Thank you very much.
I want to say how much I appreciate the time you have taken here, gentlemen. When I'm asking questions, it's not that.... I think you have done a very thorough job, given the task at hand. My question is, are we looking for the same thing?
I think the issue of timelines is crucial here. There's a ten-day period when this story begins to take off, from February 21, when the government is doing damage control over the Democratic primaries, to March 1 or March 2, when AP says they have the memo. Now, you've chosen to focus on the memo, but I think the real issue here is the seeding of the story.
I'm a big fan of movies. I watched Wag the Dog I don't know how many times, and in Wag the Dog they bring in Robert De Niro to offset a politically damaging issue. He begins to seed the story. Of course, there's no such thing as a B-3 bomber; who said anything about a B-3 bomber? And the next thing we know, we're talking about the B-3 bomber, as opposed to the scandal.
So we have Mr. Brodie in Washington on February 25, at the same time as this issue of NAFTA and the Democratic primaries becomes a hot political issue, and he says he doesn't remember getting briefed on anything to do with NAFTA and says perhaps there was an informal discussion on NAFTA. So we're to take it that the Prime Minister sends Brodie to Washington to discuss everything under the sun but NAFTA, but maybe they discussed NAFTA.
On February 26 he spoke to a reporter in the lock-up. We know that. Either the reporter is lying or he just doesn't do his job.
On February 27, Ambassador Wilson gets a call from CTV and is asked to confirm whether it was Clinton's camp who was sending the messages not to worry about the position on NAFTA, and Mr. Wilson doesn't really give us a sense of what he told them, but CTV goes on the news that night saying that it was a top staff member from the Obama campaign who telephoned Michael Wilson and told him not to take this rhetoric seriously.
Now someone had to clarify that story. Someone had to clarify what Mr. Brodie said, and CTV is very clear that it was Michael Wilson who did it.
On February 28, Mr. Wilson speaks with them again. Of course, this time he has someone in the office with him when that phone call takes place. But CTV stands by their story--