JUST when we thought the case of lawyers not knowing who their clients are couldn’t get any ‘curious-er’, Information Minister Daryl Vaz and attorney-at-law Harold Brady proved to be the contrary.

First, the minister tells a post-Cabinet press briefing Wednesday that Mr Brady had failed to convince Solicitor General Douglas Leys that the United States law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips (MPP) had corrected the “false claim” that they had been contracted to represent the Jamaican Government.

Mr Vaz didn’t say how the Bruce Golding administration would punish Mr Brady for mistakenly acting as a government consultant authorised to engage MPP to provide services, with “contacts and meetings with the executive branch regarding existing political and economic matters, including existing treaty agreements between Jamaica and the US”.

According to the information minister, action against Mr Brady, a long-standing JLP member who previously sought election on a JLP ticket, could come after “everything is perused” by the industry and commerce minister and general secretary of the JLP, Karl Samuda, who has been mandated by the Cabinet to do an investigation, “because, obviously, this matter has implications both ways”.

Thursday morning Mr Brady ridicules Mr Vaz. “Knowing what he knows, and knowing that I know what he knows,” the affable Mr Brady intoned, Mr Vaz “must either be daft or he needs to have his head examined” for threatening sanction over the documentation provided to the solicitor general.

Despite gentle prodding from Naomi Francis and Emily Crooks on Nationwide, Mr Brady would not divulge what knowledge he and Mr Vaz share or who else may be in the loop. However, an inescapable interpretation of the exchange is that some persons involved in this high-stakes political drama know more than they have been letting on.

Since the issue surfaced March 17 when Dr Peter Phillips — Opposition People’s National Party member of parliament and former minister of national security — raised questions in the House, very little has been resolved.

Citing documents available on the website of the US Department of Justice, Dr Phillips asked the prime minister about reports that Manatt had been contracted by the Government to assist in the impasse between Jamaica and the US surrounding America’s request for the extradition of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke to face organised crime charges of trafficking in guns and narcotics.

The prime minister disdainfully dismissed the questions, saying he had to deny the former national security minister the headlines he was seeking.

No one was engaged to represent Jamaica and lobby the US government, the prime minister affirmed. And Mr Brady, identified in the documents as a government consultant authorised to engage Manatt to provide the services described, was a ‘mistake’ which was corrected “last year”, presumably some time after the arrangement began in October.

But as the weeks passed the headlines and editorial comments have not been going as Mr Golding appeared to expect when he spoke March 17. The Opposition has kept up the pressure and a sceptical civil society keeps demanding more and better information to close the gaping holes in the official stories.

To ease the pressure, the Government instructed Mr Brady to submit proof of the correction of the ‘error’ to the solicitor general.

Now, if Mr Vaz is to be believed, the solicitor general does not believe Mr Brady’s story. “What the Government is saying is that, based on what documentation has been provided to the solicitor general, it shows nowhere that (MPP’s claim that it was representing the Government) has been corrected.” So the plot thickens.

Clear the air, prime minister

Mr Golding owes the country a full and clear explanation of the events. Like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room, it cannot be ignored. It’s too big and the implications are too grave, especially at a time when the Government needs to focus on the daunting task of guiding the economy and the society through an extremely difficult period, which requires fixity of purpose by the state and unprecedented cooperation by all of us as citizens.

Some of these were clearly spelled out by Finance Minister Audley Shaw when he opened the Budget debate Thursday.

A big one is that Government cannot pay all of the $9.4 billion contractually due to public sector workers this year and will have to stretch out payments over three or four years. This cannot be imposed from on high, but will require respectful and quiet discussions with the leaders of these groups who must be convinced that the burdens of hard times are equitably shared.

The country deserves a fuller and better explanation as to why a well-connected US law firm believes that it was engaged by the Jamaican Government to do something which is common in US politics, namely, to lobby the administration to achieve an outcome favourable to the client.

If the Government was in fact seeking a lobbyist, they could hardly have chosen better than MPP. The founder of the firm, Charles T Manatt, is a very experienced political operative having served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1981 to 1985, a period in which he supervised and directed the 1984 democratic national convention. He remains an influential player in Democratic Party politics.

And Susan Schmidt, who signed off on several of the filings listed on the Justice Department’s website, was a senior state department official before joining the firm. So the people at Manatt know people in high places.

Since the agreement was entered into last October, the firm has listed several actions undertaken on behalf of the Government of Jamaica including two meetings with a deputy assistant secretary of state, Bisa Williams, and a telephone contact with national intelligence officer, John McShane, a senior White House official with direct access to President Barack Obama.

The documents also showed that Harold Brady and Company had been billed, and paid, just under US$50,000 for these services.

Two days after Dr Phillips started asking questions, MPP had a filing on the DOJ website stating that “Manatt ceased activities on behalf of the Government of Jamaica, through Harold C Brady of Brady and Company as of February 8, 2010”. Note that the filing occurred more than a month after the arrangement was terminated. Note also that they are sticking to their story: they were engaged by the Government of Jamaica.

Hence, the question: If not the Government of Jamaica, then who was the client? The answer has implications for our relations with the United States and the broader conduct of foreign policy.

Were State Department and White House officials erroneously led to believe that their meetings and conversations were with persons authorised to lobby on behalf of the Government of Jamaica when, in fact, the clients were private individuals or groups? The suggestion that our diplomacy can be hijacked that way is too mighty to contemplate.

The prime minister must also do everything in his power to bring closure to the underlying issue, namely, the specific request and, more broadly, extradition as a policy weapon in the arsenal against transnational organised crime which the Jamaica Constabulary Force has been saying is at the root of Jamaica’s runaway murder rate.

Since the request was made last August, the Golding administration has hopscotched from one objection to another. The current one is that the evidence was obtained illegally by the US because the information – from a wiretap ordered by a judge of our Supreme Court – was handed over by a police constable instead of the commissioner of police. Maybe, but that is a determination for the courts, not the prime minister. Let the courts do their work.

So far, the assumption is that extradition is a political understanding between two law-abiding states to cooperate on law enforcement while paying regard to the rights of accused persons. An unstated assumption is that successful prosecution is more likely in the United States, given the nexus between garrison politics, police corruption and dons.

Are these assumptions right, and do they still stand? If there are matters for renegotiation they should be placed on the public agenda.

kcr@cwjamaica.com