port Coquitlam.
The Shuswap militants subscribed to the political view of their white lawyer Bruce Clark, who advocated his Scottish Ph.D. research finding, despite lack of success at the law courts, that Natives in North America were sovereign nations with rights granted by the British monarchy centuries ago. Clark had moved from Toronto to Vancouver to defend Aboriginal protesters of the Lil’wat Peoples Movement of the Mount Currie Band in the Whistler-Pemberton region, in 1990 when their road blockades were taken down by RCMP led by Superintendent D. G. Cowley, the Vancouver region commander who later in October 1992 authorized obstruction and suppression of my civil lawsuit and political activism. In the end, Clark was forced to undergo psychiatric assessments, convicted of criminal charges and stripped of his lawyer’s license.
These Aboriginal issues also had relevance to issues regarding Brian Mulroney’s leadership misconduct in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional reform processes as in Part 7 – relating to the inclusion of Aboriginal self-government rights in the Canadian Constitution.
Due to selective reporting by The Vancouver Sun newspaper I subscribed to since arrival in Vancouver in 1988 to teach at UBC, I didn’t learn of the controversy over law firm Connell Lightbody’s untendered government contracts, but I took an immediate interest in Jack Cram’s legal crusade against corruption in the B.C. justice system and attempted to shorten my probation in mid-1994 so I could return to civil litigation versus UBC and RCMP. As in Part 10, unfortunately my hope was overcome by the fear that my probation officer Fred Hitchcock and forensic psychiatrist Dr. Clifford Kerr might be scheming to worsen my plight me if I applied to the B.C. Provincial Court to end probation early, and I also saw that Cram’s tirades were soon crushed by the B.C. Supreme Court.
In any case, my short-lived hope in 1994 with the Jack Cram events didn’t compare to when the biggest Canadian news stories of 1995 came, in November that year, that former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was being investigated by RCMP for receiving $5 million kickbacks for the 1988 sale of European Airbus planes to Air Canada. I was a little disappointed to learn that he was only suspected and that he denied it, but I recall CBC national news anchor Peter Mansbridge stating quite positively, “The RCMP says Mr. Mulroney took the money.”
November 1995 was just over 2 years since the near wipe-out of Mulroney’s governing Progressive Conservative party led by his successor, Vancouver’s Kim Campbell, in the October 25, 1993 election mentioned in Part 8. But the national media began going after Mulroney sooner, starting with anti-corruption journalist Stevie Cameron’s new book in October 1994, then CBC The Fifth Estate’s investigative stories in March 1995.
Published on October 24, the eve of the 1993 election’s anniversary, Cameron’s book, On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, was an instant hit, selling out its first print of 20,000 copies within 3 days. A Canadian comedian jokingly compared Cameron to Iranian author Salmon Rushdie (“The book on Stevie Cameron IN PERSON / The author of On the Take, the season’s hottest political book, is a former Ottawa lifestyles journalist who discovered early in her career, when she broke a story damaging to the federal Liberals, that investigative reporting ‘exhilarated’ her”, by Val Ross, December 10, 1994, The Globe and Mail):
“Toronto comedian Dave Broadfoot is doing topical humour (book-community style) for 450 people at a Writers Development Trust dinner party in Toronto. “Hey, remember that Salman Rushdie?” he says. “Remember those mobs of Iranians howling for his death? Who could imagine that in Canada, eh - 10,000 Conservatives howling for Stevie Cameron’s death.”
A distinctly uneasy laugh ripples through the room. Cameron is the author of On the Take, the season’s hottest political book. It alleges influence-peddling, kickbacks and high living at the highest levels of the government of Brian Mulroney, and describes more than one suspicious death. The laughter is uneasy because before the book came out, in late October, odd stories turned up in the press: Cameron said she had had anonymous, harassing telephone calls; Gary Ross, of Macfarlane Walter & Ross, the book’s publisher, spoke of attempts to steal the manuscript in two separate break-ins in downtown Toronto. Later, these stories were downplayed. Ross’s partner, John Macfarlane, made jokes at another MW&R book launch about Ross's “conspiracy theories” the police made no arrests.
In any case, the stories and rumours about the book’s contents created intense interest, and when the much-awaited book was finally published, on Oct. 24, Macfarlane Walter & Ross sold out the first print run of 20,000 copies within three days. A month later, a new press run of 45,000 copies went out. Still, bookstores reported waiting lists 250 people long. Why? Perhaps buying On The Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years was like voting all over again. Quipped Tory columnist Dalton Camp: “If you could sell a book to everyone in this country who hates Brian Mulroney, you'd be rich.” A third printing of 15,000 is planned for January.”
For a female author to be compared to Salmon Rushdie, even in humor, was a serious affair. Another journalist woman, Charlotte Gray, chose Cameron’s book as one of her favorites, all deadly serious by female writers (“Putting the best books forward; A browser’s guide to the best of the season”, by Jenny Jackson, December 11, 1994, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Charlotte Gray, political writer and contributing editor for Saturday Night magazine, said she’s enjoying Stevie Cameron’s book On the Take (Macfarlane Walter & Ross), especially as it pertains to the bureaucracy and “the corruption of the ideal of public service.”
She’s also enjoying Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about Theodore Roosevelt No Ordinary Time, (Simon & Schuster).
But her first choice was, E. Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News (Simon & Schuster).”
Cameron’s book was on the bestselling lists every week. For instance on December 17, The Gazette newspaper’s list from bookstore sales in Montreal, Quebec, listed Cameron’s as No. 1 the week before and currently No. 2 behind Fear of Frying by Josh Freed (Fear of Frying and Other Fax of Life), while The Globe and Mail’s national list had hers as No.1 the previous week and now No. 2 behind Don’t Stand Too Close by Tim Allen, “the star of TV’s Home Improvement sitcom” (Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man) (“Best-sellers”, December 17, 1994, The Gazette; and, “THE GLOBE AND MAIL NATIONAL BESTSELLER LIST”, December 17, 1994, The Globe and Mail).
But there were detractors, such as journalist Hubert Bauch (“The man people love to hate: Small details about Brian Mulroney are often far more revealing than the prime ministerial speeches written by professional speech-writers”, by William Johnson, January 12, 1995, The Windsor Star):
“Those who read books obviously like Cameron’s mauling of Mulroney. The literati commenting on the book were often less favorable. Montreal Gazette senior writer Hubert Bauch, for instance, gave the book a mixed review.
He recognized that Cameron and her collaborators (Gazette reporters Rod Macdonell and Andrew McIntosh) had accumulated an astonishing menu of major and mini scandals. But Bauch seemed to say, so-what-else-is-new?
He put Cameron down for displaying a Victorian sensibility. “At times, Cameron’s unstinting tone of disapproval simply echoes the inbred puritanism of the old Ottawa establishment, whose Earl Grey sensibilities were woefully offended by the Dom Perignon flamboyance of the Mulroney crowd. Her leering rundown of the menu at a 24 Sussex Drive soiree, for instance, sounds vaguely like a Presbyterian spinster’s detailed account of an orgy in the choir loft.””
Some of these critics might feel there wasn’t enough meat in Cameron’s account of scandals of the Mulroney era, which she had persistently criticized as I reviewed in a March 2009 blog post, “The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 2)”.
To be fair, no matter how hard Stevie Cameron could have dug Brian Mulroney’s dirt, Canadians preferred the type of short fused, firebrand heroism of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, whose 1993 memoir outshining the rest was the consensus of booksellers in the nation’s capital Ottawa, as journalist Charles Gordon noted on January 29, 1995 (“Winners and not-so-best sellers”, by Charles Gordon, January 29, 1995, The Ottawa Citizen):
“In Ottawa, the consensus among booksellers seemed to be that there was no single dominating hot title in ’94 -- nothing to rival the performance of Pierre Trudeau’s autobiography in ’93. Quill and Quire shows that Stevie Cameron’s On the Take was the closest thing to that, with 80,000 books shipped. To give you a point of comparison, the number for Alice Munro's Open Secrets was 35,000, Neil Bissoondath’s Selling Illusions was 15,000 and Russell Smith’s How Insensitive was 4,000. All are considered successes, -- 4,000 for a first novel is great; 15,000 for an “ideas” book is terrific, and 35,000 for short stories is excellent.”
But the Airbus story, the most serious allegations Mulroney would face, took up only a few pages tucked in the second half of Cameron’s 500+ pages, with nothing about Mulroney personally (Stevie Cameron, On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, 1994, Macfarlane Walter & Ross):
“Airbus Industrie was a consortium of four companies: Aerospatiale SA of France, with 37.9 per cent of the shares, Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm GmbH of West Germany, with another 37.9 per cent, British Aerospace PLC with 20 per cent, and CASA of Spain with 4.2 per cent. The consortium had poured nearly $2 billion into the development of a mid-range passenger jet, the A320, and was anxiously looking for customers, a hard sell given that Boeing of Seattle still held the lion’s share of the global market for commercial jets. … “Airbus looked at Canada as a back door into the United States,” explained a senior U.S. businessman who has studied the company carefully. … Franz Josef Strauss, the popular leader of the Christian Social Party, was chairman of the seventeen-member supervisory board of Airbus, and he already had a strong salesman in Canada in the person of Karl-Heinz Schreiber. It was Schreiber who was responsible for Strauss’s personal holding companies in Alberta under the umbrella of Bitucan Holdings Ltd. and who had become so close to Elmer MacKay in the course of promoting the Bear Head project.
When GCI [Government Consultants International] hung out its shingle in 1984, one of its first clients was Mercedes-Benz. Very quickly, [Frank] Moores was invited to join the board of Mercedes-Benz, which became, within a few years, the major shareholder in Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm, one of the Airbus partners. Another early client was Schreiber’s Bitucan Holdings; a third was Bear Head Industries, the Thyssen subsidiary Schreiber also represented. Schreiber became a valued GCI client, and he would eventually hire Greg Alford away from GCI to run Bear Head’s Ottawa office.
There was yet another factor that made Moores the natural choice as Airbus’s lobbyist. While Moores and [Gary] Ouellet were building GCI into the city’s most powerful lobbying firm, Moores and several other Mulroney supporters – David Angus, Ken Waschuk, and Fern Roberge – accepted appointments to the board of Air Canada. At the time of the appointments in March 1985, the Air Canada board was under the supervision of Moores’s old roommate, Transport Minister Don Mazankowski. …
GCI’s connection to Airbus Industrie began to surface that same summer when an official in the Department of Industry told reporters that Moores was trying to drum up business for Airbus, which was eager to sell its aircraft to Air Canada. Ottawa reporter Bob Fife was told that Moores had arranged a meeting with government officials to discuss a number of issues, including a possible Airbus sale to Air Canada. If an Air Canada director was lobbying on behalf of a company trying to sell planes to the airline, there was more than the appearance of conflict of interest. Moores discovered that Fife was pursuing the story and invited him over to 50 O’Connor to talk; when Fife arrived, Moores was waiting with his resignation from the Air Canada board. In return for the scoop, Fife said afterwards, Moores asked him not to mention his relationship with Airbus. Sorry, Fife told him; it’s part of the story. …
To this day, Moores publicly denies that he ever lobbied for Airbus. His client, he insists, was the helicopter division of Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm, not the division that made up part of the Airbus consortium. “I don’t know where the hell the rumour came from,” he says. Moores blames Boeing executives for initiating gossip, but others, including senior bureaucrats and political staff, have confirmed the story.
…
The lobbying went on from both sides through 1987. In early December of that year Boeing, not to mention much of official Ottawa, was stunned by the news that Transport’s deputy minister, Ramsey Withers, a man closely involved with the Air Canada file, was leaving government to join GCI. Withers, a former chief of defence staff, was the first top mandarin to bolt for a lobby firm. Boeing was again upset; it suspected that Airbus, for which Moores was lobbying so strongly, had the inside track on the Air Canada purchase. When the issue was raised in the House of Commons in February 1988, Transport Minister John Crosbie defended Withers as “a man of complete integrity, honour, faithful service and rectitude,” who had no connection with Air Canada’s fleet replacement plans.
Crosbie’s assessment of Withers’s character may well have been correct, but he was wrong about the deputy’s knowledge of the fleet plans. … On April 1, 1988, Ramsey Withers became president of GCI.
On July 20 Air Canada held a press conference to announce its decision to buy thirty-four Airbus 320s to replace a fleet of thirty-three Boeing 727s, with delivery to begin in 1990. The cost of the planes was set at $1.8 billion, the largest civilian aircraft purchase in Canada’s history. …
…
Karl-Heinz Schreiber did not relax after the Air Canada purchase went through: he still hoped to complete a deal with the federal government for the Bear Head plant in Cape Breton. But there was bad news on October 3: Strauss had collapsed while hunting deer on the estate of Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis; he died of heart failure shortly afterwards in hospital. Germany mourned the loss of its most charismatic politician.
Strauss’s death caused barely a ripple in Ottawa; people there were gossiping about the value of the commission paid to GCI for helping to land the Air Canada contract. Estimates fluctuated wildly between $20 million and $70 million. Boeing conducted an investigation into the whole affair, one that involved police forces in both Canada and the United States; it concluded that a commission in the order of $20 to $30 million was paid to Moores and Quellet. The partners always dismissed such stories, and today Moores makes light of the rumours that he had tucked away millions from the deal. “I read that stuff and I wish it were true,” he chuckles.
However, there is little question that Moores was prospering. The best evidence of his new-found wealth was the purchase of a luxury fishing camp with about twelve miles of one of the Gaspe’s richest salmon rivers, the Grand Cascapedia. Well-informed Queberckers say he paid an American family close to $2 million for the camp; Moores claims he and Montreal businessman Brian Jones paid less than $200,000. Whatever the purchase price may have been, the camp is now worth a fortune; he has done extensive renovations at a cost of about $1 million, according to sources.”
So you see, Cameron’s story didn’t involve Mulroney, only his associates and friends, particularly former Newfoundland Premier Frank Moores and his lobby firm CGI, and Germany-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber; when Moores spent big with his “newfound wealth” he claimed it was only 1/10 as much and in partnership with Brian Jones, a businessman who obviously had money, and now no one can extract the truth from Moores – he died of cancer on July 10, 2005, as in Part 10, a month ahead of my father’s passing due to heart failure.
On the other hand, Cameron was receiving tips from people interested in exposing wrongs that might or might not have to do with the former Mulroney government (“Tips roll in since Cameron got wise to Mulroney trough”, by Brian Laghi, December 11, 1994, Edmonton Journal):
“Since publishing On The Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years (Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 512 pp., $29.95), readers have flooded her with more allegations and anecdotes that, if true, might fill another book.
“Just before coming west, I got a call from a guy in Manitoba and two or three people called from Alberta,” says Cameron, in town to promote her book. “And I was visited last week by somebody in Toronto who drove up from Quebec to tell me all about UI scams that take place all around the country.” The tips keep rolling in.”
Unemployment insurance scams “all around the country”, more like as in Part 7, former RCMP national security head, Chief Superintendent P. M. Cummins’s interest in cracking down on welfare fraud in B.C. in 1993 while dismissing my complaint faxed to Kim Campbell – far from exposing ex-PM Mulroney and a long way from what Cameron would settle down as her next focus, namely Canada’s worst known serial murderer Robert William Pickton of Port Coquitlam discussed in Part 9.
Cameron’s book having kicked up a dust over the politics of the Airbus-Air Canada deal, reports of money trails and legal issues came in March 1995, first by Germany’s Der Speigel magazine on its collaborative investigation with CBC Television’s The Fifth Estate program (“German magazine says lobbyist paid millions in Airbus sale”, by Jeff Heinrich, March 21, 1995, The Gazette):
“A Liechtenstein company was paid $11 million U.S. for its lobbying role six years ago in the largest civil aircraft purchase ever in Canada, the German magazine Der Speigel reported yesterday.
International Aircraft Leasing Ltd. (IAL) received its “commission” through a French bank after then-Crown-owned Air Canada announced in 1988 it was spending $1.8 billion to acquire 34 Airbus Industrie A320 jets, an investigative article in the weekly news magazine said.
However, the magazine does suggest the money was destined for a Calgary-based German lobbyist, Karl-Heinz Schreiber, who at the time was an
important client and friend of well-known Tory lobbyist Frank Moores, a former Newfoundland premier and close friend of then-prime minister Brian
Mulroney.In 1985, Moores resigned from Air Canada’s board of directors amid media reports he had lobbied Ottawa to buy Airbuses for the airline and also
lobbied on behalf of two other competing Canadian carriers, Nordair and Wardair. Moores denied the reports. Air Canada was privatized in 1989.In total, unsigned contract records between Airbus and IAL suggest the Liechtenstein company was to have been paid up to $46 million U.S. for helping Airbus market their mid-range jets in Canada, Der Spiegel’s article said. In addition to the Air Canada business, that money was also to be paid for helping sales of Airbuses to Wardair and the carrier with which it was later merged, Calgary-based Canadian Airlines International, the article
stated.Under Liechtenstein law, it is impossible to know who owns a registered company, only who runs it. However, the Hamburg magazine suggests Schreiber is the owner, alleging he is now being pressured by IAL's executives to pay an unspecified sum he owes them for their help in the Canadian deals.
It also quotes an unnamed “high-ranking aircraft industry manager” as saying: “Without Schreiber, Airbus would not have sold any aircraft in Canada.”
Schreiber, 61, who now lives near Munich, denies any connection with IAL.
“There is no paper trail at this point” that leads from IAL directly to Schreiber and on to Canadian politicians, lobbyists or airlines, the article’s author, staff reporter Mathias Muller von Blumencron, agreed in an interview yesterday.
However, evidence of a Canadian connection could emerge as soon as next week, Blumencron added, when the CBC television investigative show The Fifth Estate, with whom Blumencron worked on the investigation, broadcasts its report on the subject. “We are extending Der Spiegel’s report,” senior producer Susan Teskey confirmed yesterday.
In Europe, the allegations are the subject of a federal investigation. Since earlier this month in Germany, federal tax inspectors have been quietly looking into the $11 million U.S. payment to IAL, part of $20 million U.S. which IAL was supposed to receive for the Air Canada deal through the Banque Francaise du Commerce Exterieur, the Der Spiegel article stated, citing signed copies of bank records.
In Canada, the RCMP’s commercial crime division is not investigating the allegations “at this time,” although it did look into what was thought to be a
Canadian lobbying connection briefly in 1988, when Air Canada announced the Airbus purchase, Supt. Carl Gallant said in an interview yesterday from
Ottawa.”
At least $11-$20 million commissions were paid by Airbus to Schreiber for lobbying Air Canada, and up to $46 million total for lobbying airlines in Canada. German authorities were investigating, at least for taxation reason, but RCMP wasn’t.
Not in public. Supt. Carl Gallant cited in the above story had interviewed Stevie Cameron in January, as I reviewed in June 2009 (“The myth of political vendetta … and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 6)”):
“… in January, RCMP investigators Sergeant Fraser Fiegenwald and Inspector Carl Gallant visited Stevie Cameron after listening to her talking about her book on the CBC Radio program The House; they told her that in 1988 there had been a brief FBI investigation on the Airbus sale to Air Canada but that the Canadian government and police had been unwilling to cooperate; she told them in return her experience that interviewing people in Europe had been more helpful.”
For whatever reason Inspector Gallant was promoted to Superintendent in the two months, it wasn’t the Airbus matters.
A week after Der Speigel, CBC The Fifth Estate quoted International Air Transport Association director-general Pierre Jeanniot, ex-president of Air Canada, as saying the Airbus commissions were “useless” (“Airbus ‘crazy’ to pay lobbyists, Jeanniot says”, by Jeff Heinrich, March 29, 1995, The Gazette):
“In an interview with the CBC television show The Fifth Estate, Pierre Jeanniot said Airbus “uselessly” paid $11 million in commissions to the Liechtenstein company after government-owned Air Canada spent $1.8 billion to buy close to three dozen Airbus jets in 1988.
“Some clever people made money which a company didn’t have to pay,” Jeanniot, director-general of the International Air Transport Association, said on the program, broadcast last night.
“Why pay a commission to something when they don't get a service? I think it’s useless,” Jeanniot said, chuckling. “Useless because you would have bought (the aircraft) anyway?” he was asked.
“No,” responded Jeanniot, who was Air Canada’s president at the time, “because we would have made the decision that was right for the company. The Airbus company was naive in doing this, in believing the fact that by giving someone a commission they could influence the decision.””
Jeanniot’s dismissal of the Airbus commissions’ importance contradicted the view of a “high-ranking aircraft industry manager” quoted by Der Speigel that Schreiber’s lobbying in Canada was critical.
More recently, The Fifth Estate showed evidence of Frank Moores’s middleman role in the Airbus-Air Canada negotiation (“Moores linked to Airbus before Mulroney came to power, memo reveals”, by Harvey Cashore, April 10, 2009, CBC News):
“Moores, who died in 2005, always maintained he had nothing to do with the deal.
But documents provided to The Fifth Estate also show that on Feb. 3, 1988, Moores wrote to then Airbus chairman Franz Josef Strauss, raising concerns that Airbus might not provide the Crown corporation with what’s known as a “deficiency guarantee” — an aircraft manufacturer’s guarantee of a plane’s future resale value.
The Airbus chairman responded on March 29, affirming the guarantee would be in place.
The next day, March 30, Air Canada’s board of directors met and approved the proposed Airbus purchase.”
As the date in Cameron’s book indicated, 2 days after Air Canada board’s approval of the Airbus deal General Ramsey Withers became president of Moores’s lobby firm GCI.
To whom the money went certainly mattered. The Fifth Estate reported Swiss bank accounts held by Schreiber and Moores, with one account codenamed Devon for “a Canadian politician”, and the Airbus company’s condition that commissions might not be paid “in the event of a major political change in Canada”:
“IAL was a “shell company” - only a postbox and a bank account - controlled by Alberta-based German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.
…
IAL was to be paid a commission of at least a half-a-million American dollars for each plane sold,” journalist Trish Wood narrated.
“There was one particularly interesting clause: The contract would be canceled in the event of a major political change in Canada.”
…
Three months after that, in October, 1988, IAL got its first payment: $5 million U.S., almost half of the $11 million U.S. that would flow into the company’s coffers over the next two years, according to bank records. The money came from the Banque Francaise du Commerce Exterieur, in Paris, a bank sometimes used by Airbus, the Fifth Estate report showed.
From Liechtenstein, the money was then transferred to secret Swiss bank accounts held by Schreiber, the news program said. He and Moores both had accounts at a Zurich branch of the Swiss Bank Corp. Moores’ accounts dated back to 1986.
In that year, accompanied by Schreiber, Moores had opened two accounts at the bank - one for himself, the other for “a Canadian politician,” an unnamed source told The Fifth Estate.
The first account, No. 34107, was in Moores’ name.
The other, No. 34117, had a code name attached: Devon.
“Airbus was secretly trying to gain influence in Canada,” Wood said in her conclusion to last night’s broadcast. “The commissions were paid by Airbus, and moved through a series of financial transactions, but where all that money ended up is still a mystery.””
The implication was that the Airbus money was for persons associated with Mulroney’s government, and that Moores might be looking after Mulroney’s personal interests through a Swiss bank account.
Later in 2007 while fighting extradition to Germany to face criminal charges, Schreiber admitted to receiving $20 million, part of which went to Moores, for the Air Canada deal as I noted in February 2009 (“The myth of political vendetta … and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 1)”):
“… after Karlheinz Schreiber received around $20 million dollars of commissions from Airbus Industrie (an amount according to himself), Moores billed Schreiber at least a confirmed $1.3 million for his part of the commissions; the conventional wisdom is that Moores was a middle man for Schreiber in distributing millions of dollars of commissions to others in Canada”.
Back in late March 1995, the Canadian commissions story wasn’t the only thing dogging Airbus.
Days later on March 31, a Romanian Tarom airlines Airbus 310 crashed after take-off from Bucharest to Brussels, killing all 59 aboard, including 10 crew members and 49 passengers – all Europeans except a Thai and 3 Americans: U.S. Treasury Department official Mrs. Terry Chung and Christian missionaries Rev. Norman Hoyt and wife Virginia of Columbia International University in South Carolina. That Tarom flight earlier on March 15 had received a bomb threat, and this time someone on the ground witnessed an explosion. (“Crash kills all 59 on Romanian plane”, April 1, 1995, Edmonton Journal; and, “Crash of Romanian Airliner Kills All 59 Aboard”, April 1, 1995, The New York Times)
The next day, the death toll was revised to 60 to include a Tarom security guard on the flight “to collect a Romanian asylum-seeker”. Belgium’s ambassador in Romania said he was sure the investigators “would prove it was an accident”. (“One flight recorder damaged”, April 2, 1995, Calgary Herald)
Within 2 days, Tarom’s general manager said internal investigation has ruled out pilot error (“Investigators sift debris site of air crash: Pilot error unlikely cause, airline says”, April 3, 1995, Kingston Whig - Standard).
The airport’s director of air traffic control and a top Romanian forensic expert both said evidence pointed to an explosion (“Explosion downed Romanian jet: expert”, April 4, 1995, The Gazette):
“A commission investigating the crash declined to comment until their work is finished. But Dr. Vladimir Belis, head of Bucharest's Forensic Institute, which is trying to identify the victims, said the way the body parts were burned “was very specific to an explosion.”
Seven forensic experts from Belgium and two from the United States were assisting in the identification. Thirty-two of the people killed were Belgians and three were Americans.
Even as investigators analyzed the plane's flight data recorders, a bomb scare yesterday caused new jitters at the carrier.
Bucharest’s Otopeni Airport was closed for four hours after an anonymous caller claimed a bomb was planted aboard a Tarom jet bound for Paris, national radio quoted airport chief Constantin Tudose as saying. The plane made an emergency landing in Timisoara, in western Romania, and was searched.
No bomb was discovered, but the plane was returned to Bucharest and another sent to Timisoara to fly the passengers to Paris.
…
Investigators were cautious about making any assessments before the analysis of the flight data and voice recorders is complete. They began decoding the voice recorder Sunday, and the data recorder was sent to England for analysis.
…
Ovidiu Traichoiu, director of the Otopeni Airport air traffic control, said all indications were that the accident was caused by an explosion, but added: “We don’t know whether it was a bomb or a technical defect.””
Well, the Belgium ambassador was right. A week later the government investigation ruled out bombing, didn’t refer to explosion, and at completion in November 1997 blamed mechanical fault and pilot “incapacitation”, despite a 40-second late, last-moment recovery attempt by the co-pilot (“Europe Technical failure ruled in crash”, April 11, 1995, The Globe and Mail; “Pilot, throttle problems caused ’95 Romanian air crash: inquiry”, November 28, 1997, Star – Phoenix; The Air Bulletin, Vol. 2 No. 11, November 28, 1997, Google Groups; “Tarom A310 crash pilot was ‘incapacitated’”, December 10, 1997, Flight Global; and, “Record of Justice” and “A Partial List of Our Aviation Cases”, Clifford Law Offices).
Only 30 days before the Bucharest disaster, on March 1 a Tarom Airbus A310 over Quebec on an international flight from Chicago to Amsterdam suddenly behaved uncontrollably, going rapidly up and down. A Canadian official investigation concluded that “a misrigged autopilot elevator servo control” and “the crew’s ineffective or inappropriate pitch control inputs” were to blame. (“AVIATION OCCURRENCE REPORT, REPORT NUMBER A95H0004”, 1995, Transportation Safety Board of Canada)
And only months earlier on September 24, 1994, a Tarom Airbus A310 with 11 crew members and 173 passengers stumbled into a steep dive near Orly Airport in Paris, France, before the pilot regained control and landed it. The incident prompted French civil aviation authorities to issue an international warning about flying Airbus A310s (“Jet in steep dive over French airport”, September 25, 1994, Edmonton Journal; and, “French issue Airbus alert”, by Pierre Sparaco, October 24, 1994, Aviation Week & Space Technology).
Airbus’s safety reputations weren’t great, nor were Romanian pilots’ skills.
These earlier Tarom Airbus A310 troubles didn’t develop into accidents like the Bucharest crash, which was merely the latest of 4 Airbus commercial flight crashes in about a year, including: a Russian Aeroflot flight in Siberia on March 22, 1994, when the pilot let his daughter and then son take the control, which then suddenly moved on its own, with all 75 onboard dead; a (Taiwanese) China Airlines flight in Nagoya, Japan on April 26, 1994, partly blamed on high body alcohol levels of pilot and co-pilot, with 264 dead of 271 onboard; and a Korean Airlines flight on Chenju Island, South Korea on August 10, 1994, with no death of 158 onboard, but with Canadian pilot Barry Woods and Korean c-pilot facing criminal charges for fighting over landing control (“Pilot’s son at controls’ of Russian jet before fatal crash”, April 3, 1994, Times – Colonist; “At least 259 killed as Taiwanese plane crashes at airport in central Japan”, by David Thurber, April 27, 1994, The Gazette; “Co-pilot in 264-death crash drunk by road standards, says Tokyo paper”, May 6, 1994, Edmonton Journal; “Doomed plane’s pilot grappled with sophisticated computer”, by David Holley, May 11, 1994, The Gazette; “Treatment of Canadian by Koreans angers pilots; Captain involved in crash could face prison term”, by Mary Gooderham, August 30, 1994, The Globe and Mail; “Pilot back home after Korean ordeal; But Canadian will return to Seoul to face charges in crash”, by Carolyn Lewis, September 26, 1994, The Gazette; “Russian jet crash more than just child’s play, investigator says”, by Julia Rubin, September 28, 1994, and, “Mind & Matter Who’s in charge? The captain or the computer?”, April 29, 1995, The Globe and Mail).
In-between the 4 commercial flight crashes there was an Airbus test flight crash on June 30, 1994 in Toulouse, France, killing 7, making for a total of 11 fatal Airbus crashes in 7 years (“NEWS BRIEFING Airbus crashes on test flight in France”, July 1, 1994, The Globe and Mail; and, “Altitude cited as crash cause”, July 2, 1994, The Windsor Star).
Despite all that, Air Canada, privatized since 1989, announced in May 1995 it would buy a fleet of the new Airbus A340 instead of the new Boeing 777 (“Canadian airlines have no plan to order passenger-friendly 777”, May 19, 1995, Calgary Herald):
“Boeing turned over the wide-body plane to United in a ceremony filled with songs of praise for the aircraft as the most passenger-friendly plane ever built.
The 777 also has been ordered by British Airways and by 13 other airlines.
However, it may be some time before Canadian travellers get to see the inside of the jetliner. Air Canada and Canadian Airlines International say they have no plans to order the 777.
Air Canada is in the midst of an aggressive buying spree, but spokeswoman Sandie Dexter says it has opted for the Airbus Industrie A340 instead.
The airline owns Airbus A320 aircraft, and Dexter says the similarity of cockpits means pilots trained on the A320 can also fly the A340.
Canadian spokeswoman Laurie Schild says a committee is forming a plan to renew the airline’s fleet, but so far the 777 is not part of that picture.”
This verified Pierre Jeanniot’s assertion that Air Canada would buy Airbus planes without any sales commission – even with all the deadly Airbus accidents!
In fact, at this time the city of Montreal prepared for the emergency scenario of an Airbus plane crash onto the city (“Coping with catastrophe; Simulated disaster conducted to test local emergency plan”, May 19, 1995, The Gazette):
“An Airbus flying from North Ireland to New York lost an engine on Metropolitan Blvd. during rush hour yesterday morning then crashed on a CP freight train near the Blue Bonnets raceway, killing 207 people and 50 horses.
…
The crash and ensuing rescue operations were part of a simulation performed inside one of the Montreal Urban Community's three emergency-measures centres to see how Civil Protection, the MUC, police, medical and other crews would respond to a major disaster in the MUC.
…
“It was not one of the worse scenarios but it was bad enough,” said Paul St-Pierre, head of the operation - code-named Icarus - which was staged in the MUC’s emergency measures office, in the city’s water-filtration plant in the east end.”
As in Cameron’s book, Aerospatiale SA of France owned 37.9% of Airbus shares, and Montreal was also Brian Mulroney’s home.
Also around this time, Boeing and Airbus planned to fully go separate ways and scrap a $10 billion joint project on a next-century, 800-seat superjumbo jet (“Plans for 800-seat plane axed; Boeing, Airbus too good at rivalry for jet partnership”, by Joanna Walters, May 20, 1995, and, “Boeing, Airbus partners shelve plans for ‘super-jumbo’ jet”, by Paul Sloan, July 11, 1995, The Gazette).
Regardless of Airbus’s fortune and bad breaks, Stevie Cameron’s book was selling well, surpassing the 100, 000-copy mark (“Celebrities”, May 3, 1995, Calgary Herald).
But that bestseller status was more of a consolation for Cameron’s ambitious goals, because not many seemed to care about the Airbus commissions story; certainly not the RCMP or Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s government, as journalist Paul Palango bitterly lamented (“Canada ignores a scandal; $40 million in Airbus kickbacks gets a yawn instead of an inquiry”, by Paul Palango, June 1, 1995, The Gazette):
“The Fifth Estate’s certainly wasn’t the first story about the Airbus deal. Since the purchase was announced, rumors had been swirling about payoffs to top government officials. Newspapers in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa had devoted much time and effort in attempting to track down leads. Airbus’s competitor, U.S.-based Boeing Co., had even launched a complaint at one point that the fix was in, but later withdrew it. This happened at about the same time the federal government allowed Boeing to purchase de Havilland Aircraft in Toronto.
An investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police went nowhere, which seemed to be no accident either. Members of the force wanted to track down the Airbus payments, but say they were prevented from doing so. RCMP insiders such as former deputy commissioner Hank Jensen and former assistant commissioner Rod Stamler have gone on record as saying they believe the Mulroney government used its political power to effectively block the police from conducting a thorough and complete investigation of the Airbus deal, among other things.
In its investigation, The Fifth Estate found the best evidence to date that something shady took place in the Airbus sale. Using a copy of Airbus Industries’s own contract with Air Canada, The Fifth Estate was able to trace payments through a series of bank accounts and shadowy companies in France, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
Money was paid to people in Canada who were trying to hide their involvement in the transaction. Why were they afraid to make themselves known?
The answer is obvious.
One would have thought, therefore, that after the CBC broadcast its program, there would be an uproar in Parliament and the media. But no, this is Canada. The world of politics and journalism doesn't work quite that way here any more.
Politicians yawned and said the story was old news. The Canadian media, almost without exception, labeled The Fifth Estate story as old news or whatever excuse was needed to conveniently pass on it. The story disappeared from sight faster than a bombed airplane in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The federal government and the RCMP each ignored the story, too, arguing that there was no evidence that a crime had been committed. After all, an RCMP spokesman told a reporter, the fact that Airbus Industries chose to pay a commission on a sale was not a criminal act.
It wasn’t?
…
After watching The Fifth Estate story and reading Stevie Cameron's book On the Take and my own, Above The Law, ordinary citizens can’t help but be disconcerted by the unwillingness of the Chretien government and the RCMP to take action. It’s in the public interest that this issue be pursued.
…
In virtually every other Western democracy in recent years, serious and successful investigations have been mounted against former government and business leaders for corruption. Only in Canada has such judicial scrutiny failed to materialize.
Governments here seem reluctant to investigate their predecessors because their successors might investigate them. What kind of honesty is that?”
Palango’s explanation made sense that the Chretien government didn’t want to investigate the former Mulroney government for fear that itself would become target of the next government. But that still could not explain why most of the media were dismissive of the story.
Meanwhile, Mulroney’s circle were courted by some among international dictatorships accused of not only corruption but murder (“Former Tory minister to defend ex-dictator; Danis hired for Bangladeshi murder trial”, by Alexander Norris, July 15, 1995, The Gazette):
“A former Tory politician who served in Brian Mulroney's government has been hired to act as lead defence lawyer in the politically charged murder trial of a onetime military dictator of Bangladesh.
Marcel Danis, who was Canada's labor minister from 1991 to 1993, is to leave Montreal today for Bangladesh after being retained by the Jatiya Party of former strongman Hussain Muhammad Ershad to act in Ershad's defence team.
Ershad - who ruled the impoverished Asian nation with an iron fist from 1982 to 1990 and is now in jail for corruption - is charged, with four retired army officers, with murdering General Abul Manzoor in 1981.
Manzoor was slain after a failed coup attempt that he was said to have led.
While Ershad was in power, his regime was the target of numerous complaints from human-rights groups about torture, detention without trial, political imprisonment and other forms of repression.
Yesterday, the former MP’s association with the former dictator was greeted with consternation by some professors at Concordia University, where Danis is now employed as vice-dean in the faculty of arts.
“I have trouble with someone who works at my university travelling halfway around the world to defend one of the biggest crooks, a criminal of big time proportions," said economics professor James McIntosh, who worked in Bangladesh while Ershad was in power.””
To be fair, not all under Brian Mulroney enjoyed that kind of reputation or association. His successor Kim Campbell, to whom I had faxed documents critical of Mulroney, said in her new Vancouver radio show that Cameron’s book was “very interesting” (“IT’S C-KIM!: Ex-PM woos new riding in radio talk-show land”, by Jason Proctor, August 1, 1995, The Province):
“She’s already ruled the country. The airwaves should be a cinch.
Still, former prime minister Kim Campbell was a little white- faced yesterday as she tensely sat in her chair and cleared her throat before kicking off her latest career, as Vancouver’s newest CKNW talk-show maven.
“Good morning, this is Kim Campbell,” she said, looking down at the script in front of her.
…
Campbell, 48, invited listeners to ask her anything, but few took the opportunity.
“It is indeed an honor to be the first to talk to the right honorable Kim talk-show host,” said the first caller, kicking off a love-fest that lasted until about Caller 6.
“You keep trying to push your book. I wonder if you’ve read Stevie Cameron’s book, On The Take,” (an expose of corruption during the years when Brian Mulroney was Tory prime minister,) the first negative caller said.
“I thought it was very interesting,” Campbell replied.”
Hmm, more interesting to Kim Campbell than to Jean Chretien whose Liberals had decimated Campbell’s Tories in October 1993.
Airbus’s success on the international market emboldened the global ambition of an European banker like Hans Baer, chairman of the 105-year-old Julius Baer Group headquartered in Switzerland, to compete with the United States (“Swiss banker blunt in his views; U.S. dollar won’t remain world leader, Quebec separation not a wise move”, by James Ferrabee, September 23, 1995, The Gazette):
“Hans Baer, true to form, soars like an eagle over the Alps when discussing the state of the world’s financial and economic systems.
But he also has blunt views he isn’t shy to express on everything from the future of the U.S. dollar as a world currency, which he feels is bleak, to Quebec separatism, which he calls a form of economic suicide.
Baer, chairman of the 105-year-old Julius Baer Group with headquarters in Zurich, said a single European currency is inevitable, although he sees turmoil in the markets before the actual implementation date in 1999.
…
“The Germans feel threatened because the only currency that’s better (than a single currency) is the deutsche mark and the only central bank that is
better is the Bundesbank.”…
“The U.S. economic figures aren’t very good. The budget situation is better but the balance of payments is worse,” said Baer, whose firm, with 1,400 employees worldwide, opened its first office in Canada two years ago.
“The government in the U.S. operates on benign neglect. (President) Clinton doesn’t care where the dollar goes,” he said.
…
“After you have exported jobs, what else can you export?” he asked. He pointed to the aircraft industry, which the U.S. once dominated.
“Once the largest planes were made by American companies, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. Now Airbus has seriously challenged them.”
…
Another is that European firms like Swiss-based Nestle, the largest food-products company in the world, with annual sales of $60 billion Canadian,
have world-wide exposure.“After all, when we buy Nestle, we buy the world,” said Baer.”
Buying more Airbus planes but getting prepared for one to crash onto Montreal, could be Hans Baer’s advice. Not being bothered with where the Airbus commissions went in Canada, might be like U.S. President Bill Clinton’s “benign neglect”.
A few days after the appearance of Han Baer’s Canadian media interview, on September 29 Justice Department lawyer Kimberly Prost sent a letter to the Swiss authorities as part of an RCMP criminal investigation of possible “criminal activity” by Brian Mulroney, triggering a libel lawsuit from Mulroney as I noted in March 2009 (“The myth of political vendetta … and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 2)”):
“… as for the real story of how the Justice Department letter dated September 29, 1995 and signed by senior counsel Kimberly Prost – another woman – came to include the reference “criminal activities carried out by the former prime minister”, it has never been adequately explained, i.e., who was, or were, behind the criminally accusatory language that would result in a $50 million defamation lawsuit from Mr. Mulroney and over $2 million of legal-settlement costs by the government.”
Mulroney’s lawsuit against the Canadian government and RCMP would become the focus of the Airbus Affair.
But just before that, news involving Prime Minister Jean Chretien shocked many Canadians.
On October 30, 1995, a Quebec referendum called by the separatist Parti Quebecois government over whether to seek sovereignty from Canada was defeated by a razor-thin margin of 50.6% No over 49.4% Yes. A French Canadian himself, Chretien led the national campaign for the No side and was vilified in Quebec, but overall was viewed positively in English Canada (“CANADA’S FUTURE: Majority back PM’s role in unity debate, poll finds; Only Quebecers consider Chretien a liability to talks”, by Joan Bryden, November 5, 1995, The Ottawa Citizen).
But the outcome’s narrow margin was a cause of uncertainty for businesses and the financial market, as journalist David Israelson observed (“Canadian roulette; Endless gaming over Canada’s future is trying the patience of foreign investors and we're all paying for it”, by David Israelson, November 5, 1995, Toronto Star):
“Canada has just closed its eyes, prayed and played another round of referendum roulette.
Who won and who lost? “We won,” said Prime Minister Jean Chretien, downplaying the narrowness of the 50.6 per cent versus 49.4 per cent federalist victory in last Monday’s vote in Quebec.
But did we?
In the great global casino - the international, around-the-clock money markets – it’s a bit more dicey.”
The opposition Reform party led by leader Preston Manning blamed Chretien for nearly losing Canada; Chretien had taken compromising stands toward the larger Official Opposition party, separatist Bloc Quebecois as journalist Lorne Gunter pointed out (“Liberals point fingers at Reform”, by Lorne Gunter, November 4, 1995, Edmonton Journal):
“Two days after Quebecers nearly voted to rip Canada apart, Reform leader Preston Manning accused Prime Minister Jean Chretien of bringing the country to “the brink of disaster,” with “his lame-brained strategy” of non-involvement in the sovereignty referendum.
Chretien’s actions had been “sickening,” “pathetic” and “tragic,” Manning charged. “(His) gross miscalculations almost cost us the country.”
…
In each of the first two sessions of this Parliament, the Liberals have used their majority to assure that BQ MPs have become vice-chairs of all Commons committees. The BQ go along with the Liberals’ social engineering programs more readily than Reformers.
For two days after the referendum, the Liberals levelled no criticism at the Bloc. Instead, every time the subject came up, the Liberals turned their wrath on Reform.
On referendum day, Manning proposed that O Canada be sung each Wednesday in the Commons. The Liberals defeated the motion out of deference to the Bloc MPs, all 53 of whom were boycotting the House that day to signal their hatred for Canada.
Halifax Liberal MP Mary Clancy, summed up the Liberals’ utter disdain for Reformers when she scoffed, “For those creatures to suggest a government led by Jean Chretien doesn’t want to sing O Canada, I think it’s reprehensible.””
The Canadian-flag and Quebec-flag waving scenes of the referendum campaign prodded The Vancouver Sun’s excerpt, on November 4, of a memoir by Vancouver Stock Exchange Chairman Patrick Reid on the Canadian flag’s creation in November 1964 (“A wild colonial boy tames the flag problem”, by Patrick Reid, November 4, 1995, The Vancouver Sun):
“[John] Matheson, a disabled war veteran, entered Parliament in 1961 and became the chosen executor of Lester Pearson's plan to have a new Canadian flag by 1965. He was totally and courageously committed to a symbolic renewal that he hoped would ease the divisions that were all too apparent as Canada approached its Centennial in 1967. …
…
Tom Wood, our chief designer, suggested Jacques Saint-Cyr for the job. …
Jacques produced a 13-point leaf, not dissimilar to one that he had designed for a recent Canadian exhibit in Europe. Matheson appeared to be warming to that particular version. We agreed to meet again on Nov. 6, after Jacques had had a chance to work up some variants. …
Matheson phoned to say that he had to have a flag at the prime minister’s residence on the morning of Nov. 7. It would be flown there for the PM’s inspection when he got up. …
…
I told Matheson what was proposed. He had no objection except that time was running out. Jacques was already on a redesign, and an hour later we had a precise, 11-point, maple leaf.
…
… About 2 a.m. the flag was ready and Ken Donovan set off for Sussex Drive. He was to phone when he had made the delivery.
Ken was almost incoherent when he telephoned to say that the RCMP security guard at the gate had taken one look at his beaten-up old car and refused him admission. He was persuaded to go back and give the flag to the guard. We would telephone and make sure it was picked up.
…
The final design was sent to Matheson on Nov. 9. We had been able to demonstrate that the natural maple leaf became a blob as it receded, while our design maintained its outline and identity.”
As the tale went, the first finished Canadian flag – of the last-to-final design by chief designer Tom Wood and actual designer Jacques Saint-Cyr – was delivered in the wee hours of November 7 to the Prime Minister’s residence at Sussex Drive in Ottawa for then Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s inspection, but was refused entry by the RCMP guard due to the deliverer’s “beaten-up old car”.
Part of the flag design project in 1964, Patrick Reid is today Chairman of the Rick Hansen Foundation (“Reid, Patrick, O.C., M.C., C.D.”, Leadership Canada).
31 years later Prime Minister Jean Chretien had no time for such niceties. On November 4 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, and Chretien had to go to Israel for the funeral and proceed to other overseas visits (“PM to attend funeral”, by David Vienneau, November 5, 1995, Toronto Star):
“Officials in Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s office were scrambling last night to make arrangements for him to attend Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral tomorrow.
“I will be leaving Canada with my wife (Aline) to be present at the funeral of Prime Minister Rabin,” a saddened Prime Minister told reporters last night. “I will be back” Nov. 19.”
In the wee hours of November 5, a knife-wielding intruder, 34-year-old Andre Dallaire from Quebec, slipped inside the Prime Minister’s residence and came face to face with Mrs. Aline Chretien, who quickly retreated to their bedroom, locked the doors and called RCMP guards, who took 10 minutes to arrive and arrest the man holding an open jackknife outside the main bedroom door (“PM says wife kept assailant out of bedroom; Couple waited up to 10 minutes for police arrival”, by Mike Blanchfield, November 6, 1995, The Ottawa Citizen):
““I would like to say that my wife did not panic,” Chretien said before boarding a plane to Israel for the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin.
“I think that I’m lucky that she was there. And I’m grateful.”
…
With Aline at his side, Chretien was solemn but did not appear shaken as he spoke of the incident.
“Around a quarter to three, my wife heard a noise. She heard somebody walking in the house,” Chretien said.
He was not awakened until Aline slammed the door shut and locked it after coming face-to-face with a man wearing glasses and a moustache. She also locked a second bedroom door.
“She called police right away and I could not believe what she was telling me,” he said. The Mounties arrested the man, who was carrying an open jackknife, after responding to the bedroom phone call “within six or 10 minutes, I don’t know,” Chretien added.
Police charged Andre Dallaire, 34, of the Montreal suburb of Longueuil, with several offences, including break and enter and possession of a weapon. He was to appear in court this morning.
Police in Longueuil said Dallaire is a convenience store worker whose family says he has a history of psychiatric problems. His family reported him missing on Wednesday.
It is well-known that 24 Sussex is staffed around the clock by Mounties and has alarms and cameras. It is enclosed by a wall made of stone and wrought iron and sits atop a cliff overlooking the Ottawa River.
“When I go over there, I practically have to take a lie detector test,” said one Chretien aide.
In a press release, the Mounties said the Chretiens’ “lives could have been in danger.”
Insp. Jean St-Cyr, an RCMP spokesman, said the incident was under investigation and security measures would be reviewed. He could not explain how the man entered the grounds or how he made it to the bedroom door undetected.
“We don’t have much to go on. We have to presume he jumped the fence somewhere,” he said.
St-Cyr said RCMP officers are on duty outside the house at all times. “There were some on the grounds, but not in the home. We are not in the house usually.”
One former resident, Margaret Kemper, the ex-wife of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, said it didn’t surprise her to hear someone had got inside the house without being detected.
“I can see it happening easily. There are all kinds of ways to get into the house,” she said Sunday, recounting that, in 1969, a woman got into the house without the RCMP knowing about it. Trudeau, she said, found the woman locked in his bedroom closet.
Kemper, who married Trudeau in 1971 and separated from him in 1977, speculated the intruder got into the house through either a side door or a door at the rear of the house. …
…
Ottawa-Carleton police chief Brian Ford said, “It’s beyond me how it could happen . . . (but) It happens from time to time, people get through a security system. It doesn’t necessarily mean people aren’t doing their jobs.
…
A spokesman for Solicitor General Herb Gray said the minister will comment only when he has a full report.
Last year, Gray expressed concern about Chretien’s security when he was jostled by a crowd in Mexico while trying to pay respects to a slain
presidential candidate.In May, a man armed with a crossbow entered the Winnipeg Convention Centre shortly before Chretien arrived to deliver a speech. He was arrested
without incident.”
As Pierre Trudeau’s ex-wife Margaret Kemper said, an undetected intrusion at 24 Sussex Drive had happened before but that intruder meant romance with Trudeau.
RCMP spokesman Inspector Jean St-Cyr, who said there were guards outside but usually not in the house, happened to have the same uncommon surname as the Canadian flag’s designer Jacques Saint-Cyr in The Vancouver Sun‘s tale just the day before the intrusion, that the first Canadian flag’s delivery to Lester Pearson at the residence couldn’t get past RCMP guards in the early morning of November 7, 1964.
I don’t doubt the patriotism of the iconic Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but this oversight occurred just before the eve – the Chretiens would be in Israel – of the 31st anniversary of that Canadian flag delivery rejection; Stevie Cameron’s 1994 book publisher, Macfarlane Walter & Ross, had served her stories of Mulroney-circle corruption to the public on the eve of the anniversary of the Chretien Liberals’ trouncing of the Mulroney Tories under Kim Campbell.
Safety for the leader of the peaceful Canada was so easily breached just as he was going to pay tribute to the assassinated Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin – worse than Chretien’s 1994 visit to Mexico when the ruling party’s presidential candidate was assassinated, which I commented on in May 2009 (“The myth of political vendetta … and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 5)”):
“While [RCMP Commissioner Norman] Inkster’s resignation in 1994 was expected to give the Liberal government a fresh start in gun control at home, it also took place amid the Liberals’ retreat from its election promise of higher priority for international human rights, to focus on the economy and business; and as if that had not been enough, prime minister Chretien’s first official foreign visit – to Mexico instead of traditionally to the U.S. – in March 1994 was marred by the assassination by gunshot of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio (of the Institutional Revolutionary Party that had ruled uninterruptedly for 65 years) just before Chretien’s arrival, by a large and angry mob shouting “out” while Chretien attempted but failed to pay respect to the body of the slain, and by a rare type of rebuttal of Chretien’s notion that Mexican democracy and Canadian democracy were just different types – from Subcomandante Marcos of the rebel Zapatista Army of National Liberation in a jungle interview in Chiapas, Mexico.
Subcomandante Marcos’s criticism of Chretien was voiced at a time when Canadian native leaders had been expressing support for more rights (including land-title rights) for the Mexican Mayans in light of swift acceptance of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by the new Chretien government – an agreement that had been negotiated by the Mulroney government and had contributed to its unpopularity, and one that Chretien during the election campaign had talked about renegotiating.”
Defeating Mulroney’s party led by a woman might not be that hard, as the Liberals’ Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau and John Turner had ruled 2/3 of the time from 1964 to 1993 over the Tories’ Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell, but it gave Chretien a “free” new start.
It was immediately disclosed that RCMP officers did not follow the standard procedure to rush into the house, but surrounded it outside for 6-7 minutes (“Mounties admit serious mistakes in protecting PM”, by Dianne Rinehart, November 7, 1995, The Gazette):
“Instead of following procedure and rushing to the aid of Chretien and his wife, Aline, officers made a mistake by surrounding the house first, which delayed response to her call for help by seven minutes.
…
“We expect immediate response. We did not get immediate response,” RCMP Commissioner Phil Murray told reporters.
The threat to the lives of the Chretiens caused an uproar in the Commons as Reform MP Deborah Grey said the security breach has upset Canadians.
…
Grey said the seven-minute delay in getting to the prime minister’s bedroom was unacceptable.
“If (Aline Chretien) had called the fire department, they would have been there in 3-1/2 minutes.”
Murray said he was embarrassed and angry that the officers did not act first to protect the Chretiens’ lives.
…
“A judgment call was made (not to rush in immediately) and it was not in keeping with our operational procedure,” Murray said. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it.””
According to RCMP Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell, the intruder was on the house ground for possibly 45 minutes total; Assistant Commissioner Wayne Martel in charge of VIP security would now conduct an internal inquiry (“Quiet man ‘wanted to kill’ PM; Armed man roamed 24 Sussex for 45 minutes; Referendum motive possible; RCMP conduct inquiry into security”, by Leonard Stern, Dave Rogers and April Lindgren, November 7, 1995, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Meanwhile, Solicitor General Herb Gray insisted Monday that the force could be relied upon to investigate its own performance and determine what
went wrong with security at 24 Sussex.A team of security experts led by Assistant Commissioner Wayne Martel will conduct the inquiry.
Martel is responsible for the prime minister’s security, as well as the security for visiting heads of state, the governor general, diplomats, and federal cabinet ministers.
“He is in charge of the whole protective detail of the RCMP but he is not involved personally in the security of the prime minister,” said RCMP spokesman Sgt. Pierre Patenaude.
…
Assistant RCMP commissioner Bryan McConnell said investigators have determined the intruder was on the premises nearly 45 minutes before his
arrest. But RCMP officers didn’t learn of the situation until Aline Chretien phoned them at 3 a.m. McConnell said the intruder, armed with a jackknife,
was calm and offered no resistance when officers stormed the residence.McConnell would not say if there are electronic security devices at 24 Sussex. But CBC News reported Monday night that a security system inside the
sprawling mansion was not working Sunday and that three RCMP officers were on duty. Officials did not comment on the report.”
According to Dianne Rinehart’s news report quoted earlier, RCMP guards at Chretien’s residence were not those protecting his travel security, but regular cops:
“John Thompson, an expert on security and terrorism at the Mackenzie Institute in Toronto, said there’s no conflict in the RCMP investigating itself.
But he said the report might look like a “whitewash” because the RCMP will be reluctant to release security details to the public.
RCMP officers who guard 24 Sussex Drive are members of a detachment assigned to protect the residences of the prime minister and governor general.
They do not receive intensive training given to the RCMP’s protective service, whose members accompany Chretien when he travels, Inspector Jean St-Cyr said.”
Meeting reporters on his way from Rabin’s funeral to a British Commonwealth summit in Auckland, New Zealand, Chretien told a tale of grabbing an Inuit carving as weapon just in case, and maintaining his sense of humor (“PM grabbed carving to use as weapon Intruder ‘was six feet from my bed,’ Chretien says”, by David Vienneau, November 8, 1995, Toronto Star):
““He was about six feet away from my bed,” Chretien said in shedding more light on the 3 a.m. incident.
“It was good, in a way, that he had a knife. It was a good thing he didn’t have a gun. I probably would not have survived to wake up.”
…
Chretien had grabbed a soapstone carving of a bird and he was ready to defend his wife and himself if necessary.
“He’d have had a headache,” Chretien said.
…
“He was a good-looking guy but he had a strange look in his eyes,” Chretien said, explaining that while in his housecoat he went to see the individual after he had been handcuffed and arrested.”
A good-looking guy looking for a headache.
Canadian artists promptly called for a review of a government decision to close the Canada Council's art bank, which furnished art for official residences (“PM made case for art funding: group: No Mounties in sight, Chretien had sculpture for defence”, November 9, 1995, The Gazette):
““Unlike the RCMP, art was there when the prime minister needed it,” Greg Graham of Canadian Artists’ Representation said in a statement yesterday.
…
Graham, whose group represents 2,000 painters, sculptors and other artists, said if the Canada Council had proceeded with plans last spring to close its art bank, the Inuit sculpture might not have been in the bedroom.
Most of the art at official government residences is on loan or rented from the art bank, although Chretien is known to be a collector of Inuit art.
“We once again call on the Canada Council to re-evaluate their decision to close the art bank. This is now a matter of national security,” Graham
said, tongue in cheek.”
This type of proud Canadian value promotion hit newspaper front pages, but the Inuit bird sculpture was Chretien’s own (“Break-in finally puts Art Bank on front page”, by Ann Duncan, November 18. 1995, The Gazette).
Art’s role in this was not only a sculpture as weapon but one RCMP guard being from the famous Musical Ride (“PM’s RCMP guard called unqualified; One officer culled from Musical Ride, none had special training, Reform says”, November 9, 1995, The Globe and Mail):
“Now Reform Party House Leader Deborah Gray has offered a possible explanation for the grave security lapse. Based on a tip that apparently came from inside the force, Ms. Gray said yesterday the three officers on duty on Saturday night were inexperienced, had no special training in security work and one of them “was culled from The Musical Ride.”
Possibly he was waiting for his horse to circle the house before riding to the rescue, she said. Possibly he was waiting for orders from one of the three senior officers who were supposed to be on 24-hour call that night, but according to Ms. Gray, did not answer their cellular telephones.
Ms. Gray said her party had received a telephone tip about the unanswered cell phones and the lack of training in security.
Like the Mounties on the Musical Ride, Ms. Gray said the investigation “is going to go round and round in typical Herb Gray (Solicitor-General, responsible for the RCMP) fashion and go nowhere.””
Perhaps the RCMP anticipated another Canadian-flag delivery and wanted a Musical Ride to do it right this time.
In fact, Andre Dallaire tripped an alarm but it was ignored by RCMP guards, who thought it was an animal. With a rock he failed to break the front door, succeeding later at a west-side door, and he even waved at the surveillance cameras, surprised by the lack of police response (“Sussex Dr. intruder waved at cameras; Alarm sounded but apparently was ignored”, by Tim Harper, November 10, 1995, Toronto Star):
“An intruder who entered the home of Prime Minister Jean Chretien waved at RCMP surveillance cameras in an apparently confused effort to be deterred, sources told The Star yesterday.
The sources also said the man tripped a perimeter alarm that sounded in the RCMP gatehouse at 24 Sussex Dr. when he entered the grounds early Sunday.
But that was apparently ignored.
Sources said that was likely because animals climbing through the fences routinely tripped the alarm.
The sources also say the man made two attempts to enter Chretien’s residence.
The first try, they say, was unsuccessful because the door withstood an attempt to break it down with a rock.
The suspect then went to a western entrance and tried again - this time, successfully.
…
Sources say the intruder spent more than 20 minutes on the grounds in what appeared to be bewilderment, unable to understand why his movements went undetected by RCMP officers.
“He basically moved one step at a time, even at one point waving at a surveillance camera,” a source said last night.
“It wasn’t like he was prowling. This wasn’t a James Bond operation. He waited for someone to show up, but nobody came.””
Chretien asserted that Quebec separatist verbal attacks on him during the referendum campaign might be to blame for a “deranged” intruder (“I felt my life was in danger during break-in: PM”, by Rob Carrick, November 8, 1995, The Gazette):
“Chretien drew a troubling parallel between the emotions unleashed in the Quebec referendum and the fanaticism that led to the assassination of Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin.
He mused about how he was called a “traitor” during the referendum campaign, just as Rabin was called a traitor by extremists who opposed the Israeli leader’s peace attempts in the Middle East.
“In my case, too, some adjectives were used that might have excited deranged minds.”
Chretien was in Jerusalem on Monday for the funeral of Rabin, who was assassinated by a gunman on Saturday.”
The Quebec separatist dimension was confirmed by Andre Dallaire in a media interview, who was held at Royal Ottawa Hospital undergoing psychiatric assessment, charged with attempted murder (“Sovereigntist leaders too tame -- Dallaire”, November 15, 1995, Edmonton Journal):
““I didn’t vote (in the Oct. 30 referendum) because I am an independantist,” Andre Dallaire told the Toronto Sun in a phone interview from the Royal Ottawa Hospital, where he is being held for psychiatric assessment until his next court date.
Dallaire said he felt that Premier Jacques Parizeau’s Parti Quebecois should have moved more strongly toward founding a separate country.
“I am much better than Parizeau,” he said. “I would like an independent state like France or Germany.”
…
He faces charges of attempted murder, breaking and entering, being unlawfully in a dwelling and possession of a weapon.
But said he would be “very surprised” when he offers his explanation of events.
“I’ll speak the truth in the courtroom,” he said. “I am a gentle man and I am a good man.”
Dallaire will plead not guilty to the charge of attempting to kill the prime minister, his lawyer said Monday.
John Hale argued Dallaire did not have the intent to kill, nor did he take steps toward committing murder.”
So instead of a Canadian-flag waving fan the Mounties let slip a man wishing to make Quebec independent, i.e., break up Canada, but he didn’t try to stab Mrs. Chretien or break into the bedroom.
Besides, Dallaire’s mind was more confused than “deranged”: it wasn’t easy to be both a Quebecer and the leader of Canada; the Reform party had hit hard on Chretien’s “lame-brained strategy” in the referendum campaign and his compromising gestures toward Bloc Quebecois.
RCMP management took actions to suspend 4 officers onsite that night, and reassigned 3 of their supervisors, as A/Comm. Bryan McConnell announced (“4 Mounties suspended over Sussex Dr. break-in: 3 supervisors reassigned after incident at Chretien’s residence”, by Jim Bronzkill, November 11, 1995, The Gazette):
“The four suspended Mounties were on duty at 24 Sussex Dr. when an intruder armed with an open jackknife confronted Jean Chretien's wife outside the couple’s bedroom early Sunday.
They failed in their primary duty to protect life and property, Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell said yesterday.
“Decisions were made that put the lives of the prime minister and Madame Chretien in danger. That is totally unacceptable and falls below the standards of conduct expected of a member of the RCMP.”
…
Meanwhile, three officers in supervisory jobs have been reassigned.
The RCMP , citing privacy provisions, would not make public names or ranks.
But Inspector Jean St. Cyr said the four suspended members each had at least five years of experience on the force.”
These cops were no rookies, even if not the VIP-protection type.
But the media learned 2 of the 4 onsite officers were of the lowest rank, “special constables”, and the reassigned supervisors were already on their way out in pre-planned downsizing (“Mounties’ transfer not tied to break-in; Downsizing explains move at 24 Sussex”, by Leonard Stern, November 16, 1995, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Two of the four Mounties on duty that night were special constables, the lowest rank in the force and the one with the least training.
…
But the three officers -- Supt. Claude Sweeney, Insp. Jean Dube and Staff Sgt. Frank Trottier -- knew before the break-in that their positions were being eliminated.
Several sources say that, earlier this year, McConnell was involved with a report recommending that Sweeney’s position be downgraded to inspector, and that those of Dube and Trottier be eliminated.
…
Sweeney, Trottier and Dube would not comment on McConnell’s statement that their departures were connected to the break-in.
Sweeney is taking a government buyout. Dube is the operations officer in the executive and diplomatic protection section. Trottier is in charge of the detachment that includes the prime minister’s and governor general’s residences. Dube and Trottier said questions should be directed to McConnell.”
An RCMP employee representative, Staff Sergeant Joe Brennan, complained that the disciplinary actions favored the senior officers:
“Rank-and-file police officers are also upset at the way top RCMP officers saddled junior ranks with the blame for the break-in.
Staff Sgt. Joe Brennan, the RCMP staff relations representative, said that McConnell’s statement about senior officers being held accountable for the break-in was misleading.
“The statement is true that they were re-assigned, but they were going anyway,” he said. “Right now, the cat is being let out of the bag, and senior people have (yet) to be held accountable.””
It looked like a potential RCMP “whitewash” security expert John Thompson was predicting as quoted earlier. But in following S/Sgt. Joe Brennan’s lead, the media also missed the point of the planned downsizing of the senior ranks: downgrading the supervisory ranks for Chretien’s security, similar to assigning lowest-rank cops to his residence, had been in the works.
Canadian Police Association president Neal Jessop sent a letter to Solicitor General Herb Gray, listing a litany of security problems at the prime minister’s residence and requesting an independent review (“Review of break-in at PM’s home demanded; Full story of incident needed, police association says in letter to Solicitor-General”, November 16, 1995, The Globe and Mail):
“People are not being told the full story of what led to the security breach, Canadian Police Association president Neal Jessop says in a letter to Solicitor-General Herb Gray.
“The public is only able to hear the explanation offered by those RCMP management personnel whose responsibility it was to ensure adequate security,” says the letter released late yesterday.
The association represents 40,000 police officers across Canada, including many RCMP members.
…
The association says it has heard that:
- TV monitors for the security camera system may have been low-quality, providing a picture so poor the officers could not tell the difference between a Mountie and an intruder;
- Officers responsible for security had never been allowed in the house before that night and were therefore unfamiliar with the layout;
- On-site security staff had submitted four reports since 1989 that recommended upgrading security at the residence, but all were ignored or refused by RCMP management or the Prime Minister's Office.
…
The letter says the unanswered questions about the event do not “justify the convenient silence RCMP management seeks to impose.””
So since when Mulroney’s family lived there in 1989, the RCMP guards had submitted 4 reports to request upgrades but were ignored.
Hard to believe that security “home improvement” could fall through the cracks like this.
Criticisms of RCMP management by S/Sgt. Joe Brennan, “the elected staff representative for A Division”, prompted RCMP “A” Division commander, A/Comm. Bryan McConnell, to issue a formal statement that the 3 supervisors’ transfers were taking place 4 months sooner due to the incident; but Brennan still felt the onsite junior cops shouldn’t be blamed (“RCMP boss disputes Mountie’s version of disciplinary action; Assistant commissioner admits reassigned supervisors’ jobs were to be abolished but says severe punishment was in ending positions early”, by Hugh Winsor, November 17, 1995, The Globe and Mail):
“Assistant Commissioner Brian McConnell, commander of the RCMP’s A Division, which includes responsibility for security at 24 Sussex Drive, issued a statement yesterday disputing an accusation from a Mountie employee suggesting that the force has been fibbing about disciplinary measures taken.
…
When he announced last week that four officers on duty at 24 Sussex Drive had been suspended and three of their supervisors had been reassigned, Mr. McConnell said the reassignments were made “because supervisors must be accountable for the actions of their units.” He also said the action taken was severe, “but given the serious errors of judgment that led to the incident, I believe these actions are justified.” But yesterday, following Staff Sgt. Brennan’s intervention, Mr. McConnell admitted the three supervisory positions were being abolished on April 1 as part of an overall restructuring of A Division that had been decided before the break-in. But he said the reassignments had been moved ahead by four months as a direct result of the incident at the Prime Minister’s residence.
…
Staff Sgt. Brennan is the elected staff representative for A Division, responsible for taking members’ grievances to senior management and acting as an advocate on staff relations’ matters. RCMP members are not allowed to have a union.
He has interviewed the four suspended officers and analyzed past security assessments and the picture he presents of what happened at the Prime Minister’s residence is quite different from that painted in earlier reports.
Two of the four officers are special constables who have not had the rigorous training given regular force officers; such officers have often been engaged as a cost-cutting measure for less critical security duties.
None of the four men on duty had ever been inside the residence, according to Staff Sgt. Brennan and therefore had no idea of the location of the corridor and bedroom where the intruder was.
Nevertheless, the corporal in charge of the security detail arrested the man within four minutes of Mrs. Chretien’s call to the security hut, Staff Sgt. Brennan said, not the seven to 10 minutes related by Mr. Chretien the day after the incident.
The corporal should be commended for his bravery because he didn’t wait for re-enforcements to arrive before tackling the intruder at risk to his own personal safety, rather than being vilified, according to the staff representative.”
According to S/Sgt. Brennan, the RCMP corporal in charge onsite went in and made the arrest on his own within 4 minutes, not 7-10 minutes.
The above The Globe and Mail story by Hugh Winsor spelled RCMP “A” Division commanding officer’s name as “Brian McConnell” while all other news reports referred to “Bryan McConnell”. In any case, a picture emerged that A/Comm. Bryan McConnell was the RCMP commander of the Ottawa capital region where the Prime Minister’s residence was located, whereas A/Comm. Wayne Martel doing an internal review was responsible for VIP security.
A day later an RCMP decision was made to suspend one of the 3 supervisors, to upgrade security equipment and to require all guards to have VIP training (“Fallout from break-in moves through ranks: Senior mountie suspended over breach of security at prime minister’s residence”, by Leonard Stern, November 18, 1995, The Vancouver Sun):
“At Friday’s news conference, the RCMP announced that one of the senior officers now has been suspended indefinitely with pay. Insp. Cindy Villeneuve also said that the four junior members have been given an additional seven days to prepare their explanations.
“I think ( RCMP management) may have a change of heart,” said S.Sgt. Joe Brennan, who, as staff relations representative, is advising the junior members. “At first, (the junior Mounties ) were being hanged out to dry, but I really think they’ll be reinstated.”
Brennan believes the four junior members were partly vindicated Friday when the RCMP said that the electronic monitoring equipment at 24 Sussex has been upgraded and that all Mounties posted at the house will now receive specialized VIP training.
…
Villeneuve would not confirm a report that McConnell himself could face disciplinary action. But she did not rule out more suspensions as the RCMP’s internal investigation unfolds.”
The latest remedies and policy changes were likely from “A” Division commander’s superiors, as the changes upgraded the Prime Minister’s residence security to VIP-protection level and RCMP headquarters’ direct supervision:
“The RCMP announced tighter security measures Friday for the prime minister:
* Security for prime minister and his residences (24 Sussex Drive and nearby Harrington Lake) put under one unit, reporting to national headquarters.
* Levels of supervision reduced to three from five, shortening chain of command.
* RCMP responsible for PM’s personal protection now guard residences on rotating basis.
* Unit to be comprised of Mounties with specialized VIP training.
…”
Now Chretien’s security everywhere was overseen by A/Comm. Wayne Martel, presumably.
The next day at an Asia Pacific summit in Osaka, Japan, Chretien said the RCMP was now doing enough and a public inquiry was not needed (“Chretien rejects inquiry into security breach”, by Les Whittington, November 19, 1995, The Ottawa Citizen):
““There’s no need for a public inquiry into that matter. The RCMP is responsible for security at 24 Sussex and they apparently are changing the procedures and the equipment and it's for them to decide.”
Chretien made the statement in Osaka, Japan, where the prime minister and leaders of 17 other countries are giving formal approval today to an agreement that is to significantly reduce trade barriers in the Asia-Pacific region over the next 20 years.”
Rather than ordering an inquiry, Chretien personally thanked the RCMP corporal in charge that night as it became known that the corporal had come over from the Governor General’s residence to arrest the intruder, within 4 minutes and with no help – an incredibly heroic tale in a debacle (“Mountie thanked by PM, brass told”, by Tim Harper, November 24, 1995, Toronto Star):
“An RCMP corporal facing dismissal from the force was personally thanked by Jean Chretien for thwarting a potential attack on the Prime Minister and his wife earlier this month, according to information provided to his superiors.
The information was given to RCMP Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell by Staff-Sergeant Joe Brennan yesterday. It was contained in a written submission in an attempt to have the corporal’s suspension lifted.
…
According to Brennan’s investigation, the corporal was in charge of three security operations that night - 24 Sussex, the Governor-General’s residence and the Prime Minister 's summer home at Harrington Lake, Que.
He was at the Governor-General’s when alerted to the break-in. The staff association says he entered the premises and made the arrest without waiting for back-up.
The staff association alleges the four senior officers erred that night and none came to the scene to take charge.”
How low and how sad had the RCMP sunk to in this saga: a Corporal, ranked just above Constables, was put in charge of protecting all head-of-state and head-of-government official residences; and when the intrusion occurred he had to go from one place to another, enter an unfamiliar place and make the arrest, while the special and regular constables under him didn’t follow and his superiors wouldn’t bother to show up.
Enough for Prime Minister Jean Chretien. But a real story, a fact given by RCMP spokesman Insp. Jean St-Cyr, was tucked away at the bottom of one news article and ignored by other media venues – the reassignment of Chief Superintendent Al Rivard the day after the intrusion, which St-Cyr said was unrelated (“RCMP admits bungling security; Possible assassin gains easy entry”, by Paul Koring, November 7, 1995, The Globe and Mail):
“There are two details involved with protecting the Prime Minister, and RCMP sources said there is close liaison and co-ordination between them.
However, Sunday’s incident involved only one of the units. The detachment shared by the Prime Minister and Governor-General is responsible for “the two official residences and their occupants,” Insp. St-Cyr said.
Ultimately, both that detachment and the Prime Minister’s travelling personal-security unit report to the officer in charge of protective operations.
Chief Superintendent Al Rivard held that post until last weekend. He began a new job yesterday, although the move had nothing to do with Sunday’s incident. Supt. Marcel Groulx, the new officer in charge, assumed that post in an acting capacity yesterday.”
So both Chretien’s residence security and travel security, though manned by different RCMP units, had been under the command of Chief Superintendent Al Rivard, whose immediate transfer “had nothing to do with Sunday’s incident”.
Well, while Capital Ottawa residents were no doubt stunned by what happened so close to the Chretiens, I wonder how many were aware that the security of all top government officials and diplomats had been C/Supt. Al Rivard’s responsibility, and a few months earlier when a homemade bomb had made it into a government office tower, Rivard admitted he was in the dark (“1,800 civil servants flee bomb”, May 25, 1995, Toronto Star):
“Questions about security in federal buildings were raised yesterday after a homemade bomb was smuggled into a Department of Indian Affairs office Tuesday.
Nearly 1,800 bureaucrats were forced to flee their desks around 4 p.m. after a man carried the bomb to the ninth floor of the 28-storey tower.
There were no injuries as a result of a controlled explosion of the device by defence department bomb experts and only minor damage to the offices.
Indian Affairs Minister Ron Irwin, whose office is on the 21st floor, was not in the building at the time.
Police later arrested a man from Kuujjuaq, Que., and charged him with illegal possession and use of explosives and mischief.
Pierre Claude Dufresne, 41, entered no plea in a Hull courtroom yesterday and was remanded in custody.
…
Sergeant Yves Martel of Hull police said federal security is generally the responsibility of the RCMP and security branches of individual departments.
…
Several RCMP officers - including a senior officer in charge of protecting the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers and diplomats - were surprised to learn of the attack.
“If I’m not informed, I can’t comment on that,” said Chief Superintendent Al Rivard, commander of the protective operations branch of the RCMP.”
Why Al Rivard had been given that job looks like a mystery given a grave failure in his past record that people in the province of New Brunswick probably all knew. In New Brunswick in 1989, then Superintendent Rivard leading over 100 officers took 7 months to capture escaped killer Allan Legere who was hiding near them in the woods of the Miramichi region, and Legere killed 4 more people during that time and later taunted Rivard in a letter to the media (“Legere says he was never far from police while on the run”, December 10, 1989, Toronto Star):
“Convicted killer Allan Legere - a suspect in four brutal murders - boasts he was never farther than a shout away from police during his seven months as a fugitive.
“All it would take is one good sweep of the forest,” Legere claims in an eight-page handwritten letter sent from his prison cell in Renous, N.B.
“Honestly I sincerely believe all those . . . fellows on the SWAT team and Newcastle forces do watch too much TV and are too preoccupied with fancy rifles and the cool look.”
The letter, which Legere calls “an exclusive report on my comings and goings,” was mailed to The Saint John Telegraph-Journal this week. In it, Legere, 41, makes many claims and says he followed most of the media coverage since his May “departure.”
Legere, who escaped from a Moncton, N.B., hospital in May, was recaptured two weeks ago after one of the biggest manhunts in Canadian history. …
…
In the seven months that followed Legere’s escape, fear and terror grew along the Miramichi River and many residents took to sleeping with firearms at their bedside.
A native of the area, Legere quickly became a prime suspect in four murders that occurred while he was at large. An elderly storeowner, two sisters and a priest were viciously beaten.
In his letter, Legere shows just how closely he followed the news by refuting claims about him and mocking police comments.
“I’ve noticed that RCMP Rivard calls me chicken, etc.,” Legere wrote, referring to comments by Superintendent Al Rivard. “But do tell me, if I am so chicken and dumb, why couldn’t over 100 of Canada’s finest, with dogs, and SWAT teams find little ol’ moi? Hmmmm? . . . They are not the Sergeant Prestons of bygone years.””
The incompetent RCMP force under Al Rivard were no “Sergeant Prestons of the bygone years”, and 4 people were murdered in this 7 months in 1989, including elderly Catholic priest Rev. James Smith, beaten to death in November; then, RCMP took another year until November 1990 to file charges against Legere, due to the slowness of DNA tests according to Supt. Rivard (“'The terror' still hangs over Miramichi”, by Chris Morris, November 20, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
“A year ago, many residents were paralysed with fear and revulsion after the beating death of an elderly Catholic priest in nearby Chatham Head.
There was a memorial service Monday for Rev. James Smith, the 69-year-old parish priest whose body was found in the church rectory Nov. 16, 1989. He had been savagely beaten to death.
…
Police consider Legere the prime suspect in the Miramichi killings. Today he was charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Annie Flam, on May 28, in Chatham; sisters Donna and Linda Daughney, on Oct. 13 in Newcastle; and Smith, on Nov. 15.
…
The RCMP, which held a news conference today to announce the Legere charges, are expected to introduce DNA fingerprinting evidence, a forensic technique that identifies genetic material in human matter such as hair, fingernails and skin. Scientists believe each person's genetic material is unique.
“The testing itself, because it’s a new procedure, every one was doing it meticulously and the testing itself is a very long process,” said RCMP Supt. Al Rivard in explaining why it took so long to lay charges.”
Chief Superintendent Al Rivard had been a glaring hole in security, a human-safety disaster waiting to happen. Luckily in Canada’s capital in November 1995, it got to the very top without bloodshed – unlike what happened to Yitzhak Rabin in Israel.
At the Prime Minister’s residence the security hole was in the back of the house ground, a fact the RCMP knew since escaped killer Allan Legere’s era: Andre Dallaire likely entered the ground from there, a scenario alerted to in a 1989 RCMP report and in 1995 after a July 28 incident when a man “wandered onto” the ground from the back (“Report cited security flaws before Chretien break-in: The area behind 24 Sussex Drive lacked closed circuit TV cameras, creating a blind spot, an unnamed officer reported”, by Jim Bronskill, December 20, 1995, The Vancouver Sun).
Security holes also existed in the systemic ‘acting up’ manner of the RCMP senior officers, not just Al Rivard, shown the night of the Dallaire intrusion (“Break-in probe reaches RCMP brass; One senior officer already suspended, sources say”, by Tim Harper, November 17, 1995, Toronto Star):
“The sources told The Star that one member of a senior management quartet, Inspector Jean Dube, has already been suspended.
But the sources say the probe could be extended to include Chief Superintendent Al Rivard; McConnell, the commanding officer of the RCMP’s A Division; and an unnamed superintendent in charge of Chretien’s bodyguards.
All must bear some responsibility for the snafu that night, the source said, for not taking charge at 24 Sussex but instead going to RCMP headquarters.
Dube is the easiest target because he is the lowest-ranking among the four senior officers.
…
McConnell, as the ranking officer, should have told his subordinate Rivard to get to Sussex Dr. as quickly as possible the night of the break-in, sources say.
Instead, he called to the site and reported Dube was on his way.
But Dube was at least two hours away - even though he was supposed to be within easy response time of 24 Sussex Dr.
Rivard received a call at 3:30 a.m. after the suspect was arrested. He was expected to be at 24 Sussex and call bodyguards to the site to have the Chretiens escorted from the home, sources said.
He stayed at headquarters instead.
“Security had been breached,” a source said. “It’s basic. You don’t leave VIPs on unsecured premises.
“Who knew if there were other people on the grounds? Who knew if a bomb had been planted? That’s one of the first things they teach you at VIP protection.”
The suspended officers on the site were not authorized to escort the Chretiens.
Another source said unless proper disciplinary action is taken against the four senior officials, junior officers will rebel. Any attempt to simply penalize those on site will severely damage force morale, he said.”
Rivard’s spotty record in New Brunswick could be a reason McConnell didn’t call him but the more junior Jean Dube, when told of the intrusion. Dube was 2 hours away while on call, and Rivard when notified afterwards went to the headquarters instead, and so the Chretiens’ security wasn’t immediately beefed up.
But why didn’t McConnell attend the scene himself then?
He went to the RCMP headquarters “to oversee damage control”. In the year-end “Who’s hot, Who’s not” in Canada in 1995, The Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau staff chose Aline Chretien as “really hot”, and “Brian McConnell” as “cold” (“Here's looking at who’s hot, who’s not; Brian Tobin, who raised up turbots by their fingernails; ticked off taxpayers; the humbled Montreal Canadiens; a feisty British Columbia: These are among the year’s newsmakers as compiled by The Globe and Mail’s Ottawa bureau staff”, December 30, 1995, The Globe and Mail):
“Really hot - Aline Chretien, who remains calm and collected, locking doors and phoning police.
Cold - RCMP Assistant Commissioner Brian McConnell, who as head of A Division is responsible for 24 Sussex Dr. security, went to RCMP headquarters to oversee damage control rather than to the Prime Minister's residence to oversee security.”
These senior officers had better be sure nothing worse could happen to the Chretiens.
On the day after the intrusion, A/Comm. McConnell seemed very matter-of-fact in explaining the RCMP response (“RCMP admit delay in response; Officers secured house before heading for Chretiens’ room”, by Shawn McCarthy, November 7, 1995, Toronto Star):
“Responding to a reporter’s suggestion that the Chretiens could have been murdered, McConnell seemed to downplay the danger.
“The individual was in the house; there’s no question about that. The individual was armed, the individual did not attempt to get into the private quarters,” he said.”
Rational calculations of a veteran cop deciding whether to pull the trigger, whoever it was to protect, or it seemed.
But to suggest, as in Tim Harper’s November 17 news report quoted earlier, that RCMP junior ranks would rebel if the senior officers were not disciplined, was overstating it – rebellion unlikely as the Prime Minister victim himself quickly expressed satisfaction after a few RCMP security upgrades and duty reassignments.
So much for RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray’s saying, “We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
Later in June 1996 Andre Dallaire was found guilty of attempted murder but declared not criminally responsible due to “Paranoid Schizophrenia”, and Chretien told the media he was satisfied with the outcome (“No jail time for intruder who wanted to kill Chretien”, by Leonard Stern, June 29, 1996, and, “Chretien satisfied with verdict on break-in”, June 30, 1996, Edmonton Journal).
By the spring of 1998 Dallaire had become a neighbor of the Chretiens, living in a house a few blocks away, and it was fine with RCMP (“Sussex Drive intruder now PM’s neighbor”, April 18, 1998, Star – Phoenix):
““We don’t see any more problems with Mr. Dallaire,” said Sgt. Andre Guertin, adding that Dallaire understands he cannot come within 500 metres of the prime minister.”
What a lucky “good-looking guy”, at around my age when I was arrested at CBC Vancouver in January 1993 and falsely labelled as having the same mental illness, as in Part 7.
On November 19, 1995 when Chretien ruled out a public inquiry he was to return home after overseas visits beginning with Rabin’s funeral. The Chretiens’ scare was dropping off most top news, which on November 13 had begun to focus on the Airbus Affair stories.
As earlier, in March 1995 Der Speigel magazine and CBC The Fifth Estate had reported that German tax inspectors were looking into the multimillion-dollar Airbus commissions for Air Canada’s 1988 purchase of Airbus planes, paid by the Airbus company to the Liechtenstein company International Aircraft Leasing Ltd. reportedly owned by Karlheinz Schreiber, who allegedly funnelled the money to Canada and whose lobbying for Airbus had involved then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s friend, former Newfoundland Premier Frank Moores and his company Government Consultants International; both Schreiber and Moores had bank accounts at the Swiss Bank Corp.
In the weekend of November 11-12, amid the Canadian media frenzies on Chretien residence break-in, French and Swiss media reported that the Swiss justice system was investigating alleged Airbus bribes funnelled into Swiss bank accounts, that unnamed Canadian political leaders received large commissions; RCMP confirmed it was evaluating “certain allegations” and had asked the Swiss for help, but wouldn’t give details until Tuesday (“RCMP evaluates bribery allegations on Airbus sales”, November 13, 1995, The Vancouver Sun):
“An RCMP official said late Sunday the force is evaluating “certain allegations” concerning an Air Canada contract with Airbus and that the Swiss have been asked to help.
The official said there would be no further comment from the force until Tuesday. The statement comes after news of the Swiss end of the
investigation surfaced in Europe.The French news service Agence France-Press said Saturday the Swiss justice system had opened an investigation into alleged bribes funnelled into Swiss bank accounts during a sale of Airbus aircraft to Canadian companies.
Its report cited an official for the federal justice and police department in Switzerland who would not give further details.
However, the news service said the Swiss TV network DSR reported that unnamed Canadian political leaders received large commissions.
A front company consisting of a post office box in Liechtenstein served as a go-between during the aircraft sale and received a commission of about $20 million, the network said.
The TV report said Canadian authorities suspect part of that money went into numbered Swiss bank accounts for Canadian politicians.”
The European reports were confirmed on November 13 by Swiss police spokesman Folco Galli and Swiss justice department spokesman Peter Lehmann, that Switzerland had received a September 29 request from Canada to look into certain Swiss bank accounts (“Swiss account freeze sought: Canada seeks banks’ help in alleged bribes in Airbus sale; AIRBUS: Canada asks Swiss to put freeze on bank accounts”, by Carolyn Abraham, November 14, 1995, The Vancouver Sun):
“Folco Galli, speaking for Switzerland's Federal Office for Police Matters, confirmed Monday that Canadian authorities sent a formal request for help in the matter Sept. 29.
Galli said Canadian authorities alleged that “the money that has maybe been paid in this affair is in a Swiss bank account.”
A recent Swiss television report said Swiss authorities were investigating alleged pay-offs to Canadian politicians ensuring the sale of Airbus aircraft to Canada.
Galli said: “The request was that {Canada} was interested in certain bank documents and accounts.” He added that the matter could involve more than one bank in Zurich.
Galli could not say if any accounts had been frozen as a result.
Peter Lehmann, speaking for Switzerland’s attorney-general, said Swiss authorities have agreed to help and “do the necessary things.”
“We have taken a few steps in this, but I cannot say what we did,” Lehmann said.
He said Switzerland’s role is continuing, but that Swiss officials “are not the judges for the Canadian authorities.””
Frank Moores immediately denied everything (“Airbus bribe claims just ‘nonsense’: ex-lobbyist”, by Edison Stewart, November 14, 1995, Toronto Star):
“Former lobbyist and Air Canada director Frank Moores says allegations of bribery involving the sale of Airbus jets to the airline are “total nonsense.”
“There is not a darn thing that I can say at this time except to say what I've said for - what? two or three years now - that is, that it is totally inaccurate,” he said in a telephone interview from Florida.
Moores, appointed to the airline’s board by friend Brian Mulroney, said yesterday he had no relationship to Airbus – “none whatsoever.”
“I’ve already got a lawyer working on it and I am not in a position to comment on any of this right now because as far as I'm concerned it's total nonsense.””
On Tuesday, November 14, the lone RCMP investigator on the case, Sergeant Fraser Fiegenwald, did a media interview, stating he merely started with information from media reports; former senior officers Tim Quigley and Rod Stamler and former Commissioner Norman Inkster all confirmed RCMP had looked at allegations in 1989 but gave conflicting assessments of the seriousness; Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps confirmed a continuing RCMP investigation (“AIRBUS INVESTIGATION: RCMP revive bribery investigation six years after hearing allegations”, by Jim Brown, November 15, 1995, The Ottawa Citizen):
““There’s a difference between information and evidence,” Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald, the only police officer now on the case, said Tuesday. “We have to determine whether the allegations (reported by the media) are appropriate and whether they’re based on fact.”
There have long been questions about the role of lobbyists and Conservative politicians in the 1988 deal that saw Air Canada buy 34 A320 medium range jets from Airbus Industrie, a consortium of French, German and other interests.
Fiegenwald got on the trail after reports in March -- by the German news magazine Der Spiegel and the CBC-TV current affairs program Fifth Estate -- suggested Airbus may have paid secret commissions to Canadians to facilitate the sale.
Authorities in Switzerland disclosed this week the RCMP have asked them for help, including a request to freeze any bank accounts linked to the deal.
That suggested the investigation had moved to a new and more serious stage. But Fiegenwald remains cautious. “What we’ve asked them to do is to verify the information that's already been in the media,” he said. “They’ve been very co-operative and I’m sure they’ll give us a speedy response. They know how important it is to us.”
…
The RCMP first looked into the Airbus sale in 1989.
“I wouldn’t even go so far as to call it an investigation,” said Supt. Tim Quigley, who handled that review. “It didn’t develop into anything substantive at all.”
Quigley, then an inspector in the elite squad that investigated political corruption, already had his hands full with other matters.
He described Airbus as “one of those things on the back burner and it just never got much of a priority.”
Rod Stamler, former head of economic crime for the RCMP, has suggested the force caved into pressure from Mulroney’s government in not pursuing Airbus and other politically loaded cases.
Stamler notes that after he left the force in 1989, the anti-corruption squad was revamped and its former personnel scattered: “They never continued the investigations of any kind.”
His criticism strikes a nerve with Norman Inkster, the RCMP commissioner at the time and a frequent target of Stamler's barbs. “There was never, ever, on any front, any political pressure,” says Inkster. “Any allegations to the contrary are highly improper.”
…
Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps says simply: “The investigation will continue and hopefully at the end we’ll have some answers.””
Mulroney’s successor Kim Campbell had said Stevie Cameron’s book was “very interesting”, as earlier; now her successor, Progressive Conservative party leader Jean Charest, stated on November 14 he’s focused on the future, but admitted that the devastating 1993 election defeat leaving his party with only 2 MPs was “the opportunity for Canadians to voice their views on their party” (“Airbus shouldn’t hurt Tories, Charest says: Bribery allegations? It's news to me, he declares, determined to forge ahead to rebuild party”, by Jack Danylchuk, November 15, 1995, The Gazette):
“Charest, a junior cabinet minister in the Tory government at the time, said he knows nothing of a deal that is alleged to have seen secret commissions paid on the $1.8-billion sale of the jets to Air Canada.
“I think people will look at us in light of how we have behaved since 1993,” said Charest, who was praised for his effort on the No side during the referendum campaign.
“That was the opportunity for Canadians to voice their views on their party and they did that.”
Charest was in Edmonton for a fundraising dinner and to outline the party’s efforts to rise from the ruins of the crushing defeat in 1993 that left it with only two seats in Parliament.
“We're focused on the future; I can’t do anything about what happened in the past. People will judge us on our actions, the referendum campaign being one of the episodes where people can judge what we have to offer the country.””
The current Tory leader decided not to stand by Brian Mulroney’s legacies.
On that same day of November 14, 1995, there was a new record item in my RCMP file, an Occurrence Report – General form created at the “E” Division Civil Litigation Unit handling RCMP defence for my lawsuit.
What is interesting about this 1-page form that contains no detail is that it was not for any new occurrence of incidents, but for a complaint by me about the RCMP, as it categorized me as “COM [Complainant]” and RCMP as “Oth [Other]”.
I had filed only two complaints about the RCMP. The first was at the RCMP Public Complaints Commission in early September 1992, then withdrawn in late September due to pressure from RCMP investigator Staff Sergeant M. M. Ukrainetz, as in Part 5, but I was about to file a lawsuit.
The second complaint was my press releases and cover note faxed to local MP Kim Campbell on November 30, 1992, on my lawsuit as well as criticisms of then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s leadership conduct; as mentioned earlier, my note contained the allegation, “a political persecution ordered by the PM was underway”. It found its way to then Solicitor General Doug Lewis and was forwarded by Assistant Commissioner J. W. B. McConnell, RCMP Director of Enforcement Services, to RCMP “E” Division in early January 1993, as a complaint about RCMP eviction of me from my former UBC office on July 2, 1992, as in Part 6.
The RCMP form prepared on November 14, 1995, initially had the “Reported” date as “92-09-03”, meaning for my first complaint, but was then changed to the current date of “95-11-14”, probably upon realization that my first complaint had been withdrawn.
For whatever reason, the date didn’t change to the time of my second complaint or when it was forwarded to RCMP, i.e., in the period November 30, 1992-January 1993.
If I take it literally, this new RCMP form marked my complaint as reported on the same day when RCMP went public with its Airbus Affairs investigation – pretentious, am I not?
The only real content in this form is a brief statement in the “Details/Action” section:
“REQUEST FOR LEGAL COUNSEL. X-REF
92E-11918 FOR BULK OF PAPER WORK”
As in Part 6, in January 1993 RCMP “E” Division C/Supt. P. M. Cummins had sent a memo to C/Supt. M. K. M. Clegg whose supervision included civil litigation, to suggest that with my lawsuit pending my (second) complaint be consolidated by the Civil Litigation Unit, i.e., there be no separate internal investigation; accordingly, C/Supt. Clegg sent a letter dated January 29 – it happened to be my birthday – to RCMP Director of Enforcement Services to reply that there was a “continuing [legal] action” in place.
But now this new “bulk of paper work” referred to on November 14, 1995, seemed to indicate a change of mind on the part of RCMP, that some work was now done for a complaint by me – enough for the investigator to request “legal counsel” to reference it.
The other intriguing fact in this seemingly mundane RCMP form is the surnames of both the investigator, “Rischmueller”, and the signer, Constable “Neustaedter”, distinctively German and uncommon in Canada.
This came on the day of RCMP’s first media interview for its Airbus Affair criminal investigation concerning Brian Mulroney and German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber, where the lone RCMP investigator’s surname, Fiegenwald, was of German heritage also.
I have described in Part 10, how totally unexpected my father’s death on August 10, 2005 was to me – I did not get to visit him at the hospital in China – and how shocked I was later to come to realize that it was on the 10-year anniversary of B.C. Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic’s Closing Summary, which referred to a letter the Clinic’s Dr. Clifford Kerr had written for my mother, and which ended the open forensic psychiatric oppression against me since my January 1993 arrest at CBC Vancouver for trying to get a TV interview, as in Part 7, over then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s misconduct in handling the cancer situation of then Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa.
But my father had a long history of heart problems – as in Part 6 when on November 30, 1992 I was taken by RCMP to UBC Hospital for my first psychiatric committal, my father was in hospitalization in China for his heart.
Not so for my brother-in-law Yuzhuo Li, beloved husband of my sister Ning, mentioned in an April 7, 1995 letter from my mother to Raymond Chan, then MP for Richmond, B.C. and Canadian Secretary of State for the Asia Pacific, as in Part 10. In 1995 Yuzhuo was a professor at Clarkson University in New York state, and he went on to become an accomplished academic and leading research scientist (“Memorial fund established at Clarkson to honor Dr. Yuzhuo Li”, May 22, 2013, Daily Courier-Observer):
“A consummate researcher, Li was a leading expert in the area of chemical mechanical planarization (CMP). He was on extended leave from Clarkson serving as head of research & development for CMP, Global Business Electronic Materials at BASF, Ludwigshafen, Germany, from 2008 to 2010, and then as head of research & development for the entire Global Business Electronic Materials division at BASF from 2010 until his untimely passing in November 2012.”
As indicated in the above local news in Potsdam, NY, Yuzhuo died young last November.
He was 54. Shocking already that a talented scientist looking healthy could suddenly die at a prime age, even more so is that it took place on November 14 in Germany, as I recalled in a February 2013 blog post (“Guinevere and Lancelot – a metaphor of comedy or tragedy, without Shakespeare but with shocking ends to wonderful lives (Part 2)”):
“For over 24 years after receiving his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1988, Yuzhuo excelled as an academic and scientist, primarily mentoring students and researchers at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, and for the last nearly 5 years also leading research and development in Electronic Materials at the world’s largest chemical company, BASF in Germany.
Yuzhuo’s diligent and productive life was recently cut short, unexpectedly and sadly, by a sudden illness on November 14, 2012 – a coma he couldn’t get out of, I was told.”
Truly shocking is that my brother-in-law, an academic scientist recruited to work as an R&D leader in a world-leading German company, in his prime suddenly died there on the 17th anniversary of an RCMP form reviving my complaint against RCMP, prepared by 2 Canadian officers of German heritage on the day in 1995 when RCMP officially went public with its Airbus Affair criminal investigation.
Unfortunately, I have been unable to find out from RCMP, despite attempts based on personal-information access laws, what was in the “bulk of paper work” referred to in the RCMP form.
On November 14, 1995, the RCMP did not say if Mulroney was named in the September 29 Justice Department letter to the Swiss Authorities. That information came a few days later on November 18 when The Financial Post reporter Philip Mathias quoted from the letter (“Justice seeks evidence on Mulroney, Moores: Mulroney denies any connection with alleged payoffs over $1.8-billion Airbus deal”, by Philip Mathias, The Financial Post):
“In letters rogatory sent to Switzerland on Sept. 29, Justice Department senior counsel Kimberly Prost indicates Brian Mulroney received secret commissions from European manufacturers that did business with the government while he was in office.
The letter names French aircraft manufacturer Airbus Industrie SA and German arms manufacturer Thyssen AG. It concludes that there was a “persistent plot/conspiracy by Mr. Mulroney [and others] … who defrauded the Canadian government in the amount of millions of dollars.”
The Justice Department sent the 13-page demand to Switzerland, written in German, at the request of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”
A “persistent plot/conspiracy by Mr. Mulroney” – serious accusations.
But according to Mathias, the letter contained no evidence against Mulroney other than what was in the CBC Fifth Estate broadcast in March, which hadn’t named Mulroney or provided evidence of Airbus commissions going into the alleged Swiss bank accounts:
“…
The Justice document says the Devon account was set up “to direct a part of these amounts to Mr. Mulroney.” But no evidence is offered.
The Justice Department says incorrectly: “The CBC report made a connection between Mr. Mulroney and these [alleged Airbus] payments.” In fact, the CBC didn’t identify Mulroney.
…
The Fifth Estate report declared: “We found no evidence that anybody with decision-making power received payments.” It also said: “Fifth Estate has no evidence any commissions were ever paid into the [Moores] accounts …” The program concluded with the words: “Where all the money ended up is still a mystery.””
The truth appeared to be in the possession of the ‘paymaster’, Karlheinz Schreiber, who wanted to block the investigation:
“It could be months before the RCMP obtains any information from the accounts (if, indeed, they ever do). The reason is that Schreiber has started legal proceedings in Switzerland to prevent information from being disclosed.
One of Schreiber’s lawyers said in an interview that his client felt it was “improper” that any of his business affairs unrelated to the Airbus matter should become public through the Canadian request.
In response to Schreiber’s move, the Swiss government has sealed the three accounts. A Swiss federal prosecutor has been appointed to determine whether the RCMP’s “evidence” justifies opening the bank accounts under Swiss law. …”
Mathias also reported that during the Mulroney era RCMP had investigated Air Canada officials but found nothing:
“… The original decision to buy the A320 aircraft came from Air Canada, and went up to cabinet for approval. Under the Mulroney government the RCMP mounted a lengthy investigation of senior Air Canada officials that led to nowhere.”
Brian Mulroney issued a formal statement which, if anyone noticed, didn’t deny he might have received Airbus money, stating that he didn’t have a hand in the Airbus-Air Canada deal (“No influence on decision: Mulroney”, November 14, 1995, The Financial Post):
“An adviser to Brian Mulroney gave The Financial Post the following statement on Mulroney’s behalf:
Mr. Mulroney states unequivocally that he did not in any way influence or try to influence Air Canada’s decision to purchase aircraft made by Airbus, a fact which has been repeatedly and publicly confirmed by Air Canada senior officers. Nor was he ever a party to any agreement to influence this decision or to receive any consideration directly or indirectly for so doing. Mr. Mulroney states categorically that he does not now have, nor did he ever have directly or indirectly a bank account in any foreign country. Furthermore no one now has, nor did anyone ever have, such an account on his behalf.”
As I understand it, Mulroney only said that he never influenced or been in an agreement to influence Air Canada to buy Airbus planes or to receive money for doing so.
In fact, when I first read it – a year or two before the so-called Mulroney-Schreiber Affair mentioned in Part 1 – I said to myself, “Look, Mulroney didn’t deny receiving Airbus money, just not money for helping Airbus as the prime minister.”
Unknown to the public until Stevie Cameron’s 1998 book, Blue Trust: The Author, the Lawyer, His Wife and Her Money, was the fact that before his August 1993 death Bruce Verchere, a director of the Swiss Bank Corp. where Schreiber and Moores had bank accounts, was Mulroney’s tax lawyer and financial trustee, as in Part 5. Nonetheless, as quoted earlier Swiss police spokesman Folco Galli indicated more than one bank could be in the investigation.
But by 2007-08 due to Schreiber’s revelation that Mulroney had received $300,000 cash from him (Mulroney said it was only $225,000) shortly after stepping down as Prime Minister, the matter was labelled the “Mulroney-Schreiber Affair”, i.e., some sort of going-on between the two only; as in Part 1, then University of Waterloo President David Johnston – now Governor General of Canada – recommended to Prime Minister Stephen Harper not to include in a public inquiry the Airbus Affair that RCMP had already investigated.
I commented in February 2009 (“The myth of political vendetta … and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 1)”):
“Prime Minister Harper then turned to an academic, Dr. David Johnston, president of the University of Waterloo, to advise him what to do while the parliamentary ethics committee hearings featuring Schreiber, Mulroney, Mulroney’s long-time aide Fred Doucet and others were under way; Dr. Johnston reported back that there should be a limited public inquiry based on Karlheinz Schreiber’s allegations about Brian Mulroney, but that there is no necessity to include the Airbus Affair in the scope of the public inquiry because the RCMP had spent years conducing a criminal investigation into that, found “insufficient evidence” and closed its file; Dr. Johnston referred to the Airbus Affair as “this well-tilled ground”.”
The RCMP did close the Airbus Affair investigation in 2003, but in 2007 admitted they had learned about the $300,000 but couldn’t verify it, as in the above blog post:
“… the RCMP announced that the agency long ago during its Airbus Affair investigation had learned of allegations about the $300,000, but could not confirm it or find out what it had been for and decided to let it go when closing the Airbus Affair investigation file in April 2003; the agency has promised to look into it now.”
Like with the Chretien residence break-in, the RCMP was either incompetent or ‘acting up’.
Forensic accountant Steve Whitla of Navigant Consulting testified at the 2009 public inquiry that the $300,000 was likely from Airbus commissions (“Airbus funds likely source of Schreiber’s ‘Britan’ account: witness”, May 6, 2009, CBC News):
“A forensic accountant called in to investigate the business dealings between Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber testified Wednesday that there’s a “strong inference” the money alleged to have been paid to the former prime minister came from Airbus funds.
Steven Whitla, an accountant with Navigant Consulting, said the account known as Britan, which Schreiber has claimed he used to pay Mulroney $300,000 in cash payments, was funded by a Frankfurt account.
In regard to the source of funds for the Frankfurt account, Whitla said: “Our analysis of the facts support a strong inference that the original source of monies withdrawn by Mr. Schreiber from the ‘Britan’ account came in large part from funds received from Airbus.””
Norman Inkster, former RCMP Commissioner under Brian Mulroney, including becoming Interpol president as in Parts 5 & 9, had been a Navigant Consulting managing director, active in Transparency International Canada’s lobbying for a public inquiry on the Mulroney-Schreiber Affair (“The Anatomy of Corruption in Canada”, Newsletter Vol. 12, No. 1, May 2008, Transparency International Canada).
Also in the TI Canada anti-corruption drive was lawyer Milos Barutciski of the law firm Bennett Jones (“"The Anatomy of Corruption in Canada: Its Causes and Prevention" and Eleventh Annual General Meeting, June 12, 2008”, May 5, 2008, Transparency International Canada) – as in Part 5 Bennett Jones Verchere when then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s financial trustee and tax lawyer Bruce Verchere was alive.
TI Canada asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper for an investigation “to get to the bottom of these allegations” (Letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, December 21, 2007, Transparency International Canada):
“TI-Canada is of the opinion that the Parliamentary House Ethics Committee was not the appropriate forum to properly and fully deal with these allegations. It had neither the ability, the resources nor the time to properly question Mr. Mulroney or Mr. Schreiber and to get to the bottom of these allegations. We strongly encourage the Government to urgently take full action to investigate these allegations, including a public inquiry if necessary. … And if there is a shred of evidence that these allegations are true and the law of Canada has been broken, then they must be quickly prosecuted in order to restore the public’s faith in a corruption-free government.”
But Inkster, previously also a Gowlings Consulting partner, was appointed by Harper as Chair of Advisory Council on National Security in November 2007, and I guess that was it (“Prime Minister announces appointments to the Advisory Council on National Security”, November 1, 2007, Prime Minister of Canada; “"The Anatomy of Corruption in Canada: Its Causes and Prevention" and Eleventh Annual General Meeting, June 12, 2008”, updated, May 20, 2008, and, “What Was New in 2008”, Transparency International Canada).
In the September 29, 1995 Kimberly Prost letter, Mulroney was accused of “criminal activity” and “conspiracy”, but RCMP provided no concrete evidence, only asking the Swiss to help find it in Switzerland.
The Canadian government didn’t disclose contents of the letter, however The Financial Post’s quoting from it let Mulroney take the public-relations offensive and sue the government and RCMP for $50 million in damages (“Mulroney filing suit against feds, RCMP - Former prime minister will”, November 19, 1995, Times – Colonist):
““Any fair-minded person who knows what happened here will easily see that the rights of Mr. Mulroney and of his family have been gravely violated,” lawyer Harvey Yarosky told a news conference Saturday.
…
Mulroney is seeking $25 million in damages to his reputation and $25 million in punitive damages, said lawyer Gerald Tremblay. Any award for punitive damages will be given to charity, he added.
…
Yarosky said the allegations are ungrounded. “Mr. Mulroney categorically and unequivocally states that he had absolutely nothing to do with Air Canada’s decision to buy Airbus, nor did he receive a cent from anyone. He was simply not part of any conspiracy whatsoever.”
Another lawyer, Roger Tasse - a former deputy justice minister in Ottawa - said the Justice Department and RCMP even refused to listen to Mulroney’s side of the story when he offered to co-operate with them.
The defendants named in the lawsuit are the government of Canada; RCMP Commissioner Phil Murray; Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald, the RCMP investigating officer; and Kimberly Prost, the Justice Department lawyer who sent the documents to Switzerland. …
The lawyers said Mulroney’s reputation, which is much better abroad than it is at home, has already been affected and that he has received several calls from around the world.
Mulroney practises law in Montreal and sits on the board of directors of some multinational corporations.”
I note that Mulroney lawyer Harvey Yarosky’s denial was more absolute than Mulroney’s press statement.
Mulroney hired prominent lawyers, including former deputy justice minister Roger Tasse and former Quebec Court of Appeal justice Fred Kaufman, to fight the libel battle against accusation of $5 million in Airbus kickbacks to him, among others (“Probe of former PM looks at more firms; Mulroney files $50-million suit”, by Rod MacDonell, November 21, 1995, The Gazette):
“The RCMP are investigating Brian Mulroney not only for possible kickbacks from the 1988 Airbus purchase but also for suspected payments from two
German military suppliers.RCMP documents referred to by Mulroney in his unprecedented $50-million libel suit launched yesterday against the federal government also suggest
that the former prime minister might have been paid as much as $5 million in the purchase of 34 Airbus jets by Air Canada for $1.8 billion.The documents also revealed other allegations, one arising from Ottawa’s 1986 purchase of 12 Coast Guard helicopters from the firm Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm for $26 million.
The other, involving the firm Thyssen Industries, arose from the anticipated construction of a facility to manufacture military vehicles in Nova Scotia.
The project never came to fruition.Mulroney, through his lawyers and public-relations consultant Luc Lavoie, has insisted frequently since allegations first surfaced on Saturday that all
suggestions of wrongdoing are false.…
Mulroney has assembled a top-calibre team of lawyers to argue his case. The team includes Harvey Yarosky, one of Canada’s top criminal lawyers; Gerald Tremblay, one of the province’s top civil litigators; Fred Kaufman, a criminal-law expert and former justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal; Roger Tasse, a former federal deputy justice minister; and Jacques Jeansonne, a partner of Tremblay.”
News reports I can find on Mulroney lawsuit filing in November 1995 focused on his lawyers’ prominent political backgrounds. But as in Part 6, Gerald Tremblay was the lawyer for a publication-ban effort in the Diane Wilhelmy Affair – during the Charlottetown referendum campaign in September-October 1992 – critical of then Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa as well as Stevie Cameron’s husband David Cameron, and was with McCarthy Tetrault, the former law firm of B.C. Supreme Court Justice Pamela Kirkpatrick who cooperated with RCMP to start psychiatric oppression against me in November 1992.
Government ministers denied prior knowledge of the Justice Department letter:
“Senior Tories alleged that Liberal politicians named Mulroney as a suspect in the investigation for partisan purposes.
Justice Minister Allan Rock called those claims “absolute nonsense.”
“This request (to Swiss authorities for information about Mulroney) was carried out entirely in accordance with standard practice,” Rock said. “It was done by a police force requesting the department to go to a foreign government for information.
“I had no involvement. Indeed I had no knowledge. And that’s the way it should be.”
Solicitor-General Herb Gray also denied ministerial involvement in the police investigation.
“I was not advised by the RCMP that Mr. Mulroney was being named in the letter sent by justice to the Swiss authorities,” he said, adding: “I do not think that I should have been.””
In Osaka, Japan, where as cited earlier he said no to a public inquiry for the intrusion at his residence, Prime Minister Jean Chretien also said he knew nothing about RCMP investigating Mulroney (“Mulroney to sue Ottawa over ‘false’ bribe claim”, by Sandro Contenta, November 19, 1995, Toronto Star):
“Prime Minister Jean Chretien, in Osaka, Japan, last night denied knowing about the justice department investigation.
Chretien told The Star’s David Vienneau there is no rule that he be advised if a former prime minister is being investigated for alleged wrongdoing.
“I am not aware of anything,” Chretien told reporters at the annual meeting of Pacific Rim nations yesterday. “It is a police investigation. They do their job and they don’t send me any information and I'm not requesting information.””
Chretien’s statements in Osaka on these two matters were not even the original timing coincidence of the November 5 intrusion and Mulroney’s legal action (“How simmering Airbus scandal boiled over; Unprecedented legal drama launched by Mulroney libel suit”, by Shawn McCarthy and Derek Ferguson, November 25, 1995, Toronto Star):
“After years of simmering, the Airbus scandal blew up this week in spectacular fashion when Mulroney launched an unprecedented $50 million libel suit
against the federal justice department and the RCMP.By doing so, he becomes the first former prime minister to sue the government.
…
The Swiss agreed on Oct. 24 to freeze the bank accounts in question and co-operate with the Canadian authorities.
It’s unclear at this point when and how Mulroney learned of the justice department request. Tasse says in a letter to the department that Mulroney found out only around Nov. 1 and it “has caused him great consternation.”
On Nov. 4, Tasse phoned Rock and demanded to talk to the justice minister about the case. Rock refused, saying it would be improper for a politician to get involved in the police investigation. He referred Tasse to the RCMP and justice department officials.
Still, on Nov. 8, Tasse wrote to Rock - with copies to Solicitor-General Herb Gray and RCMP Commissioner Phil Murray - objecting to the justice department’s strong language in the letter to the Swiss. He argued the letter went beyond a statement of allegations and “effectively labelled (Mulroney) as a criminal.”
In reply, justice department senior counsel William Corbett said the original letter must be read in context and “makes it clear that the conduct described in the request is alleged criminal conduct under investigation.”
But Corbett adds his department has written the Swiss again to reiterate that it was discussing allegations and that confidentiality is key.”
Mulroney lawyer Roger Tasse’s November 4 call was a surprise to Justice Minister Allan Rock and was referred to associate deputy minister Mary Dawson, who and Kimberly Prost, director of Justice Department’s international assistance group and author of the September 29 letter, then met with Tasse; Prost wrote in a memo to deputy minister George Thomson (“Bureaucrats kept Rock from Airbus affair, documents show: The justice minister probably wasn’t aware of the probe until Mulroney’s lawyer called him”, by Gord McIntosh, March 1, 1996, The Vancouver Sun):
“The decision not to involve the minister was made to protect him against possible allegations of political interference in a police investigation”.
RCMP handlings of the Chretien and Mulroney matters were not the only things governments kept in secrecy. According to Karlheinz Schreiber’s former partner, Swiss-Canadian businessman Giorgio Pelossi, the European government-owned Airbus paid the commissions secretly to avoid controversy, and the Swiss justice system could also have links to money laundering (“Airbus pact exists, Pelossi says; Man who signed agreement urges police to locate commissions contract”, by Estanislao Oziewicz, December 11, 1995, The Globe and Mail):
“Giorgio Pelossi, who signed the agreement on behalf of International Aircraft Leasing Ltd., said in an interview during the weekend that the RCMP should get a copy of the signed document as part of their investigation into allegations of a secret commissions deal on the sale of Airbus planes to Air Canada, Canadian Airlines and Wardair.
Mr. Pelossi, who was Mr. Schreiber’s long-time accountant, confidant and business partner, said he and Airbus have unsigned copies of the agreement. He showed The Globe his copy of the agreement and appendages, but would not allow it to be photocopied.
The only signed copy, he said, is held in trust by a Zurich law firm. He said this was done specifically because European government-owned Airbus did not want it known that it paid secret commissions.
…
Mr. Pelossi, 57, said that he has never spoken to the RCMP and that he has never said, nor can he prove, that any commission money actually went to either Mr. Moores or to Mr. Mulroney. He said that he can only document, through Airbus payment schedules and bank drafts, that commissions went from a French bank to IAL Ltd. and then to Mr. Schreiber.
Mr. Pelossi has had a falling-out with Mr. Schreiber over his share of profits, a fight that began, Mr. Pelossi said, when Mr. Schreiber initiated criminal charges against him. He said those charges have been dismissed. Mr. Pelossi also spent six months in custody 10 years ago over accusations of misappropriation.
…
Mr. Pelossi said he would provide the RCMP with the business card on which he wrote the numbers of the accounts on one side and the name Frank
Moores and the initials BM on the other side. He said the BM refers to Brian Mulroney. He said the BM could not refer to Mr. Moores's wife, Beth. Mr.
Pelossi said he did not know Mrs. Moores's first name.…
Mr. Pelossi said he has been unfairly smeared by Mr. Mulroney’s supporters as a shady businessman. For example, they have leaked suggestions that Mr. Pelossi was somehow involved in the scandal that led to the resignation in 1989 of Swiss justice minister Elisabeth Kopp.
Mrs. Kopp resigned after a prosecutor’s report said she was “strongly suspected” of violating an official secret by warning her husband, Hans-Werner, to sever ties with a company under investigation in a major drug money-laundering scandal.
…
Mr. Pelossi said that Mr. Kopp has acted as his Swiss lawyer in his continuing business dispute with Mr. Schreiber after their falling-out in 1991.”
But once European governments learned of the Airbus Affair allegations, they acted swiftly, including against some powerful figures in Germany.
By January 1996, German police had searched the home of Schreiber’s friend Max Strauss, and son of the late Franz Josef Strauss, as in Cameron’s book once the almighty leader of the Christian Social Party and board chairman of Airbus (“Bavarian home searched in probe of Airbus deal”, January 12, 1996, Edmonton Journal):
“The home of the son of a former Bavarian state governor was searched for material dealing with the sale of Airbus planes to Air Canada in 1988.
…
State Prosecutor Joerg Hillinger said the search of Max Strauss’s Munich home was related to an investigation of businessman Karlheinz Schreiber in connection with the Airbus deal.
The home was searched because Strauss is a close confidant of Schreiber, the prosecutor said Thursday. He did not say when the search was done or if any evidence was found.
…
The state prosecutor in Bavaria is investigating partly because secret commissions would mean the government is owed back taxes.
…
Former state governor Franz Josef Strauss died in October 1988.”
Swiss Police were equally swift and in January interviewed Georgio Pelossi (“Airbus probe visits Pelossi; Swiss interview ex-PM's accuser”, by Derek Ferguson, January 16, 1996, Toronto Star):
“Georgio Pelossi said yesterday he reiterated his claim that Ottawa lobbyist Frank Moores opened two secret bank accounts in a Swiss bank in 1985 and one of them was intended for Mulroney.
He said during the four-hour interview conducted by a Swiss general prosecutor and two police officers that he was told this by his former employer, German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.
“I already told them that the two accounts were set up, and one was, I was told by Mr. Schreiber, that the one was for Mr. Mulroney,” Pelossi said yesterday in a telephone interview from Lugano, Switzerland.
…
“I declared I am ready to go to court,” he said. “The last question they asked me was if I am willing to testify directly, so I think now, with my authorization, they (RCMP) can call me directly without going through the Swiss authorities. They have the authorization to contact me directly.”
…
Pelossi said he told Swiss legal authorities yesterday that he joined Moores, a former Newfoundland premier, and Schreiber in Zurich to open two bank accounts at the Swiss Bank Corp. branch at Paradeplatz. He said Schreiber told him one of the accounts was for Mulroney.
…
Pelossi said both Moores and Schreiber had gone to court to stop Swiss authorities from turning over the requested bank documents to the RCMP.”
With his willingness to cooperate, 2 months later in March Pelossi took a secret trip to Canada and met with RCMP (“Key Airbus figure meets with RCMP, CBC says”, March 14, 1996, Toronto Star).
But Schreiber and Moores kept the Airbus commission money more tightly to their chests: the Swiss Bank Corporation account codenamed Devon, for Brian Mulroney according to Pelossi, Moore asserted was for his wife Beth and never contained more than $575Cdn. Moreover, Schreiber filed a $35 million libel lawsuit against Canadian Broadcast Corporation and reporter Trish Wood for The Fifth Estate reports in March and November 1995. (“Airbus suit seeks $35 million: A German-Canadian accuses the CBC of defaming his character in a TV report”, by Kathleen Engman, January 4, 1996, The Vancouver Sun)
German police targeted Schreiber directly. A December 1995 search at his home found a list related to Airbus money, with personal identities coded; police then searched the homes of several prominent figures connected to Schreiber (“Schreiber called target of $40-million bribery probe: German tax officials investigating businessman with Airbus links, newspaper says”, by William Marsden, May 12, 1996, The Gazette):
“German tax authorities are investigating German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber for what they claim is a spectacular kickback and tax evasion scheme involving more than $40 million in bribes to important German and Canadian political figures, according to a German newspaper.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung, a respected Munich daily, said in an article yesterday that tax investigators found a bribery or commission distribution list last December when they raided Schreiber’s home in Kaufering, Bavaria.
The newspaper says that the list included the code names of individuals who received the bribes and claims that the prosecutors leading the investigation have decoded all the names.
One of the code names is “Frankfurt.” The newspaper says that a former business partner of Schreiber, Georgio Pelossi, claims Frankfurt is the code name for former Newfoundland premier Frank Moores.
…
The RCMP and German investigations were sparked by information from Pelossi that Schreiber had paid commissions to German and Canadian politicians through bank accounts in Liechtenstein, Panama and Switzerland.
The newspaper claims Schreiber was a member of a close circle of friends connected to the late Franz-Josef Strauss, the former flamboyant German defence minister, premier of Bavaria and chairman of the board of Airbus.
This group is referred to in the German media as the “amigo scene.” Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the amigo scene had two companies, called Maple Leaf Enterprises and FMS (Franz Marianne Strauss), that were used to invest money on which they had not paid taxes.
Under the headline “Strauss Buddy Deep in a Bribery Quagmire,” the paper states that Schreiber was an important lobbyist for Airbus, Thyssen and Messerschmitt.
The paper claims his commissions were funneled through three companies: ATG Investments in Panama, Kensington-Anstadt and International Aircraft Leasing (IAL), both in Liechtenstein.
…
The raid last December on Schreiber’s home immediately led to four other raids on the homes of three prominent German politicians and a Thyssen executive. These raids were part of a tax-evasion and bribery investigation surrounding the Saudi armored-vehicle deal.
Investigators raided the residence of Holger Pfahl, 53, a former state secretary in Germany's defence ministry and leader of the secret service. He is suspected of receiving about $3.5 million in bribes from ATG in Panama.
Investigators also raided the home of Walther Leisler Kiep, 70, former treasurer of the German Conservative Party and a close friend of Strauss. He is alleged to have received $900,000 from ATG.
Tax police also raided the homes of Strauss’s son Max, 36, and Winfried Haastent, 55, chairman of the board of Thyssen. Strauss, a lawyer, is alleged to have received about $200,000 and Haastent $450,000.
The four men have all denied they accepted bribes or evaded taxes.”
By June 1996, the home and office of German Member of Parliament Erich Riedl, formerly Germany’s top aviation and space official as a deputy economics minister from 1987 to 1993, was searched for evidence (“German MP target of Airbus investigators”, June 15, 1996, The Ottawa Citizen).
As in the quoted news report by William Marsden, German police raided the home of Holger Pfahls, former state secretary of defence and head of the intelligence agency, for evidence of receiving $3.5 million bribes from Schreiber’s company ATG based in Panama.
Targeting Pfahls would turn out to be fruitful.
In Part 10 I have contrasted the swift German justice to the Canadian system where practically nothing has happened surrounding the dealings of Karlheinz Schreiber, quoting from my February 20, 2009 blog post Pfahls’s jail sentence 2 days after my father’s August 10, 2005 death that was exactly 1 month after Frank Moores’s:
“Ludwig-Holger Pfahls, former head of West German domestic intelligence and junior defence minister under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was sentenced to jail for accepting bribes from Karlheinz Schreiber in an arms sale to Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War, after being on the lam from authorities for several years in Hong Kong, Jakarta, Madrid, Montreal and Paris, and despite court testimonies in favor of him from former Chancellor Kohl and former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher”.
Pfahls was jailed for $2.5 million bribes taken, and taxes unpaid, for the sale of Thyssen armoured carriers to Saudi Arabia during the 1990-91 Gulf War, a project initiated by then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the behest of then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker (“German leader jailed in Saudi deal”, August 12, 2005, Al Jazeera).
Executed by Pfahls in a swap, 36 out-of-stock Fuchs-type tanks in German army service were shipped to the Saudis on the Thyssen company’s promise of 36 new ones for the army later; for the 226 million DM deal, Thyssen was paid 446 million DM by Saudi Arabia, an astonishing 220 million DM of it as commissions – far above the typical 10% – from which Pfahls got a share via Karlheinz Schreiber (“Pfahls/ Kiep/ Luethje/ Weyrauch”, Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative, The World Bank):
“Thyssen paid 24.4 million DM into a Swiss account with the Swiss Bank Corporation held by Schreiber’s Panama registered firm “ATG”.”
More recently on November 9, 2011, Pfahls was handed a second jail term for hiding an additional, over €5 million Euro bribery fortune from the investigation and trial leading to his first jail term, this time along with his wife Viorica and lobbyist Dieter Holzer linked to former Chancellor Kohl’s Christian Democrats as well as foreign government circles (“The scandal that rocked the government of Helmut Kohl”, January 18, 2010, Deutsche Welle; “The villa, the villains and Rusty”, by Sam Sole and Lionel Faull, October 21, 2011, Mail & Guardian; and, “Former German minister jailed for fraud”, November 9, 2011, Reuters).
The wheel of justice started in 1996 after Schreiber was targeted, and came down despite Ludwig Holger Pfahls’s record of government service and political achievement, which included tightening internal security at the intelligence agency in 1985 that triggered the fleeing defection of agency official Hans Joachim Tiedge who had secretly worked for East Germany and betrayed around 350 West German spies and double agents (“Bonn spy scandal widens with arrest in President's office”, August 26, 1985, The Globe and Mail).
I can’t help but ponder the coincidence that it was RCMP officers of German surnames who on November 14, 1995 prepared and signed a RCMP form to revive my 1992-93 complaint, and despite that the Canadian justice system continued to let oppression be ‘justice’ in my case.
An important facet of the Pfahls story is the Panamanian link, that his bribes received via the Swiss Bank Corporation came from Schreiber’s company ATG in Panama.
The 1995 RCMP investigation was based on CBC The Fifth Estate stories, which focused on Schreiber’s Liechtenstein company IAL and its links to Frank Moores’s Ottawa company GCI. As a result, in the storm of media publicity surrounding the Airbus Affair there was almost no mention of Schreiber’s Panamanian existence – but the RCMP knew it as the news report by William Marsden indicated.
Not until after the 1995-97 Airbus Affair dominated by Mulroney’s lawsuit was over that it was disclosed to the public through Stevie Cameron’s 1998 book Blue Trust: The Author, the Lawyer, His Wife and Her Money, that while Mulroney was Prime Minister, Bruce Verchere, a board director of Swiss Bank Corp., was his financial trustee and lawyer, and that Verchere also had a company in Panama – I have commented in Part 8 that it looked like “an extravagant spy tale”.
As Stevie Cameron explained, Verchere had moved money from Panama to Switzerland for his family and for some clients (“Who was Bruce Verchere? And why did Karlheinz Schreiber raise his name?”, by Stevie Cameron, February 26, 2008, Stevie Cameron’s Blog):
“When Mulroney was elected prime minister in 1984, Verchere managed his blind trust as his financial trustee. He was also his tax lawyer. Both Bruce and Lynne Verchere received patronage appointments from the government during this period.
Verchere developed a skill in hiding money. After his wife sold her company to Prentice Hall in 1987 for nearly $17-million, he moved the money around through Panamanian shell companies and other offshore entities until it finally landed in two banks in Geneva: Darier Hentsch et Cie and Pictet Cie, both specializing in wealth management and infinite discretion.
Bruce Verchere used these banks for some of his other clients as well, including the Haileys.”
Logical suspicions arose in 2009 during the Mulroney-Schreiber Affair, as columnist Geoffrey Stevens noted, that Airbus commissions might have gone into Mulroney’s trust run by Verchere, who had died of a reported suicide on August 28, 1993 – as in Parts 3 & 8 – which happened to be “the day after Mulroney accepted his first envelope of cash from Schreiber” (“Mulroney to get grilled this week; Former PM on the stand at the Oliphant inquiry all week long”, by Geoffrey Stevens, May 11, 2009, The Guelph Mercury):
… According to evidence at the inquiry, Schreiber collected more than $30 million from his European clients, Airbus Industrie, Thyssen AG and Eurocopter, to distribute among his Canadian “friends.”
He says he gave $300,000 to Mulroney (Mulroney says it was only $225,000). At most, it was only 1 per cent of the $30 million in grease money that Schreiber had at his disposal. Where did the other 99 per cent go? Some, the inquiry has learned, went to Mulroney cronies and supporters Frank Moores and Gary Ouellet (both deceased) and Fred Doucet (he of the failing memory).
There is a suspicion, reflected in Schreiber’s records, that some of the money found its way to Bruce Verchere, a Montreal tax lawyer who managed Mulroney’s blind trust when he was PM. Verchere committed suicide on Aug. 28, 1993, the day after Mulroney accepted his first envelope of cash from Schreiber at a hotel near Mirabel Airport.
The chief commission counsel Richard Wolson and his assistants would love to uncover what happened to that 99 per cent, but they will be digging with one hand tied behind their backs. They are restricted by narrow terms of reference drafted by University of Waterloo president David Johnston at the behest of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who from the beginning has been more interested in minimizing damage to the Conservative brand than getting to the bottom of the scandal.”
As alluded to earlier, “national security” could be an explanation, that even former RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster, named by Harper as his advisory chair on national security, likely had to “minimize damage”.
Back in 1995-97 in Canada, it being the first time an ex-PM suing the government, the Airbus Affair and most of the media spotlights were consumed by Brian Mulroney’s $50 million libel lawsuit.
Government defence strategies began by trying to prove that it was someone on Mulroney’s side leaking the September 29 letter to the media, and if so his side had more to do with damaging his reputation (“Mulroney’s lawyers allege stall tactics; Request for information called ‘abusive’”, by Sandro Contenta, January 17, 1996, Toronto Star):
“Mulroney’s suit charges his reputation was seriously damaged by “false” and “reckless” allegations in a justice department letter that he received $5 million in connection with the Airbus deal.
But Mulroney 's lawyers yesterday balked at revealing how he got wind of the letter, which asked the Swiss government to help the RCMP’s investigation by freezing and opening two accounts suspected of being used to funnel payments.
The justice department letter was written in German and Mulroney’s lawyers also balked at revealing who translated it into English, the version that eventually made its way into media reports last November.
…
Knowing the author is important because it was this translation that was published in the media, thereby causing the alleged libel, argued Claude Armand Sheppard, lawyer for the Canadian government and for Kimberly Prost, the justice official who signed the letter.
But Mulroney’s lawyers argued the libel occurred the minute the justice department letter and its accusations were sent to Swiss authorities.”
It did look suspicious, that it was Mulroney’s side leaking the letter to create a media storm in order to sue the government and put RCMP on the defensive, hopefully scaring them off.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Andre Rochon ruled that Mulroney didn’t have to provide information in this regard but answer if he knew who had leaked it to The Financial Post (“Mulroney wins right to keep information private”, by Rod MacDonell, January 25, 1996, The Gazette).
In a court filing, Mulroney stated he did not know the source of the leak, and also that he might increase his libel claim because the $50 million claim “does not include compensation for real losses” of income. (“Mulroney says damage claim to be more than $50 million”, January 31, 1996, The Vancouver Sun)
Untouchable superego in display for the court to see.
Government lawyers appealed, wanting to know who on Mulroney’s side translated the letter into English and whether he had a copy of the original German, but Quebec Appeal Court Justice Andre Brossard ruled government lawyers had enough information to “adequately prepare” their defence (“Judge quashes bid for more Mulroney data; Lawyers told they have enough to fight lawsuit”, by Sandro Contenta, February 15, 1996, Toronto Star).
Government defence lawyer Claude Armand Sheppard continued to raise the prospect of questioning The Financial Post reporter Philip Mathias about it (“Federal lawyers to target reporter”, by Rod MacDonell, March 22, 1996, Calgary Herald):
“The name of Financial Post reporter Philip Mathias came up in Quebec Superior Court this week during arguments in Mulroney’s $50-million libel suit against the federal government.
Mulroney’s lawyer, Jacques Jeansonne, told Judge Andre Rochon that federal lawyer Claude-Armand Sheppard sent him a letter stating that he wanted to question Mathias and others.
…
Mulroney’s spokesman, Luc Lavoie, said Thursday that the documents Mathias used for his story seemed to be copies of Mulroney’s documents.
…
Reminded that journalists traditionally refuse to reveal their sources, Sheppard said: “It depends on what questions you ask. There are many ways to skin a cat.”
Mathias said Thursday he will not reveal the source of the leak if he is called to testify, and he is certain the documents did not come from the Mulroney circle, directly or indirectly.”
Around this time in March 1996 at the Federal Court of Canada, Karlheinz Schreiber filed the official English version of the letter he got from “the chief Swiss federal public prosecutor”, in his effort to seek an injunction to prevent the RCMP from obtaining his Swiss banking records; as part of the effort, he agreed to be interviewed by the Justice Department (“Justice letter details payment allegations; Request to Swiss outlines claims of secret transfers to Moores, Mulroney for contracts”, by Estanislao Oziewicz, March 23, 1996, and, “Airbus figure to respond to questions from Ottawa; Schreiber reaches agreement with Justice Department”, by Ross Howard, April 2, 1996, The Globe and Mail).
Mulroney’s testimony in April would explain that he first heard the bad news from Schreiber, and that a quick English translation of the September 29 letter in German was done by Swiss law firm Blum & Partners for Schreiber (“Ottawa targets source of Mulroney story Documents in lawsuit argue leak based on translation prepared for former PM”, by Tu Thanh Ha, August 28, 1996, The Globe and Mail):
“The Financial Post and the reporter who wrote the story, Philip Mathias, say that they have no intention of revealing their source.
“It’s a futile line of inquiry,” Mr. Mathias said in an interview yesterday, maintaining that the documents he used to write his story did not come from “Mr. Mulroney or his entourage.”
…
When he was examined under oath in April, Mr. Mulroney explained that he first learned he was under investigation when Mr. Schreiber called him on Nov. 2, 1995.
Mr. Schreiber had been advised by the Swiss that transactions in his bank accounts would be suspended. He was also given a copy of the RCMP request, written in German.
Because Mr. Mulroney did not speak German, the two agreed to have the Swiss law firm Blum & Partners prepare a summarized translation, a copy of which Mr. Mulroney received within days.
Ottawa’s lawyers will argue that the government is not responsible for the fact that the issue became public because what appeared in the Nov. 18, 1995, issue of the Post wasn’t the RCMP letter but an unauthorized translation.
“The translation obtained by The Financial Post is not the English version of the request prepared and sent by the Justice Department to Swiss authorities on Sept. 29, 1995,” Ottawa’s filing says.
“Rather, it is identical to the Blum translation, made at the request of Mr. Schreiber and Mr. Mulroney.”
The filing adds: “The defendants will try to establish how the Blum translation ended up in the hands of Philip Mathias and The Financial Post.”
…
Mr. Mathias said he had a German version of the RCMP letter but not the official English version, forcing him to rely on an unofficial translation.”
It looked possible that Schreiber was the leak source, that in November 1995 when the Swiss police got on his trail he went for immediate publicity to drag Mulroney into the mud – better for himself and likely better for Mulroney.
Mulroney’s court testimony came in the examination-for-discovery stage, while his side forewent the early examination of others – similar to with my lawsuit, as in Part 7, that I was examined by a lawyer for UBC in April 1993 but I lost lawyer Brian Mason and did not examine any UBC or RCMP person.
The occasion was attended by journalists, and Mulroney’s superego, expressed in hyperboles similar to later in the limelight of live TV broadcast during the Mulroney-Schreiber Affair, has always been brimming (“Mulroney denies taking kickbacks ‘It reeked of fascism. Allegations I believe to be poisonous and really fraught with fascism.’”, by Sandro Contenta, April 18, 1996, Toronto Star):
““It reeked of fascism. Allegations I believe to be poisonous and really fraught with fascism,” Mulroney, 57, said.
“My father was an electrician on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. He gave me a good name and that good name was besmirched by the government of Canada. And I want to clear it, despite the smirks from the other side,” Mulroney said, glaring at a government lawyer who had made a facial expression.
…
Claude Armand Sheppard, who represents the government in the suit, spent much of the morning quizzing Mulroney about the 11 companies for which he sits on the board of directors or on advisory boards.
Mulroney argued that “Contrary to the view that I have considerable wealth, I don’t.”
He said he immediately offered his resignation after the allegations were made public but all of the companies refused to accept them.
Sheppard was trying to demonstrate that despite Mulroney’s claim that his reputation was smeared, it hasn’t stopped him from earning a living or hurt his standing in the business world.
…
“I have four young children, my mother is 85 years of age, my father-in-law is very ill - to have to explain to them what happened and what is going
to happen is a painful thing,” he said.“I had to take my 10-year-old aside: ‘Nicolas, in a little while it will be in the papers. They will say that the government of Canada will say that your
father committed crimes and you will be harassed because of it,’” he said.…
Later in the afternoon, Mulroney counted the government lawyers sitting across from him.
”Two, four, six, seven . . . it’s taxpayers’ money,” he said.
“It’s not $50 million,” replied RCMP lawyer Yvan Bolduc.
“Tenez vous bien,” Mulroney shot back, which basically translates to, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.””
Mulroney’s “very ill” father-in-law, psychiatrist Dimitri Pivnicki as in Part 9, had been acquainted with Vancouver Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic’s Dr. Mel Dilli who committed me to Forensic Psychiatric Institute in Coquitlam in early 1994.
When his heightened expressions could not evade the fact of his private meetings with Schreiber – in Montreal when he received cash from Schreiber as later admitted in 2007 (“Mulroney admits taking cash a ‘colossal mistake’”, November 21, 2007, The Ottawa Citizen) – Mulroney brought up Schreiber’s Chretien Liberal link to cover for it:
“He said he first met Schreiber while prime minister, when the businessman wanted federal money to set up a plant in Canada that would produce equipment for the military. Mulroney said he eventually rejected the scheme because it cost too much.
After leaving office in July, 1993, Mulroney said he met Schreiber - whom he described as a “well-informed, determined and competent businessman” - once or twice in Montreal.
During one of those meetings, Schreiber said he hired former Liberal cabinet minister Marc Lalonde as his lawyer to lobby the current Liberal government about setting up the army equipment plant, Mulroney said.”
Vividly, Mulroney described his first reaction to the bad news (“Mulroney begins ‘fight for honor’: The former prime minister says allegations he took kickbacks from the sale of 34 Airbus Industrie planes to Air Canada ‘horrified’ him”, by William Marsden, April 18, 1996, The Windsor Star):
“Mulroney said that when he learned about the letter Nov. 2 he was “horrified” and couldn’t sleep for weeks.
Holding a copy of the letter up to the packed courtroom, he said the only true statement in the letter is in the first line where he is called a former prime minister of Canada.
He repeated several times he does not deny the government’s or the RCMP’s right to investigate allegations of kickbacks or to ask a foreign government for help.
He said the government went too far in its letter to the Swiss by making blanket statements calling him a criminal and referring to “criminal activity on the part of a former prime minister.”
“This is not an allegation. This is an indictment,” he said. “The government has accused me, convicted me and sentenced me.
He said he first learned about the letter from Schreiber on Nov. 2.
“He told me he had received a document that had been served upon him and he said there are things in here that involve you,” Mulroney recalled.
The letter was in German and Mulroney asked Schreiber to give him a summation over the phone.
“With each passing adjective my horror and disbelief grew,” he said. “I was thunderstruck. I said, ‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’ This was something straight out of Kafka.””
A strange contradiction of facts showed in the testimony, that both sides had expressed willingness for Mulroney to provide full bank records in exchange for RCMP withdrawal of the letter prior to media publicity, but now each blamed the other as unwilling:
“Mulroney said he hired Roger Tasse, former federal deputy justice minister, to try to persuade the government to withdraw the letter before the media obtained a copy.
He said he offered the RCMP full disclosure of all his bank accounts and relevant documents if they would withdraw the incriminating statements in the letter. He said the government refused.
Sheppard asked him if the RCMP had not offered to withdraw the letter at a Nov. 15 meeting with Tasse if Mulroney would hand over all his banking records. Mulroney denied that the RCMP had made the offer.”
If neither side was lying, then the middleman Roger Tasse had done a sloppy job. Mulroney quickly realized it and 2 days later explained that the circumstances by November 15 had changed, journalists including Stevie Cameron were getting to the story (“Officials backed probe, ex-PM says; Unlikely that senior authorities did not see claims in letter, Mulroney argues”, by Tu Thanh Ha, April 20, 1996, The Globe and Mail):
“Mr. Mulroney’s lawyers say in their revised statement of claim, filed on Jan. 29, that during the Nov. 15 meeting, “the offer of full co-operation from Mr. Mulroney was reiterated.”
Yesterday, however, Mr. Mulroney was saying he was ready to open his books only on Nov. 4, not Nov. 15. By the later date, media leaks had made the offer irrelevant, he said.
“The situation had greatly changed from the 4th to the 15th. . . There was another train coming down the track,” he told the hearing.
Considering the circumstances on Nov. 15, his representative was right in refusing to extend an earlier offer to open Mr. Mulroney’s books, the former prime minister said.
“Mr. Tasse did well in his meeting with Mr. Fiegenwald to withdraw that proposition.”
Three days after that meeting, The Financial Post, on Nov. 18, was the first media outlet to state that Mr. Mulroney was named in a police investigation.
But the Mulroney team says that other publications were already on the same path, including the magazines Der Spiegel and Maclean’s.
At one point, Mr. Mulroney implied that some of the leaks came from the RCMP.
He said that on Nov. 16 he had received a fax from Maclean’s which made it clear that Maclean’s reporter Stevie Cameron already knew that Mr. Tasse had met the RCMP.
“You can be certain of this: Roger Tasse didn’t call Stevie Cameron,” Mr. Mulroney said, adding that he was hoping to see Ms. Cameron take the stand eventually to explain how she got the information.”
A world full of holes and leaks.
Mulroney would not provide financial records now, and he denied being a good friend of Frank Moores (“Mulroney lawsuit: Former PM calls claims a ‘setup and a sham’”, by William Marsden, April 20, 1996, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Testifying in Superior Court, Mulroney , 57, said Moores did not support him when he won the leadership of the Progressive Conservative party in 1983. He also said Moores later angered him prior to the 1988 federal election when Moores told reporters that the Tories would probably lose the election.
“He just wasn’t on my hit parade in those days,” Mulroney said in response to questions from government lawyer Claude-Armand Sheppard.
…
Mulroney has denied ever having a foreign account and said Friday that for the last 25 years he has maintained only one account, at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Montreal.
…
The government has subpoenaed Mulroney’s bank records and tax returns, but Mulroney’s lawyers are challenging the request.”
The media pointed out, that newspapers had recorded intimate socializing between the Mulroney family and the Moores family at the time Mulroney was supposedly angry at Moores (“Mulroney party guest lists dispute Airbus testimony”, by Rod MacDonell, May 22, 1996, Toronto Star):
“The Globe and Mail reported Jan. 9, 1988, that Moores was invited to Mulroney’s country retreat Dec. 31, 1987, to celebrate New Year’s.
In March, 1989, the Toronto Sun reported that Mila Mulroney threw a 50th birthday party for her husband and invited 20 couples, including “lobbyists Frank and Beth Moores.””
Mulroney’s aggressive offense worked well and media coverage was taken by it – he, his foes and others agreed (“AIRBUS AFFAIR How Brian Mulroney’s pre-emptive strike won the PR war”, by Estanislao Oziewicz, September 14, 1996, The Globe and Mail):
“On the night of Friday, Nov. 17 last year, Ottawa public-relations executive Luc Lavoie was enjoying a glass of nouveau beaujolais at a party in Montreal when his cell phone rang. It was Brian Mulroney.
The former prime minister told his trusted retainer that Senator Marjory LeBreton had just informed him that CTV’s Craig Oliver was onto what would later break wide open as the Airbus story.
Mr. Mulroney gave Mr. Oliver’s home phone number to Mr. Lavoie with orders “to try to stop him.”
…
Whatever the venue, the article in the Post on Nov. 18 was the trigger for a calculated legal and public-relations strategy in which Mr. Lavoie, Mr. Mulroney’s former deputy chief of staff and current vice-president and managing partner of National Public Relations Inc., played a crucial role.
…
From the beginning the goal, as he later testified in an examination for discovery in the libel case, was to have headlines say, “Mulroney Suing the RCMP for Libel,” as opposed to “RCMP Accuses Mulroney of Having Secret Bank Accounts in Switzerland and Receiving Bribes.”
Within hours of the publication of the Post story, Mr. Mulroney’s high-profile Montreal lawyers, including Gérald Tremblay, Harvey Yarosky and Roger Tassé, held a news conference in Montreal to announce that their client was suing the federal government for $50-million.
…
Says Patrick Gossage, former press secretary to Pierre Trudeau: “The unbendable principle of political PR, when you know an issue is coming up and you know it’s a serious issue that’s liable to have big public impact, is ‘The first cut is the deepest,’ which was a Bryan Adams song when I was at the Prime Minister’s Office."
…
“If I had not acted the way I did,” Mr. Mulroney explained later, “and as quickly as I did, to convey to the Canadian people that this was a hoax and a fraud being perpetrated against me, and if I had not acted in a way to convey that internationally, then the damage to my reputation, which is already very significant, would have been lethal.”
…
Claude-Armand Sheppard, the lead lawyer for the Justice Department, says of Mr. Mulroney’s performance at the discovery: “That must go down as a
masterpiece of answering to another audience rather than to your questioner. It was brilliant. As I left, I said to someone, ‘I now understand two things: how Mr. Mulroney rose so high and how he fell so low.’””
Both the Canadian public and the court now expected RCMP evidence to substantiate its claim in the September 29 letter about Mulroney’s “criminal activity”. Government lawyers countered that RCMP had sensitive information from informants other than news media but disclosure at this time would harm the criminal investigation. (“Society’s interest outweighs ex-PM’s right, lawyers argue; Ottawa says judge’s order for details threatens probe”, by Tu Thanh Ha, May 24, 1996, The Globe and Mail)
RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray said if necessary RCMP would invoke the Canada Evidence Act related to “national security” to avoid disclosing info at the civil trial (“Airbus probe comes before Mulroney lawsuit, RCMP says: Mounties will invoke national security to avoid testimony”, by Carolyn Abraham, May 29, 1996, The Ottawa Citizen):
“In a meeting with the Citizen’s editorial board, Murray said RCMP investigators or sources called to testify at the civil trial will invoke the Canada Evidence Act in hopes of being exempt from answering questions that could jeopardize the criminal investigation.
A sweeping provision of the Canada Evidence Act, traditionally used by RCMP , federal government officials and Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents, blocks testimony that threatens national security.”
The government was now on the defensive, and Mulroney’s PR offense went farther, portraying the RCMP investigation as a political move by Liberal Justice Minister Allan Rock (“RCMP had Rock’s support, Mulroney says Airbus probe based on work of two journalists, former PM claims in rebuttal prepared in libel suit”, by Tu Thanh Ha, June 4, 1996, The Globe and Mail):
“Lawyers for Brian Mulroney say the RCMP started their investigation of the former prime minister in the Airbus affair mainly on the basis of journalists’ research and with the “implicit support and encouragement” of Attorney-General Allan Rock.
…
Mr. Rock has said that he was unaware of the investigation and the letter to the Swiss.
He has said that in late 1993, the year the Liberal government was elected, he heard allegations of illegal payments during the Progressive Conservatives’ years in office. The allegations did not include specific references to the Airbus purchase, and Mr. Rock said he passed the information to Solicitor-General Herbert Gray, taking no further part in the matter.
The Mulroney rebuttal notes Mr. Rock’s action. But it says his information was “from a source that he admitted publicly that he could not deny were journalists.”
Mr. Rock’s decision to pass on the allegations “gave to the entire process that would ensue a stamp of laxity that would mark the process leading to sending the letter,” the rebuttal says.”
Rock then disclosed his December 2, 1993 letter to Solicitor General and RCMP’s declining reply (“Rock releases letters to counter Mulroney; Proof that file was closed, minister’s aide says”, by Tu Thanh Ha, August 10, 1996, The Globe and Mail):
“The first of the letters was sent by Mr. Rock on Dec. 2, 1993, to Solicitor-General Herbert Gray, the minister responsible for the RCMP.
The letter shows that Mr. Rock reported rumours that he heard on two separate occasions in November, 1993 of “serious wrongdoings and possibly criminal offences” in the contracting practices of Mr. Mulroney’s government.
The second letter, a reply sent by RCMP Inspector Marc Beaupré to Mr. Rock on Feb. 22, 1994, says that, after meeting Mr. Rock on Jan. 10 and subsequently interviewing two journalists, no grounds were found to pursue an investigation. Neither document mentions Mr. Mulroney’s name.”
So Allan Rock’s political view had led to a request through Solicitor General for RCMP to investigate the former Mulroney government, but it wasn’t Airbus money specific and was declined.
Similarly my documents faxed to Kim Campbell, then Justice Minister, on November 30, 1992, might have gone from her to Solicitor General, though as in Part 6 local RCMP, including Sgt. Brian Cotton taking me to psychiatric committal, got copies immediately. The difference for my case was that RCMP accepted it as a complaint about RCMP in one UBC incident as specified by A/Comm. J. W. B. McConnell – but so far no result other than the November 14, 1995 form referring to “bulk of paper work”.
Reform MP Stephen Harper accused Rock of conducting a private investigation, which Rock denied (“Justice minister accused of meddling in Airbus affair: Allan Rock says he knew about the kickback allegations but denies he was conducting his own private investigation”, by Adrienne Tanner, June 15, 1996, The Vancouver Sun):
““Going back to the beginning of this affair, why was the minister of justice conducting his own private investigation?'” asked Reform MP Stephen Harper.
Rock denied all charges. The only investigation into the Airbus affair is being done by the police, he insisted.
But Rock admitted that he received information from journalists about the kickback allegations shortly after becoming justice minister.
After consulting with his deputy minister and federal Solicitor-General Herb Gray, he says he told the RCMP everything he knew.”
RCMP draft of the letter to Swiss police, later filed at court, did reveal remarkable editing by Justice Department for Kimberly Prost’s final version, specifically to accuse Mulroney of fraud during his entire prime ministerial era (“RCMP letter ‘toughened,’ Mulroney aide says”, by Derek Ferguson, November 14, 1996, Toronto Star):
““What was sent to the department of justice in August, 1995, was three pages long, and what came out on the 29th of September, 1995, was seven pages long. You can tell that it’s the same flow - actually some of the paragraphs are identical,” said Lavoie, who provided copies of both letters to The Star.
“But it was toughened up, especially the part . . . which says that this is proof of an ongoing scheme on the part of Mr. Mulroney to defraud Canadian taxpayers of millions of dollars from the day he was elected prime minister to the day he resigned in 1993.””
In an April 2009 blog post I agreed with what Mulroney said in 1997 after his lawsuit settlement, that the Chretien government had been involved in the Airbus Affair criminal allegations, but I viewed it as part of the Liberal government’s law-and-order politics (“The myth of political vendetta … and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 4)”):
“And Mulroney further stated the Liberal government must have been behind the RCMP in branding him a criminal in a letter to the Swiss authorities:
“If anyone believes that this could take place without the knowledge of the minister of justice or the knowledge of the solicitor general or the knowledge and approval of the commissioner of the RCMP or the knowledge of the PMO [i.e., Prime Minister’s Office] anybody who believes that, I wish them well in Disney World”.
While the Chretien government at the time denied any involvement in the RCMP investigation, I would give Mr. Mulroney the benefit of the doubt on his points quoted above. My analysis of press archives has suggested to me that such were likely the case, however that it was not obvious vendetta against Mulroney but a part of the incoming Liberal government’s law-and-order agendas during 1993-1995 to include a criminal investigation of Mulroney’s role in the Airbus Affair…
…”
The RCMP was not only put on the defensive at the lawsuit front, but also suffered a legal setback in the criminal investigation. Schreiber’s application to the Federal Court of Canada to block RCMP access to his Swiss bank records won on constitutional grounds regarding police search (“Airbus probe ‘back to start’ as judge rules against RCMP: Mounties back to ‘square one’”, by Stephen Bindman and Rod MacDonell, June 5, 1996, The Vancouver Sun):
“Justice Howard Wetston of Federal Court said federal officials should have obtained a judge’s approval before sending the letter to Swiss authorities requesting access to the bank records of German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.
…
Justice Minister Allan Rock has said officials in his department merely transmitted the Mounties’ request to the Swiss and did not evaluate the police investigation.
But Wetston ruled the government’s action violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because a judge did not grant prior authorization as would be required if the search were conducted in Canada.”
In contrast, the Swiss Federal Court actually rejected Schreiber’s request to block RCMP access (“Swiss open records to Airbus probe: RCMP to examine accounts allegedly linked to Mulroney”, by Bill Schiller, June 18, 1996, The Ottawa Citizen):
“The request by the Canadians for legal assistance contains a concise and detailed presentation of their suspicions,” said the court decision, written in German. “The Canadian authorities are not obliged to present any proof.”
Still, the Swiss police investigation had to be suspended due to the Canadian court ruling (“Judge orders Ottawa to halt Airbus search; Quest for documents in Switzerland to await outcome of new court hearing”, by Paul Koring, July 27, 1996, The Globe and Mail).
Eventually in May 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada would side with RCMP, stating that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms applied only within Canada and a search request to foreign police was not a Canadian police search (“Airbus search allowed by Supreme Court; Schreiber’s Charter rights not violated by RCMP request to Swiss government to seize bank records, top judges say”, by Kirk Makin, May 29, 1998, The Globe and Mail).
But during the tense time in 1996-97 defending against Mulroney’s libel lawsuit, RCMP now had nothing new legally to add to the speculative info that had led to Kimberly Prost’s letter.
Despite media speculations of lawsuit settlement the two sides couldn’t agree to terms, as Mulroney wouldn't accept any deal without an apology while the government would only express “profound regret” and promise review of RCMP procedures (“Rock pours cold water on settlement with Mulroney: Minister blames ex-PM’s team for leaking details of negotiations”, by Stephen Bindman and Rod MacDonell, June 18, 1996, The Gazette).
On August 28, 1996 – I notice it as the 3rd anniversary of Bruce Verchere’s death as in Part 3 – Justice Andre Rochon set the trial to begin on January 6, 1997, with a 60-day length expected – 15 days for Mulroney’s side to make its case and 45 days for the government to counter with defence witnesses (“Mulroney libel trial to begin Jan. 6”, by Rod MacDonell, August 29, 1996, The Gazette).
More than the coincidence of the day was that of the high-profile government lead lawyer Claude Armand Sheppard – lawyer for Verchere in his dispute in 1993 with his wife Lynne Walters, mentioned in Part 8, that allegedly led to his emotional ruin and suicide (“Who was Bruce Verchere? And why did Karlheinz Schreiber raise his name?”, by Stevie Cameron, February 26, 2008, Stevie Cameron’s Blog; and, “Suicide & Airbus intrigue”, by Stephen Maher, May 5, 2009, The Chronicle Herald, as shared on InvestorVillage).
In June, after Mulroney’s successful courtroom testimony and as Justice Minister Allan Rock was accused by Mulroney’s lawyers and the Reform party as politically behind the RCMP investigation, the government hired lawyer Harvey Strosberg of Windsor, Ontario, whose philosophy was, “litigation is war and the weak go to the wall”, as a “backroom adviser” for the defence (“Ottawa bolsters its defence team in Mulroney case”, by William Marsden, December 7, 1996, Calgary Herald).
Strosberg had become Rock’s friend since Rock’s articling student days at a Toronto law firm 20 years ago, and a close friend for nearly a decade, and his joining was a sign that Rock’s political future – a possible prime minister – could be in the balance (“‘Lawyers’ lawyer’ gets call: Mulroney’s libel lawsuit is the latest in a string of high-profile cases for litigator”, by Grace MacAluso, December 14, 1996, The Windsor Star):
“Rock’s political future could hinge on the outcome of the lawsuit, but Strosberg is reluctant to talk about his relationship with a man who has been touted as a future prime minister.
“He’s one of many close friends,” he says. Still, it’s clear the two mean a lot to each other. “It’s hard talking about him,” says Strosberg. “He’s like family.””
To strengthen its defence against defamation claim, the government side also filed at court a linguistic analysis report by German-language expert, University of Windsor professor Ingrid Helbig, which concluded that the Kimberly Prost letter quotes in The Financial Post on November 18, 1995, were very likely from the Swiss law firm Blum & Partners’ translation ordered by Schreiber for Mulroney (“Ottawa attributes leak to document for Mulroney; Court filing part of defence strategy in Airbus libel suit”, by Tu Thanh Ha, October 2, 1996, The Globe and Mail):
“The document that Ottawa filed with the court yesterday says that the quotes in the Post story and the Blum translation are very much alike. It was written by German-language expert Ingrid Helbig, a professor at the University of Windsor.
For example, Ms. Helbig notes that the German “eines andauernden Komplott durch Herrn Mulroney” is officially translated as “an ongoing scheme by Mr. Mulroney.”
In the Blum summary, however, the words were presented as: “a persisting plot/conspiracy by Mr. Mulroney” -- an uncommon choice of words that reappears in Mr. Mathias’s article.
“The double wording is so unusual that, had I assigned this German passage to my university students, and had two of my students rendered ‘Komplott’ as ‘plot/conspiracy,’ I would immediately have concluded that they had consulted and copied,” Prof. Helbig wrote.”
Aha, Kimberly Prost had only called Mulroney’s activity “an ongoing scheme”, not quite “a persistent plot/conspiracy”, but the Swiss law firm translation made it much more irritating to Mulroney.
The analysis of “linguistic fingerprints” was allowed by Justice Andre Rochon as evidence for the trial, “relevant in determining the damages Mulroney can claim for harm to his reputation” (“Mulroney loses fight over disputed letter: A Montreal judge refuses to throw out a key piece of evidence in Ottawa’s defence against the ex-PM’s libel suit”, by Rod MacDonell, October 16, 1996, The Vancouver Sun).
The RCMP also intensified its criminal investigation, hiring forensic accountant Richard Monk’s firm to examine documents to find links between Mulroney and the Airbus commissions (“RCMP hires accountants to examine Airbus papers; Ottawa firm takes close look at financial documents”, by Estanislao Oziewicz, September 7, 1996, The Globe and Mail):
“A small Ottawa forensic accounting firm, working on behalf of the RCMP, has begun a detailed examination of documents related to the Airbus investigation.
Richard Monk, a partner of Boyer, Monk & Payne Inc., confirmed yesterday that his firm has a short-term contract to review financial and other records provided by the RCMP in its investigation of allegations of illegal commissions in the 1988 sale of Airbus planes to Air Canada.
Mr. Monk said he did not know whether this initial contract would lead to further forensic work on the Airbus file.”
There was also a major RCMP reinforcement, the transfer of RCMP Inspector Peter German, a lawyer, from “E” Division in British Columbia to take over the criminal investigation:
“RCMP Detective Inspector Peter German, who heads the Mountie’s major fraud investigation unit probing the Airbus case, said yesterday he cannot
comment about any aspect of the on-going investigation.“My hands are tied,” he said.
Inspector German, a lawyer as well as an investigator, moved to Ottawa from Vancouver earlier this summer to take over the Airbus investigation. In British Columbia, Inspector German was chief of the so-called bingogate inquiry into allegations that the governing New Democrats misused charity money for political purposes.”
German was promoted from Staff Sergeant to Inspector for this, so finally RCMP was getting more serious than having a lone Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald on the case (“RCMP inspector selected to help beef up Airbus probe; Experience includes B.C. ‘bingogate’ investigation”, by Derek Ferguson, December 24, 1996, Toronto Star):
“Royal Canadian Mounted Police Inspector Peter German was promoted to inspector from staff-sergeant when he was transferred from Vancouver to Ottawa in July after being selected to head the moribund Airbus investigation.
…
German confirmed that he is in charge of the Airbus investigation, but said Fiegenwald remains a part of the probe.”
That was literally a “German”, besides Fiegenwald’s surname. I have to seriously wonder if the two German surnamed “E” Division officers, “Rischmueller” and “Neustaedter” as on the November 14, 1995 form to revive my RCMP complaint, were not part of this “German” mission.
But the government defence for the lawsuit proposed an unusual legal step, one that RCMP would find intrusive for their police investigation. Government lawyers asked and received court approval, despite initial objection from Mulroney’s side, that Swiss police lawyer Pascal Gossin, responsible for handling the Kimberly Prost letter, take part in the trial to explain how the Swiss worked (“Ottawa wins key ruling in Airbus case; Lawyers can go to Switzerland to question Swiss official about RCMP’s letter”, by Tu Thanh Ha, October 9, 1996, The Globe and Mail):
“The ruling is important for Ottawa because it hopes the testimony of Swiss police lawyer Pascal Gossin will support the government’s contention that
a letter the RCMP wrote about former prime minister Brian Mulroney was typical of foreign requests for assistance the Swiss receive.…
But because Mr. Gossin handles so much sensitive information, Ottawa said it was doubtful that the Swiss would let him travel to Montreal to testify.
That is why the federal government petitioned for an overseas hearing.
Mr. Mulroney’s lawyers opposed the move, saying that Mr. Gossin should be questioned only on specific facts of the case, not on the general way such requests are handled, since that is a role reserved for expert witnesses.
Furthermore, the Mulroney side says that holding a hearing in Switzerland would be costly.
Yesterday’s ruling by Mr. Justice André Rochon of the Quebec Superior Court would allow Mr. Gossin to be questioned by a Swiss judge in a hearing in Bern.
The questions will be submitted in advance by both sides so Swiss authorities can examine them. The hearing transcript will then be used in the Canadian trial.”
Mulroney’s lawyers decided to swamp Gossin with many questions, 100 of them; RCMP found it too much for the criminal investigation, and like Commissioner Philip Murray had said invoking the Canada Evidence Act if necessary, Deputy Commissioner Frank Palmer – a lawyer himself – filed RCMP objection to 8 of them, citing international law enforcement “confidentiality” (“RCMP object to some Airbus queries; Mulroney spokesman scoffs at claim foreign relations would suffer if questions allowed”, by Estanislao Oziewicz, November 6, 1996, The Globe and Mail ):
“RCMP Deputy Commissioner Frank Palmer said in a certificate filed yesterday in Quebec Superior Court that premature disclosure of information gathered by police in a criminal investigation “would benefit those who are the subject of the investigation by providing them indications of what is known or unknown by the police and what directions the investigation is taking, and by thus giving them an opportunity to take counter measures that would jeopardize the success of the ongoing investigation.”
Mr. Palmer, a lawyer with 38 years of RCMP service, also argues that disclosure of the information sought by Mr. Mulroney’s lawyers would compromise the RCMP’s relationship with foreign governments, police and security forces.
“International co-operation between law enforcement agencies is based on a recognized quid pro quo,” Mr. Palmer argues. “A failure to guarantee the confidentiality of information exchanged would have the effect of reducing and possibly destroying the likelihood of future co-operation in the sharing of information, not only by Switzerland but by most other foreign police agencies.
“The international law enforcement community is a dynamic group who maintain a general awareness of what is occurring between and among its various member agencies; as a result, failure to guarantee confidentiality of information exchanged with Switzerland would reverberate throughout the international community. We know many foreign national agencies are watching this case with great interest -- and concern.”
…
Lawyers for both sides were required to submit, in advance, questions they wish to ask Mr. Gossin. Last week, the government side submitted a list of 46 questions; Mr. Mulroney’s lawyers presented 100.
Citing the Canada Evidence Act, the RCMP has objected to eight of the 100 questions. These include whether the Sept. 29, 1995, letter of request to Swiss authorities about banking records was preceded by other queries and, if so, by whom, and how many people in all were notified about Canada’s request.
Mr. Mulroney has argued that the Canadian request was written in such a careless way that even though it was supposed to be a confidential government-to-government communication, it was inevitable that it would be leaked and damage his reputation.
Luc Lavoie, a spokesman for Mr. Mulroney, said in a telephone interview yesterday that it is interesting to note the RCMP, not the Justice Department, is objecting to the questions.”
It looked like a blunder, a repeat of RCMP rejection of Justice Minister Allan Rock’s December 1993 request for an investigation of the former Mulroney government. But this time government lawyers must have consulted with RCMP in advance – so it might just be Rock’s valiant gesture of international openness.
Mulroney’s spokesman Luc Lavoie noticed the difference:
“Mr. Lavoie said it is obvious that a serious rift has developed between the Justice Department and the RCMP in their defence of the libel action.”
Merely days before the trial’s start, the government’s hope of winning the lawsuit was dashed by Federal Court of Canada’s decision in favor of Mulroney’s appeal against the RCMP objection to 8 of the questions for Pascal Gossin, and by what Mulroney had suspected in his April testimony, that RCMP might have leaked something – Sgt. Fiegenwald had told a reporter Mulroney was named in the letter before The Financial Post quoted from the Schreiber-Mulroney translation on November 18, 1995 (“Money key to lawsuit’s settlement COVER STORY / Rock was willing to apologize but Mulroney wanted Ottawa to pay his legal costs. A deal seemed impossible until the federal government learned of a crucial mistake and changed its strategy”, by Tu Thanh Ha, January 11, 1997, The Globe and Mail):
“As 1996 was drawing to a close, Justice Minister Allan Rock and Brian Mulroney were holed up on separate floors of a prestigious Montreal office building for two days, closely monitoring talks to end the former prime minister’s unprecedented lawsuit against the federal government.
The talks failed. And both men rang in the new year facing the prospect of a three-month trial that could leave a permanent -- perhaps fatal – mark on their political reputations.
But on Jan. 2, the two sides agreed to resume the secret talks that would lead to last Sunday’s dramatic out-of-court settlement, the day before the trial date of Mr. Mulroney’s $50-million libel suit against the government.
…
The two sides had roughly agreed that Mr. Mulroney would drop his lawsuit in return for an apology. There was also no objection from the plaintiff’s side to a clause saying that Mr. Rock was not aware of the investigation until contacted by one of Mr. Mulroney’s lawyers on Nov. 4, 1995.
But the federal side did not want to pay costs. It argued that it could not shell out any sums during a time of budget cuts. The federal side warned that Mr. Mulroney had little chance of recovering his costs, even if he were to win some damages. One federal lawyer said that Mr. Mulroney could not expect to win more than $2-million, what it would have cost him to wage a three-month trial.
…
Then, suddenly, the federal case collapsed.
Mr. Rock was at home watching CBC’s The National news, at 10:10 in the evening, when the phone rang. It was Mr. Thomson.
During a final preparation session with Justice Department lawyers, Staff Sergeant Fraser Fiegenwald, the lead RCMP Airbus investigator, disclosed that he had confirmed to a reporter that Mr. Mulroney’s name appeared in the letter to the Swiss before it had become public knowledge in November, 1995.
This was bad news because, in Quebec, an action for defamation is similar to an action for negligence in a Common Law jurisdiction. So Ottawa would have had trouble arguing that it had acted with the appropriate precautions and the requisite standard of care.
…
The next day, several federal officials glumly gathered in an office at the Justice Department’s building in Ottawa: lawyers Vincent O’Donnell and Claude-Armand Sheppard from Montreal, Mr. Strosberg, who had flown in from Windsor, and Mr. Thomson, Mr. Palmer and RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray.
…
While the officials were still discussing the problem, more bad news came in. Mr. Justice Pierre Denault of the Federal Court had ruled that the RCMP could not invoke international relations as a reason to deny Mr. Mulroney the opportunity to ask questions about the way the letter was handled by the Swiss.
…
SUNDAY, JAN. 5
Again, the Mulroney side offered another proposal: “Any conclusions or suggestions of wrongdoings were and are unjustified.” Again, the government turned it down.
On monetary matters, the government had conceded that it would cover Mr. Mulroney’s costs. The agreement would say that the RCMP would pay “all fees and disbursements . . . reasonably incurred.”
…
After 5 p.m., the deal was reached, without the word “suggestions.”
It read: “Based on the evidence received to date, the RCMP acknowledges that any conclusions of wrongdoing by the former prime minister were -- and are -- unjustified.”
Mr. Mulroney was at his home, waiting with his media adviser, Luc Lavoie, along with Mr. Tremblay and Mr. Jeansonne, for news of the negotiations.
The phone rang. It was Mr. [former Quebec Superior Court chief justice, settlement facilitator Alan] Gold. Mr. Mulroney took the call, smiled, and simply said: “It’s done.””
RCMP didn’t have evidence to conclude Mulroney wrongdoing. By settling before trial, RCMP avoided more facts to come to the open:
“There are many questions that the trial might have looked at:
Who saw and approved the letter before it went out?
Who initiated the investigation and included Mr. Mulroney’s name, and on what basis?
What evidence has been discovered over the past 18 months?
Why hasn’t the RCMP talked to Air Canada?
Who leaked the letter to the Swiss authorities and why?
These remain unanswered, however, as both sides opted for the certainty of a three-page document over the three-month uncertainty of a landmark trial.”
One of these questions had an answer, as earlier, that RCMP had investigated Air Canada shortly after the 1988 Airbus deal.
An expensive hoax perhaps. Mulroney’s legal expenses could be $2 million, but Allan Rock’s friend, lawyer Harvey Strosberg was elated (“Taxpayers on hook for $2 million”, by Sarah Scott, January 7, 1997, The Windsor Star):
“Justice Minister Allan Rock is exonerated in the deal, said Strosberg, a longtime friend of Rock who was asked by Rock last spring to help in the defence.”
From the start it was to Mulroney’s advantage to take the offensive with a libel lawsuit, but there were indications that RCMP also provoked Mulroney to do so; in other words, RCMP likely also wanted a media circus focused on an unprecedented lawsuit by an ex-Prime Minister against the government, thus avoiding a harder criminal investigation the German police did in contrast.
For one, RCMP, including Commissioner Murray, treated Mulroney’s early intermediary, lawyer Roger Tasse, aloofly and even rudely (“Mulroney lawyer: Suit was avoidable; Ottawa rejected apology before allegations public, Tasse says”, by Edison Stewart and David Vienneau, January 8, 1997, Toronto Star):
“RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray knew the key contents of a controversial letter in the Airbus case in time to rectify the damage, according to a lawyer for former prime minister Brian Mulroney.
Murray says it was only last week that he first read the 1995 justice department letter to Swiss authorities which accused Mulroney of criminal activity and sought their help in the investigation into alleged kickbacks.
But lawyer Roger Tasse says he personally read excerpts of an unofficial translation of the letter to Murray before the Airbus allegations were made
public in the Financial Post on Nov. 18, 1995.“I took some time to go over the essential parts (and) I said if you want a copy you can have a copy, but he didn’t accept my invitation,” Tasse said in a telephone interview.
…
He said he met two RCMP investigators Nov. 15, 1995, and then wrote to them the following day asking for both the clarification and the apology that has now been issued.
“They said no, no regrets, no apology, no nothing,” he said in an interview.”
For another, Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald leaked to quite a few reporters that Mulroney had been named in the letter, and then denied leaking until a few days before the trial’s start (“Leak final blow to federal position: RCMP prober talked to ‘two or three’ reporters”, by William Marsden and Paul Wells, January 8, 1997, The Gazette):
“Lavoie said that, around that time, Mulroney received numerous calls from reporters claiming they knew Mulroney was named in the letter, calls which made it clear that the RCMP was leaking information.
…
… a high-placed government source close to the investigation named Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald, who was the lead investigator on the Airbus investigation.
…
The official, who did not want to be named, said Fiegenwald made the admission in answer to a direct question posed by a government lawyer last Thursday, about whether he had told Cameron that Mulroney was named in the letter.
“His response was that, ‘Well, I wasn’t forthcoming with the name; it was just a sort of confirmation (of the name),’” the official said.
The official said Fiegenwald had been asked the same question several times over the past five months and had replied in the negative.
The RCMP has begun an internal investigation into Fiegenwald and reassigned him to administrative duties, the official says.
…
Mulroney’s lawyer Roger Tasse … recalled that on Nov. 15, 1995, he met Fiegenwald at the RCMP headquarters in Ottawa and was given assurances that Mulroney’s name would be kept confidential.
…
Tasse said he began to have suspicions about the RCMP when, soon after his meeting with Fiegenwald, he received several phone messages that Cameron wanted to speak to him. He said only a handful of people knew that he was acting for Mulroney and that he had met with the RCMP.
“I had never met Cameron, but I knew who she was and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what she wanted,” he said.”
The way the RCMP acted, they probably didn’t plan to win any libel defence against Mulroney, either.
The last time when Prime Minister Jean Chretien said RCMP was now doing enough to rectify the situation with the break-in of his residence, he was in Japan. This time visiting South Korea, Chretien stated RCMP was doing enough on the Airbus Affair with an internal inquiry on Sgt. Fiegenwald’s conduct (“RCMP chief has support of the PM -- for now”, January 14, 1997, Edmonton Journal):
“RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray has a vote of confidence -- for the time being -- from Jean Chretien over police handling of the Mulroney –Airbus investigation.
“I have confidence in everybody that is in the job until you know he is no more in the job,” the prime minister said Monday as he concluded a visit to South Korea.
“So I have confidence in him.
“He is looking into the matter. He is supposed to act on the problem according to his own responsibilities. But you know an inquiry is an inquiry and there is no political interference with that.”
The statement was reminiscent of the qualified confidence the government repeatedly expressed in Gen. Jean Boyle until he abruptly quit as chief of defence staff last year over claims that he had lost control of the armed forces in the Somalia affair.
RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Mike Gaudet rejected any parallel with Murray.
Boyle ran into trouble because he “minimized his role and somewhat blamed his underlings,” Gaudet said. “That hasn’t been the case with the commissioner. He has simply explained the process. He has not assigned blame.”
Murray has been under fire since he admitted he did not personally read a contentious letter to Swiss authorities before it was sent in September
1995.…
An internal RCMP investigation is under way into a Mountie suspected of telling a journalist in November 1995 that Mulroney had been named in the letter to the Swiss.
There has been no word on when the internal inquiry will be completed, and it appears the force doesn’t intend to share the results.
“The findings cannot be disclosed publicly,” said Gaudet. “They remain confidential.”
That came as a surprise to Reform justice critic Jack Ramsay, a former Mountie. “I would think that probe should be made public because of the high-interest nature of this inquiry,” said Ramsay.
The RCMP has not named the officer, but sources identify him as Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald, former lead investigator in the Airbus case. If he violated the RCMP code of conduct, he could face sanctions ranging from counselling to dismissal.
More senior officers, including Murray and Frank Palmer, the deputy commissioner for operations, were briefed on the case as it unfolded but their exact roles remain a mystery.”
Holding an internal inquiry looking only into the conduct of a Sergeant, albeit the lone investigator in the Airbus Affair investigation, looks to me like “minimizing” RCMP senior management’s responsibility in the legal setback, similar to in the Chretien residence intrusion case when initially only low-ranking onsite officers were penalized by Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell, and senior supervisors’ roles were never properly reviewed.
This time, there was also a subtle RCMP revelation that it was happening the same way, but again the media didn’t pursue it (“Airbus letter puts heat on top Mountie Botched probe casts force in role of bumblers”, by Tim Harper and Derek Ferguson, January 11, 1997, Toronto Star):
“Three key questions still surround Murray’s performance on the file.
* How could he have not read until nine days ago the accusatory letter sent to Swiss authorities implicating Mulroney - even though Mulroney’s lawyer had offered him a copy and asked for the language to be changed 12 days before its contents became public?
* How could a letter, all but convicting the country’s former prime minister, have been sent without his approval or even his knowledge?
* Did he mislead Jocelyne Bourgon, the country’s top bureaucrat, about the nature of the investigation into Mulroney? He is said to have told her that she was not informed because Mulroney was not a cabinet minister.
Murray would not be interviewed for this story.
‘LUDICROUS’ EXPECTATION
His spokesperson, Sgt. Andre Guertin, said Murray cannot be expected to take a hands-on approach to every criminal investigation undertaken by the force.
“That would be ludicrous. It would be exceptional,” Guertin said.
He also said Murray purposely refused to be briefed on the case after Nov. 18, 1995, when Mulroney named the commissioner as one of the respondents in his $50 million libel suit.
Murray said Monday the RCMP approved the now infamous letter from its regional headquarters for the national capital before it was sent to Swiss authorities.
Guertin later said the letter never made it to RCMP headquarters and the ranking officer to sign off on the accusatory missive would have been in Ottawa’s A Division, someone between chief investigator Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald and deputy commissioner Frank Palmer.
Even when Roger Tasse, one of Mulroney’s lawyers, met with Murray on Nov. 6, 1995, to discuss the letter and seek an apology, Murray dismissed him and told him to take up the matter with Palmer.”
Both RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray and his spokesman Andre Guertin made it quite explicit, that the RCMP “A” Division responsible for Capital Ottawa had been in charge of the Airbus Affairs criminal investigation.
Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell? As earlier, he was the “A” Division commander overseeing “damage control” after the Chretien residence break-in, announcing some cover-up like decisions, including transferring Chief Superintendent Al Rivard away, quietly.
Wonder why a lowly ranked Corporal was in charge of onsite security for all of the head-of-state and head-of-government official residences, and why at just one rank above, a Sergeant was the lone investigator up against Brian Mulroney?
It was A/Comm. McConnell’s turn to be let go, again quietly, but it was ‘coincidentally’ marked in the records of the Parliament of Canada (“EVIDENCE Sub-Committee on the DRAFT REGULATIONS ON FIREARMS of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affair”, Chairman: Russell MacLellan, Meeting No. 13, February 4, 1997, House of Commons, Parliament of Canada):
“The Chairman: We’re ready now to resume our hearings on the proposed regulations under the Firearms Act.
I want to welcome this afternoon our witnesses from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. We have with us Chief Brian Ford from the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police Service; Mr. N.G. Beauchesne, legal adviser to the law amendments committee; and Mr. Bryan McConnell, the executive director of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
Welcome, gentlemen. It’s a pleasure to have you once again in this room. We look forward to your presentation. We’re hopeful that after the presentation you’ll allow us some time to ask some questions.
Chief Ford, are you making the presentation?
Chief Brian Ford (Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police Service; Chair, Law Amendments Committee, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police): Yes, I’ve been elected.
The Chairman: Picked the short straw, eh?
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Chief Ford: Not in the true democratic sense, Mr. Chair, but nonetheless it’s a pleasure for me again to appear on behalf of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. I am here as the chair of the law amendments committee and also as chief of the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police Service. I speak both as the chair of the law amendments committee and as a chief of police in a local municipality.
I’m joined here today by Rusty Beauchesne, a police legal adviser to the Metropolitan Toronto Police Service and a member of the law amendments committee.
I’m also pleased to introduce Mr. Bryan McConnell, who is the new executive director of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. Mr. McConnell is a former assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was commander of the A division here in the national capital, and has now assumed duties as the executive director of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police here in Ottawa.
…”
Merely weeks after the Mulroney legal settlement Bryan McConnell was no longer policing the nation’s capital and was out of the RCMP, “not in the true democratic sense”, but chosen by the chiefs nationwide to coordinate police matters across the entire Canada.
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