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A tape recording at the centre of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's $3.5-million defamation suit against the Liberal party was not altered as the prime minister has claimed, a court-ordered analysis of the tape by Mr. Harper's own audio expert has found.

The key portion of the recorded interview of Mr. Harper by a B.C. journalist contains no splices, edits or alterations, says the finding by a U.S. forensic audio expert.

The findings may call into question Mr. Harper's testimony about the interview during a sworn cross-examination conducted by a Liberal party lawyer in August.

The analysis was filed in Ontario Superior Court on Friday by lawyers for the Liberal party, despite attempts by Mr. Harper's lawyer to keep the opinion out of the court file until at least next week.

Mr. Harper sued the Liberals in the midst of a raging controversy earlier this year over claims in a book by B.C. author Tom Zytaruk that the Conservatives offered the late Independent MP Chuck Cadman a $1-million life insurance policy in return for help defeating the minority Liberal government in 2005.

The prime minister maintains that Mr. Zytaruk doctored the tape of an interview he conducted with Mr. Harper after Mr. Cadman died.

Mr. Harper denies that he told Mr. Zytaruk he was unaware of the “details” of the insurance policy offer. He insists that he only confirmed the party had offered Mr. Cadman “financial considerations” in return for rejoining the Tories and voting against the Liberals in a Commons confidence vote.

But former FBI agent Bruce Koenig, the sound expert Mr. Harper hired to prove his allegations, submitted a report dated Friday to Mr. Harper's lawyer, which also had to be sent to the Liberal lawyer Chris Paliare.

In the report Mr. Koenig concluded that the first part of Mr. Zytaruk's interview with Mr. Harper, which contains the key portions that the prime minister has contested, was intact.

The second part, beginning roughly one minute and 41 seconds into the tape, was a new recording that was made over the final part of the original recording, he said. But the first crucial minute and 41 seconds had not been altered.

Mr. Koenig reported that the tape “contains neither physical nor electronic splices, edits or alterations, except for the over-recording start that erased and replaced the end of the first part of the designated interview.”

Kory Teneycke, a spokesman for Mr. Harper, maintained that the findings do not undermine the prime minister's case – and in fact can be used to buttress Mr. Harper's claims.

“This report supports our position that the tape does not represent the complete interview, and as such is favourable to our case,” said Mr. Teneycke.

But it's the first portion of the interview – the first one minute and 41 seconds that Mr. Koenig says were not tampered with – that are considered key.

It's that part of the recording that includes Mr. Zytaruk's question to Mr. Harper about whether he knew anything about a $1-million insurance policy that unidentified Conservatives allegedly offered to Mr. Cadman in return for his support in Parliament against the Liberals.

“I don't know the details, I know that, um, there were discussions, um, but this is not for publication?” Mr. Harper replies on the tape.

Mr. Zytaruk tells Mr. Harper his comments are intended for a book Mr. Zytaruk was writing about Mr. Cadman, who had died earlier that summer in 2005. Mr. Harper again says he “didn't know the details” but adds that he told Conservatives who were going to approach Mr. Cadman they were unlikely to succeed.

“They were just, the were convinced there was, there were, financial issues,” Mr. Harper says. He later qualifies his response to Mr. Zytaruk by saying: “Of the, uh, uh, the offer to Chuck was that, it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election.”

When Liberal lawyer Mr. Paliare questioned Mr. Harper during cross-examination in August, Mr. Harper said of Mr. Zytaruk's question about the insurance policy: “That is not the question as he put it. He has done some editing there.

“What I do know is that this answer is not the answer to this question, I think there's been some editing in this question, so I don't think it goes from this question to this answer.”

Mr. Harper insisted in his testimony that at that point in the interview he told Mr. Zytaruk he did not know about the offer of an insurance policy. He claimed Mr. Zytaruk edited that response out of the recording.

Mr. Harper testified that he authorized his campaign manager, Doug Finley, and former adviser Tom Flanagan, to approach Mr. Cadman only with an offer of financial help should Mr. Cadman vote against the Liberals and then run for the Conservatives in the election that would have ensue.

Mr. Harper's lawyer, Richard Dearden, convinced Justice Charles Hackland last month to postpone a hearing into the veracity of the audio tape until after the federal election. The two sides have a conference scheduled with Judge Hackland next week on other aspects of the case.