The Greasy From Creasey

A re-updated Reuters report on today's testimony has a new snippet that reports some testimony by Fred Creasey. It mentions that Conrad Black described, perhaps disparaged, the Hollinger Inc's audit committee as a "superfluous committee."

Mr. Black has done something like this before. As recounted by Richard Siklos (Shades of Black , pp. 179-80,) Conrad Black wrote a column for the Financial Post, back in 1989, in which he called journalist Linda McQuaig "a weedy and not very bright leftist reporter." He had asked Douglas Creighton, the boss of the Financial Post's then-editor John Godfrey, to make sure that it ran unedited. Mr. Godfrey, though, believed that the quoted snippet could be seen as libelous, so he excised it, along with the word "mendacious," after finding out that the Post's libel lawyers believed those parts of it to be risky too. This made Conrad Black umbrous, because, he said, he himself had pre-run it by his own libel lawyer before submitting it. Mr. Siklos doesn't explicitly say that Mr. Black had used the word "superfluous" at that time, but I'd be unsurprised if he had used that same word back then.

More details are already hitting the web. According to this AP Wire "Summary Box," Mr. Creasey is already getting into the Bora Bora gritty gritty. A more detailed AP report, as webbed by MSN Money, relates that the spending didn't stop with that trip. Creasey put the total bill for the use of the corporate jet, while he was Hollinger Inc.'s comptroller, at 7 million bucks a year - and co-defendant Jack Boultbee had approved it all. "Black regularly billed the company when he took the jet to visit his estate in West Palm Beach, Fla., said Fred Creasey, the former comptroller of the newspaper conglomerate."


He's yet to be cross-examined, though.

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An updated CBC report has put Angela Way's earlier testimony in perspective: "'It is quite apparent that rather than concealing information, [the Hollinger officials in question] were disclosing a lot of information,' [CBC reporter Mike] Hornbrook said. 'They were also concerned that fairness to the shareholders was a principle that was discussed and arbitrated.'"