Brian Mulroney businessman Karlheinz Schreiber (or to companies controlled by him), Brian Mulroney and former Newfoundland premier Frank Moores in exchange for three government contracts. These contracts involved the purchase of Airbus Industrie aircraft by Air Canada; the purchase of helicopters by the Canadian Coast Guard from Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm GmbH (MBB) in 1986; and the establishment of a manufacturing plant for Thyssen Light Armoured Vehicles (Bear Head Project) in the province of Nova Scotia, a project which Mulroney as prime minister had cancelled. This Letter of Request (LOR) "and its contents were to be kept confidential" but the letter was leaked to the
The Secret Mulroney Tapes under the title . It has been suggested by some media outlets that Newman released his book before Mulroney could get his own edited and sanitized version of events out. After the publication of the book, Jean Charest, a former Cabinet minister under Mulroney and former premier of Quebec, came to his defence in a press conference, saying that he agreed with the statement that "Nobody has achievements like this ... you cannot name a Canadian prime minister who has done as many significant things as I did, because there are none." Charest pointed out that Mulroney was the father