If summoned, I will testify, says investigative writer Stevie Cameron

Author, former magazine editor (Elm Street) and magazine writer (Maclean's) Stevie Cameron says if journalists are called to testify during the forthcoming judicial inquiry into the Mulroney/Schreiber/Airbus situation, she expects to be at the top of the list, according to a story in the Montreal Gazette.

No journalist has pursued the story more doggedly than veteran investigative reporter Cameron, who has written extensively about the relationship between the two men for various publications and in two bestselling books, On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years and The Last Amigo: Karlheinz Schreiber and the Anatomy of a Scandal, which she co-wrote with CBC producer Harvey Cashore.

"I think the only one he [Mulroney] really wants to get at is me," she said in an interview yesterday.

She said she'd only be able to testify if the book publishers and publications for which she reported the story were prepared to cover her legal expenses.

"I don't think journalists will be testifying. I don't think Brian Mulroney is going to be allowed to determine the scope of this inquiry. But it's a brilliant strategy. He's going to try to delay, delay, delay. You'll have teams of lawyers arguing to keep reporters out of it."

Cameron said much of the story remains to be told, and that the inquiry should focus on where the millions of dollars went that Schreiber was given by European industrial interests to secure Canadian government contracts....

Cameron suggested that the crucial mistake for Mulroney was when his spokesman Luc Lavoie called Schreiber "the biggest f...ing liar the world has ever seen" in response to Schreiber's allegation a year ago that Mulroney never provided any services for the money he was paid.

"That was when Schreiber knew Brian Mulroney was no friend of his. That turned everything around."