Former RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli. (QMI Agency file photo)

OTTAWA - The family feud at the top of the RCMP is beginning to look more like a feud in the mob families the Mounties investigate than what Canadians would expect from the national police force.

On Monday a source leaked complaints about RCMP Commissioner William Elliott to the CBC. On Tuesday the Harper government announced that they would conduct a review of the situation through a workplace assessment, essentially a review of Elliott's management style.

Now QMI Agency has learned that the entire affair may be the work of senior Mounties close to their old boss, Giuliano Zaccardelli.

Zaccardelli stepped down as RCMP commissioner in 2006 amid a string of controversies surrounding the department including claims of interference in the federal election earlier that year, the Maher Arar affair and problems in the RCMP pension fund.

Zaccardelli was replaced by a civilian and bureaucrat William Elliott.

As the battle within the RCMP goes back and forth, a new source close to the force says this mutiny in the Mounties is being orchestrated by people who "lost power when Zach left."

The unnamed source says the group of Zaccardelli loyalists are all close to retirement and "have nothing to lose."

Liberal MP Scott Brison told a news conference on Wednesday that the entire problem within the RCMP lays at the feet of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Brison says Elliott should never have been named as commissioner of the RCMP, that it was wrong to appoint a civilian as the country's top cop.

"It was Mr. Harper's decision to appoint Mr. Elliott," Brison said. "He

should be accountable for the chaos caused by that appointment."

A former Liberal campaign official is shocked at his party's stance.

"The former commissioner's intervention in the 2006 campaign was deliberate, inappropriate and hugely consequential," said the official. "The attacks on Bill Elliott's character reflect the very same attitude: an internal culture opposed to reform and resistant to the imposition of a civilian commissioner."

At the time of his appointment, Elliott was pegged as the man to clean up the many problems facing the senior ranks of the RCMP including a management structure that was deemed "horribly broken" by an independent report in 2007. That same report refered to former commissioner Zaccardelli as an autocratic leader that ran the force with an iron fist.

Among the complaints fed to the government earlier in the week that lead to the review are claims that Elliott yells at fellow officers, berates staff and once threw papers at a colleague in a rage.