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A secret RCMP informant who concocted evidence about an underworld conspiracy to assault British Columbia prosecutors and a judge — and later went on to murder someone after he was admitted to the witness protection program — told the Mounties he expected to be criminally charged if they discovered he was lying.

Previously undisclosed audio tapes of an interview with informant Richard Young, obtained by The Globe and Mail, show that the Victoria police agent repeatedly altered his evidence during a two-hour interview in 2001 — at one point asking his interviewer to stop the tape because he got something "wrong."

The recordings also show that the Mounties had a degree of skepticism about their high-priced informant. When the interviewer, Constable John Toogood, asked the informant what he thought should happen to someone who misleads the police, Mr. Young responded "a lot of trouble, right?"

"Charge them or I don't know. Some people will probably get charged," he added.

Mr. Young was never charged. This despite a British Columbia Supreme Court judge, Mr. Justice Dean Wilson, rejecting the informant's evidence as nothing more than a "cruel charade."

The secret informant's journey into the RCMP's witness protection program was first detailed in The Globe and Mail in 2007. By the time his lies were exposed in court, the RCMP had already paid $130,000 of Mr. Young's debt, relocated him and given him a new identity.

While in the program, he was convicted of murder under his new name, but Canada's rigid witness protection law forbids anyone — including the family members of his victim — from being told about his relationship with the RCMP. The same law prohibits The Globe from revealing who Mr. Young became or the name of the person he killed.

The case caught the attention of the House of Commons public safety committee, which launched hearings into the matter, and an internal RCMP review, which determined the Mounties had no way of predicting that Mr. Young would go on to commit murder.

The previously undisclosed interview tapes, though, offer a partial window into how Mr. Young convinced his Mountie handlers of his worth: using rambling, convoluted answers that evolved as the interview progressed.

The interview took place on Jan. 17, 2001, a few months after Mr. Young walked into an RCMP office and signed up as an informant. He had infiltrated the social circle of an accused heroin dealer named Barry Liu and claimed to his Mountie handlers that he had uncovered a plot to attack a list of prominent people in the British Columbia justice system. While Mr. Liu was charged and acquitted of various drug charges, he never faced charges stemming from Mr. Young's made up plot.

When the informant first sat down with Constable Toogood for the interview, he claimed Mr. Liu had a list of five targets: a judge, two Crown attorneys, a defence lawyer and an RCMP officer. But about 17 minutes into the interview, the list of five people had shrunk to four.

"The list of four was they're going to get like maybe severely beaten but not killed," Mr. Young said. About 15 minutes later, the numbers decreased again; "I think the main list consists of three people: the judge and the two Crowns," the informant said.

Constable Toogood repeatedly pushed Mr. Young to explain his changing story, but the more questions the officer asked, the more the story morphed into a confusing odyssey — complete with a secret meeting at a Vancouver steam-bath room and multiple gangsters with multiple lists of targets.

More than an hour into the interview, Mr. Young suddenly announced "that's wrong" — and explained that something they were discussing "brought back some of my memory." He had confused a Crown attorney for a defence lawyer, he claimed, rendering the story he had told for the last 70 minutes inaccurate.

Later on, Constable Toogood asks Mr. Young: "So, is it possible in some cases that you're adding two and two and making five?"

Mr. Young responded: "Yeah, there are some times I've done that, yeah."

The RCMP officer also expressed astonishment when Mr. Young informed him that he had told someone — Mr. Liu's criminal defence lawyer — about his role as a clandestine agent of the state.

Apparently bewildered by this admission, Constable Toogood asked Mr. Young: "But he's also Barry's lawyer. You've told him that you're co-operating with the police?"

Mr. Young muttered back: "It's a little bit messy."

Months after the interview with Constable Toogood, Mr. Young paid some Asian college students to follow Mounties in their cars as they drove home from work, and enlisted one young man to walk through the Victoria RCMP parking lot and write down licence plate numbers. Mr. Young then phoned his handlers and warned them that Mr. Liu and his associates were conducting surveillance on the RCMP.

Since the story of Mr. Young was revealed in the media in 2007, the Mounties have insisted their hands are tied by Canada's witness protection law, and that the force is prohibited from telling the public the truth about their relationship with the informant-turned-killer.

However, there is an exception in the law that allows RCMP Commissioner William Elliott to publicly disclose what happened if he believes Mr. Young "acted in a manner that results in the disclosure."

In a letter, The Globe asked Mr. Elliott whether he thought Mr. Young's murder conviction constituted him acting in a manner that resulted in the disclosure, and if not, what a protected witness would have to do to warrant such a disclosure by the commissioner.

Mr. Elliott did not respond directly to those questions. He did respond, however, about a different subsection of the witness protection act that he was not asked about. That provision allows the commissioner to expose a protected witness if the commissioner deems it "essential" in the public interest.

"As Mr. Young has been prosecuted for the crime of murder there is no essential public interest in the disclosure of his identity," Mr. Elliott wrote.