The Secret Mulroney Tapes is an outrageous and intimate portrait of a Canadian prime minister, as told in his own words. There has never been a political book like this, and there will almost certainly never be another.

Peter C. Newman, the author of books about John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, as well as 2004’s number-one bestselling memoir, Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales of People, Passion and Power, has done it again. He has written twenty-two books that have sold two million copies, and earned him the title of Canada’s “most cussed and discussed” political commentator. Here, his no-holds-barred profile of Canada’s most controversial – and most reviled – prime minister breaks new ground.

Compiled from years of candid, taped conversations with Mulroney and the people closest to him while he was in power, the sometimes uproarious and often disturbing interviews – 7,400 pages of transcripts totalling 1.8 million words – have been sealed until now. Stunningly indiscreet and savagely frank, Mulroney is the first prime minister to be so nakedly outspoken. Yet he is also revealed as a witty Irish charmer, ready with a quick line to raise a laugh, no matter how impudent or profane, a man as warm in private as he was defensive in the public eye.

Mulroney names the names and spills the beans about what really goes on in Ottawa, which he describes as a “sick” city that runs on “goddamned incest”: “They’re all married to one another. They’re shacked up with one another. Their wives are on the payroll of the CBC. It’s just awful.” Lucien Bouchard, his one-time soulmate, he calls “bitter and profane” and “extraordinarily vain.” He writes off his constitutional foe, former Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells, as an “unprincipled son of a bitch.” His disgust for the press is as monumental as his sense of being misunderstood, and in his eyes the Ottawa press corps are “a phony bunch of bastards” who don’t give him credit even when the world applauds him for being “one of the three men who played the most important role in the collapse of the Berlin Wall.”

Out of The Secret Mulroney Tapes emerges a startling picture of the politician whose reign shocked and appalled and yet also revolutionized this country. No other prime minister in Canadian history aroused a stronger emotional response than Brian Mulroney. This book provides Canadians with a unique insight into the bold politician who changed their country like no other.

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NOMINEE 2006 - Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award - Non-fiction Book of the Year

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A Chronology: The Mulroney Years

Introduction: Mulroney Unplugged

The Secret Tapes

1. “Canadian people like me, you know?”
Mulroney on His Rise to Power

2. “You had an option, sir!”
The 1984 Coronation

3. “What did I do wrong?”
Patronage and the Art of Politics

4. “Goodbye Charlie Brown!”
Scandals, Retreats and Flip-Flops

5. “The sweetest deal ever known to man”
The Meech Lake Accord

6. “Canadians think I’m an arrogant bastard – that’s not a bad position to be in”
The Second Mandate

7. “Grab ’em by their privates, and their hearts and minds will follow”
The Mulroney Gang

8. “First of the great betrayers”
Lucien Bouchard

9. “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”
The Free Trade Crusade

10. “A really sick place”
Life in Ottawa

11. The Mila factor
Brian’s Greatest Asset

12. The dirty dozen
Some People Who Really Bugged Him

13. “Even fucking Hitler got better press”
Mulroney on the Fourth Estate

14. “I Told You I Loved You, Now Get OUT!”
The Perils of People Power

15. “I led a revolution”
Mulroney on the World Stage

16. “What did they achieve?”
Mulroney Rates His Peers

17. “Keep your pecker up, Kim!”
Severing Her Own Jugular

18. Keeping caucus happy
Walking Through Fire for Brian

19. “The best since Sir John A.”
Mulroney Rates Himself

20. “About as ideological as that coffee pot”
The Vision Thing

21. “He needs a bit of praise, the poor bugger”
Mulroney as Others Saw Him

Conclusion: Mulroney Redux

Appendix A: The Interviews
Appendix B: The Patronage Machine
Appendix C: Secret Strategy Memo: Gaining Control of the Senior Civil Service
Appendix D: Paying Their Own Way

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Peter C. Newman has been writing about Canadian politics for nearly half a century, including books on prime ministers John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau. His Renegade in Power (1963) revolutionized Canadian political reporting with its controversial “insiders-tell-all” approach. Four decades later, Newman has done it again, with his ultimate insider book, The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister.

The author of twenty-two books that have sold two million copies, Newman has won a half dozen of the country’s most illustrious literary awards, including the Drainie-Taylor Biography prize for his 2004 memoir, Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales of People, Passion and Power. A former editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star and Maclean’s, Newman has been honoured with a National Newspaper Award, has been elected to the News Hall of Fame, and has earned the informal title of Canada’s “most cussed and discussed” political commentator.

His first-hand profile of Brian Mulroney is based on seventeen years of frank and intimate discussions with the country’s most controversial, and reviled, prime minister. Before they began, Mulroney told Newman he didn’t want a “puff job.” He didn’t get one.

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