RailGate For Real....Day 3....

AllTheWitnessesThatFit
UnderOathVille

8:00pm: How come the Defence didn't make any opening remarks earlier in the RailGate Week?....Well, Brian Hutchinson, CanWest's NaPo man-about-town says that the reason "cannot be disclosed owing to a publication ban".....Sheesh..... In addition, Mr. Hutchinson, who may have come late to the party, also says that there is no evidence that there was any paid, and potentially illegal, media dirty-tricking going down on M. Brown's watch.....Hmmmmm.....Those local Lotuslandians who have been paying attention, and who know how to double-up the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, might beg to differ....

7:30pm: OK, now things are getting surreal, not to mention really stupid...Apparently, according to a Day 3 round-up piece by Matt Kieltyka in 24 Hours, Robert Virk used the moniker 'Bob from Burnaby' when he called Talk Shows during the 2001 provincial election campaign to lob softballs at then not-quite-yet premier Gordon Campbell....Here's the real question, though.....Did Mr. Campbell know that it was Mr. Virk, who was working on his campaign at the time, that was calling?...And here is the follow-up....Was it, in fact, Mr. Campbell that recommended Mr. Virk's hiring as a ministerial assistant after that election?....Finally, did Mr. Campbell condone Mr. Virk's continued slow-pitching during the post-election BC Rail propaganda offensive?.....These questions, backed with the post-Ledge Raids 'conversation' issue discussed below, sure have me wondering if the defence is trying to build a rationale to justify calling Mr. Campbell himself as a witness down the road...... Meanwhile the Globe's editorial writers call for narrow, circumscribed, 'nothing-but-$27,000-in-bribes-to-be-seen-here' codswallop.....errrrr...calm....

6:00pm: I dunno about you, but I have long wondered why B.Virk was suspended, but kept on the payroll, after the Ledge Raids until the charges finally came down a year later ....Keith Fraser brings this up in his latest report in the Province (which has re-appeared on-line again, finally).....I always figured it had something to with the possibility that Mr. Virk had a lesser degree of involvement with anything allegedly nefarious that went down compared to the co-accused....But that seems to have changed, at least on the face of it with all this alleged 'bid-leaking' business....But what if, perhaps, somebody was instead trying to keep Mr. Virk on the reservation throughout that period?....It would appear that it was the latter possibility that Mr. Virk's lawyer, K. McCullough, was probing today when he asked Premier G. Campbell's chief of staff M. Brown in court today about alleged repeated conversations that Mr. Campbell had with Mr. Virk during the latter's year in limbo.....Mr. McCullough even went so far as to if these these conversations were designed to assure Mr. Virk that he would be 'taken care of' if he were to keep quiet over the long haul....As noted below, it was this line of questioning that led Mr. Brown to state that he would be 'shocked' if this did take place.....So...... In the absence of further evidence (so far at least), let's go down that alley, if only just for a moment, and consider the possibility that Mr. Brown is actually right about his 'shock' being an indication that such conversations between Mr. Campbell and Mr. Virk did NOT take place... With that possibility in mind, does it not make you wonder, now more than ever, precisely why Mr. Virk was kept on the payroll for an entire year when co-accused Mr. D. Basi was cut loose essentially almost immediately after the original raids?....


3:30pm: CBC B.C. is reporting (un-bylined) that defence lawyer K. McCullough has alleged that.."Bobby Virk was hired on the personal suggestion of Premier Gordon Campbell.....He (McCullough) also suggested Campbell called Virk regularly after the police raid on the legislature and told Virk the party would take care of him if he kept his mouth shut." ....For his part Mr. Campbell's chief-of-staff M. Brown responded with yet another non-denial denial saying that..."he was not aware of that and would be shocked it were true...".....Yes, and as Claude Rains once said to Humphrey Bogart...."I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! " (as the croupier handed him a bundle of money)......Ha!

2:00pm: Well whaddy'a know, it looks like the limited hangouts have begun in earnest....Say what?....Well, while he denies ever telling one of the defendents, specifically, to call up talk-shows and do the wrong-way shuffle, Gordon Campbell's chief-of staff Martyn Brown did say, under cross-examination and under oath, that......'he only ever encouraged political staff to ask others to call such shows, although it was a "perfectly acceptable practice" for government employees who weren't on the clock to phone in with favourable questions during the run-up to an election....." Now that shows the utmost integrity, eh? (see yesterday's walk down the many-meetinged 'integrity path' during the softball questions from the prosecution).... But as to those 'others' ......We can only wonder if there there ever any 'inducements' offered to them to encourage them to make those calls when 'asked'?.....Oh, and also according to the CPress (un-bylined), Mr. Brown used the 'no knowledge' non-denial denial defense (again) regarding any orders that may or may not have been given by then finance minister Gary Collins to his charge, Mr. Basi, to engage in such acts of ratf*cking......Oh, and, off-topic but why, pray tell, does CanWest keep posting, and then pulling down, and then later re-posting 'blow-by-blow' Railgate reports from their local stringers Mess'rs Hall and Fraser?.....

12:00noon: What did Mr. Brown tell Mr. Virk and when did he say it???....The defence has accused Gordon Campbell's chief of staff Mr. Martyn Brown, and perhaps Mr. Campbell also, of telling Mr. B. Virk after the Ledge Raids that he would be taken care of if he just 'played the game' and 'kept his mouth shut'.....Mr. Brown responded with a non-denial denial saying that 'he doesn't remember' and has 'no knowledge' of such conversations having taken place....NW's Marcella Bernardo has the story....In addition, the issue of the Talk Show Call-in-Posse of the highest (?) integrity has come up with Mr. Brown....He has, apparently, admitted some involvement....Does this mean that the limited hangouts have begun?....

11:03am: Apparently, the defence will get to have another go at Campbell Gov't chief-of-staff Martyn Brown.....According to the VSun, next up for the prosecution is supposed to be former BC Rail executuve Kevin Mahoney who was a 'staff advisor' to that BC Rail Restructuring Committee that defendant B. Virk was supposed to report to back in the day....More recently, Mr. Mahoney was the CEO of the way-stripped down operationless version of BC Rail (ie. he was, for all intents and purposes, the guy that was paid big bucks to watch over the Spur line that nobody so far, OmniTrax included, has managed to win as a consolation prize).....One might also wonder if, as a longtime RC Rail exec., if Mr. Mahoney had, perhaps, a penchant for writing Emails to various associates when, say, his company came under fire?....Also scheduled is Ms. Joy Illington who was once the deputy cabinet secretary in the government of Gordon Campbell....Why Ms. Illington?....Well we can only wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that her job description means she was good at telling folks about things like privilege or, alternatively, if it has something to with the fact that as a cabinet secretary she may have been very good at writing memos to cabinet Ministers, regardless whether or not they were named Judith....

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