From the archives, a profile of conservative political strategist Tom Flanagan
Composite image courtesy of Tom FlanaganTuesday evening on CBC News Network, Tom Flanagan — widely identified today as “an advisor to the Prime Minister of Canada” — called for the targeted killing of Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website which has caused an international scandal by releasing massive amounts of United States diplomatic cables. “I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. I think [Barack] Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something,” Flanagan told host Evan Solomon on live television. Given the opportunity to retract his statement, Flanagan replied, “Well, I’m feeling very manly today… I wouldn’t feel unhappy if Assange disappeared.”
Who is Tom Flanagan? Six years ago, award-winning investigative journalist Marci MacDonald profiled him for The Walrus:
Little is known about the shadowy, sixty-year-old professor who is staying on Harper’s post-election payroll as a senior advisor from Calgary. Flanagan declined to be quoted in this story. In Ottawa, where he has refused interviews for the last three years, some journalists regard him as a modern-day Rasputin manipulating a leader sixteen years his junior. But in Calgary, one of his former students, Ezra Levant, publisher of the eight-month-old Western Standard magazine, cautions against that generational cliché. These days, Levant sees Flanagan and Harper more as “symbiotic partners.” But he does not disagree with a Globe and Mail report that once referred to Flanagan as the original godfather of the city’s conservative intellectual mafia. “I call him Don Tomaso,” Levant says. “He is the master strategist, the godfather — even of Harper.”
Click here to read the rest of MacDonald’s story, called “The Man Behind Stephen Harper.”
* Update: Flanagan now claims to be The Man Who Was Only Kidding About Killing Julian Assange.
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