Was it the moment when he said he had met regularly with Dingwall, sometimes as often as twice a week, though Dingwall had earlier told the committee he could not recall having met him even once? Was it his equally direct contradiction of Alfonso Gagliano's claim to have had scarcely any contact with Guite, confirming other public servants' testimony to the effect that the two met several times a month?

Or was it his pique, almost that of a spurned lover, at Don Boudria's similarly baffling memory loss? "He doesn't remember the dinner I had with him with a fairly high-profile hockey legend during the Canada Games ... He doesn't remember that I organized a hot air balloon-ride in his riding as part of the sponsorship program ... He doesn't remember a football game in Montreal where he was going to do the first kick ... He doesn't remember his trip to ... the Grand Prix Trois-Rivieres that was organized through the sponsorship [program]..."

Of one thing, however, I am in no doubt, having watched the two days of testimony and having read the transcript of his appearance before the same committee two years ago. It is passing strange that all these people should have such a hard time remembering Chuck Guite, for there has seldom been such a memorable character to appear on Parliament Hill. In his cheerful readiness to break the rules, his manic us-versus-them mentality, his gung-ho military allusions, his, well, plain craziness, he recalls no one so much as G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate conspirator.

Like Liddy, he cannot resist regaling his listeners with tales of the capers he was involved in, such as Operation Whiteout ("I phoned the guys in Montreal, the media people, and I said, 'What's your inventory?" They said, 'Oh, it's about $8-million worth of outdoor advertising that's available.' I said, 'I'll buy it' ...") and Operation Who's-Your-Daddy (advertising agencies, on his account, were hired essentially as spies, to report on which events the Quebec government had sponsored).

So, too, there are the weird Liddy-like ethical distinctions. Consider these gems from the world according to G. Gordon Guite:

- When a politician or other official intervenes in the sponsorship file in a way that Guite likes, as the succession of Public Works ministers listed above certainly did, and as the Prime Minister's Office did via a series of meetings with Jean Pelletier, Jean Chretien's chief of staff -- meetings in which, Guite testified, it was decided who should get how much of the sponsorship money and which Liberal advertising agencies should be cut in for a share -- that's "input." When a minister or official intervenes in a way he does not like, as in the hotly denied phone calls from and meetings with Paul Martin's chief of staff, Terrie O'Leary, that's "interference."

- In earlier testimony, he expressed outrage at the Auditor-General for saying he had "broken every rule in the book." His defence: He didn't break all the rules, just some of them. He told the committee he had been instructed by senior federal officials to "follow a bit of the guidelines that exist in the rules, but to ... bend them a little bit." Follow the rules a bit. But bend them a little. Got it. Because, after all, "we were basically at war trying to save the country."

- Later, he tells the committee that the absence of any documentation for the various contracts he awarded -- unwritten contracts, for verbal advice, without invoices, or even records of whether the work had been done -- does not mean no files were kept. He filed them in his head. Asked why he did not keep any records, he tells the committee he did not want to have to destroy them, should any nefarious separatist try to use an Access to Information request to get hold of them, because, well, because that's illegal. Whereas if you never create the file in the first place, you can't be found guilty of destroying it. I am not making this up:

"The way I read the act, and understand the act, is that if you ask for a file through Access to Information, and I, personally, take documents out and destroy, then I'm subject to be guilty of an offence under the Access to Information Act. But, to say that I did not put something on file because I kept it in this file ..."

Mr. John Bryden: "In your head?"

Mr. Charles Guite: "In my head -- is contravening the Access to Information Act, I don't think so."

Well. What should we conclude from all this? That this man should never have been let anywhere near the taxpayers' money, let alone put in charge of a multi-million dollar program? Certainly. Yet successive ministers, and successive governments, did put him in charge, telling him, in effect, do what you gotta do. "You won't rat on them, you won't rat on us."

What is also clear by now, from Guite's testimony and others, is that there was extensive partisan involvement, not only in the sponsorship program, but in government advertising in general; that it predated the referendum, and extended far beyond Quebec; and that it happened under both parties. That's scandalous enough, I supposed. But what's truly scandalous is that nobody can claim to be particularly surprised at these revelations.