Meet Alan Gough

...the Tories other audio expert in the Cadmania Scandal. He

...grew up in Stratford, Ontario and began working in the industry in 1964 in the studios of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications and Theology from the University of Waterloo. He speaks English, French, and Swahili.

He is important to the whole story about the Tories bizarre resurrection of The Cadman Affair, and their allegations re the Zytaruk tape, because his is the name that the Tories are not bandying about. (The name they are bandying about is "Tom Owens", of New Jersey). Well, why is that? Because Mr. Gough adds a few caveats to his analysis:

The other specialist hired by the party, Alan Gough, was less certain in his conclusions. Gough, co-founder of a firm called Integra View, concluded that the tape "is not a continuous recording of one conversation."

The interruption of words, changes of background ambiance, and changes of frequency response indicate that this may be three separate recordings. Any further analysis of these anomalies should be performed on the original recording and not on a copy," Gough said...

I suspect what is at issue here is that the Tories are looking at a copy of the original tape, perhaps the copy on the LPC's website. As one of Kady's fans has noted:

I see it as entirely possible that the Liberals put up an excerpt of the full tape on their website.

On having that analyzed, it would obviously be an edited version, at which point they could run around saying that the Liberals doctored the tape — whether or not the editing was anything germane or substantial to the issue.

Which begs the question. If the real purpose of this Tory stunt is to stop the Liberals from using their version of the tape in campaign commercials, why could said Liberals not return to the original, re-excerpt it, and use that?

In any case, thanks to James Moore for bringing this one back from the dead.

PS. Here is the website for Mr. Gough's company, Integra View, and this article touches a bit on the kind of work he does in real life.

Update: Apparently, the copy the CPoC analysed came direct from the publisher. Be interesting to know what kind of file it wound up being? An MP3 on a disk, for example? That's going to be significantly degraded from the original.

Update II: Tories are now suggesting Libs are in cahoots with Zytaruk, according to this new release from Party HQ. Weirdest bit:

When did the Liberal Party obtain the doctored tape? From whom did they receive it? Who in the Party received it?

Why are they asking this if in fact the tape analysed came to the analysts from the publisher via the Conservative Party. Isn't the answer to their 2nd question therefore: from the same people you got your copy from? And suddenly Paul Martin is involved.