No Medal For Rudy

[Gary Sisco]

Bush ally used Ground Zero rescue crew flat as a love nest
By David Usborne in New York
16 December 2004


The murk surrounding Bernard Kerik, whose nomination to be homeland security chief by President George Bush fell apart a week ago, thickened yesterday amid reports he used an apartment that had been donated for use by exhausted 11 September rescue workers for conducting his extra-marital liaisons.

The revelation, carried in the New York Times, will only add to the embarrassment of the White House, which apparently failed sufficiently to vet the background of Mr Kerik, who served as New York police chief under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Since Mr Kerik abruptly withdrew himself from consideration last weekend - conceding tax problems over a former Mexican nanny without proper immigration papers - aides to Mr Bush have squirmed as new ethical and professional questions from his past have surfaced almost daily.

Media reports have focused in particular on ties between Mr Kerik and a New Jersey construction company, Interstate Industrial Corp, which allegedly had connections to the Mafia, as well as on reports that while serving as police chief he conducted two extra-marital affairs at the same time.

Mr Kerik, who married his third wife in 1998, may now have to answer questions about his use of the donated unit in an apartment tower just two blocks from the World Trade Centre that he allegedly used to conduct trysts with one of the women, Judith Regan, a well known figure in publishing. The apartment is said to have been one of several in the neighbourhood donated as space for emergency service, rescue workers and Red Cross personnel to use for rest in the weeks after the 11 September tragedy.

It seems that quite soon after the attacks, however, Mr Kerik asked that one be set aside for his personal use. The apartment in Battery Park City, now being described as a love nest, has views directly onto the hole at ground zero.

The affair with Ms Regan reportedly spanned about a year when she was publishing Mr Kerik's 2001 memoir, The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice. Among those suffering from the fall-out of the nomination debacle is Mr Giuliani, considered by some to be a future Republican presidential candidate. He has more than once in the past few days offered a personal apology to the White House for his role in pushing the nomination of Mr Kerik.

Since Mr Kerik and Mr Giuliani left their positions in the New York City government at the end of 2001, both have been running a security and financial consultancy and have accumulated substantial private wealth in the past three years.

Described in the American media as a tough-talking former street cop whose years as an undercover narcotics officer were very successful, Mr Kerik earned the admiration of Mr Bush after the 2001 attacks, by training local police officers in Iraq last year and energetically campaigning for the President in the recent campaign.
16 December 2004 09:39

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[Valerie]

Kerik Gave Us a Rudy Awakening by Margaret Carlson

Bernard Kerik, the erstwhile Homeland Security nominee, may have saved the country from taking the Rudy-in-'08 juggernaut too seriously.

In one swift, fantastic implosion, Kerik reminded us of the pre-9/11 Rudy, who had been lost in the mists of that horrible day three years ago. Remember the old Rudy? The controversial mayor who fired his most effective police chief, William Bratton, forced out his schools chancellor, berated the homeless, who treated police brutality as the cost of a low crime rate?

Like Kerik, he also had a compromised domestic life, keeping company with a woman who was not his wife and announcing his divorce at a news conference before telling his wife or children. Even those who thought he'd saved the city were sick of him. In a preliminary matchup in the 2000 Senate race against the flawed, carpetbagging first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, he could muster only 40%. He decided not to run.

Sept. 11 erased all that, replacing it with a mythic figure covered in ash calming the nation while a dazed president flitted across the country in Air Force One, afraid to land. Rudy was such a hero that one of George W. Bush's first televised acts after he crept back into the Oval Office was to arrange a photo op of himself on the phone with the mayor, accepting an invitation to tour the wreckage. That turned into the moment of President Bush's comeback as commander in chief.

And in case voters had forgotten the link, Karl Rove made Rudy a constant presence at the convention this past summer -- conveniently held 30 blocks from ground zero -- where Rudy invoked 9/11 with every breath. Then came the campaign trail, where Rudy welded the unsuccessful war in Iraq to the much harder-to-measure war on terrorism. After such service, Rudy could have told them to hire Ron Artest and they would have taken it under advisement.

The marriage was mutually beneficial. Bush got to look tough on terrorism and Giuliani got to look presidential. Odd then that the former mayor would risk all that pushing a bottom feeder like Kerik on his new best friend.

But the old Rudy saw no risk in Kerik, a slightly rougher version of Hizzoner: Both were swashbucklers who despised goo-goo government types with their sissy rules that slow you down when you know you're right. At the time of the announcement, Rudy said how proud he was: "I know personally what qualities he has."

Rudy had plucked Kerik out of obscurity after the Vietnam vet (who fathered and abandoned a child in Asia) chauffeured him during the 1983 mayoral campaign. He first made him head of the Department of Corrections and then promoted him to the most sensitive job in New York -- commissioner of police -- despite ample signs that the guy was shady.

Rudy didn't go off Kerik even when the top cop was fined for pulling two cops off the beat to research his memoirs, or when he was questioned about his connections to a New Jersey "waste management" company with ties to characters who would feel at home with Tony Soprano.

Kerik lived above his means, keeping two -- count them, two -- mistresses in addition to declaring bankruptcy and ignoring an arrest warrant for failure to pay his debts.

After Kerik withdrew last week, Rudy referred to all this sleazy behavior as mistakes that were "human" and "normal, at least by Washington or New York standards." Actually, what they were was normal by Rudy standards. Rudy apparently thinks it's normal to use an apartment near ground zero donated for the use of exhausted rescue workers to conduct an affair.

Kerik was lucky to have an illegal nanny to blame for dropping out before things got any worse. Whatever, Rudy continues to love the guy, welcoming the philandering, mobbed-up, unethical, deadbeat, immigrant-exploiting cad back to Giuliani Partners with open arms.

We know Rudy overlooked Kerik's behavior. But why did Bush, who had been warned he was no Boy Scout? The White House explains that Busy liked Bernie and Rudy so darn much he got carried away.

Come to think of it, what would Bush find not to like about a guy who, behind a swaggering, macho bravado, has busily used his political connections to amass a personal fortune? Is becoming a millionaire on the basis of your government connections really any different, when you get right down to it, from taking the taxpayer gift of a baseball stadium on the basis of your name, as Bush did?

So thanks for the memories, Bernie, and for the inside look at the operations, values and instincts of our president and his would-be successor. You never served, but you did something for your country anyway.

[Gary Sisco]

The amazing patriotism and selflessness of these guys. I tell ya. A great generation.