A tape recording at the centre of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's $3.5-million defamation suit against the Liberal party was not altered as the prime minister has claimed, a court-ordered analysis of the tape by Harper's own audio expert has found. The key portion of the recorded interview of Harper by a B.C. journalist contains no splices, edits or alterations, says the finding by a U.S. forensic audio expert. The analysis was filed in Ontario Superior Court on Friday by lawyers for the Liberal party, despite attempts by Harper's lawyer to keep the opinion out of the court file until at least next week.
Harper sued the Liberals in the midst of a raging controversy earlier this year over claims in a book by B.C. author Tom Zytaruk that Conservatives offered late MP Chuck Cadman a $1-million life insurance policy in return for help defeating the minority Liberal government in 2005. The prime minister claims Zytaruk doctored the tape of an interview he conducted with Harper after Cadman died, and denies he told Zytaruk he was unaware of the "details" of the insurance policy offer. Harper insists he only confirmed the party had offered Cadman "financial considerations" in return for rejoining the Tories and voting against the Liberals in a Commons confidence vote.
But former FBI agent Bruce Koenig, the sound expert Harper hired to prove his allegations, submitted a report dated Friday to Harper's lawyer, which also had to be sent to the Liberal lawyer, Chris Paliare, saying the contentious portion of the interview was uninterrupted. Koenig said the first part of Zytaruk's interview with Harper, where the two had apparently discussed other aspects of Harper's relationship with Cadman, had been erased and over-recorded with the portion dealing with the insurance policy. But that segment had not been altered, Koenig found.
He reported that it "contains neither physical nor electronic splices, edits or alterations, except for the over-recording start that erased and replaced the end of the first part of the designated interview."
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