A new book from one of Jean Chretien's top lieutenants paints an unflattering portrait of Paul Martin, describing him as a political boil that should have been lanced years earlier.

The 400-page book by Eddie Goldenberg hits store shelves in the midst of Liberal efforts to defuse partisan bickering and choose a new leader -- an exercise many Grits are hoping will bridge the gap between the rivalling Martin-Chretien camps.

"This is making the old Tory war seem like child's play, Eddie Goldenberg just took off the gloves and went right at Paul Martin. He had some pretty strong language, too," CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife told Canada AM.

"This is going to cause more harm for the Liberal party and it's going to cause it at the time that they're trying to unite in a Liberal leadership race."

Goldenberg dismissed suggestions his decision to pen the telling tome was motivated by the upcoming Liberal leadership race.

However, the book could serve as a cautionary example, he told CTV's Canada AM.

"What I do at the beginning of the book, for example, I write about how opposition parties have to organize themselves and I write about the importance of being united and instead of doing it in an academic theoretical way," he said.

"I set out the difficulties that Mr. Chretien had in trying to unite the Liberal party after the leadership campaign of 1990 and I set out what he was able to do to bring Mr. Martin onside to have a united party and a strongly united party going into the 1993 election where he and Mr. Martin -- despite their personal differences -- were able to work very closely together. I hope that's a lesson for Liberals in the next few months."

Goldenberg is supporting longtime friend Bob Rae in the current leadership contest, although he also has kind words in his book for another contender, Stephane Dion, Chretien's onetime unity minister.

Entitled "The Way It Works: Inside Ottawa," Goldenberg's book offers an inside look at the tensions between former prime minister Chretien and Martin, his finance minister and eventual successor.

Goldenberg said he wanted to give Canadians a peephole into the unique vantage point he was privileged to hold.

"I think it's really important to be able to bring Canadians into the room -- show them how decisions are made, what goes into decision-making and I did it in a whole variety of areas from Iraq to the Clarity Act to managing September 11th to federal-provincial relations to budget-making to how cabinets are formed, cabinet shuffles, how the Prime Minister's Office works," Goldenberg told Canada AM.

"I used anecdotes so people can turn the page. It's really important in an era where people are cynical about government to learn from the inside how government works."

He writes that he was assigned the responsibility of managing the relationship between Chretien and Martin as prime minister and finance minister and was present at almost every one of their meetings.

'Obvious tension'

Goldenberg writes that the two men were uncomfortable with each other and didn't like meeting. Whenever one of them requested to get together, the other would ask Goldenberg ahead of time, "What does he want?"

Goldenberg, who counselled Chretien for more than 30 years, 10 of them as senior policy adviser in the Prime Minister's Office, recounted one meeting between the two men in the mid-1990s when there was "obvious tension."

Chretien told Martin that he had been on the golf course the previous day with Mike Robinson, who had run Martin's leadership bid.

"In the course of the game, a stray shot from Robinson sent the ball buzzing past the Prime Minister's head. Chretien said, 'Paul, I told Mike there are better ways to make Paul Martin prime minister.' Martin laughed nervously, didn't find it very funny, and rapidly changed the subject."

The book, published by McClelland and Stewart Ltd., reveals that Chretien wanted to push Martin out of the finance post after a botched leadership coup in early 2000.

Goldenberg says he and Jean Pelletier, then Chretien's chief of staff, recommended against a shuffle, out of fear that Martin would quit cabinet and consequently split the party.

"Over the course of the next two years, it became clear that Pelletier and I were wrong and that Chretien's political instinct to lance the boil immediately was the right one," Goldenberg writes.

Martin eventually left cabinet in 2002, and the ensuing revolt by his caucus supporters forced Chretien to announce his retirement about a year ahead of schedule.

On the Meech Lake accord

Goldenberg writes that Chretien never trusted Martin's instincts on Quebec and was never able to forgive him for their rivalry over the Meech Lake constitutional accord during the 1990 leadership contest.

During one all-candidates debate in Montreal, Martin's supporters called Chretien a sellout and traitor for opposing the accord.

Those words were "particularly destructive and short-sighted and could only give a boost to the separatist cause should Chretien win the leadership," Goldenberg says.

He also maintains that Martin himself was personally against the Meech accord, although he proclaimed himself to be a staunch supporter.

At a policy conference in 1989, Goldenberg says Martin told him "in no uncertain terms that . . . he too was against the accord."

But Martin was convinced the deal would never get the necessary provincial backing and so "he could publicly support Meech Lake -- knowing it would fail -- because, in his view, it was good politics in Quebec for federal Liberals to be seen to support it."

Goldenberg also reveals that Martin had no objection to a plan from Chretien to budget $125 million for a foundation for postgraduate scholarships commemorating former prime minister Pierre Trudeau after his death.

But "he made it clear to me that he was not prepared to be part of any government announcement in commemoration of Pierre Elliott Trudeau," writes Goldenberg, adding that Martin refused to be photographed with Trudeau's two sons, Alexandre and Justin.

Goldberg says Tim Murphy, Martin's chief of staff, told him: "Paul's Quebec people don't think it would be good for him to be associated publicly with anything in Trudeau's memory."

On the sponsorship scandal

Goldenberg also launched a scathing attack at Martin's handling of the sponsorship scandal, saying his "colossal over-reaction" ruined the Liberal brand name and rekindled separatism in Quebec.

Goldenberg says Martin should simply have handed the file over to the RCMP after Auditor General Sheila Fraser revealed that the sponsorship program was riddled with corruption.

Instead, as prime minister, Martin decided "it would be in his political interests to separate himself from his predecessor by highlighting what in fact was an isolated case of unacceptable greed, abuse and wrongdoing" by a handful of bureaucrats, advertising executives and Liberal organizers in Quebec.

Goldenberg argues that the subsequent Gomery inquiry that Martin created to investigate the scandal served to damage "public respect for the institution of government itself and the cause of federalism in Quebec."

Goldenberg emphasizes throughout his book, however, that Martin and Chretien's personal rivalry never affected their professional relationship, which was "the best example of how prime ministers and finance ministers should support each other."

Other revealing anecdotes on the world's biggest names:

• U.S. President Bush, during a private meeting shortly after he was elected, told Chretien he'd heard that Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez was "a pain in the ass." 
• About two weeks after the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, Chretien flew to Washington to have lunch with Bush.

Goldenberg, who was at the meeting, writes that he was struck by "how moderate, calm, reflective and statesmanlike he (Bush) was. There was no arrogance, no 'you are with us or against us' rhetoric. He told us that he had learned how important it was to be careful in his vocabulary. ... Then he said something deeply profound, which brought home to us the enormous responsibility on his shoulders: 'I have to manage the bloodlust of the American people.' "

Chretien and Bush "shared and enjoyed the fact that they were often underestimated by their adversaries and that they both sometimes mangled the English language."

• It was the British who pushed Canada to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. At 9 a.m. on March 17, 2003, the British government contacted the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs to ask whether Canada would provide both political and military backing for the invasion. They gave the government until noon to reply but Chretien ignored the deadline and declined.
• Bush once jokingly told Chretien he loathed officials who leak information to journalists. "If I catch anyone who leaks in my government, I would like to string them up by the thumbs. . . The same way we do with prisoners in Guantanamo."
• An angry Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, called Chretien's foreign policy adviser and told him the relationship between the two leaders was "irreparably broken" after Chretien reminisced with reporters about his "friend" and former U.S. president Bill Clinton.

With files from The Canadian Press