Today’s New York Times takes a comprehensive look at the Bernie Kerik saga — the story that would, in a rational world, have already meant the end of Rudy Giuliani’s political career. The long and detailed description of Kerik’s corruption is worth reading on its own. On a larger level, the article paints a disturbing picture of Giuliani’s poor personal judgment and his questionable grasp of the notion of honest public service.
The article begins by putting the lie to Giuliani’s claim that he had never been briefed on Kerik’s links to organized crime prior to naming his friend police commissioner. Giuliani himself amended that claim last year, acknowledging that the city investigations commissioner, Edward Kuriansky, had said that he had briefed the mayor on the subject at least once — though Giuliani claimed not to remember the briefing.
But a review of Mr. Kuriansky’s diaries, and investigators’ notes from a 2004 interview with him, now indicate that such a session indeed took place. What is more, Mr. Kuriansky also recalled briefing one of Mr. Giuliani’s closest aides, Dennison Young Jr., about Mr. Kerik’s entanglements with the [mob-linked] company just days before the police appointment, according to the diaries he compiled at the time and his later recollection to the investigators.
Let’s return again to just how remarkable this is. Giuliani claims he doesn’t remember being told that the man he was about to nominate to command the New York City police department had ties to organized crime. That’s like not remembering when you were warned that the person you hired to babysit your kids was a convicted sex offender. What’s more, I just cannot believe that the matter just somehow slipped between the cracks in Dennison Young’s attention. If someone tells a political aide that the man his boss is vouching for is connected to the mob, he should run into the boss’s office waving a giant red flag.
Of course, part of the problem here was that Giuliani had already degraded the ability of the system to do its job. When Kuriansky briefed Giuliani and Young on Kerik’s ties to the apparently mobbed-up construction firm Interstate Industrial, he “knew that Mr. Kerik had intervened on behalf of a firm suspected of mob ties and that the commissioner’s brother and best friend worked for the company.” He didn’t know that Interstate had paid $165,000 to renovate Kerik’s apartment.
The city investigations agency is set up to provide an internal check and balance on political appointments, conducting background checks on official nominees.
But Mr. Giuliani had torn down that wall, senior investigators said, appointing friends like Mr. Kuriansky as commissioner and having them attend his morning meetings.
Giuliani wants to hire his friend to be police commissioner (despite, the article reveals, the opposition of more than half of his cabinet). The man in charge of vetting him is another friend. Giuliani’s administration starts to look less like a government and more like, well… a family:
Mr. Kerik followed Mr. Giuliani downstairs to a dimly lighted room. There waited Mr. Giuliani’s boyhood chum Peter J. Powers, who was first deputy mayor, and other aides. One by one, they pulled Mr. Kerik close and kissed his cheek.
“I wonder if he noticed how much becoming part of his team resembled becoming part of a mafia family,” Mr. Kerik wrote. “I was being made.”
That was the first time Rudy promoted Bernie — when he took a foul-mouthed ex-detective with one year’s experience in the Correction Department and made him first deputy correction commissioner. Rudy, the article points out again and again, is fiercely loyal to his friends, and there’s plenty of evidence that that loyalty too often trumps both common sense and the public interest. His dogged support of Kerik put Rudy — either knowingly or, unforgiveably unwittingly — just two or three degrees of separation away from the mob. In his governing style, at least, Rudy sometimes seemed even closer to that world.
11 Responses to “Kerik: Rudy’s Made Man”
The Amzing Thing is that Giuliani was having 2 simultaneous adulterous affairs at the same time! With Judith Nathan AND Christyne Letagano!!
Rudy thinks foreign affairs is with a French woman…
haha why would it have ended rudy’s campaign? isn’t kerik responsible for his own actions? is rudy supposed to hold his hand all day and make sure everything is peachy? i find it hilarious that a party pushing another clinton wants to talke about marriage problems, affairs, and corrupt friends, what a joke!!!
just a small sample of the clinton crime family:
Clinton administration officials indicted
Henry Cisneros, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development became the second Clinton administration official to be indicted.
The Justice Department probe began on Sept. 22, 1994, it’s investigating whether Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros lied to the FBI about payments he made to his former mistress, Linda Jones. In March ‘95 Attorney General Janet Reno concluded HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros made yearly payments to Jones of between $42,000 and $60,000—contradicting Cisneros’ claim to the FBI that his yearly payments totaled no more than $10,000. In May 1995, an independent counsel was named to investigate if the lies HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros told to the FBI constitute a felony.
On Dec. 11, 1997 a federal grand jury in Washington handed down a 21-count indictment, charging Cisneros and Jones variously with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, fraud and perjury. Evidence including 40 hours of secretly recorded telephone calls, IRS records and canceled checks suggests to prosecutors that Cisneros committed perjury and conspired with his ex-mistress and others to lie about the hush money. Those records indicate Cisneros paid Jones about $250,000 and continued to pay her after he came to Washington, including payments totaling some $40,000 prior to his interview with the FBI.
Former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was indicted on charges he accepted illegal gifts and lied to investigators. In August, 1994 Attorney General Janet Reno asked for an independent counsel to investigate Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy for accepting gifts from companies regulated by his department. On Oct. 3, 1994, Mike Espy resigns amid charges he accepted gifts and perks barred by federal ethics laws and rules.
In Dec. 1997, Tyson Foods Inc., the nation’s largest poultry processor, pleaded guilty to giving former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy more than $12,000 in illegal gifts, and agreed to pay $6 million in fines and investigative expenses.
Ultimately, Independent Counsel Smaltz s investigation of Agriculture Secretary Espy, has resulted in 14 indictments yielding 2 convictions, 3 guilty pleas, 4 acquittals, 3 companies paying enormous fines, and 3 defendants awaiting trial or retrial.
In the tenth major probe into high level Clinton appointees, the Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether or not Labor Secretary Alexis Herman was involved in a scheme of influence peddling during ‘94-’96 when she was a White House aide. The seventh independent counsel of the Clinton era will investigate influence peddling and corrupt campaign fundraising allegations against Labor Secretary Alexis Herman. In response to these allegations, President Clinton remarked, “I don t believe that for a minute.”
Under investigation for overbilling clients, mail fraud and tax evasion, Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell resigned on March 14, 1994. On Dec. 6, ‘94 Hubbell pleads guilty and on Aug. 7, 1995 he began serving 21-month sentence for defrauding the federal government and tax evasion. A June 24, 1997 Los Angeles Times story revealed a City of Los Angeles audit found Webster Hubbell cheated Los Angeles out of almost $25,000 by lying about the consulting work he did for them.
The Justice Department began investigating Commerce Secretary Ron Brown on Feb. 19, 1995 for violation of tax and financial disclosure laws and whether he took money from people seeking to influence him. Apparently, he took bribes from almost everybody saying it is part of the way Washington works. Ron Brown was still under investigation by an Independent Counsel when he died mysteriously in a plane crash in 1996. Former Brown business associate and lover Nolanda Hill revealed on the June 18, 1997 ABC Prime time Live that deceased Cabinet Secretary Ron Brown was set to accept a $700,000 cash payoff from Vietnam in return for pushing normalized trade relations with the communist country.
Whitewater
On Jan. 20, 1994, an independent counsel is named to investigate the Clintons’ personal, political and business finances in the 1980s, including their role in the Whitewater Development Corporation. As a result, Clinton’s cronies begin to fall around him.
Former Arkansas Municipal Court Judge David Hale was indicted for defrauding the federal government by misrepresenting Capital Management’s paid-in capital. David Hale pleads guilty on Mar. 22, 1994 to conspiracy and mail fraud.
Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker was indicted on three felony charges of making false statements and conspiracy to defraud the United States in the Whitewater venture. Later, 11 new counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, making false statements and misapplying funds are added. When Clinton loyalist Judge Henry Woods dismisses the original three-count indictment against Gov. Tucker, independent counsel Kenneth Starr files an immediate appeal. Tucker is eventually found guilty of fraud in connection with the failed savings and loan institution and faces 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines. After Tucker’s resignation as Governor, Lt. Gov. Mike Huckabee replaced him.
Clinton’s partner in the Whitewater venture, Jim McDougal, was indicted on 19 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, making false statements and false bank reports, and misapplying funds. McDougal was found guilty of fraud in connection with the failed savings and loan institution. Jim McDougal was serving his 3 year sentence for bank fraud at the Fort Worth Federal Medical Center in Texas, a facility operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons for inmates who need medical attention. Just prior to another round of testimony before Kenneth Starr’s grand jury, Jim McDougal suffered a heart attack while in solitary confinement, which may have been brought on by the diuretics forced on him.
Susan McDougal was indicted on eight counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud and making false statements.
On Feb. 6, 1996, President Bill Clinton is subpoenaed in the bank fraud and conspiracy trial of James and Susan McDougal, his partners in the failed Whitewater development project and on Mar. 26th, the White House agrees to have Clinton videotape his testimony.
The White House releases on Feb 20, more than 100 pages of “mistakenly overlooked” Whitewater records subpoenaed in 1994.
On May 16, 1996, the Senate Whitewater committee votes to subpoena FBI reports showing that Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints were found on hundreds of pages of Rose law Firm documents found in the White House residence quarters in January. The records, subpoenaed in 1994, and had been missing. In a two-page affidavit to Senate Whitewater investigators on June 17th, Hillary Clinton states that she “does not know” how her Rose Law Firm billing records ended up in the White House.
Criticized for attempting to quash a Whitewater investigation at the RTC through White House liaisons, obstructing justice in the Foster suicide investigation by blocking access, removing documents, lying about his removal of documents, and by retrieving Foster’s pager from Park Police, White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum resigns on Mar. 5, 1994 and is under investigation for lying to Congress.
Director of White House Administration, Patsy Thomasson, lied to Congress about the composition of the Health Care Task Force and the size of its budget and obstructed justice when she removed documents from the office of Vince Foster.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman resigned on Aug. 17, 1994 amid charges of lying to Congress in his testimony concerning Whitewater/Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) investigation.
Treasury Counsel Jean Hanson resigns on Aug. 18, 1994 amid charges that she briefed the White House on Whitewater/RTC investigation.
On Dec. 15, 1995, Former White House lawyer William Kennedy refuses to comply with Senate Whitewater Committee subpoena demanding Whitewater-related documents.
Jury selection began on June 17, 1996 in the Whitewater-related trial of Herby Branscum and Robert Hill, two Arkansas bankers indicted on charges of fraud. Prosecutors maintain Hill and Branscum funneled $7,000 to then-Gov. Bill Clinton’s 1990 re-election campaign.
Deputy Chief of Staff, Harold Ickes, broke into New York Republican headquarters in 1970 but has never been indicted for this crime which was similar to what the Watergate Plumbers spent time in jail for. He also lied to Congress about his involvement in the Whitewater coverup.
Former White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler lied to Congress and attempted to withhold vital information from Congress. He obtained a confidential Treasury report and showed it to witnesses before they testified before Congress in the Whitewater hearings. He again lied to Congress when he denied having shown testimony to witnesses. Lloyd Cutler has resigned.
Campaign Finance
In October 1996, the Clinton/Gore campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Commerce Department engaged in covering up a Democrat political fund-raising scandal.
Three former Clinton administration officials have refused to give the U.S. Congress documents subpoenaed for investigations of Democrat fund-raising — claiming a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The three are: former Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell, former Commerce Department political appointee John Huang and Mark Middleton, a former aide to the White House chief of staff. (Associated Press, 2/28/97)
Others have fled the country to evade indictments and answering questions.
John Huang was involved in fund-raising while he was a political appointee at the Commerce Department.
Huang, a former U.S. representative of the Asian conglomerate Lippo Group, despite assertions of having avoided any contact with any Commerce Department matters involving Lippo, apparently violated federal conflict-of-interest laws by joining the administration’s Indonesia Advocacy-Financing Working Group which dealt with projects involving Lippo. Huang aggressively argued for a new U.S. trade policy toward Vietnam only one day after joining the Commerce Department in July 1994, and pushed the issue for 17 months while the Lippo Group sought to expand its business in Vietnam. (The Washington Times, 12/12/96; 11/27/96)
While still at the Commerce Department, Huang traveled coast to coast to raise money for the Democrat Party and brought in more than $150,000 in donations before he formally left his senior Commerce Department post, according to records obtained by House investigators. Political fund-raising by federal employees is prohibited by the Hatch Act. (The Washington Times, 2/19/97)
John Huang expressed a particular interest in gathering secret intelligence about China, according to testimony by a CIA officer who briefed Huang 37 times. His testimony was taken as part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch on whether Democratic donors were rewarded with trips on trade missions.
EPA Administrator Carol Browner used the EPA to campaign against Republicans running on the Contract with America, an illegal use of the executive branch for political campaigning.
A bipartisan letter from the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs on March 21, 1995, charges the Environmental Protection Agency and its administrator, Carol M. Browner, with violating the federal Anti-Lobbying Act by faxing unsolicited material opposing the Republican-sponsored regulatory reform package to various corporations and public-interest groups.
Senior Advisor, Bruce Lensey, as treasurer for the Clinton gubernatorial campaign in 1990, signed withdrawals from Perry County Bank, the president of which has pled guilty to conspiring to conceal these withdrawals from the IRS and FEC.
TravelGate
William Kennedy, David Watkins, and Patsy Thomasson was accussed of fabricating charges against White House Travel Office personnel to have the business taken over by Clinton friends. They coerced FBI and IRS agents into complicity with this scheme. Kennedy and Watkins have resigned.
Travel Office employee, Catherine Cornelius removed documents from White House Travel Office. Because those documents later became the subject of a trial against Office Director Billy Dale, that could amount to obstruction of justice.
Filegate
On June 6, 1996, The Los Angeles Times reported that the White House sought confidential FBI background documents on fired White House Travel Office chief Billy Dale. The next day, the White House admits it ordered FBI files of more than 330 people, including dozens of Republican leaders, saying it was working off an “outdated list” of people who had applied for access to the White House. Eventually it is discovered that about 1,000 people’s FBI files were obtained by Clinton officials.
One of those people whose FBI file was obtained by the White House was Linda Tripp, who blazed onto the national scene when she released to Independent Council, Ken Starr, secretly taped conversations she had with Monica Lewinsky about the sexual conduct of the President. Tripp’s connection to FBI files also include her witnessing fellow employees copying FBI files onto White House computers when she worked in the Clinton White House. (The Washington Times, 9/4/98) Tripp is also at the center of conspiracy theories involving Vince Foster’s suicide. Tripp had worked in the early Clinton administration in 1992 as executive assistant to Bernie Nussbaum, then the White House counsel. Tripp first surfaced in the original report on Foster’s death by former independent counsel Robert Fiske. Fiske said in his report, that Tripp was the last person to speak to Foster before he committed suicide. It was also Tripp who provided testimony on what happened inside Foster’s office after word of his death surfaced, again leading to questions of impropriety.
Tripp also is the original source of information regarding Kathryn Willey’s reported claim that Clinton had kissed and fondled her, claiming to be the first person to talk to Willey after she left the Oval Office.
On the 9th, White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta offers a public apology for the White House’s obtaining the FBI files: “Mistakes were made. It is inexcusable.”
President Clinton later offered a direct apology and calls the FBI files controversy a “completely honest bureaucratic snafu.”
FBI Director Louis Freeh said on June 14, that he and his agency were “victimized.” He also says that the White House acquisition of the files represented “egregious violations of privacy.”
The Washington Post reports on the 16th, Secret Service officials say the tracking system they used for White House passholders could not have generated the supposedly outdated list that the White House claimed it used to request FBI files on the now more than 400 former passholders.
White House places personnel security office director Craig Livingstone, directly responsible for obtaining the FBI files, on administrative leave.
House Government Reform and Oversight Committee begins hearings on FBI file affair on June 19th. Livingstone tells officials that the office holding the files was often left unsecured and that people with the lowest level security clearance were allowed access to the room. ABC News reports that Livingstone himself did not get proper security clearance until more than a year after he began his job as head of security.
Attorney General Janet Reno calls on FBI to expand its probe to determine how and why White House obtained files on former Reagan and Bush administration staff members - later she reverses her earlier call for the FBI to lead the inquiry, and announces that Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr should investigate how the White House acquired the FBI files in an improper manner.
New documents on June 25th, show that a total of more than 700 FBI background files were improperly obtained by the White House.
Craig Livingstone resigns from the White House staff on June 26th.
Anthony Marceca informs the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 28th, that he is taking the Fifth Amendment and will not answer any more questions concerning the White House acquisition of FBI background files.
The diaries of the Dick Morris’ call girl, Sherry Rowlands, noted that Mr Morris described Mrs Clinton as the prime mover in the scandal when confidential FBI personnel files on leading Republicans were taken to the White House and scrutinised by political fixers. “It was Hillary,” Mr Morris replied when Miss Rowlands asked who was to blame for the scandal. “She ordered them. She’s a paranoid lady; she did it.”
Co-President, Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton became the first first lady to testify before a grand jury when she was subpeonaed by the Whitewater grand jury.
Took a $100,000 bribe, camouflaged as futures trades, from Tyson Foods Inc.
Speculated in Health Care industry futures while overseeing legislative reform of same.
Failed to correct false testimony by co-defendant Ira Magaziner in Health Care trial.
Obstructed justice by ordering the shredding of Vince Foster’s documents in the Rose Law Firm.
Ordered members of the Health Care Task Force to shred documents that were the target of a court probe.
Ordered the removal of documents from Vince Foster’s office and told aides to lie about their removal of documents.
Obstructed justice by keeping her billing records, a document sought under subpoena, in the White House residence.
Lied to investigators about her knowledge about billing records.
Lied to investigators about her involvement in the Castle Grande land flip con.
Ordered the use of the FBI to discredit Travel Office employees.
Lied to investigators about her involvement in the firing of Travel Office Employees.
A Federal judge orders a trial on July 25, 1994 to determine if Hillary Clinton’s heath care task force illegally operated in secret.
The White House finally releases more than 2,000 documents on June 25, 1996, relating to the travel office firings, originally requested two years prior by congressional investigators.
if you are going to bash rudy for kerik don’t you have to give him some, if only a little, credit for bratton? no, you guys are too hypocritical and pathetic.
You seem a little emotional and overwrought Matt - breath deep
[...] similar with his doomed-from-the-start emergency response center), and more. And, as Paul Curtis notes, the Times documents better than ever before the fact that Giuliani knew Kerik’s faults [...]
Matt, the differences between the stories you posted here and the Giuliani story is that the Giuliani story is accurate. The Clinton-year “scandals” were fabricated, i.e. Whitewater.
“Giuliani? Let me say this about that; B-b-but Clinton!”
hahaha fabricated??? are you kidding??? the corruption in the clinton family, from realtives, business partners,and friends is well documented, and they corruption in campaign fundraising continues to this day with Hsu and Hillary’s bus boy proxies. the ultimate hypocrisy: attacking rudy while supporting a clinton, priceless!
[...] Kerik: Rudy’s Made Man [...]
[...] Paul Curtis added an interesting post on Kerik: Rudyâs Made ManHere’s a small excerpt [...]
Something to say?
It has become common to agonise over the Democrats’ failure to attack Rudy in the same way the Republicans are attacking Clinton. I’m not worried. I suspect the Democratic candidates have decided to lay off attacking Rudy for now because if he loses the nomination it won’t matter and if he wins they want their attacks to be fresh news during the actual campaign. And even if the media won’t pick up on the “Rudy is a pathologically lying proto-fascist with ties to the mob” narrative on their own, it will prove too good to resist when the Democrats start hammering it home. Not to say that TRF shouldn’t keep fighting the good fight in the meantime.
Left by The Sleep Thief
November 3, 2007 at 12:15pm