“The story will be told with us or without us,” said Major David Muralt. “We have to get our side of the story out.”
Muralt’s testimony at the Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry into the 2008 suicide of Afghan vet Cpl. Stuart Langridge was a rare glimpse inside the military’s vast public relations machine, and revealed how it kicked into high gear following a request from an Ottawa Citizen reporter preparing the first major feature on the case.
The commission is holding the inquiry because Langridge’s parents claim that three military police investigations and an internal board of inquiry into Stuart’s death were flawed and biased.
Muralt’s evidence was accompanied by a book of more than 700 pages containing internal emails, answers to anticipated media questions and numerous other documents, all related to the military’s ongoing communications strategy around the soldier’s suicide.
Langridge family lawyer Michel Drapeau told Muralt he was “astounded” by the amount of time and energy put into the communications effort by dozens of senior officers.
“Was it institutional damage control?” he asked Muralt, who until last year was area public affairs officer for Land Force Western Area.
As Langridge’s parents became increasingly frustrated and more publicly vocal about the lack of information forthcoming from military police and others at CFB Edmonton, documents show the military’s communications began developing a defensive strategy.
About 14 months after 28-year-old Stuart hanged himself at CFB Edmonton, his mother and stepfather, Sheila and Shaun Fynes, learned that he had left a suicide note addressed to them.
It contained his last wishes, including the desire for a simple family funeral he didn’t get.
For reasons that still remain unclear, the suicide note was withheld by the military’s National Investigation Service.
Coupled with the Fynes’ anger over being kept in the dark, that note remains an ongoing public relations disaster for the military.
In a May 20 “Questions and Answers” memo prepared to anticipate news media questions, the ‘answer’ to a question about the 14-month delay in delivering the suicide note said it could only be released to the family through Access to Information.
A revised and softened version of that ‘answer’ a month later states that the NIS officers made a mistake and should have given the Fynes a copy right away.
“The CFNIS regrets the situation and has revised its procedures to ensure that it does not happen again.”
In the background, military brass were being warned that a public storm was brewing over the Fynes case.
In an email to numerous colleagues on May 28, 2009, Casualty Support officer Norma Mcleod warned: ‘This is going to explode in the media.”
Mcleod, who had direct contact with the family, urged her colleagues in Ottawa and Edmonton to take notice of the Fynes’ complaints and seemed especially incensed about the suicide note.
“Edmonton released this to the family over 14 months later,” she wrote. “I will withhold my comments on the matter.”
McLeod urged immediate intervention with the family: “We need to sort this out right now.”
A flurry of high-level meetings and emails followed a June 2009 request for an interview about the Fynes case from Ottawa Citizen defence reporter David Pugliese.
Pugliese’s two-part feature article was the first major piece about the Fynes case.
Muralt testified that as senior public affairs officer, he decided to take the questions from Pugliese on behalf of his commanding officer of Land Force Western, Mike Jorgensen, who doesn’t deliver “bad news”.
The commander only gets to personally deliver the good news to media, added Muralt — “he is the brand, if you will. He is the army in Western Canada.”
Muralt didn’t want to hand off to a more junior public affairs officer because the Fynes case was “a complex issue and one that deals with people. Anything that deals with people is important.”
Lawyer Drapeau asked why he referred to his commanding officer as a “brand” who needed protection.
“He’s a leader. Why are you protecting him?”
The major repeated that he considered it his job to deliver to media the “bad news”
Muralt said he conducted the interview with Pugliese using Media Response Lines as reference and immediately wrote to various colleagues across the country, including his superiors, NIS media relations and military lawyer.
In his email, Muralt described the questions Pugliese asked and the answers he gave to the reporter.
In her cross-examination of Muralt, complaints commission lawyer Dana Cernacek asked where he typically gets information to pass on to the media.
“I will take good advice anywhere I can get it,” he said, adding that he defers to anyone high in the chain of command. If a superior told him “the sky is orange, I would take him at his word.”
On the Langridge case, Muralt said he gathered information from several sources, including the NIS: “we brainstormed and put our lines together.”
The inquiry continues on Monday.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Chris Cobb
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