Republican connection to NAFTA-gate exposed

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Tuesday May 27, 2008 · 11:48 AM PDT

2008/05/27 · 11:48

Despite a whitewash report issued by the Harper government http://www.theglobeandmail.com/... a column by one of Canada's most respected political reporters reveals that the source of the leak that damaged Obama's Ohio campaign leads directly to the Prime Minister's office, and that the recipient of the leak was the son of a Republican congressman. This is clear evidence that the Conservative party in Canada is working hand-in-hand with the Republicans to damage Obama. Democrats need to highlight the Republicans' improper use of secret information from a foreign country to affect the course of the election.

Fingers are pointing at Conservatives close to Stephen Harper for leaking a diplomatic memo that badly embarrassed Barack Obama and put Canada's vital cross-border interests at risk. Multiple sources say the Canadian note questioning the Democrat frontrunner's public promise to reopen NAFTA was leaked from the Prime Minister's Office to a Republican contact before it made American headline news.

http://www.thestar.com/...

Their claims come days after an internal probe threw up its hands at finding the source. Contradicting Friday's inconclusive report, they claim the controversial memo was slipped to the son of Wisconsin Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner. Frank Sensenbrenner is well connected to Harper's inner circle and, at Ottawa's insistence, was briefly on contract with Canada's Washington embassy to work on congressional relations.

Contacted yesterday morning, Frank Sensenbrenner did not seem surprised and agreed to an afternoon interview. But he did not call at the agreed time and did not respond to repeated emails.

. . . .

What the report conspicuously avoids is following the suspicious trail from the PMO to America's dominant newswire service, the Associated Press, through a Republican conduit. Instead of fulfilling Harper's pledge to trace the source, the report by Kevin Lynch, Canada's top civil servant and Harper's deputy minister, blames bureaucrats for circulating the memo too widely and failing to identify the information as classified

That badly misses the point and obscures the motive. Identifying the information as more sensitive would not have stopped the leak as long as Conservatives in high places were willing to help soulmate Republicans by rolling the dice on Canada's most important relationship. Getting the diplomatic memo to the U.S. media was pivotal in amplifying a small Canadian story into big American political news. The interpretation by Canadian diplomats that Obama was speaking out of both sides of his mouth on free trade is widely believed to have damaged his prospects in the Ohio primary and distracted Democrats to Republican advantage.

"This was a very deliberate piece of business for political purpose," one of the sources said. "It puts political ideology ahead of what's good for the country."

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