A onetime top aide to Brian Mulroney says the ex-prime minister personally directed him to oversee a project that's now at the centre of a $500,000 cash-payments scandal and "get it done."

"In that case, the project is dead," is how he quotes Mulroney's response. He describes the conversation in an afterword to William Kaplan's book, A Secret Trial.

"It could not have gotten a head of steam again without some involvement of the prime minister's office. ... I can't say the prime minister -- but the prime minister's office," [Norman Spector] said.