Perp walks

Reaction to Pelletier's testimony before the Adscam committee: Don Martin says it was "amateur hour," the old pro Pelletier toying with the bickering showboats on the committee. John Ivison says the Liberal members of the committee are deliberately sandbagging the hearings with endless points of order. John Ibbitson says Pelletier, like other Liberals who have appeared before the committee, showed not the slightest remorse nor took the least bit of responsibility for the colossal misappropriation of funds that occurred on their watch, if not with their collusion. Yet the committee "never laid a glove on him." (This, as I have pointed out, even as he acknowledged giving "recommendations" on how the loot should be divvied up in regular meetings with the program's director.) Susan Riley rolls her eyes in a column headlined "yet another blameless insider feigns ignorance." She ledes: "It is Holy Week, of course, an appropriate backdrop for the continuing parade of innocent lambs appearing before the Commons public accounts committee." Finally, Lorne Gunter suspects the fix is in: Martin has agreed to absolve his predecessors in the Prime Minister's Office of any blame in the scandal (hence his sudden doubts about whether there was any "political direction" to the affair after all, notwithstanding the parade of witnesses who have testified that there was) in return for the Chretienites keeping shut about what he knew. SPINWATCH: If nothing else, Pelletier certainly succeeded in confusing the press on what he actually said. The Globe swallows the spin whole, reporting that Pelletier "denied that he interfered in the management of the program," though it allows lower down that he was "consulted," made "recommendations" etc. The Star lede is 180 degrees different: "Senior officials around Jean Chrétien were directly involved in the now-disgraced sponsorship project, regularly discussing who should be awarded grants, his former chief of staff revealed yesterday." Then it folds in his denials that this amounted to "political pressure." But it says he "admitted he personally intervened" to steer funds to particular projects, and that he "regularly discussed the workings of the program with [Chuck] Guité, his successor Pierre Tremblay and former cabinet minister Alfonso Gagliano." It sums up:

Pelletier's testimony was the first time a top figure in the Chrétien government has acknowledged high-level input in sponsorship decision-making. It appeared in sharp contradiction to earlier statements by Gagliano, who told MPs there was no political input in the operation of the project.

Advantage: Star!