Talking of envelopes full of cash...

... whatever became of this story, noted in my December 18, 2004 column (not yet archived)?

The book of the year is also the least noticed. In any other country, William Kaplan’s A Secret Trial: Brian Mulroney, Stevie Cameron, and the Public Trust would be a sensation. Parliament would be in an uproar. Public inquiries would be ordered. The implications would be thrashed out in every newspaper, on every talk show. We would be sick to death of it by now. Consider just some of the events the book describes. The former prime minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney, mere months after leaving office, accepted payments totalling $300,000 in a series of meetings with one Karlheinz Schreiber. In cash. In hotel rooms. That would be the same Karlheinz Schreiber from whom Mr. Mulroney was later -- wrongfully, as it turned out -- accused of receiving kickbacks in connection with Air Canada’s $1.8-billion purchase of aircraft from Airbus Industrie. The false accusation prompted Mr. Muroney’s famous lawsuit against the government of Canada, in settlement of which he was eventually paid $2-million. Much of this was documented in Mr. Kaplan’s 1998 book, Presumed Guilty, a passionate defence of Mr. Mulroney’s reputation as an innocent man traduced. So it is newsworthy, to say the least, that Mr. Mulroney is now known to have accepted substantial sums of money, after he was prime minister, from the same man from whom he was alleged to have accepted bribes while prime minister. Yet what has been the reaction? Paul Wells wrote it up in Maclean’s. The Globe and Mail published an editorial. Michael Bliss raised an eyebrow in the Post. Apparently there was some discussion of it in the Literary Review of Canada. And that’s about it. A strange, disquieting silence has fallen over the whole story. Aside from the Globe, none of the major papers that I am aware of even published a review -- this, for a book that for several weeks was among the top 10 bestsellers in Canada. To be fair, much of the story had already been reported in the newspapers last year. But it’s the details in Mr. Kaplan’s later account that make all the difference. That Mr. Mulroney had done business as a private citizen with a man of Karlheinz Schreiber’s notoriety showed deplorable lack of judgment. That he neglected to mention this at the time he was suing the government -- Mr. Mulroney maintained that he had only a “peripheral” acquaintaince with Mr. Schreiber -- showed, shall we say, chutzpah. But that this business relationship was consummated via envelopes full of cash in hotel rooms raises all sorts of questions. Questions like: What was the payment for? Mr. Schreiber has given several explanations for the payments, none of them substantiated. At various times, he has maintained that Mr. Mulroney was hired to help him promote a pasta firm he was starting, or to represent him in other business dealings, or because the former prime minister needed the money, or even out of gratitude for Mr. Mulroney’s supposedly critical role in the unification of Germany. Just so we’re clear: There’s no suggestion, and no evidence, that Mr. Mulroney did anything wrong here. His spokesman insists that “all income was declared, and all taxes paid.” But then why is the whole business so shrouded in murk? As Mr. Kaplan asks, “what assignments were undertaken? How much time was put into the file? Was the fee proportionate to the service? And why cash?” If it is remarkable that Mr. Mulroney could have had the stones to go into a court of law, not three years later, and claim that he “had never had any dealings with [Mr. Schreiber],” it is equally remarkable that no one on the government’s side thought to ask him, point-blank, whether he had ever been in receipt of the German businessman’s largesse. Mr. Mulroney insists that, if they had, “I would have answered the question.” Mind you, unless the government’s lawyers had specifically known about the envelope-passing, we can imagine how the exchange might have gone. “Q. Were you ever paid any sum of money, for any reason, by Karlheinz Schreiber? A. What an indignity! The question, sir, is an outrage. There are no cheques in my name from Mr. Schreiber. Q. Were you paid in cash, then? A. I did not receive a single payment from Mr. Schreiber.” And so forth. It is hard to fault the government for its incuriousness, however, when the same appears to have afflicted much of the Canadian media. The story of Mr. Mulroney’s post-prime ministerial dealings with Mr. Schreiber was first unearthed in 2000 by Philip Mathias, a former reporter for this newspaper. For whatever reason, the story was never published. It then became enmeshed in legal proceedings surrounding Mr. Schreiber’s involvement in another procurement deal, this time for helicopters for the Coast Guard, proceedings which for months carried on in camera, under a comprehensive publication ban: hence the Secret Trial of Mr. Kaplan’s title. Yet when the evidence was at last unsealed, and published -- admittedly at punishing length -- in the Globe and Mail, there was barely a ripple of reaction: the same indifference that has greeted Mr. Kaplan’s book-length treatment. The coincidental timing of the Gomery inquiry’s hearings into the goings-on in government under Mr. Mulroney’s successor, Jean Chretien, highlights how low our expectations have sunk. Our last two elected prime ministers, men who governed us for most of the last twenty years, have both left office under an ethical cloud. And hardly anyone thinks this worth mentioning. (Full disclosure: Besides being an eminent lawyer and historian, William Kaplan is a neighbour and friend of mine. Read into that what you will.)