And the only witness to support any of it is Fred Doucet—former chief of staff, faithful friend, fellow recipient of Schreiber largesse, and crippled with such massive memory loss on any point that might incriminate him that he could not even offer the name of his own secretary. The same Doucet who was faxing off memos to Schreiber describing precisely how many Airbus planes had been delivered, the day Mulroney was taking his first delivery of cash—Airbus cash, according to forensic accountants who followed the money trail—from Schreiber.
Though Mulroney did not know its provenance, accepting the cash, he now realizes, was a mistake. Yet he accepted not one, but three such payments from Schreiber, over 16 months. And having accepted the cash, he offers no explanation whatever for why he kept it in cash: why he left the money in a safe in his Montreal home, or in a safety deposit box in New York, rather than deposit it in a bank account, where it would earn interest. The closest we got was this gem of a non sequitur:
Q: Why didn’t you put the money in the bank?
A: Well, I brought it home and I left it there.
Nor does he explain why he kept no other records of it. His explanation for why he failed to disclose it on his income tax returns until six years later—that it was a retainer, and as such did not have to be declared until then—conflicts with the reality that it was declared under Revenue Canada’s voluntary disclosure program for late filers. His repeated insistence that he had declared the “full” $225,000, and “paid full tax on it,” is belied by tax records that show he paid tax on only half that amount.
But then, Mulroney is never more opaque than when professing his desire for full disclosure. He justifies his misleading testimony in the 1996 deposition as the literal truth. But he didn’t just tell the court “we had coffee,” and leave it at that. That would be the literal truth, if a partial one. No, he went on to describe the coffees in some detail, even mentioning that Marc Lalonde had done some work for Schreiber, without revealing that he himself had done the same. He says he “would have” answered a direct question on his dealings with Schreiber (the dealings he “had never had,” as he also testified in 1996), if they had asked. But we only have his word for that. And while he also claims he “would have” given the police all of his documents (“anything you need from me, from bank accounts . . . to tax returns to whatever”) if only they had agreed to his offer of “full and complete co-operation,” we know now what his bank accounts and his tax returns would have revealed: nothing.
And we’ve only just covered the highlights! The “fourth article” he claimed the Globe and Mail agreed to publish: there was no such agreement, as he later admitted under Judge Oliphant’s questioning. The “leading political figure from Cape Breton” who was allegedly the intended recipient of the money in the infamous “Britan” account: also false, in the judgment of the forensics.
At some point, we are entitled to conclude Mulroney is not telling us the truth, even now. What he has admitted to—belatedly—is damning enough. But no one believes him even then. And the reason no one believes his story is that it’s so unbelievable.
It took some time. For as long as he refused to tell his story, people were naturally inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. He used that, sought refuge in it, took advantage of it. Even after he told his story the first time, before the Commons ethics committee, you still found a good many people willing to take his “explanation” at face value. As in: he sure showed poor judgment, taking cash from a man like Schreiber. Or: a former prime minister, you’d think he’d have known better. People do not want to believe that a former prime minister of Canada would lie to them, especially under oath. But eventually, especially after this last performance, the reality sinks in: no one has that poor judgment. No one is that naive, least of all Mulroney. After his ethics committee appearance, you still saw TV reporters doing the “ho-ho, Lloyd, it was vintage Mulroney blarney” routine. No one is saying that now.
But do we just leave it at that? If we conclude that Mulroney is telling us a pack of lies, what do we do about it? Or never mind we: supposing Judge Oliphant, in his final report, comes to the same conclusion, even if phrased in more lawyerly language—as in, “Mr. Mulroney’s testimony must be set aside” or “I attach no weight to his evidence.” What then? Anyone who imagines we could just leave it at that—with a former prime minister of Canada found by a judicial inquiry to have lied under oath about a cash deal with an international arms dealer—has not thought this through.
People have to take the next step. They have to ask themselves: if this is the best face he can put on it, how much worse is the reality? If this is his cover story, what on earth is the real story? It’s possible to imagine why he might have lied before—to keep the story from coming out. But now the story has come out. So why would he be lying now? People do not do these kinds of things without a good reason—a reason that makes it worth the risk, not only of loss of reputation, but of possible legal repercussions. And the reasons that come to mind are not appealing.
We have to follow through. We have to confront some unpleasant possibilities. If we conclude he was not paid all that cash to sell peacekeeping vehicles to Boris Yeltsin, we have to ask the next logical question: so what was the money for?
