(Continued from Part 1, previous blog post)
If I have painted a picture of the RCMP and the former Chretien Liberal government reacting rather than leading in the Airbus Affair investigation into possible corruption of former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, then who have been the driving forces behind the events that have dogged and irked Mr. Mulroney for so long and may still reignite?
When the Mulroney conservatives ascended to power in 1984 on a platform of economic privatization and free trade with the United States, and were perceived as practising politics more closely identified with that of the rightwing Mr. Ronald Reagan in the United States and Mrs. Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, the connections between the conservatives’ politics and their business and personal lifestyles naturally became subjects of scrutiny by the traditionally left-leaning Canadian media. 37 Since that early days the press media have regularly exposed facts as well as innuendos, while the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Fifth Estate TV program has relentlessly pursued some of the harder topics. 38
Mulroney’s approach to politics in the end proved extremely unpopular with most Canadians. The Progressive Conservative Party he had led for ten years, 1983-1993, nine of which as prime minister with two consecutive terms of parliamentary majority, a party once led by the founding prime minister of Canada Sir John A. MacDonald, in the October 25, 1993 election under his successor, the first female Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell, won only two parliament seats. 39
Oppositions to Mulroney’s politics from the sprawling federal government system and its affiliates came even sooner, as in the 1988 election his party’s candidates were already wiped out from the national capital Ottawa and its surrounding urban areas in Eastern Ontario, keeping only one parliament seat in a rural riding; such sentiments were apparently not merely partisanship as his government had been rocked by a never-ending string of scandals resulting in the firing or resignation of eight cabinet ministers in a short time-span from 1985 to 1988. 40
Given this background of history it is obvious that it was politically appealing in 1995 for the Justice Department to take a hard line when it was approached by the RCMP to initiate cooperation with the Swiss authorities in the Airbus Affair investigation; 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. 41
In 1996 during his civil litigation with the RCMP and the Canadian government over the Airbus Affair, Mr. Mulroney’s side expressed the view that there was a vendetta against him in the Canadian media that contributed to the RCMP criminal investigation, and his lawyers subpoenaed three top Canadian journalists to testify to find out their roles in it, who were: author and former The Fifth Estate host Stevie Cameron, The Globe and Mail newspaper columnist Susan Delacourt, and Maclean’s magazine writer Mary Janigan; all happened to be women (in addition to the three female journalists, Mulroney’s lawyers also subpoenaed the executive assistant of then justice minister Allan Rock by the name of Cyrus Reporter). 42
It is known that before the controversial letter to the Swiss authorities the RCMP had sent two investigators to Switzerland to interview Karlheinz Schreiber’s former accountant Georgio Pelossi, apparently oblivious to a requirement in the Swiss law for prior approval by the Swiss authorities; a Canadian judge later also ruled that Canadian judicial approval in advance was needed, which the RCMP had not obtained before requesting foreign authorities to search bank accounts (of Karlheinz Schreiber’s in Switzerland). 43
It is also known that media materials provided to the RCMP had been crucial in the agency’s 1995 decision to revive the Airbus Affair investigation, and that author and journalist Stevie Cameron has been generally viewed as a key person in a tireless media campaign driving the investigation, not only through her articles, books and public speaking but also her communications with the RCMP, cooperating with the RCMP since 1988 and was later officially designated a “confidential informant” by the agency. 44, 45 Cameron however has been unwilling to be treated or viewed as in cooperation with the law enforcement – the RCMP in particular – out of safety concern for her family as well as concern about some of the ways in which the RCMP have operated. 46
Not a surprise at all for Stevie Cameron to be casted as someone driving behind the RCMP Airbus-Affair criminal investigation, as she has been a leading Canadian journalist of anti-political-corruption repute ever since the early years of the Mulroney era. From a family of some background in the intelligence field, Stevie Cameron had apparently worked for a short time at the Communications Security Establishment – a Canadian intelligence agency she discussed at length in her 1989 book Ottawa inside out: power, prestige and scandal in the nation’s capital – before becoming a food and lifestyles journalist; 47 by the mid-1980s, Cameron had begun to take on assignments investigating political ethics and conduct, and she made her initial fame in this field through reporting on the lifestyles and related problems of the family of then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, in 1987 exposing the so-called Gucci-gate, i.e., Prime Minister Mulroney’s closet built to house 50 pairs of Gucci shoes, 30 suits and other personal furnishings. 48
More intriguing among what Cameron reported in 1987 than the fact that the Progressive Conservative Party helped pay for part the Mulroney lifestyles, was that during those early years there were already prospects of a legal dispute with a legitimate businessperson who did services for the Mulroney family for their lifestyles, who was threatening to take the family and the government to court for money owned; but he was given career-ending threat not to pester Mr. Mulroney who being the national leader was powerful and influential. 49
The Gucci-gate and related topics of lavish personal spending (of government and party money) by then Prime Minister Mulroney and his family became a hot topic before the 1988 election, pounded upon by opposition parties and journalists alike. One of the journalists who expressed outrageous opinions at the time was Canadian columnist Barbara Amiel based in Ottawa and in London, England, who commented with considerable disdain: 50
“The problem with the Mulroneys, who are certainly bright enough to know this, is that they are still a little too lower-middle class, culturally speaking, to be able to accommodate their hungry social ambitions to this reality.”
Ms. Amiel even made a bold prediction that the many Gucci shoes would end Mr. Mulroney’s political career:
“It is an understandable failing but a failing that will bring them down. The ludicrous thing about Canada is that it is not the dreadful politics of Brian Mulroney nor his lack of principle in foreign and domestic policy that will be his undoing, but one pair of Gucci loafers too many.”
Well, Canadians all know that Mr. Mulroney was a tough leader who could not be so easily brought down by one pair of Gucci shoes too many, not in 1988 anyway, and apparently thus far has never personally lost in a general election or in the court of law.
Rather, and quite ironically, recently in 2007-08 it has been by this time Ms. Barbara Amiel’s dear husband of intellectual and trans-Atlantic fames, Canadian and international press baron Lord Conrad Black of Crossharbour, who was brought down for having – together with his associates – tens of millions of dollars too many in a way that constituted criminal fraud and not just lifestyle excess. 51
The Conrad Black case is an instance of ‘Chicago corruption’, which has been discussed in my January 29, 2009 blog article, “Greeting the New Millennium – nearly a decade late”, and which included the ongoing case of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich who is represented by the same Chicago lawyer Edward Genson who defended Conrad Black. The standard views on the Black case are different, however, and they included opinions that Black’s was a case of American justice for a Canadian crime, as well as opposite opinions that Black was harshly targeted because he was non-American. 52, 53
In any case, Ms. Barbara Amiel is fortunate that Lord Black’s high lifestyle with her as Lady Black, personally more extravagant than the lifestyle of the family of former prime minister Mulroney while in office, hasn’t contributed further misery to the life of Mr. Conrad Black in prison. 54
Moving on from her 1987 lifestyle stories on then prime minister Brian Mulroney and his family, journalist Stevie Cameron hosted the flagship broadcast program of Canadian investigative journalism, The Fifth Estate, in 1990-1991. 55
After the 1987 Mulroney-lifestyle stories Cameron also began to concentrate on a career as a book writer, specializing in investigative political journalism, and she has been growing her reputation ever since in this field, through a series of bestselling or award-winning books on subjects centred at corruptions in the era of the former Mulroney government, starting with, Ottawa inside out: power, prestige and scandal in the nation’s capital (1989; an introduction to political life and business lobbying in Ottawa, with a focus on the years of Mulroney’s first term in government, 1984-1988), then after the Mulroney era had ended, On the take: crime, corruption and greed in the Mulroney years (1994; a book credited with bringing to public attention the Airbus Affair and contributing to the revival of the RCMP criminal investigation), then after the government’s 1997 legal settlement with Mulroney on his defamation lawsuit, Blue trust: the author, the lawyer, his wife, and her money (1998; the real-life stories of Montreal tax lawyer Bruce Verchere, whose father had been a British Columbia supreme court justice, and who was entrusted with supervising Brian Mulroney’s personal business affairs while Mulroney was prime minister, stories about Verchere’s manner of business, his Swiss and Vatican bank connections, his marital infidelities and dispute with his wife who was a successful computer-software businesswoman, and his ultimate suicide in August 1993 – only two months after his appointment as chairman of Atomic Energy Canada Limited by Mr. Mulroney the day before Mulroney was to step down as prime minister), and finally, The last amigo: Karlheinz Schreiber and the anatomy of a scandal (2001; a book co-authored with then CBC The Fifth Estate producer Harvey Cashore, describing various international business and political-bribery activities of German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber). 56
The last in the above series of books from author Stevie Cameron has been proven very credible by Karlheinz Schreiber’s own disclosures and revelations of facts in the last few years. Ms. Cameron’s reputation as a courageous and solid investigative journalist doggedly on the money trails of former prime minister Brian Mulroney and German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber has been firmly established.
Ms. Cameron herself is also sure that the persons she has been chasing view her in this way as well, as she has been quoted as saying on November 13, 2007: 57
“Would I be at the top of Mulroney’s list of journalists? You bet. In a letter Schreiber wrote to Mulroney on Jan. 29 this year, he said, ‘All my personal problems began with Stevie Cameron’s book On The Take and Allan Rock’s political witch hunt with the RCMP against you.’”
For Stevie Cameron, the story of Bruce Verchere, former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s tax lawyer, has continued to be a subject of intense interest, as Ms. Cameron posted a blog article about him as recently as on February 26, 2008; in her blog article, Cameron made it clear that when Mulroney was the Prime Minister he had a “lawyer in Geneva, Switzerland” (something Mr. Mulroney’s spokesman denied when Karlheinz Schreiber first said it in 2006-07, as mentioned in an earlier part of this blog article), and that as explained the day before on February 25, 2008 by Mr. Schreiber in front of the parliamentary ethics committee this lawyer was Mulroney’s tax lawyer Bruce Verchere, who was also his financial trustee while he was serving as prime minister. 58
The reason for then prime minister Brian Mulroney’s Canadian lawyer to be referred to as his lawyer in Switzerland is that Bruce Verchere was also the Canadian lawyer representing the Swiss bank where (in a branch in Zurich, Switzerland) Mr. Schreiber opened bank accounts for Airbus commissions and other funds including his now famous $300,000 given to Mulroney in 1993-94. 59, 60, 61
While her books have been either bestselling or award-winning (receiving book-of-the-year accolades), Author Stevie Cameron’s relentless pursue of possible corruption on the part of former prime minister Brian Mulroney in the Airbus Affair has also drawn her criticisms, ridicules and even verbal attacks.
One major category of criticisms levelled at Cameron has been that she collected all kinds of information she could get, including innuendos, rumors and gossips, and presented them as facts against Mulroney, and that she was a “conspiracy theorist”, “gratuitous” or even “mean-spirited” targeting Mulroney; varying degrees of this view have been expressed by many of her critics, notably author William Kaplan, columnist Philip Mathias of the National Post/Financial Post newspapers and Tory Senator Marjorie LeBreton. 62
National Post columnist Gerald Owen went as far as comparing Cameron (and the American prosecutors in the Conrad Black case) to “ancient sycophants” bent on persecuting the rich and powerful out of envy more than out of justice. 63
A second type of criticisms of Stevie Cameron has implied that she had a personal (i.e., family) grudge against Brian Mulroney because when Mulroney became prime minister in 1984 it ended the career of her husband David Cameron as a federal government official in Ottawa, “an assistant under-secretary of state” (i.e., assistant deputy minister) specializing in constitutional and federal-provincial relation issues. 64, 65
Another category of criticisms of Cameron has touched on her Presbyterian background, hinting that she was a “self-righteous self-flatterer”, and yet in another view was of “Victorian sensitivity” and “inbred puritanism of the old Ottawa establishment” – and that some of her writing sounded like “a Presbyterian spinster’s detailed account of an orgy in the choir loft”. 66
A most interesting, rather lengthily outspoken and contemptuous attack on Stevie Cameron has come directly from Conrad Black, who was owner of the National Post newspaper in 1998 when he penned a review of William Kaplan’s book, Presumed Guilty: Brian Mulroney, the Airbus Affair, and the Government of Canada. Mr. Black referred to the RCMP Airbus Affair criminal investigation as “a disgraceful abuse of police and ministerial powers”, stated that Stevie Cameron’s “pathological hatred of Mulroney was notorious”, and described certain controversy about Cameron to do with leaked RCMP information – which the government had used as reason for settling Mulroney’s libel lawsuit – as that Cameron “febrilely promoted” the RCMP criminal investigation and then “double-crossed” the investigator Staff Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald as well as the RCMP legal defence for the lawsuit because she was not willing to “identify her source under oath or alternately face contempt charges” in court: 67
“Because she didn’t wish to have to identify her source under oath or alternately face contempt charges, she destroyed the feeble defence the government had against the man she had obsessively assaulted journalistically for years and she ratted on her police informant. Eventually, impartial history will have to record that for Brian Mulroney to have had such enemies was a badge of honor.
Justice was ultimately done, in that Mulroney was vindicated but most of the wrongdoers went unpunished. Only the RCMP sergeant paid with his job, doublecrossed by Ms. Cameron, the beneficiary of his misconduct, retiring the day before his disciplinary hearing, (with a full pension).”
Black also unabashedly declared that his notion of media ownership had much to do with power struggles directly related to the issue of how former prime minister Brian Mulroney should be treated by the media:
“The smugness of the public and the venality of much of the press are more worrisome. They are closely related. The publisher of the Toronto Star, the ne plus ultra of Canadian soft-left hypocrisy, unselfconsciously announced that he had "got away with" luridly partisan reporting of the case. Among the least distinguished journalistic performances were some of the Southam newspapers, especially the Ottawa Citizen (except for Greg Weston) and the Montreal Gazette. They are now under new management, for which this reviewer has some authority to speak. When tested next on such a fundamental question of justice, we will do better.”
Such barely veiled warnings from the powerful press baron Conrad Black prompted newspaper columnist John MacLachlan Gray to comment unambiguously that Black wanted to have Stevie Cameron “put in jail” and turn Canadian journalists into “toy soldiers”. 68 Also in reaction to Conrad Black’s comments, The former RCMP Airbus Affair investigator Fraser Fiegenwald sent a letter to Stevie Cameron issuing a denial that he had been betrayed by Cameron in anyway. 69
(Read Full Article with Footnotes in Feng Gao’s Space) . . .
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