My Take on Grewal

There are some slight updates to the body of the text - June 8 '05

The Globe & Mail has the latest reports on alterations of the Grewal Tapes and they hired a U.S. forensic audio expert to confirm it.

I had promised readers to give my take on Grewal. The first question was, if Grewal had suspected that the Liberals were attempting to buy votes, why didn't he speak to the Conservative leadership about it and then have them request the RCMP to investigate? Or did they and the RCMP refused?

Excerpts from the tapes extracted by CTV has Grewal complaining to Tim Murphy:

Immigration Minister Joe Volpe had asked the RCMP and the Commons Ethics Commissioner to examine allegations that Grewal and another Tory had offered to aid immigrants in return for money. Those allegations are now being examined by the RCMP.

Murphy is overheard suggesting a retraction [from the RCMP probe] is possible, but that he could not stop the probe by Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro.

Grewal Clean?

So what is to say that Grewal wasn't taping the Liberals to bribe them out of the RCMP investigation with no intention of making the tapes public? What is to say that if the didn't get the positions he negotiated with Tim Murphy and Dosanj as they promised on the tapes that he wouldn't have used it against them after he crossed the floor?

The Liberals are in defense mode, since they can't deny what offers they made on the tapes, so they have to use the forensic sound experts to defend the allegations of more corruption.

Why doesn't the Conservative Party hire their own forensic expert? Ultimately, it's a judge who will have to decide on whether or not the tapes can be used as evidence even though the Liberals are doing everything they can to discredit them.

As for Grewal, my own anonymous sources who has some knowledge of tapes used as evidence tells me that sound copying technology is so sophisticated nowadays that whatever is on the CD's was most likely copied directly from the originals.

So how can Grewal splice and edit analogue tape cassettes? The originals will show physical evidence of being spliced.

This CTV news report asks U.S. forensic expert Jack Mitchell how the alterations occured or if they were done intentionally. Mitchell could not say.

One thing that makes me think he may have attempted some half-assed splicing job (although I don't know how) is just by perusing his website. He asks readers to vote on a yes or no question about whether or not he should have given the tapes to the RCMP, but he doesn't provide the answers. Instead, he asks those who have voted to provide their names and addresses and he will mail the "results" to those that sent in their addresses to find out at a later date.

He also provided a transcribed version of the tapes on his website with emphasis added of who was speaking to whom by indicating the initials of the speaker. Half the time it didn't make sense who was actually speaking. I didn't post the tape transcript from his site because of this.

All of this seems a little opaque to me and a tad bit unethical. This guy just doesn't come across as the epitomy of integrity to me and indicates some form of bizarre politiking.

Even if there was some editing in places that do not make up the majority of the taped conversations, the majority of them cannot and should not be ignored.