Let’s see if I have this right. In 1995, former prime minister Brian Mulroney sued the federal government and the RCMP for $50 million for suggesting he had accepted secret payments from middleman Karlheinz Schreiber to help grease the sale of Airbus jets to Air Canada in the late 1980s.

In 1996, during a discovery hearing in connection with his lawsuit, Mulroney testified under oath: “I had never had any dealings with [Schreiber].”

A year later, Ottawa settled that lawsuit and agreed to pay Mulroney $2 million in legal and PR fees.

Now there is a new and dramatic twist on this old story: it turns out that, soon after the prime minister left office in 1993, Schreiber hired Mulroney to promote what was described as “a fresh pasta business Schreiber had started in Canada, as well as his international interests.” The fee, according to a report on November 10, 2003 in The Globe and Mail, was $300,000, and there were suggestions it was paid in cash.

Was this news?

It certainly was to me, but not, apparently, to the rest of the Canadian media, which almost uniformly ignored it.

I could only find two stories following up on The Globe’s allegation, and those — a media column in the Toronto Star that focused mostly on another aspect of The Globe‘s series and a largely self-congratulatory report by The Star‘s ombudsman on its lack of coverage of The Globe revelations that conceded, almost off-handedly, that the paper should have done more with the Mulroney disclosure — didn’t add anything to what The Globe had published.

The media’s failure to run with the story is almost understandable.

The Globe itself, which has been a stout defender of the former prime minister, seemed embarrassed by what it had discovered and did its best to bury it.

This latest chapter in the Airbus saga began last month after Globe lawyers persuaded an Ontario judge to unseal documents in a semi-related court case. The Globe‘s editor then asked William Kaplan, the author of a pro-Mulroney book on the Airbus affair, to make sense of the newly released mountain of documents.

Kaplan’s massive account ran on the front page and into several inside pages each day for three days. But it wasn’t until the final day — and 26 paragraphs deep into that final installment — that Kaplan finally revealed the payments. (In fairness, The Globe‘s headline writer — Schreiber Hired Mulroney — got it right, but Kaplan’s text actually began with another long rehash of Kaplan’s claim that anti-Mulroney journalist Stevie Cameron might be an RCMP informant, which had been the centerpiece of Kaplan’s entire second installment.

In fact, its worth comparing The Globe‘s treatment of Cameron and Mulroney.

Kaplan’s accusation against Cameron seemed based entirely on the courtroom theatrics of Schreiber’s lawyer, one Eddie Greenspan, who has been known to defend his clients by attacking others, including journalists.

When Greenspan was in Halifax defending former Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan on sexual assault charges in the 1990s, he not only subpoenaed a bunch of journalists but also accused one complainant of having had a child out of wedlock before she met Regan (the old Criminal Code charge said she was a minor of “previously chaste character”) and publicly labeled a potential Crown witness as a “damnable liar” before the man had even testified in court. It’s worth noting Greenspan failed to prove either assertion.

Despite that, The Globe partnered Kaplan’s story with its own editorial attack on Cameron that included only the mildest of caveats that the allegations hadn’t been proven in court. (By contrast, The Globeâe(TM)s editorial board has remained strangely, stoically silent about Mulroney’s Schreiber deal.)

While Kaplan and The Globe seemed almost indecently eager to serve as judge and jury of Cameron, they were eager to endorse, without quibble or question, Mulroney’s explanation for his dealings with Schreiber.

Kaplan noted correctly that Mulroney’s disavowal of any dealings with Schreiber during the discovery hearing was technically correct — Schreiber didn’t hire him until after he left office — and blamed government lawyers for failing to ask exactly the right question in exactly the right way.

Kaplan went on to express admiration for Mulroney’s “balls of steel” for navigating such a careful course through the discovery process, then suggested that, because Mulroney now does admit the Schreiber payment — after Kaplan put the question to him — he must therefore be innocent. “Mulroney did admit them,” Kaplan concludes, “because the payments were above board.”

Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps even likely. But Kaplan, who has just bowed down before Mulroney’s balls of steel, offers no evidence to support his suggestion that Mulroney has really told “all” this time.

The Globe‘s own account raises plenty of questions. The pity is that The Globe doesnâe(TM)t seem to want to ask them. And, worse, neither does any other news organization.

Perhaps there’s a story in that too.

Stephen Kimber

Stephen Kimber

Stephen Kimber is an award-winning writer, journalist and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel and nine books of non-fiction, including the best-selling Flight 111: The Tragedy of the Swissair...