Letter from the Editor: Dear Mr. Mulroney

The Globe and Mail's Edward Greenspon addresses Brian Mulroney's mention of the newspaper in Tuesday's testimony
Globe and Mail Update

May 19, 2009 at 11:44 PM EDT

Dear Mr. Wolson,

I am writing to you in your capacity as Lead Commission Counsel. I resisted the urge to write to you last week when there was an unsubstantiated allegation made that Greg McArthur, the Globe and Mail reporter covering the Inquiry, was seen giggling during Mr. Mulroney's testimony. I can assure you those allegations were completely without any foundation and, indeed, Mr. Mulroney's spokesman had to admit that although he was collecting photographic evidence in the hearing room, he had no photo of the alleged moment in question. In any case, since this allegation was not made in evidence before the Commissioner I decided not to pursue it.

However, because Mr. Mulroney made certain comments concerning The Globe and Mail in evidence before the Commissioner today, I now feel compelled to write to you to correct the record. In his testimony today, Mr Mulroney made reference to a supposed fourth article in the November 2003 series authored by William Kaplan and suggested this article, on which he "was counting very heavily," was suppressed by the Globe. There was no such fourth article ever contemplated. The number of articles in the series was always three.

It may be that what Mr. Mulroney is referring to is information he offered me in an effort to induce The Globe and Mail not to publish Mr. Kaplan's third article revealing that Mr. Mulroney had accepted cash payments from Mr. Schreiber. When he found out that the Globe intended to publish Mr. Kaplan's story, Mr. Mulroney contacted me several times trying to appeal to me not to publish the story. In at least one of the conversations, Mr. Mulroney offered to trade me information about a story that he said was explosive and would be of greater interest to The Globe than Mr. Kaplan's story about the cash payments.

Mulroney tried to block Globe article about cash
As can be surmised from what has occured since, the Globe emphatically declined Mr. Mulroney's offer of information in exchange for suppressing Mr. Kaplan's story. I told Mr. Mulroney that if the story he was offering was true and verifiable that it would be in his interest to tell it to me in any case and that we would pursue it. He did and we did. Unfortunately, it was not verifiable.

The information from Mr. Mulroney also was not provided in sufficient time for it to have possibly been checked out and included in the series called Secret No More. This was never contemplated. Mr. Kaplan refers to independent discussions he had on the same subject on page 129 of his book, A Secret Trial. He also concluded there was not sufficient grounds to justify the story.

As your office has been advised, because Mr. Mulroney has chosen to make the erroneous allegation about there being a fourth story public, The Globe will be releasing this letter to the public. We trust this assists in clarifying matters.

Sincerely,
Edward Greenspon
Editor-in-chief
The Globe and Mail