Battle of the anonymous stars!

One of the more entertaining aspects of the current unpleasantness is the attempt by the Martin crowd to present themselves as the virgins in the whorehouse: not only unaware of just how low the party had sunk in Quebec, but actively opposed to the whole philosophy behind it. As a Martin-friendly journalist (Are there any other kind? - ed. These days, yes.) puts it:

Martin's Quebec supporters came more from the new-style provincial Liberals, whose political system was cleaned up decades ago. Chr�tien's support was rooted in the Liberal politics of his youth, the hard-knuckle, all's fair school.

We know this from the many off-the-record briefings various unnamed Martin officials (or perhaps the same one over and over) have been giving these days. To Jane Taber of the Globe and Mail:

Perhaps sensing that the spin hadn't quite gone their way after the release of the Fraser report on Tuesday, senior Martin advisers tried another tack, spending Wednesday calling up journalists to "spin" them on their version of events. They described the way in which the Chr�tienites played politics in Quebec as "tribal politics." They said those days are over and will be "done and dead" when the results of the public inquiry come to light. They even suggested that former prime minister Jean Chr�tien could become the "poster boy" for that school of politics.

To John Ibbitson of the Globe:

Everyone knows that there was more to this than a few guys who might have espied a chance to make some ill-gotten gains by rigging advertising contracts. Mr. Martin's own advisers were on the phone to reporters across Ottawa, telling a different story. The real problem, they said on condition of anonymity, was the ancient and dishonourable tribalism of Quebec politics, in which friends do favours for friends, rules are made to be skirted, and the end justifies not inquiring too closely into the means. This was the political culture personified by Mr. Chr�tien, they alleged, and the real purpose of a judicial inquiry would be to finally break the power of the corrupt old guard that Mr. Martin had fought for so many years.

To Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star:

"We weren't trusted. We were kept out," said one of the Martin team yesterday. "Quebec was Chr�tien's province. He wanted to keep a tight rein on it and that meant keeping Martin and his people out."

To Bob Fife of the National Post:

"[The Chretien government] had a team of people who believed in a certain approach to politics in Quebec that was negligent of rules and unconcerned with proper conduct," said the senior official. "This public inquiry is going to pin it all on them." ... "You have people who were deliberately running a program under what appears to be essentially criminal directives. They are certainly breaking administrative rules and in many cases, it appears they could be guilty of fraud," the official said. ... "Let's face facts. There were two tribes with respect to Quebec and we were not welcome in Jean Chretien's tribe and this is the unpleasant reality," the official said. "This is Jean Chretien and his fundamental belief and those around him that the end justifies the means.... That old ward-heeling, pump-house politics thesis is exactly the approach the Prime Minister personified and Alfonso Gagliano personified and the team they put in place personified."

Naturally all this anonymous briefing against Chretien has his partisans mighty steamed. On his website, Chretien attack-dog Warren Kinsella fumes:

The allegations made [in the National Post story] were plainly actionable. As a lawyer, and a keen observer of all of this, it looks like certain timorous, anonymous political hacks assumed that anonymity could assist them in getting off scott-free when spouting libel.... The cowards who are spreading these smears under the cloak of anonymity ... should now repeat their claims in public, so that they can be held legally accountable for same.

Yet, strangely, unnamed sources close to the former Prime Minister could be found to brief against his successor. To John Ibbitson of the Globe (same piece!):

Mr. Chr�tien's loyalists will not sit by while the former prime minister's reputation is dragged into the dirt. "I have a file this thick on a certain company," someone close to Mr. Chr�tien said yesterday. That file is labelled "Earnscliffe," for the Ottawa consulting firm whose senior figures ran Mr. Martin's leadership campaign and who also held lucrative contracts to advise the Finance Department when he was minister.

To the Canadian Press:

One Chr�tien loyalist said the old boss still has plenty of weapons at his disposal - legal and political. "Every conceivable measure is possible," said the loyalist, who requested anonymity. "You know him (Chretien). He will defend his reputation because he has a good reputation to defend. And all of us will defend his reputation because he - the man who called in the auditor-general, the man who called in the RCMP - does not deserve to now be handed the blame." ... Chr�tien's anonymous ally raised the case of another former prime minister, Brian Mulroney, who sued the federal government and reached an out-of-court settlement in the Airbus affair "The allegations in the National Post were libellous and they should pay careful attention to what was done in the Airbus case by Mr. Mulroney," he said.

To Campbell Clark and Drew Fagan of the Globe:

As Mr. Martin was speaking publicly yesterday, Chr�tien insiders launched an attack on the Martin camp under cover of anonymity, speaking to The Globe and other news organizations. A former senior Chr�tien official, speaking on condition he not be named,charged that Mr. Martin's camp smeared Mr. Chr�tien, and said he must fire the aides who made anonymous attacks on Mr. Chr�tien. Mr. Martin has said he does not support the anonymous attacks., with which Mr. Martin said he disagreed. "What is Martin going to do about it? What leadership is he going to show? "Liberals are joking that he's a temporary prime minister, and that what we have here is leadership that waffles, because every day it's a different story and somebody else is being blamed for it. And there's great nervousness in the party that the election's going to be a major problem with this type of leadership � or lack thereof."

To Tonda MacCharles of the Star:

Allies of Chr�tien say he is weighing over the weekend whether to respond to Martin's stunning suggestions that people in his entourage gave "political direction" to those who abused the public trust in the sponsorship scandal and committed "theft." "I don't think we can remain silent for long," said one, who spoke on condition he not be named. "We're going to defend the former prime minister's integrity." ... "If he (Martin) knows a `political' person, maybe he should point at them directly," said one angry senior Liberal. The insider squarely blamed Martin and his camp for further poisoning what is described as an "awful" atmosphere in the Quebec wing of the federal Liberal party. Another warned that Martin has also failed to build bridges with former Chr�tien ministers, such as Robert Nault, Jane Stewart, Herb Dhaliwal, risking the chance their grassroots machinery may not help out the party in the next election. "They can't move on from the fight with us," said one, calling Martin's claim of respect for Chr�tien "profoundly hypocritical."

Still, lest anyone think relations between the "two tribes" have broken down irreparably, there's this:

Reports surfaced that Jean Lapierre, Martin's recently named Quebec lieutenant, dined at the cottage of Jean Lafleur of Lafleur Communication Marketing, an ad firm now implicated in the scandal. Also at the party were three men who went on to head the Crown corporations now implicated in the scandal: Andre Ouellet of Canada Post, Marc LeFrancois of Via Rail, and Chretien aide Jean Carle who went on to become vice-president of the Business Development Bank....