We found out through the litigation process, before there was a settlement--and this is all part of the public record--that the way it works is that the Department of Justice would send a letter to the correspondent at the Swiss Department of Justice and Police. I'm not sure if it was the ministry of interior or the justice department. They would say, “If I send you this, are you going to freeze the bank account and send over the bank records?” Then they would say, “No, that's not strong enough for our criteria, so give it some more torque, and go, go, go.” It's part of the public record.
The seventh draft was way worse than the first one--and they knew they had done no investigation. They could only rely on a journalist turned police informant, and an affidavit by a former chief of staff, in which he said that Mr. Mulroney had cancelled the Bear Head project. That's what Sergeant Fiegenwald, who was one of the lead investigators, said under oath in the Eurocopter trial. He said he had nothing else.
So you send this letter. It's a statement of fact. It's extraordinarily damaging. It leaks out. And then you say, “If we had known that after he left office”—a completely different story—“$300,000 was paid for other types of services, then we could have kept going with the torture of Mr. Mulroney and his family for a few more years.”
It doesn't change the fact that he never had a bank account in Switzerland, as confirmed by Carla Del Ponte; he never had anything to do with this transaction, as confirmed by your star witness; he never had anything to do with the MBB helicopter thing, as confirmed by the Eurocopter trial.
The letter was horrendous liable. And I maintain it. And if anybody goes on to say, “But if we had known, God, we might have had some more fun, and we could have kept torturing the guy a little more”.... I find this offensive--
