Last
Updated 12/18/2004
- contact email: compassion-at-compassiongate-dot-com
Welcome to the
Compassionate Nominees page featuring the now-famous Bernard Kerik - a
man who clearly captured George W. Bush's heart, and who is likewise highly disqualified
to be President. A brief review of Kerik's record shows clearly why Bush
saw fit to nominate him - after all, Kerik displayed many of
the wonderful qualities that President Bush saw in himself and
considered compassionately conservative and worth celebrating
with a nomination.
After you read this
collection, please be sure to write to the White House and lodge a
complaint that Bernard Kerik has been unfairly denied the Presidential
Medal of Freedom (PMF) - a medal that has been awarded to other
compassionate conservatives like George Tenet, Tommy Franks and
Paul Bremer. (Indeed, I simply can't figure out why the authorsof My
Pet Goat or Sisters
were not nominated for PMS, oops sorry, PMF - how grossly unfair this
is!). And unlike Atrios
(this is in reference to the following one-line post below),
I think Kerik is already deserving -- considering not just the peer group involved,
but his remarkable accomplishments documented in
this page:
Bernard
Kerik is one scandal away from winning the Presidential Medal of
Freedom. (unattributed)
To get the full value of
Bernard Kerik for Geniuses, you should try to digest all the sections
below -
and marvel at the 27 or so acts of compassionate conservatism
(and counting). Special thanks to some of the media outlets in the U.S.
for their fine reporting -- after they awoke from the initial slumber.
1. PREFACE:
"...You can judge the nature of a man by the company he
keeps..."
[Bush,
a few years before he and Kerik became bosom (oops,
sorry, that word is probably censored by the FCC)
compassionate pals]:
You can judge the nature of a man by the company he keeps...
Compassiongate note:
Now, I am not a believer of "guilt-by-association", but
clearly President George "Moral-Values" W. Bush is. So, in
this page, in deference to his "moral values" I humbly and graciously apply
his rule to Bernard Kerik as well.
[S]ome
administration officials acknowledge that the president's
predilections work against a careful review. Bush hates leaks
and enjoys popping surprise announcements on the press. He liked
the idea of Kerik—the self-made tough guy—and he dismissed
as gossip or press carping newspaper stories about Kerik's
bending the rules.
"There's a
misperception out there," the [White House] official said.
"Giuliani was obviously a strong supporter of Bernie Kerik, but
we don't make decisions based on recommendations or the faith of other
people's word. We do our own independent vetting and selection
process."
Many people, the
official added, had made recommendations on behalf of Mr. Kerik.
"But the president had his own independent relationship with
Kerik that had formed over the last several years and he made his own
decision," the official said.
Throughout the process,
the Republican close to the administration said, everyone at the White
House knew that Mr. Bush liked Mr. Kerik, placing him in the special
category of "this guy's our guy." Mr. Bush admired Mr. Kerik
for his service as New York City's police commissioner on Sept. 11,
2001, for his willingness to try to train the police force in Iraq and
for campaigning tirelessly for the president's re-election.
White
House spokesman Scott McClellan said earlier Friday the Bush
administration has "full confidence" in Kerik's
integrity and is confident "he will take the appropriate
steps necessary to make sure that there are no conflicts [of
interest]."
President
Bush gives
a thumbs-up
to Al Gonzales over the Kerik vetting, say DeFrank and Bazinet
in the Daily News. "Rest
assured, we did significant due diligence," says Dan
Bartlett." [Compassiongate
note: More on Bush's "vetting" of Kerik here]
Bush
administration lawyers who vetted former New York City police
Commissioner Bernard Kerik before President Bush named him to
head the Homeland Security Department knew he had a “colorful
past” but concluded that his long record of public service
would outweigh questions about his conduct, a senior U.S.
official told NBC News on Monday.
The
official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the lawyers
were aware that Kerik had been questioned in a civil lawsuit involving
questions about an alleged extramarital affair with a corrections
employee; the failure to properly report financial gifts on disclosure
forms; and an arrest warrant issued after he failed to pay condo fees.
“The
lawyers looked at all these issues,” said the official. "We
believed they were not disqualifying."
...in the Monday Timespiece
by David Sanger, White House officials, including Scott
McClellan seem to make quite clear that they were aware of all
the issues now being discussed about Bernard Kerik's background.
And that it was only the alleged nanny problem, which they had
no way of discovering absent Kerik's volunteering the
information, that came as a surprise. And that it was that alone
that sank his nomination.
Bernard Kerik, the former nominee for Homeland Security
secretary, will return to work at Giuliani Partners "in the
very near future," a spokeswoman for the Manhattan
consulting firm said yesterday.
2. KERIK'S
IMPRESSIVE RESUME THAT AMAZED AND PLEASED PRESIDENT BUSH (except,
apparently, the "nanny" part)
2A.
Professional scandals, cronyism, corruption, profiting via
conflicts of interest compassionate conservatism
Without a doubt, Kerik's
long history of compassionate conservatism probably brought
secret tears of joy to the leadership of today's Republican Party and
their brown shirts in the media such as Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
In particular, I suspect that Kerik's ability to "multi-task"
with women may have brought quite a kick to Newt Gingrich and the horde of
other like-minded Conservative politicians and their media brown shirts.
Now, Kerik (evidently) declined the
position of Director of Homeland Security of the United States of
America -- but this is no reason to deny him the well-deserved post
of Chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Better still, he
would serve well as the Chair of the Family Values Council or the
Concerned Women of America or many other such fine compassionately conservative
organizations. I think the Republican Party is making a grievous mistake
by ignoring a man of Kerik's "abilities" and
"background", just because he pales in comparison to the
compassionate conservatism displayed by some of their current
leadership. That's such short-term thinking -it's so 20th century guys!
Come on!
Anyway, you got here to
learn more about Kerik. So let's start with this.
2A.1
Kerik used taxpayer paid police officials for research on a personal book
(published by his then girlfriend) that enriched him further
Kerik's
tenure as a high-level city manager was a mix of accomplishment and
nagging questions about his judgment. The city's Conflicts of
Interest Board fined him $2,500 for sending two police officers to
Ohio to help research his best-selling 2001 memoir, "The Lost
Son."
2A.2
Kerik and close friend Lawrence Ray: Kerik repeatedly milks Ray for
money and illegally did not disclose it; recommends Ray for job in a
firm lobbying for city contract; Ray involved with construction company
with mob ties and indicted in $40M "pump-and-dump stock
swindle" after which Kerik starts to avoid him
Former
New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik accepted thousands of
dollars in cash and gifts without making proper public disclosures, a
Daily News investigation has revealed.
Kerik failed to report
the gifts on financial disclosure forms he was required to file with
the city as head of the both the NYPD and, before that, the Department
of Correction.
...
The News probe
calls into question his conduct while holding two of the city's most
important public offices.
The probe revealed that
for many years, one of Kerik's main benefactors was Lawrence Ray, the
best man at Kerik's 1998 wedding, according to Ray, other sources and
checks shown by Ray to The News.
Ray and another Kerik
pal, restaurant owner Carmen Cabell, helped bankroll Kerik's 1998
wedding reception, contributing nearly $10,000.
Ray also gave Kerik
nearly $2,000 to buy a bejeweled Tiffany badge that Kerik coveted when
he was Correction commissioner.
And Ray said he gave
Kerik $4,300 more to buy high-end Bellini furniture when Kerik
allegedly griped that he couldn't afford to furnish a bedroom for a
soon-to-be born daughter.
The city's Conflicts of
Interest Board requires officials to report any gifts of $1,000 or
more.
The board's definition
of gifts includes cash, free travel, and wedding presents not given by
relatives.
Intentionally failing
to report gifts is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in
prison and a fine of $1,000. The board also can impose civil fines of
up to $10,000. The News has examined Kerik's disclosure forms and
there is no record of any of the gifts for the period concerned.
At the time of the
gifts, Ray was working for Interstate Industrial, then a major city
contractor. City ethics rules bar officials from accepting gifts worth
more than $50 from anyone doing business with the city. The company
hired Ray based on a recommendation from Kerik, according to a sworn
deposition by Interstate's owner Frank DiTomasso. New Jersey gaming
regulators said Kerik had confirmed to them that he had vouched for
Ray.
...
Thanks to the fame he achieved standing next to Giuliani after Sept.
11, 2001, Kerik now enjoys tremendous wealth. He recently turned a
profit of$5.5 million by selling stock options earned during his 18
months on the board of Taser, a company that makes controversial stun
guns.
But until his last year
in public office, Kerik had money problems. He filed for bankruptcy in
1987 as a rookie city cop, when he earned $25,000 a year and had
$11,782 in debt. By the time he became correction commissioner in
January 1998, his only asset was a condo in New Jersey that had been
in foreclosure throughout the 1990s, according to his financial
disclosure forms and court records in New Jersey.
In connection with that
case, he was cited for contempt by a New Jersey judge, according to
Newsweek magazine.
Despite his finances,
Kerik's November 1998 wedding was a grand affair. It was attended by
Donna Hanover, then Mayor Giuliani's wife, Deputy Mayor Joseph Lhota,
and state Supreme Court Justice Leslie Crocker Snyder.
The reception was held
at The Chanticler, in Millburn, N.J., one of the Garden State's
premier catering facilities. Kerik and his new wife, Hala, entertained
230 guests in the facility's Empress Room.
"This thing was
top shelf," said one person who attended. "Martini bar, full
spread, the works."
Ray wrote a check for
$1,000 in July 1998 to cover the deposit. Cabell wrote a check for
$6,688 to the Chanticler on the day of the wedding. Six weeks after
the wedding, Cabell wrote another $2,000 check to the Chanticler.
"Bernie was a
close friend of myself and Larry's that needed help," Cabell told
The News. "I helped him in the planning, details and cost of the
wedding."
Kerik still couldn't
pay the remaining balance, and the Chanticler threatened to sue, Ray
and Cabell said. Ray's attorney's handled correspondence with the
Chanticler, until Ray and Cabell covered the remaining balance.
"Bernie told
everybody those guys paid for it," said one official who
attended.
The reception was not
the first time that Ray covered Kerik's tab. After Kerik was named
correction commissioner in January 1998, he pleaded with underlings to
buy him a Tiffany badge like the one given to the police commissioner,
department sources told The News.
"He just had to
have one because the police commissioner always gets one," said a
source who then worked at Correction Department headquarters.
In April 1998, Ray
wrote a check out to Jorge Ocasio, then Kerik's chief of staff, for
$1,895 with "Tiffany badge" written in the memo field.
Ray's wife, Teresa,
issued the certified check to Bellini on Feb. 22, 2000, shortly before
the March 3 birth of Kerik's daughter, Celine.
Ray, who acknowledged
the gifts to The News after the paper showed him other evidence of the
pattern, said he was flush at the time and Kerik always complained
about surviving on his civil servant salary.
"He was always
crying about money," Ray said. "Like before Celine was born,
he was always saying he couldn't believe how much everything cost and
they were out of money."
Ray also showed The
News a check for $2,500 that his wife made out to "cash" on
Aug. 29, 1999. The check was endorsed and cashed by Kerik.
In total, Ray and
Cabell showed The News checks to the value of $18,400.
At the time, Ray's own
finances were deteriorating.
A week after Kerik's
daughter was born, Ray and 18 other men were indicted in a $40
million, mob-run, pump-and-dump stock swindle. Kerik repeatedly spoke
to Ray's criminal defense attorney before the indictment, but he
dropped his longtime benefactor when the case became public.
"We never saw Ray
around Corrections again," said the headquarters source.
On Dec. 2, The News
asked Kerik to discuss issues raised by the paper's six-month
investigation. Kerik never responded.
Via the same link from Josh,
a story in the New
York Times:
While serving as
New York City correction commissioner in the late 1990's, Bernard B.
Kerik spoke to the city's Trade Waste Commission on behalf of a close
friend who was helping a company suspected of mob connections try to
get a license from the city, according to a former commission
executive.
The conversation was
part of a web of relationships Mr. Kerik developed with officials of a
New Jersey construction company long suspected by
New York authorities of connections to organized crime. The company,
Interstate Industrial Corporation, hired Mr. Kerik's close friend
Lawrence Ray, the best man at Mr. Kerik's wedding, to help with its
licensing problems. Mr. Ray said yesterday that he gave Mr. Kerik more
than $7,000 in cash and other gifts while Mr. Kerik was commissioner
of correction and the police. The gifts were first reported in The
Daily News yesterday.
Interstate also hired
Mr. Kerik's brother, Donald Kerik, after the conversation with the
Trade Waste Commission executive, Raymond V. Casey, then head of
enforcement at the agency, although there is no indication that the
hiring was in return for the conversation. Both Mr. Kerik and one of
the owners of Interstate, Frank DiTommaso, acknowledge that they were
friends, but said there was no effort to inappropriately influence the
licensing process.
Mr. DiTommaso said his
company did not have ties to organized crime. But in January of this
year, city regulators recommended denying the license, citing what
they said were ties to organized crime over many years.
...
According to a memorandum issued in January by the Business Integrity
Commission, the successor to the Trade Waste Commission, Interstate
paid more than $1 million in 1996 to buy a debris transfer station in
Staten Island from a company controlled by a captain and a soldier in
the Gambino crime family, and it then employed organized crime figures
at the station and did business with trucking companies owned by crime
figures. The memorandum, which recommended denying the company a
transfer station license, said the owners of Interstate associated
with crime figures and had a cavalier attitude about the integrity of
their employees.
"There is ample
evidence on which to conclude that Interstate Materials Corp. and its
principals, Frank and Peter DiTommaso, lack the good character,
honesty and integrity required of a transfer station permit
holder," according to memorandum. Interstate Materials is an
affiliate of Interstate Industrial, both owned by the DiTommasos. They
have not been charged with any crime.
In recent testimony in
an unrelated case in Federal District Court in Manhattan, an
informant, Anthony Rotondo, has made more direct accusations about
Interstate, saying that it has been tied to two crime families for
years and that the company paid bribes in paper bags to the
DeCavalcante crime family of New Jersey so as to be allowed to use
cheaper, nonunion labor.
As the commission was
looking into Interstate in 1999, Mr. Kerik spoke to Mr. Casey, then
the agency's deputy commissioner for enforcement, about the man
Interstate had hired to help with its licensing problems, Lawrence
Ray. Mr. Casey said in an interview that Mr. Kerik had told him that
he "thought Ray was a good, honest person with a security
background that could help the commission alleviate the concerns with
Interstate. And that Ray was someone we could work with."
The next year, Mr. Ray
was indicted and later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit stock
fraud in an unrelated federal case.
Mr. Casey said that
after his conversation with Mr. Kerik, he assigned a commission
detective to talk to Mr. Ray, along with a supervisor. Mr. Casey said
he thought it was "weird" for the correction commissioner to
speak up on behalf of an employee of a company under suspicion, but
said he did not think Mr. Kerik intended to improperly influence the
commission's decision.
In the interview
Saturday, Mr. Kerik described himself as a friend of Frank DiTommaso,
and said he did not recall having the conversation with Mr. Casey. He
defended his relationship with Mr. DiTommaso.
Two months before the
appointment, the department learned that Mr. Kerik had a social
relationship with the owner of a
New Jersey construction company suspected of having business ties to
organized crime figures. Investigators knew further that the company's
owner had hired both Donald Kerik, Mr. Kerik's brother, and Lawrence
Ray, the best man at Mr. Kerik's wedding, during a period when one of
his companies was seeking a license from the city, according to city
documents.
Mr. Kerik notified city
investigators in the spring of 2000 that Mr. Ray had been indicted on
federal criminal charges unrelated to the company. That and other
questions about Mr. Kerik's relationship with construction company
officials prompted the city's investigations commissioner at the time,
Edward J. Kuriansky, to question Mr. Kerik sometime in 2000, according
to city officials. But Mr. Giuliani said no information gleaned from
the city's review of Mr. Kerik's relationships was ever forwarded to
him before he selected Mr. Kerik as police commissioner.
If Mr. Giuliani's
recollection is correct, the department's decision not to inform him
raises questions about the management of information in his
administration.
"That would be
highly unusual," said William B. Eimicke, a professor of public
administration at Columbia University. "It's hard to imagine how
that would happen, that they wouldn't have passed that information to
City Hall. Whether the commissioner would have communicated it
directly to the mayor or not is a wholly different question."
There is no evidence
that Mr. Kerik acted improperly, but the city's vetting of him in 2000
has emerged as a pivotal point in his near-ascension to one of the
most delicate positions in the
United States government. White House officials have said they relied
in part on the assumption that Mr. Kerik had already run a gantlet of
city background checks before becoming police commissioner.
In fact, city
investigators said in their statement yesterday that no one from the
White House had ever contacted them about Mr. Kerik, either before or
after he was nominated.
Now, I'm just getting
my footing here in the Big Apple. But I'm told by some pretty
knowledgable people that big runs of penny-stocks are not infrequently
used by some of your shadier business elements to cleanly move ...
well, let's say 'thank you money' to politicians for services
rendered. Pump the stock up a bit and there you go.
Such unfortunate
manipulations of stock prices certainly do happen. Remember, for
instance, that Lawrence Ray, Kerik's financial benefactor, who worked
for the allegedly mobbed-up construction company in New Jersey, later
got indicted in that "$40 million, mob-run, pump-and-dump stock
swindle."
2A.3
Kerik and Corrections Department use for Republican campaigning
Kerik has
always been highly political. After he left as chief of the New York
City Department of Corrections in 1999, he was named in a civil
lawsuit as the architect of a system to force prison guards to work
for Republicans in their off-hours. The suit, by a Democratic warden
who claimed he was punished for his political views, claimed that
Kerik would "hunt down" anyone deemed "disloyal."
The suit was settled; the plaintiff got $300,000 and a promotion.
Though a Kerik protege was later indicted, Kerik himself was never
accused of criminal wrongdoing.
Part
1 July 13, 2004
» Listen
In 2002, in the final weeks of Governor George Pataki's campaign for
re-election, word began to emerge that New York City Correction
Department employees were working on Republican political campaigns --
often while on-duty. Now, WNYC takes a close look at the system of
rewards and punishments on Rikers Island that led to hundreds of city
employees working as campaign foot soldiers - in apparent violation of
city law. WNYC's Andrea Bernstein has this first of two reports.
» More
Part 2: July 14, 2004
» Listen
Earlier, WNYC looked at how hundreds of employees of the New York City
Department of Correction came to work on Republican political
campaigns for a decade beginning in the 1990's, often on City time.
Those who participated were rewarded with the choicest assignments and
promotions. Those who worked for Democrats faced demotion, cuts in
pay, and transfers to the most dangerous jails. Today, WNYC's Andrea
Bernstein reports on how nobody has been charged with wrongdoing for
these activities.
» More
2A.3.1
Kerik repeatedly promotes Anthony Serra who is later indicted for
partisan and personal use of police/corrections officers
Kerik
several times promoted Anthony Serra, finally to bureau chief. But
this summer -- well after Kerik left the department -- the Bronx
district attorney filed a 146-count indictment against Serra, charging
that he had over several years used corrections officers to work on
his home and in Republican Party campaigns. There was no
indication that Kerik knew of the alleged crimes. [Compassiongate
note: Sure!]
Kerik -- who
remains under scrutiny because he abruptly withdrew his nomination last
Friday for the nation's top security post -- once warned correction
subordinates he was a "hunter of men" and demanded loyalty.
The trial of former three-star correction chief Serra is scheduled next
month in State Supreme Court in the Bronx on dozens of counts, including
grand larceny. The allegations are related to Serra's paid role in
running Republican campaigns and the rebuilding of his suburban house
using labor and materials that belonged to city taxpayers.
Another high-ranking department retiree who declined to be identified
said that depending upon how testimony is elicited, new questions could
arise about Kerik's command of the agency.
Serra has proclaimed his innocence. His lawyer, Peter Driscoll, did not
return calls yesterday.
A spokesman for the Bronx district attorney's office gave no comment on
Serra, who was promoted repeatedly on Kerik's watch.
When Kerik left the Correction Department to become police commissioner
in 2000, and later in his consulting business with former Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani, he brought along with him several correction colleagues,
including his ex-chief of staff, John Picciano. In 2002, Kerik had a
longtime aide working with him who was still on the city payroll, as
reported by Newsday.
More recently, a retired correction officer, who the Bronx DA says was
ordered to work on Serra's house while being paid by the city, was hired
for a joint venture involving Giuliani's consulting in Florida, private
sources confirmed. "Giuliani-Kerik cannot comment on questions
related to a private contract," said Chris Rising, a spokesman for
the consulting business.
Serra once was a volunteer for Giuliani's campaign, when Kerik organized
volunteers. However, last summer, before his GOP convention speech at
the Republican National Convention, Kerik said, "I never knew the
guy" as a campaign aide. "I met him in corrections."
2A.4
Kerik runs Correction Foundation to fund programs to strengthen
department using tobacco settlement - however, establishes few fiscal
controls and appoints deputy commissioner who fraudulently diverts a
huge sum to prison phone-sex operation
As
corrections commissioner, Kerik also ran the New York City
Correction Foundation, which was funded by money from court
settlements with tobacco companies. The foundation was supposed to
fund programs that strengthen the department. But it had few fiscal
controls, and Kerik appointed a deputy commissioner who later pleaded
guilty to defrauding it of $142,000. The former aide is serving a
federal prison term.
There's
also Kerik's never-fully explained role in the 1990s as head of a New
York City Corrections Department foundation that was secretly funded
with roughly $1 million of tobacco company rebates from departmental
purchases of cigarettes using city funds. Kerik's hand-picked
treasurer for the foundation, Frederick Patrick, is now serving a
one-year prison sentence after admitting in court that he pilfered
nearly $140,000 of the foundation's money to pay for collect-call
phone sex from inmates.
Kerik has
been known to make up his own rules. While he was police commissioner,
the NYPD bought four $50,000 security doors for police headquarters.
They turned out to be too heavy for the floor to support. One of them
was used by the Department of Corrections, and the other three are in
storage. A police department investigation found irregularities in the
bidding process. After leaving the NYPD, Kerik became an adviser to a
company distributing the doors, though he renounced his deal after the
door-maker's president was indicted for defrauding the city.
Rauch said no one at
Defense Technology has any idea why Kerik cut ties to the company,
except perhaps in the hope of distancing himself from its association
with a Queens-based security-door company, Georal Inc., if questions
about that company should have come up at his confirmation hearings.
In late October,
Georal's owner, Alan Risi pleaded guilty to submitting inflated and
excessive invoices to the city under various contracts, and is
scheduled for sentencing this Friday.
In June 2001, when
Kerik was running the New York Police Department, Risi's company sold
the department four automatic high-security door systems for 1 Police
Plaza, at a price that published reports say was roughly $200,000.
Georal's general counsel, Theodore Pryor, said that figure is
"somewhat low."
When the doors arrived,
they were never installed, and wound up being shipped to Rikers Island
for use there.
Pryor said the doors
were supplied under a contract in which Kerik played no role, which
Kerik as well has insisted. Last July, Kerik's successor, Ray Kelly,
opened an investigation into door purchases.
Phone calls to Kerik at
his office at Giuliani Partners, seeking comment on the matter, were
not returned.
But
retired Deputy Warden Terrence Skinner says there were several major
purchases Kerik approved as correction commissioner that left him
scratching his head.
...
Skinner served twice in the chief of security's office at Rikers
Island and held several command positions. He helped create and run
the Gang Intelligence Unit and the agency's World Trade Center detail
at the city medical examiner's office. In 1999, he received a career
achievement medal from the department. He currently has a lawsuit
against the department, but the claims are unrelated to procurement.
...
Long before the Georal doors became controversial, the Correction
Department had one set at the Queens House of Detention. While working
for the chief of security in 1999, Skinner was tasked to assess the
doors.
Skinner said he wrote a report advising against purchase of more of
the doors, saying that they were prone to maintenance problems and
that standard metal detectors would be just as effective and cheaper.
But Kerik opted to make the purchase.
In February, 2000 and 2001, the city entered into two contracts worth
a total of $2 million. Only one company, Georal, bid on the second
contract, which was worth $1.5 million, a city official said.
Some of the doors are currently in place in the main visiting area at
Rikers. The president of Georal, Alan Risi, is scheduled to be
sentenced today in connection with charges that he overbilled the city
by $50,000 to service doors on other buildings, the Manhattan district
attorney's office said.
After Kerik left city government, he joined the board of Georal's
parent company. According to a published report, he quit from the
board just before becoming a candidate for the Homeland Security
Department.
2A.6 Kerik
and Defense Technology Systems (DTS) - and link to Georal: Kerik
surrenders massive amount of stock and resigns as adviser to DTS
Bernard
Kerik's sudden and unexplained resignation six weeks ago from the
advisory board of a Long Island company is raising new questions about
the former New York City Police Commissioner's private-sector
dealings.
Kerik was nominated by
President Bush on Dec. 3 to become Secretary of Homeland Security, but
backed out six days later after disclosures about his private life and
financial practices.
In late October, Kerik
abruptly submitted a resignation letter as an adviser to the firm,
Hauppauge-based Defense Technology Systems Inc., failing thereafter to
return phone calls asking for an explanation, said the company's chief
operating and finance officer, Philip Rauch.
Three weeks later,
Kerik returned certificates for 400,000 shares of stock and the
surrender of a slew of options he'd been granted by the firm, Rauch
said.
Rauch said no one at
Defense Technology has any idea why Kerik cut ties to the company,
except perhaps in the hope of distancing himself from its association
with a Queens-based security-door company, Georal Inc., if questions
about that company should have come up at his confirmation hearings.
In late October,
Georal's owner, Alan Risi pleaded guilty to submitting inflated and
excessive invoices to the city under various contracts, and is
scheduled for sentencing this Friday.
In June 2001, when
Kerik was running the New York Police Department, Risi's company sold
the department four automatic high-security door systems for 1 Police
Plaza, at a price that published reports say was roughly $200,000.
Georal's general counsel, Theodore Pryor, said that figure is
"somewhat low."
When the doors arrived,
they were never installed, and wound up being shipped to Rikers Island
for use there.
Pryor said the doors
were supplied under a contract in which Kerik played no role, which
Kerik as well has insisted. Last July, Kerik's successor, Ray Kelly,
opened an investigation into door purchases.
Phone calls to Kerik at
his office at Giuliani Partners, seeking comment on the matter, were
not returned.
People familiar with
his role said Kerik did attend meetings that resulted in a deal that
made Defense Technology a distributor of Georal's security products.
Rauch said he does not
know what role, if any, Kerik may have played in facilitating the deal
with Risi's company, but he does say he knows "from principals at
Georal," that Kerik's deal with Defense Technology Systems was
"very similar" to an arrangement he had with Georal owner
Risi. Georal lawyer Pryor said he knows of no such arrangement.
But press accounts have
referred to an individual named Lawrence Ray, identified as a
"close friend" and best man at one of Kerik's weddings,
claiming that Ray had given Kerik $7,000 in cash and other gifts while
Kerik was NYPD boss.
SEC filings show that
an individual of the same name recently held more than 200 million
shares of stock and options in a penny-stock company called FINX Group
Inc., which lists Risi and Georal as sole supplier of its main
products.
So let's review. Kerik
quickly cuts his ties with Company A because it does business with
Company B, and the owner of Company B got caught over-charging the
city and is probably going to do time.
So far so good.
But Kerik seems to have
had some other connections to Georal.
When he was running the
NYPD the department bought a few of Georal's security doors for pretty
good money. But there was apparently no use for them; they never got
installed and were eventually sent over to Riker's Island. Kerik has
always insisted he had nothing to do wtih that purchase. But this
summer, his successor, Ray Kelly, opened an investigation into the
purchases.
And there's more.
It seems that the
"advisor" who put Defense Technologies together with Georal
was ... take a guess. Right: Bernard Kerik. And Rauch says he heard
from folks at Georal that Kerik had a "very similar"
arrangement there as he had with Defense Technologies. So, in other
words, sign on as an "advisor" and get dealt in for about a
kajillion shares of penny-stocks in the company.
Now, I'm just getting
my footing here in the Big Apple. But I'm told by some pretty
knowledgable people that big runs of penny-stocks are not infrequently
used by some of your shadier business elements to cleanly move ...
well, let's say 'thank you money' to politicians for services
rendered. Pump the stock up a bit and there you go.
Such unfortunate
manipulations of stock prices certainly do happen. Remember, for
instance, that Lawrence Ray, Kerik's financial benefactor, who worked
for the allegedly mobbed-up construction company in New Jersey, later
got indicted in that "$40 million, mob-run, pump-and-dump stock
swindle."
And the funny thing is,
Mr. Ray's name comes up in this story too. According to the Post,
SEC filings show that a man by the name of Lawrence Ray recently held more
than 200 million shares of stocks and options in another
penny-stock company called FINX Group Inc. And FINX lists Georal and
our friend Mr. Risi (owner of Georal) as the sole supplier of the most
of the products it sells.
Small world, isn't it?
2A.7
Kerik and Second Chance Body Armor Inc.: Pushed no-bid contract
violating city purchasing guidelines
But
retired Deputy Warden Terrence Skinner says there were several major
purchases Kerik approved as correction commissioner that left him
scratching his head.
The largest of the three involved the $4.8-million purchase of 11,008
stab-resistant vests in May 2000 from a company called Second Chance
Body Armor Inc. The purchase was touted at the time by Kerik and
then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in a City Hall news conference.
Skinner, who left the job in April 2002, said he chaired a
three-person panel that examined the vests then on the market and
decided there was little difference among them. The hand-picked panel
recommended that the department issue custom specifications and put
the job out to bid.
Instead, Skinner said, the agency chose Second Chance, using a
state-purchasing contract, which at the time bypassed the city
comptroller's office.
The purchase drew complaints from at least one other manufacturer, who
charged in a September 2000 published report that the city had
overpaid.
After the City Council raised questions about the purchase, Skinner
said, he received a call from the Correction Department's general
counsel, inquiring why the project had not been bid out. "I said
I didn't recommend that we buy them," Skinner said. "The
commissioner's office did.
"Their purchasing clearly violated city purchasing
procedures," Skinner said. A Kerik spokesman referred calls
seeking comment to the Corrections Department. "If he has any
complaints, he should take them to the proper authority," said
Thomas Antenen, a correction spokesman. He declined further comment.
"These are all items contracted for four and five years
ago."
Skinner served twice in the chief of security's office at Rikers
Island and held several command positions. He helped create and run
the Gang Intelligence Unit and the agency's World Trade Center detail
at the city medical examiner's office. In 1999, he received a career
achievement medal from the department. He currently has a lawsuit
against the department, but the claims are unrelated to procurement.
2A.8
Kerik and useless Celayaton batons: Another outrageous
compassionate contract
But
retired Deputy Warden Terrence Skinner says there were several major
purchases Kerik approved as correction commissioner that left him
scratching his head.
...
Skinner served twice in the chief of security's office at Rikers
Island and held several command positions. He helped create and run
the Gang Intelligence Unit and the agency's World Trade Center detail
at the city medical examiner's office. In 1999, he received a career
achievement medal from the department. He currently has a lawsuit
against the department, but the claims are unrelated to procurement.
The second contract, Skinner said, involved the purchase of Celayaton
batons -- a telescoping rubberized nightstick. Kerik initially wanted
to buy 10,000, he said.
After reviewing the equipment as an aide to the chief of security,
Skinner said he concluded that the batons didn't meet training
standards.
The commissioner's office, however, purchased 2,000 of the batons,
arguing they could be used on hospital runs and by the Emergency
Services Unit. But Skinner said that those uses would be a waste of
money.
"They would sit there forever," he said. "They would
never be used."
Once the department purchased the batons, the company then demanded to
be paid for training instructors on how to use them. Skinner refused.
Kerik's chief of staff, John Picciano, took the company's side, but
Skinner still refused, Skinner said. The company then filed a
complaint with Inspector General Michael Caruso, according to Skinner.
After Kerik stepped down to run the Police Department, William Fraser
took over as correction commissioner. Skinner was subsequently called
downtown to Caruso's offices for an interview on the baton purchases.
"I told them that the commissioner's office pushed this
purchase," he said. "They then ended the interview."
Officials at the Department of Investigation did not return phone
calls seeking comment.
2A.9 Kerik's
alleged hiring of a mob-connected contractor Ed Sisca to
renovate an apartment he had purchased at West 239th Street to be
investigated
The Bronx District
Attorney's Office said yesterday it will investigate allegations that
former NYPD top cop Bernard Kerik used a mob-connected contractor to
renovate an apartment he purchased.
Bronx DA Robert Johnson
is launching the probe in the wake of a report that in 1999 Kerik had
a mob-connected contractor convert two first-floor apartments into one
large apartment at the West 239th Street building.
Kerik, then the city's
Correction Department commissioner, was experiencing severe financial
problems at the time.
Kerik's lawyer, Joseph
Tacopina, insisted yesterday that the story is bogus because the
embattled ex-NYPD commissioner bought the apartment after the lavish
renovation was done.
He also said Kerik
never met the ex-cons involved in the construction work.
"Bernie Kerik
never met either of these people, never hired any of these
gentlemen," Tacopina said. "The building secured permits
with them before Bernie Kerik purchased the apartment, and after the
two units were converted into a single apartment."
Stephen Reed, a
spokesman for Johnson, said the office has opened a "preliminary
investigation," adding, "we are gathering information"
regarding the apartment's improvements and how they were paid for.
He said his office will
try to determine whether Kerik had a relationship with the
mob-connected contractor who did the work. The project's contractor
was Ed Sisca, who had previously been arrested in a bid-rigging
scheme, according to reports.
Sisca, of Englewood,
N.J., is the son of a Gambino capo. He was sentenced to 41/2 years in
prison for the scheme.
The project's engineer
was Charles Marino, who was once sentenced to five years probation for
filing false documents with the Department of Environmental
Protection.
Tacopina
said Kerik bought the pad directly from the building's management for
$170,000 after taking out a mortgage. He also said Kerik paid $50,000
for renovations he wanted, but hired "his own people" — not
Sisca or Marino.
...
2A.10
Kerik profits mightily via glaring conflicts of interest - Giuliani Partners, CamelBak Products
A business
partner of Bernard Kerik and Rudolph Giuliani said Kerik's role as an
adviser to the Department of Homeland Security gave them insight into
where the government was investing its resources, which was helpful in
choosing potential business ventures.
Newsday also learned Friday that Kerik, who withdrew his nomination
after being tapped last week by President George W. Bush to replace
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, has resigned from the board of
a second company, CamelBak Products, Inc., which has sold at least $16
million worth of equipment to the government, including to border
patrol squads overseen by the Department of Homeland Security.
Rick Perkal, a senior managing director at Bear Stearns Merchant
Banking who oversees the firm's $300-million investment venture
looking for security-related investments with Giuliani Partners, the
company formed by Kerik and the former mayor in 2002, said Kerik's
experience with a little-known advisory committee reporting to Ridge
provided an advantage in deciding where to invest their money.
"Being an adviser in Homeland Security, what has been helpful to
us is that he understands the needs of the country," said Perkal,
who praised Kerik's expertise. "When we look at opportunities -
companies that come up for sale - he can say this is a good company, I
think it has good growth prospects."
But supporters of Kerik said he had done nothing wrong, was not
involved in any specific contracts and had abided by all existing
government guidelines.
Kerik has served on the Academe and Policy Research panel since late
2003, which seeks out strategic advice from leaders in academia,
technology and policy development to advise the Department of Homeland
Security on how to spend its nearly $40-billion annual budget. He has
attended meetings of that government advisory group this year while
working with Giuliani Partners and Bear Stearns.
"The Committee has no role in procurement issues nor are they
privy to sensitive discussions that would in any way benefit companies
interested in doing business with the department," said Tasia
Scolinos, a Homeland Security spokeswoman.
Since his nomination, much of the attention about Kerik has focused on
potential conflicts of interest between his proposed role as the
nation's security chief and the expansive business ventures of
Giuliani Partners, a firm set up to invest and guide businesses
concerned with security in the post-9/11 economy, including those
seeking contracts with the Department of Homeland Security.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said earlier Friday the Bush
administration has "full confidence" in Kerik's integrity
and is confident "he will take the appropriate steps necessary to
make sure that there are no conflicts."
"This is our worst fear," said Danielle Brian, executive
director of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Project on Government
Oversight. "Membership in these appointed panels is providing an
inappropriate and unfair insight for friends and business partners
about where the government is going to use its resources. That's a
ticket to the most prized information."
If he had been confirmed, Kerik was expected to resign from the board
of Taser International, a stun-gun manufacturer where he reportedly
earned millions from stock options.
A Kerik spokeswoman confirmed he has removed himself from CamelBak's
board and then referred other questions to the White House.
A White House spokesman, Brian Besanceney, said Kerik's use of his
government experience in deciding on private business is not atypical
for those serving on advisory panels. He said advisers to Ridge come
from many sectors of private industry. "It's a fairly common
situation," he said.
Besanceney said Friday the White House was in the early stages of
reviewing Kerik's finances, and that so far there had been no problems
that would hinder Kerik's nomination.
Since earlier this year, Kerik has been a member of the board of
CamelBak, a privately owned, California-based company making hydration
backpacks with hands-free sipping tubes for use in Iraq and for use
with domestic border patrols. "I'm honored to join the Board and
I look forward to working with the company on expanding their
market," said Kerik back in March, after serving as interim
minister of the interior in Iraq. "I used their hands-free
hydration system in Iraq in July of 2003 so I know how valuable this
product is and the important applications it has in a broad range of
market sectors."
...
Perkal said the joint venture by Giuliani Partners and Bear Stearns
into CamelBak is a good example of how Kerik used his government
expertise in the private sector. Perkal said Kerik didn't lobby or
supply specific details about pending government contracts, but his
government experience helped them tailor CamelBak's goods to suit
government needs.
"In the case of CamelBak, Bernie spent a few months in Iraq - he
understands the product and he understands the needs of the military,
having spent a lot of time there, and so, specifically with CamelBak,
Bernie was knowledgeable as a user and he actually gave product
suggestions, in terms of product improvements," Perkal said.
He indicated Kerik had an equity interest in CamelBak but was not sure
if he had cashed out his stake in the company. A CamelBak spokesman,
Pennington Way, confirmed that Kerik had left the board but had no
further comment.
Since getting off the ground, the joint effort between Giuliani
Partners and Bear Stearns has resulted in few other successful
investments, though Perkal said they are currently working on a deal
involving a $15-million to $20-million company in the security field.
"Bernie has been very helpful to us in the process of
looking" for companies to invest in, Perkal said.
2A.11
Kerik profits astonishingly from post 9/11 Board position in Taser International
In 2002,
Kerik was appointed to the board of Taser International Inc., which
manufactures high-voltage stun guns. Critics have accused the
company's weapons of contributing to dozens of deaths. Kerik received
options on more than 100,000 shares of stock. Company records show
Kerik recently exercised those options and sold $5.8 million worth of
stock, whose value increased by more than 19 times in the past two
years.
Compassiongate note:
I am all for capitalism and all that, but for an appointed Board
member to make several million dollars
seems a bit compassionate to me. And indeed, it is...
As CAP points
out (amount slightly different, bold text is my emphasis):
Kerik
has made $6.2 million dollars in profits from his relationship
"with Taser International, a Scottsdale, Ariz., manufacturer of
stun guns." Kerik was appointed as a director of the company immediately
after he had the NYPD purchase the guns as police chief. Since
2002, Kerik has hawked Taser's products to police departments around
the country. Recently the company has made an "aggressive
push to enter markets either regulated or controlled by the federal
government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security."
Thomas Smith, the company president, said the company would
"continue to go after that business" at the Department of
Homeland Security should Kerik be confirmed.
More
on the controversy over the safety of tasers here
(via Dailykos).
A prominent Republican member of the Sept. 11 commission, former
Navy secretary John F. Lehman, sharply criticized Kerik and former
fire commissioner Thomas Van Essen for failures of leadership during
the terrorist attacks, saying that rivalry between the departments
hampered rescue efforts. The command and control of their departments,
Lehman said, were "not worthy of the Boy Scouts." Kerik
heatedly disputed the charge.
The commission's final report contained much muted criticism of the
two departments and framed the overarching question this way:
"Whether the lack of coordination between the FDNY and the NYPD
had a catastrophic effect is a subject of controversy."
But Kerik's track
record combating terrorism and working on the national stage is more
spotty. Appointed by President Bush to train a new Iraqi police force
in 2003, Kerik came under criticism for inadequate screening of
recruits as U.S. authorities rushed to deploy the force. It has been
plagued by desertions and by allegations that insurgents have
infiltrated theranks.
Kerik quit four months into his six-month tenure in Iraq,telling
New York reporters later that he needed a vacation.
In an article
in the New York Daily News on May 16th 2003, Kerik confirmed
that he'd been tapped to be the American in charge of the Iraqi
Interior Ministry (formally, he'd be the chief 'advisor').
Principally, that meant he'd be in charge of domestic security and
specifically in charge of standing up a new Iraqi police force. This
was just after Bremer had arrived on the scene. And he told the Daily
News he'd be leaving for Iraq within three days. As for how long
he'd be in the country, he said he'd be in Iraq "in excess of six
months, but no one really knows . . . as long as it takes to get the
job done."
As Kerik suggested, six
months seemed optimistic. In mid-July, according to an article in the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Robert C. Orr, who the Pentagon had
just sent as part of a fact-finding mission to Iraq, said that
"former New York police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik, is
training an Iraqi police force but his work won't be completed for
at least another 18 months, and the need for help is urgent and
immediate (italics added)."
If you review the
newspaper reportage over the next couple months you'll see Kerik
quoted in various articles about security and policing in Iraq. He
even showed up in walk-along columns by the Post'sJim
Hoagland and the Times'Thomas
Friedman.
But little more than
two months into his tour, just as Iraq was slipping the first few
rungs down the ladder into chaos, something happened -- something that
I've never seen explained.
Remember that on August
7th, the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad was bombed
-- the first high-profile terrorist act since the war. Then on August
19th a truck bomb destroyed the UN compound in the Iraqi capital
killing seventeen, including the head of the UN mission, Sérgio
Vieira de Mello.
Then, only a few days
later, a few press reports noted for the first time -- in most cases
just in passing -- that Kerik was preparing to leave the country. The
earliest of these that I'm aware of came in a Timesarticle
by Dexter Filkins in which he notes in passing that Kerik was
"wrapping up his tour in Iraq" and later that Kerik's
"time here is to end in a week."
[ed.note: If
there are earlier references to the timing of Kerik's departure I'm
not aware of them. But if you are, I'd be obliged if you could let me
know.]
Then just a few days
later, on August 29th, a bomb
exploded outside the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf killing upwards of a
hundred people including Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, head of SCIRI.
Tracking down the
precise date of Kerik's departure is difficult. But he apparently left
the country either two or three days later. The first word of Kerik's
departure that I could find comes in a September 3rd article
by John Tierney in the Times, which reported on the truck
bombing of the central office on the Iraqi police in Baghdad. In that
report Tierney notes that the leader of the effort to reconstitute the
Iraqi police force had been "Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York
City police commissioner [who] finished his three-and-a-half-month
tour here this week."
The question, I
suppose, pretty much asks itself: what happened? Kerik arrived in Iraq
with a rather open-ended committment. By his own account, it should
have carried him at least through the end of 2003. There was even some
suggestion that it would keep him in the country through 2004. Yet
just after the first two major terrorist attacks in Baghdad reports
surfaced that he was about to leave. And only a week later, after
major terrorist incidents numbers three and four, he was gone.
At the time, the
Pentagon and Kerik (or rather people speaking on his behalf) made
rather unconvincing claims that Kerik's departure was simply part of
the original plan.
As TPM noted
a week after Kerik left, the Pentagon said the Kerik was actually
supposed to leave in the summer and "extended his stay to finish
his ongoing projects." That was a bit hard to figure since that
would have meant his entire tenure in the country would have lasted
only a few weeks. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Kerik's employer,
Giuliani
Partners, said the plan had always been that he'd only stay in the
country for 90 days. But that of course directly contradicted Kerik's
own statements.
We now know that the
many of the key security-related decisions that have haunted the
occupation for the last year and a half happened in those first few
months. Kerik also left at a time when there seemed to be plenty of
police work to go around in Iraq.
Yet the
President was oddly — and utterly — silent on Kerik's work in
Baghdad, and perhaps for good reason. Though Kerik presided over the
hiring of thousands of recruits for the reconstituted Iraqi police
force, most were hired without background checks, and many turned
out to be hardened criminals. As a result, some 30,000 of them, or
roughly 25 percent of the entire force, are now reportedly being let
go, with the U.S. footing the bill for $60 million in severance
payments.
...
After the
invasion of Iraq the Bush administration tapped Kerik to go to Baghdad
to begin rebuilding the local police force. As he left, Kerik vowed
that he'd be gone for six months or until he'd finished the job. But
he came home after a little more than three months, just as the
insurgency was starting to explode. Kerik told reporters that he
needed a vacation; officials now say he left because an Iraqi was
ready to take over his job.
[Compassiongate note: Sure!]
Go back to an article
by Patrick Tyler and Raymond Bonner that ran in Times on
October 4th, 2003. The headline is "Questions are Raised on
Awarding of Contracts in Iraq." The central issue examined in the
piece is why the Interior Ministry payed $20 million to a company in
Jordan for (50,000) pistols, (20,000) Kalashnikovs and (10,000,000)
rounds of ammunition for the Iraqi police when the US military was
confiscating tons of weaponry every month from Iraqi military
arsenals.
One governing council
member said "There is mismanagement right and left, and I think
we have to sit with Congress face to face to discuss this. A lot of
American money is being wasted, I think. We are victims and the
American taxpayers are victims." Another said, "I don't have
the evidence, but I think there is corruption. This is a common
grievance that people tell me ... It is totally unnecessary to buy
[the guns] from outside the country."
The explanation for the
purchase of the weaponry was that there would just have been too many
logistical problems involved in purchasing or requisitioning the
revolvers and rifles in small lots in country. And without any greater
context or being able to judge the challenges the folks on the ground
were facing at the time, that seems like it might be a reasonable
explanation.
But it turns out there
is some context. As you might have expected already, the contract was
okayed on the authority of Bernard Kerik.
All the Iraqis on the
Governing Council at the time seemed to think the deal stunk to high
heaven, that Kerik was spending millions to bring weapons into a
country that was already bursting with weapons. And when the Times
wanted to talk to Kerik about the deal he didn't want to talk to them.
The Iraqis wanted
Congress to investigate. Sounds like a good idea. Read the article.
See what you think.
The autobiography of
Bernard B. Kerik, President Bush's nominee to head the Department of
Homeland Security, recounts a difficult time 20 years ago when he was
expelled from Saudi Arabia amid a power struggle involving the head of
a hospital complex where Kerik helped command a security staff.
In the book, Kerik described his discomfort at having to investigate
employees' private lives, but said it was necessary because of the
Saudis' laws prohibiting drinking and mingling of the sexes in public.
"It was challenging, negotiating such a closed, rigid system and
trying to find justice in laws that, to an American, were
unjust," he wrote. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1984, the
book said, after he had a physical altercation with a Saudi secret
police official who was interrogating him.
Since he was nominated
last week to be homeland security secretary, however, nine former
employees of the hospital have said that Kerik and his colleagues were
carrying out the private agenda of the hospital's administrator, Nizar
Feteih, and that the surveillance was intended to control people's
private affairs. Feteih became embroiled in a scandal that centered in
part on his use of the institution's security staff to track the
private lives of several women with whom he was romantically involved,
and men who came in contact with them, the ex-employees said.
Kerik, who as chief of investigations was considered third in command
of the security staff, personally surveilled some employees and at
times confronted them with the results, several former employees said.
He also was a lead investigator in the controversial arrest, for
drinking, of a physician who was detained and deported from Saudi
Arabia for the crime.
Ex-employees also said the official Saudi investigation of Feteih and
the security team was begun in response to hospital employees'
complaints to Saudi officials of intimidation by Feteih and the
security staff.
After medical personnel at the hospital complained to Saudi officials,
the security team helped get one whistleblower jailed overnight,
sought to put another into a Saudi mental hospital, and stepped up its
surveillance of some members of the medical staff, several of the
former hospital employees said. Six members of the hospital security
staff, including Kerik, were fired and deported, and Feteih was sacked
as hospital administrator after an investigation in 1984 by the Saudi
secret police, they said.
...
"Kerik was a
goon," said John Jones, a former hospital manager, who said he
felt harassed by the security team. "They were Gestapo. . . .
They made my life so miserable."
"Kerik used heavy-handed tactics in following single men around
and keeping them away from some women," said Ted Bailey, who was
a doctor at the hospital and now practices in Indiana. Added paramedic
Michael Queen: "Men and women had to be careful with security,
but Bernie was the one we watched out for the most."
Kerik said that he knows of no improprieties by the security staff,
and that he was put in an awkward position in having to enforce the
strict Saudi moral code. Alcohol is prohibited under the code, but the
government usually allows Westerners to ignore that ban, as well as
the ban on intermingling of the sexes, inside the walled compounds of
institutions such as the King Faisal hospital and their homes, as long
as they do so privately.
Bob Burghardt, who worked with Kerik at the hospital and remains his
friend, said in an interview that he knew of no improper surveillance
by the security team. "Bernie and I were ostracized [by hospital
staff members] for upholding Saudi law," said Burghardt, who is
now an auditor.
Gilda Riccardi, then a hospital nurse and now a friend of Kerik's,
said that despite strong rumors of wiretapping and impropriety by the
security staff, she knows of no proof it occurred. "To implicate
Bernie [in any possible misdeeds by the security team], I have a
problem with that," said Riccardi, who became friendly with Kerik
years later when he was a New York police officer and she was a
prosecutor.
...
2A.15
Kerik claims importing drugs from Canada could lead to bio-terror attack!
Now I know why Bush absolutely loved the guy! Where's the masking tape when you need it?
You
see it is quite safe to import the flu vaccine en masse from other
countries outside the United States. But prescription drugs from Canada?
NOOOOO. That is objectively pro-terrorist!
Bernard Kerik, the
former police commissioner who now runs a consulting firm with former
New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R), said allowing Americans to buy
lower-cost drugs from countries such as Canada could invite terrorists
to launch a biological attack under the guise of a legal purchase.
"We are very concerned if wholesale importing is permitted, it
will make this country's medicine supply extremely vulnerable to
terrorist intervention," said Kerik, who said in an interview
later that he has been hired by the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America to investigate the safety of drug
imports. [Compassiongate note: Don't you
just love the euphemism "investigate"?]
Kerik said he believes drug counterfeiting profits are
already supporting terrorists.
2A.16
Kerik's love for his own busts (I don't mean what you may think I mean)
Eyes rolled
in the NYPD when Kerik reportedly used $3,000 of Police Foundation funds
to order up 30 busts of his own likeness, complete with bristling
mustache. Possibly because Kerik heard the grumbles, the busts were
never handed out. (His aides insist the idea for the busts originated
with the nonprofit Police Foundation.) Kerik likes the glittery
celebrity life. After he stopped being a street cop, he cut his ponytail
and began wearing silk-thread suits and Italian loafers. His workout
partner and literary editor for his memoir was Judith Regan, a
flamboyant and successful publishing figure. ("She is brash, very
assertive, extremely demanding and talks like a man," Kerik
approvingly told Vanity Fair magazine. "But you know what? I've run
the biggest police departments in the country. I've run the largest
jail. Sometimes it takes a person like that to get things done.")
2A.17
Kerik and former lover Jeanette Pinero embroiled in lawsuit - Pinero's
superior charged that Kerik prevented him from being promoted because
he had reprimanded Pinero
On
Thursday, the day before he took his name from contention, Kerik, 49,
was forced to testify in a civil lawsuit about an alleged affair with
a subordinate.
The case, which involves Kerik's use of authority when he was city
correction commissioner between 1998 and 2000, was brought against the
city by a former deputy warden. Plaintiff Eric DeRavin III contends
Kerik kept him from getting promoted because he had reprimanded the
woman, Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero.
About halfway through Pinero's deposition on Tuesday, attorneys for
the city began to raise the issue of sealing the depositions,
particularly the parts that concerned Kerik and Pinero's relationship,
lawyers in the case said.
On Wednesday, the lawyers requested and received a special hearing
before Federal Magistrate Kevin Nathaniel Fox, where they requested
that both Kerik's and Pinero's transcripts be sealed.
DeRavin's attorney, Gregory Lisi, argued against the sealing, calling
it a First Amendment issue.
The judge ordered the parties not to discuss the contents of either
deposition until he ruled.
DeRavin said that while other depositions in the case have been taken
in small, cramped quarters at the city Law Department, Kerik's was
held in a spacious conference room furnished with leather chairs.
Kerik arrived with his personal attorney, Joseph Tacopina.
2A.18 Serial-Liar
Compassionate conservative Rudy Giuliani appointed Kerik Police Commissioner despite Kerik not having
filed required background check form; not to mention Kerik is one of
Giuliani's close buddies given their compassionate conservative
values
City
investigators revealed last night that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's City
Hall allowed Bernard Kerik to become police commissioner despite
failing to file a required background form.
With the announcement, the Department of Investigation suddenly
confirmed that it is probing whether or how Kerik may have been vetted
for the job in 2000.
Kerik
had long been a personal friend, appointee and campaign aide to
Giuliani before a surprise appointment as the former mayor's third
police commissioner.
Questions were directed at DOI in recent days after Kerik's candidacy
for Homeland Security secretary exploded amid revelations about his
financial and personal dealings going back to his city service.
Just three months before Kerik's appointment by Giuliani, it has been
reported, city investigators conducted interviews that would have shed
light on questionable friendships Kerik had.
The friendships, while he was correction commissioner, involved two
men involved with a major city contractor under investigation and
gifts Kerik received from one, including payment for his wedding
reception.
There was also an unresolved lawsuit in New Jersey involving a condo
he had owned. The civil litigation regarding that case resulted in a
warrant issued for his arrest.
The DOI, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said in a statement that it so
far found Kerik "did not fill out a background form when he was
police commissioner" - but did so in 1998 to become jail
commissioner.
The rigorous form asks top municipal job candidates about all aspects
of their lives - including civil proceedings, sources of income, tax
information and possible conflicts.
One city official who declined to be identified noted that just lying
on the form in the past has resulted in prosecution. The gifts in
question were not reported on other financial disclosure forms filed
by Kerik with the Conflicts of Interest Board, a matter also now under
investigation.
"The White House did not contact DOI before or after Mr. Kerik's
nomination," the statement said, a response to questions about
President George W. Bush's screening process.
"No further information will be released until we know the facts
and circumstances of a matter that began four years ago that involves
many people who are no longer in city government and involves archived
records," the city statement said.
The Bloomberg administration says it is requiring the background forms
for all new hires, those promoted or transferred, all board and
commission members and all managers and those earning above $80,000 a
year.
Sunny Mindel, spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners, where Kerik is
employed, and Giuliani's mayoral press secretary, did not return a
call seeking comment.
WNBC in New York is reporting
that Kerik may never have filled out the proper forms that would have
allowed for a background check for him to become police commissioner
either.
Late Update: A
reader tells me that this is the form
in question.
Even Later Update:
The Times has a detailed
piece on claims by the city Department of Investigations that they
have "been unable to find any evidence that Mr. Kerik had filled
out a background form, as usually required, before his appointment to
the post by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani." Pay particular note to
the discrepancy between what experts say Giuliani should have been
told, or would normally have been told, and what he claims he was, or
rather wasn't, told.
As Leonard
Leavitt pointed
out in Newsday two weeks ago,
Kerik's selection came despite the fact that he lacked a college
degree - a requirement established in 1985 by then-Commissioner Ben
Ward for anyone promoted above captain.
If you bend one rule for a buddy, why not bend 'em all?
A cluster
of ethics questions, churned up by Bernard Kerik's aborted candidacy
for the nation's top security post, is prompting new concern over why
such issues went unexplored when Kerik was in city service.
"Nobody at that time thought that Giuliani's Department of
Investigation was independent of the muscular way he ran the rest of
the city," said Mark Green, who as public advocate criticized
Giuliani.
Even a Green adversary seemed to agree that the administration's
investigative arm had failed to track the actions of its police
commissioner.
"Did his people vet him when he became corrections and police
commissioner?" ex-mayor Ed Koch asked, referring to Giuliani.
One city councilman yesterday called the Kerik fiasco a perfect
example of why major mayoral appointments should undergo City Council
confirmation.
...
An old arrest warrant
stemming from a civil suit, a beneficial friendship with a city
contractor's employee, and explicit charges of romantically driven
favoritism when he ran the city jails were among the issues swirling
around Kerik when he withdrew.
In recent months and years, questions simmered about Correction
Department and NYPD purchasing practices under Kerik, for items from
automatic doors to comissary goods and the handling of cigarette
money.
In his 2001 autobiography, "The Lost Son," Kerik called
Michael Caruso, then as now the Department of Investigation's man at
the correction agency, one of his "closest friends and
colleagues," who helped him prepare for his next tour as police
commissioner.
Caruso, however, was only one employee in a sprawling investigative
agency. In 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg changed investigation
commissioners and the Department of Investigation was shaken up.
Edward Kuriansky, its commissioner between 1996 and 2001, did not
return a call for comment.
In 2001, an administrative judge demanded that the Department of
Investigation probe a case involving a close friend of Kerik's
girlfriend, citing a "gross abuse of power" from the top
and the misuse of disciplinary processes "to protect a favored
employee." The probe was never done, as reported by Newsday the
following year.
According to published reports, Kerik developed a friendship with a
employee of a city contractor who helped pay for his 1998 wedding in
possible violation of the charter. City investigators reportedly
gathered testimony touching on the relationship months before Kerik
was promoted to police commissioner in 2000.
2A.19 Kerik and former lover
Judith Regan's cell phone/necklace incident leads to homicide detectives
being used for intimidation against studio employees
On top of that, there's
that never-quite-adequately-explained incident from March 2002 when
Regan lost her cell phone and a necklace at Fox Studios in New York
and Kerik followed up by sending homicide detectives out to question
five Fox employees he suspected of possibly being the thiefs. (Kerik
claimed a subordinate had given the order. Police later found the
phone in a garbage can outside the studio and Regan found the necklace
in her purse.) The five who were visited told the Times (see NYT,
3/11/02) that the officers came to "question them, fingerprint
them and tell them they would have to take lie detector tests."
After the Fox employees
went public about Kerik and threatened legal action, Kerik told the Times
that "they should be worried about [the theft of Regan's
property] more than who sent the people there. They should be worried
about the thief among them."
2B. Personal
stories of an unpleasant nature, close friendships /
relationships with crime figures, and finally, "PARTISANSHIP
BEFORE COUNTRY" - a true hallmark of a compassionate conservative
Compassionate Conservatism
Bernard Kerik does not let us down on the
personal front either. What he displayed in his professional life is
equally evident in his personal life - a strong display of the
"moral values and leadership" of the Republican Party.
2B.1 Kerik
originally abandoned both the Korean woman he impregnated and his daughter
from that relationship
Kerik
learned about loyalty from bitter experience. As an MP in Korea, he
got a local girl pregnant and abandoned the child—until he
realized that he had behaved just like his mother. For years he
fruitlessly searched for the girl [Compassiongate
note: Did he claim he did or do you guys actually know that he
did? Just asking...];
they were finally reunited in 2002.
Bernard Kerik, the man
tasked with protecting the United States from the threat of terrorist
attacks, fathered a daughter with a South Korean woman while serving
on the peninsula in the mid-1970s, U.S. media reported over the
weekend.
Kerik, who was selected
to replace Tom Ridge as secretary of the Homeland Security Department
on Thursday, had the baby with a woman identified as Sun-ja after
arriving in South Korea as a 19-year-old military policeman in
December 1974, according to several reports.
The baby, named Lisa,
was born in 1975. But Kerik deserted her and her mother when he left
the country in February 1976.
In his 2001
autobiography, titled ``The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of
Justice,’’ Kerik called the decision ``a mistake I will always
regret, and I pray to God that one day I can make it right.’’
He said Sun-ja, who
later married another U.S. soldier, had not allowed him to meet his
daughter until seeing him on The Oprah Winfrey Show following his
Sept. 11 heroics.
Sun-ja arranged for the
two to meet after 26 years of separation and they appeared together at
Kerik's retirement dinner as police chief at the New York Sheraton in
2002.
Kerik named Lisa along
with his two other daughters and son during his acceptance speech for
the Homeland Security post.
2B.2 Kerik
kept first marriage/wife a secret, even in his "autobiography";
question raised as to whether first and second marriages
overlapped
First
there was "The Lost Son." Now comes the lost wife.
Investigators conducting a background check of Bernard Kerik last week
as part of his confirmation hearing uncovered that the then-Secretary
of Homeland Security nominee was married to a woman he has apparently
kept a secret for the past 20 years.
Friends of his said they were not aware of the woman, and Kerik did
not acknowledge the marriage in his best-selling autobiography,
"The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice."
Instead, he wrote about only two marriages, one to a New Jersey woman
named Jacqueline, whom he married in 1983 when he was 28, and one to
his current wife, Hala, whom he married in 1998.
But Kerik, who withdrew his name for consideration for the nation's
top security post on Friday, was also married to the former Linda
Hales in North Carolina.
Kerik and Hales, who has since remarried and changed her name to
Priest, were married Aug. 10, 1978, when she was 27 and he was three
weeks shy of 24, according to her lawyer, Ronnie Mitchell. They
separated in 1982 and were officially divorced June 6, 1983, Mitchell
told Newsday.
In Kerik's book, however, he wrote that he married Jacqueline in the
winter of 1983, raising questions about whether his first and second
marriages overlapped.
In New Jersey, marriage records are not open to the public, and
Newsday could not ascertain yesterday the date of Bernard Kerik's
marriage to Jacqueline Kerik.
In his book, though, he laid out how and when he met her.
He wrote that by December, 1981, he had left North Carolina and
returned to New Jersey. A short time after he arrived back in his
native state, he met a woman named "Jackie" through a woman
visiting an inmate housed in the jail where Kerik worked as a guard.
In October, 1982, he left Passaic for a security position at a Saudi
Arabian hospital, "but I found I missed Jackie."
"After four months in Saudi Arabia, I flew home to New Jersey and
we were quickly engaged and married," he wrote. "We
honeymooned in Spain, and then I returned to Riyadh and Jackie went
back to the states."
He wrote that he returned to New Jersey a few months later in the
"spring of 1983" and then returned to Saudi Arabia with
Jacqueline.
When questioned yesterday, an aide to Kerik maintained that, contrary
to what he wrote in his autobiography, Kerik married Jacqueline in
September, 1983. The aide said Kerik also recalls that he and Linda
Kerik divorced in 1981 or 1982 and afterward "they made a mutual
agreement between the two of them never to talk about it."
The aide said that before Kerik was nominated to head Homeland
Security, he informed White House officials about the previous
marriage to Linda Hales. Why Kerik kept his marriage to her a secret
otherwise remains a mystery.
A longtime, close police friend of Kerik's, speaking on the condition
of anonymity, said Kerik never spoke of that marriage to any of his
friends. He also did not mention his marriage to Linda Hales in the
scores of interviews he gave throughout his tenure as NYPD Police
Commissioner. In his 361-page autobiography, he apparently refers to
her only as an unnamed woman.
"Before I left for the Middle East," he wrote, "I had
fallen head over heels for a beautiful southern belle, but after I
returned we quickly realized it wasn't meant to be."
2B.3 Kerik's tryst
with (former) lover Linda George ends up with arrest warrant against
Kerik; George indicted in a multimillion-dollar mob-run gambling ring
Former New York Police
Commissioner Bernard Kerik dated an attorney in the early 1990s who
was indicted in a multimillion-dollar, mob-run gambling ring.
Kerik, a Paterson
native, and Hackensack attorney Linda George split shortly before
George and her estranged husband were indicted by a Passaic County
grand jury on allegations they owned a Paterson cafe used from 1988
until 1993 as a video gaming den.
Prosecutors described
the storefront as part of a $26 million-a-year organized-crime
gambling ring. Kerik and George lived together in an East Rutherford
town house bought by Kerik in 1994 after the pair had dated for
several years, according to people familiar with the situation.
Neither George nor her
estranged husband, Marcello Ferreira, was convicted in the politically
tinged case, as prosecutors permitted their corporation to plead
guilty to the charges and pay a fine.
Indicted with George in
the case were several prominent reputed organized-crime figures,
including Fortunato "Frank" Inzone, a felon who served time
in federal prison for conspiring to import heroin in the famed New
York City "Pizza Connection" case. Inzone received 18
months' probation in the gambling case.
Several Paterson police
officers and a former Passaic County Prosecutor's Office investigator
also were indicted.
A call to Kerik
spokeswoman Sunny Mindell was not returned.
A source familiar with
the situation told The Record that Kerik and George bought the town
house together, but Kerik later moved out and into an apartment in the
Bronx.
Mindell said last
weekend that the pair agreed that George would continue to pay
maintenance fees and the mortgage on the unit. When she stopped
paying, the condominium association sued Kerik, and banks began
foreclosure proceedings, Mindell said.
Copies of the civil
suit filed by the condo association show a Bergen County judge issued
a warrant for Kerik's arrest when he failed to appear in court.
The March 1995
indictment charged George and Ferreira with maintaining a gambling
resort at The Spot, a cafe on Paterson's Cianci Street. Altogether, 34
defendants were named in the 149-count indictment.
It was not entirely
clear Thursday how long Kerik and George dated. George has declined to
discuss the relationship.
Several people familiar
with their relationship said the pair dated in the "late '80s to
early '90s." The relationship had ended by 1995, and Kerik
married his current wife, Hala, in 1998.
Kerik was warden of the
Passaic County Jail in 1986 before embarking on an eight-year stint as
a New York Police Department narcotics officer.
His partner on the
force was current Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale who,
coincidentally, retains George as his private attorney.
2B.4
Kerik's three-timing compassion: Kerik, the married compassionate conservative
had 2 simultaneous affairs going on - one with conservative New York publisher Judith Regan (well known for chastising
Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton for their lack of morals) and another
with a married junior corrections officer Jeanette Pinero
WHEN titian-haired publishing titan Judith Regan took up with former top cop Bernard Kerik, she
thought she'd met her match. And vice versa.
But the illicit
relationship came tumbling down, a friend of Regan's told me, not when
she discovered her married lover had another mistress. It ended
horribly after Regan learned Kerik's wife was pregnant.
After that jolting
discovery, Regan — as volatile, driven and foul-mouthed as any man
— began using other words to describe her lover.
"He's maniacal.
Insane," a terrified Regan confided in a pal. Kerik, she said,
had Regan followed to Los Angeles. He showed up at her house.
Threatened her.
Now that Regan has
emerged as the final nail in Kerik's bid to serve as chief of Homeland
Security, questions are erupting over whether Kerik's admitted
mistakes — he once used city cops to research his memoir —
extended into even more intimate areas.
One thing is clear:
This man had serious issues with impulse control.
The Kerik-Regan pairing
may look unlikely — she's Vassar-bred, he's a high-school dropout.
But two friends used almost identical terms to describe the duo.
"They are male and female versions of the same people," they
said of the "power-addicted" couple.
One friend told me
Kerik lured Regan into a relationship with the oldest line in the
married man's playbook: "My wife doesn't understand me. I'm in a
loveless marriage."
Said the friend,
"Judith is smart. I couldn't believe she'd fall for that."
But she was also "crazy about the guy."
The yearlong affair,
which began as Regan prepared to publish Kerik's memoir, was an open
secret in town. Yet Regan used a "beard" — a male friend
with whom she pretended to be involved.
Months into the affair,
Regan got a call at her office from Kerik's other mistress, correction
officer Jeanette Pinero. Until then, Regan didn't know Pinero existed.
Pinero had found a love
letter from Regan in the swinging bachelor pad Kerik kept in Battery
Park City, and wanted Regan to know she'd been Kerik's lover for a
decade.
Fiery Judith shot back,
"I don't feel as f---ed as I did before you called. You're more
pathetic than I am."
While Regan is said to
have "flipped out" over the call — "She's very
territorial: 'What's mine is mine. What's yours is mine,' " —
it did not kill things entirely.
Then less than a month
later, she learned Kerik's wife was pregnant.
"She did the
math," said a pal. "She said she wanted to break it off, and
Kerik did not want to and he got crazy.
"She didn't take
his calls and he showed up at her apartment in person, ranting and
raving. Coming home from a night out, he'd be there
unexpectedly."
Worse, she said he
threatened to poison her relationship with her two children, over whom
Regan had waged, and won, an epic custody battle.
"She told him, 'If
you don't leave me alone, I'm going to call your wife.'
"They were two
crazy people. Who knows what goes on? But this was too much."
...
Atrios
provides some
useful perspective on Ms. Regan, who clearly matches the worst
best of the compassionate conservatives:
Memories of Judith
From various Fox News appearances:
REGAN: Absolutely. I
don't think there's any question. I mean, here's Hillary who's
been standing by her man all these years and allowing him to
behave in this reprehensible fashion.
REGAN: You know, look at Monica Lewinsky talking about being
suicidal, being on antidepressants, you know, gaining this huge
amount of weight. This is clearly a woman who has suffered and is
suffering inside because she has no depth of feeling and no
morality whatsoever. And so, I decided, after being involved in
this ugly negotiation, which I found morally reprehensible, that
we should make fun of the whole thing, and we should make a
comment about the amorality of everybody.
REGAN: I would never tell. Unlike Monica Lewinsky, I keep my
secrets and take them to the grave.
REGAN: I don't know. I mean, I think that they're going to move
forward here, and I think it's alarming to me that the country is
not concerned about having an amoral man in the White House.
REGAN: I said, "You know what? There's a really great
morality tale here with a great, great moral lesson," and
nobody's really said that.
REGAN: Well, partially, but it's also an "amorality
tale" because the one thing that's missing from
"Monica's Story" is, you know, deep thinking about her
own amorality, which we saw -- was in ample evidence during the
Barbara Walters love fest the other night. I mean, here's a woman
who clearly knows a lot about sex, but knows nothing about right
and wrong.
REGAN: You know, the amorality tale, "Monica's Untold
Story," is about her amorality, and the amorality of all of
the people in this ugly story. But one of the things that was
remarkable about her two hours is her utter lack of sincere
remorse. And in that case, I would say she is a true soulmate of
Bill Clinton because the two of them -- she learned a lot about
spinning. She learned a lot about publicity. You know, she learned
a lot about changing her image. And she tried to do another
Barbara Walters show, but I don't know if America's buying it. I'm
sure not.
Ms. REGAN: Well, I think that the social fabric of this country
has become completely unraveled. I think the sexual revolution had
a lot to do with that. I think that we are in terrible shape. I
think we have a country where half the kids are being raised by
single mothers. A lot of that has to do with male behavior. We
look at the men in this country who do not want to be accountable
to their wives, do not want to be accountable to their children
and we have as a president a man who could be a symbol of
everything that is good; he could be a wonderful husband, he could
be a wonderful father. He is in a position of great authority to
show this country and to lead this country in a way that is much
more important than economically.
Ms. REGAN: ...to this kind of fame, don't grow up thinking, You
know, what I really want to do is to be a good citizen, to be
loyal to my friends, to care about my neighbors, to get married,
to be faithful to my husband, to have a family.' These are not the
things that we're teaching.
Ms. REGAN: We can conquer others with force but to conquer
ourselves we need strength.' And this is really what we need in
America today. We need to conquer our own impulses. We need to
understand that we can't act on them all the time because it feels
good for us. We have to care about the other.
Ms. REGAN: Let me tell you something, my father has never cheated
on my mother, my brothers have never treated cheated on their
wives. I come from a big Italian Irish Catholic family and I have
to say that for the most part, they have not cheated on each
other. My brothers were virile...
Sadly no transcripts exist
of the Fox show she hosted for awhile.
Former New York
Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik conducted two extramarital
affairs simultaneously, using a secret Battery Park City apartment
for the passionate liaisons, the New York Daily News has learned.
The first relationship, spanning nearly a decade, was with city
Correction Officer Jeannette Pinero; the second was with famed
publishing titan Judith Regan.
His affair with Regan, the stunningly attractive head of her own
book publishing company, lasted for almost a year.
...
The tumultuous Regan-Kerik romance carried on for months, through
the writing, publication and promotion of his autobiography,
"The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice," which
Regan's company published.
2B.5 Judith Regan,
having had enough "fun" "working out" with Bernie
"Man-of-Values" Kerik, breaks up with him; then Kerik
evidently stalked her and her kids and she got herself a
bodyguard
WAS Bernard Kerik a
stalker? As the illicit romance between former top cop Kerik and
publishing titan Judith Regan went down the drain in late 2002, the
jilted Kerik snapped, according to people who knew them both.
He not only followed
his ex-lover around town — he seemed to be following her children,
two business associates of Regan's told me yesterday.
One associate, who has
not seen or spoken to Regan in a year and a half, said, "She had
me in her office one day, raving about how he was stalking her."
That was in late 2002, long before Kerik came this close to leading
Homeland Security.
"He's
insane!" Regan told the associate.
When Regan ate in a
restaurant with another man, Kerik called her cellphone, or had the
management page her, said the source. Once he got her on the phone,
"He'd describe the man she was having dinner with. He seemed to
be watching her through the window," the associate said. He kept
a key to her apartment, said another pal, and showed up unexpectedly.
On a business trip to Los Angeles, she said, he had her followed.
But what frightened
Regan most was a call in which Kerik he claimed to be following her
son as he drove back to college in Massachusetts.
"He said, 'I'm
following Patrick. I'm at this exit at the turnpike. I want you to
know this is where he is,' " the associate recalled.
While the married Kerik
has all but acknowledged that he carried on affairs with not one, but
two women in his Battery Park love nest — an apartment that had been
originally donated to 9/11 rescue workers — he denied stalking.
"These allegations
are wrong, absolutely wrong. They're outrageous," said Sunny
Mindel, spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners, where Kerik is employed.
"It begs the question, 'Why is this coming out now?' "
But sources who told me
of the stalking say the revelations are not new. People in Regan's
business and social circles talked of Regan's fear of Kerik more than
a year ago.
Regan first took up
with Kerik in 2001, as she was to publish his memoir. Months later,
she discovered he had another mistress. But the romance ended for good
after Regan found out that Kerik's wife — with whom he wasn't in
love, he told her — was pregnant.
One current friend of
Regan's told me it was impossible to determine whether Kerik was
really a threat to her and her family, or if he was just trying to
"intimidate, scare and totally overwhelm the woman."
"Whatever the
reason, he wanted her back."
Like many who knew the
pair, the former business associate was stunned when Kerik was
nominated to be Homeland Security chief.
"I feel like we
dodged a bullet," he said.
I've heard of
multitasking, but this is nuts. Kerik had a wife. Two little kids. Two
mistresses. A love nest to maintain. A pretty damn important job. And,
evidently, a temper.
As we've
noted earlier, after the end of Bernard Kerik's and Judith Regan's
affair or the end of their workouts, whichever you want to call it,
she hired
a bodyguard to protect her from Kerik's 'hounding'.
Now, TPM has a large
readership (I was going to say a 'broad' readership, in an
unintentional double entendre, but caught myself). So I'm
wondering, if you were a successful, high-profile female book
publisher and you were carrying on an affair with the police
commissioner, and things went sour between you, how threatened would
you have to feel before you hired a bodyguard?
I figure you'd have to
feel pretty threatened -- at least, harassed in a pretty serious
fashion. And I guess you'd reason that calling the police for help
probably wouldn't work out all that well.
2B.6 Kerik managed
his affairs in a love shack near Ground Zero in Battery Park originally
donated to NYPD to help in 9/11 related operations; enter Anthony Bergamo
who rents the apartment to Kerik - the same Bergamo who ran over a
homeless person and killed her and claimed he couldn't see her from
where he was sitting in his SUV - and was not prosecuted when Kerik was
Commissioner
A couple days ago we noted
the odd story, reported
by Newsweek, of how glamorous celebrity book publisher Judith
Regan had to hire a bodyguard to protect her from Kerik after their
relationship "soured."
Now, Newsweek
said that the two were "occasional workout partners." But
clearly I'm way behind the times on the latest euphemisms. Because
these weren't the sort of workouts you do at the gym, or, I should
say, at least not in the public areas. The Daily Newsreports
today that not only was Kerik carrying on an affair with Regan but
also, at the same time, with city Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero.
Pinero, you'll remember from yesterday evening's post,
is the woman at the center of the civil suit in which Kerik had to
testify just a couple days ago. The plaintiff in that case former
deputy warden Eric DeRavin III says
Kerik kept him from getting promoted because he had reprimanded Pinero.
(The Daily News reports that the city has already ready settled
one case related to the Kerik-Pinero relationship.)
And since Kerik was
married while all this was going, he had a secret love den set up down
in Battery Park City where he'd meet Regan and Pinero for their
workouts.
And that, it seems, was
how he eventually came to grief. According to the Daily News,
after one workout Regan left a "romantic
note" for Kerik. But, as so often seems to happen in these
cases, it was found by, you guessed it, Mrs. Pinero (yes, she's
married too).
Pinero and Regan
chatted on the phone; and presumably things were never quite the same.
The Battery Park love
shack saga would also seem to throw a little light on one question
left dangling from yesterday'sstory
in the Daily News.
In that piece, Lawrence
Ray, Kerik's financial benefactor with all the mob connections, said
that "Kerik always complained about surviving on his civil
servant salary." That, notwithstanding the fact that a December
1997 piece in the Times reported that Kerik's starting salary
as Corrections chief was $136,990 a year.
But now the story comes
into clearer focus because not only was Kerik paying for the place on
E. 79th street where he and his wife lived. He was also paying through
the nose for the love
den down in Battery Park which the Daily News estimates
cost between $3,150 to $6,200 in monthly rent.
With those sorts of
expenses, no wonder he had to rely on Ray to pay off some of his
bills.
Late Update: A
reader notes that the owner of the apartment
complex where the love den was located is Milstein
Properties, a big player in New York City commercial and
residential real estate. The Daily News estimates that the love
den, a snazzy furnished apartment, could have cost as much as six
grand a month. Even if that had been Kerik's only New York pad, that
would be a stretch on his salary. So who was paying that rent? Or was
it even being charged?
How
did Kerik get the luv shack? Josh notes
(bold text is my emphasis):
A
couple days ago we speculated
about how Bernard Kerik could have afforded his second luxe Manhattan
apartment, the one where he held his workouts with celeb publisher
Judith Regan and Corrections Officer Jeanette Pinero (not
simultaneously, but, it seems, and one rather hopes, serially).
Now the Times
tells the story.
It's buried pretty far
down in Elisabeth Bumiller's story
in Wednesday's Times. But there it is. The Luv Shack was
"an apartment ... donated as a resting spot for police officers
at ground zero."
I guess it's like they
say: 9/11 changed everything.
Another piece
in the Times, by Charles Bagli, gives further details. It seems
that once the 9/11 clean-up settled into a routine in the late fall of
2001, Kerik asked Anthony Bergamo, "a well-connected vice
chairman of the Milstein family real estate company and a police
buff," if he could rent the apartment for his own use.
"Mr. Kerik paid
for use of the apartment," the article goes on to say, "but
the amount was not clear. Many apartments that were available in
Battery Park City after the attack on the trade center were rented at
well below market rates for months afterward."
The article goes on to
say that Mr. Bergamo is quite tight with the NYPD. He was made an
"honorary commissioner" a few years ago and the Department
licenses him to carry "a Colt .45 handgun and two Smith &
Wesson handguns, a .38-caliber revolver and a 9-millimeter
pistol."
A homeless woman
lying on the ramp of an upper East Side parking garage was crushed
to death early yesterday when she was run over by a mammoth sport
utility vehicle, police said.
The driver, real estate executive Anthony Bergamo, told
investigators he did not see the woman from his driver's seat.
Bergamo was driving a 5,770-pound Ford Expedition.
Medics pronounced the unidentified woman dead at the scene.
An autopsy determined that she died of crushing injuries to her
chest, said a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner.
The death was ruled accidental and Bergamo, 54, who manages the
Milford Plaza hotel in Times Square for its owner, real estate
magnate Howard Milstein, was not charged.
Who was police
commissioner then? Why, Bernard Kerik. And who is Anthony Bergamo? Oh,
THAT
Anthony Bergamo...
Rescue workers were
combing through the World Trade Center rubble around the clock
when Mr. Kerik called Anthony Bergamo, a well-connected vice
chairman of the Milstein family real estate company and a police
buff, and asked for help finding a place for the workers to rest
during breaks, the executive said.
The family owned Liberty View, a 28-story yellow brick tower two
blocks southwest of the trade center at the corner of West Street
and Third Place.
According to the executive, who knows Mr. Bergamo, the vice
chairman arranged for Mr. Kerik to have the use of an apartment
there. Several apartments in the buildings had been used by rescue
workers on breaks, and by Red Cross staff who were treating them,
in the months after 9/11, according to a real estate executive.
An apartment in
Battery Park City that former Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik
secured for his personal use after Sept. 11 was originally donated
for the use of weary police and rescue workers who were helping at
ground zero, according to a real estate executive who has been
briefed about the apartment.
After the cleanup had settled into a routine that fall, the
executive said, Mr. Kerik, who was still police commissioner,
asked to rent the two-bedroom apartment for his own use. During
his use of the apartment, Mr. Kerik and Judith Regan engaged in an
extramarital affair there, according to someone who spoke to Mr.
Kerik about the relationship. Ms. Regan published his best-selling
autobiography in 2001.
But he
relied on a close-knit group of top aides, several of whom were active
in Republican Party politics. (Kerik made no secret of his
political leanings, reportedly keeping in his office a portrait of
retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, now a conservative
commentator.)
Throughout the 2004
presidential campaign, Bernard Kerik was a forceful and vocal advocate
for President Bush. The Bush-Cheney '04 campaign could count on Kerik,
and Kerik could count on the media to air his praise for Bush and his
attacks on Senator John Kerry, including his suggestion that a
terrorist attack was more likely if Kerry were elected. He was a
frequent presence on network and cable news shows and frequently
quoted in newspapers, which, perhaps like the Bush administration,
assumed that his stature as former New York City police commissioner
and as a senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior in
charge of training the Iraqi police force allowed him near-immunity
from scrutiny. He made dozens of appearances on television in support
of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq and on terrorism and the
president's reelection.
Much about Kerik has
been uncovered by the media since his nomination for Department of
Homeland Security secretary, and even more since that nomination was
withdrawn, including allegations of corruption and abuse of authority
during his tenure as police commissioner, questions surrounding his
business associations and transactions, and questions about his abrupt
departure from Iraq. But even before his nomination, there was plenty
of available information -- including the very stridency of his
attacks on Kerry -- that should have raised serious questions about
his credibility. But the media, which so willingly gave him a forum to
tout the president's war on terrorism (and rail against the purported
threat Kerry posed to the country's security), never pursued those
questions.
Between January 1 and
November 2, 2004, Kerik made 15 guest appearances on CNN, 12
appearances on FOX News Channel, and six on MSNBC (CNN aired
previously recorded Kerik quotes an additional 14 times, FOX and MSNBC
aired clips of Kerik one time each), according to a search of
transcripts available on Nexis. Kerik made one appearance on NBC News
(on the March 13 edition of the Today show, where he was asked
to comment in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings); CBS News
aired one clip of Kerik, and Kerik did not appear on ABC News.
Kerik used his media
exposure to support the Bush administration's policies in Iraq,
support Bush's reelection, and to unleash attacks against Kerry.
Notable among those attacks was Kerik's suggestion, in the words of an
April 22 New York Daily Newsreport,
that "another 9/11 attack is more likely if the Democrat [Kerry]
wins the White House." The Daily News noted: "After a
Bush-Cheney campaign official was asked if Kerik's assertion reflected
the campaign's position, Kerik called The News back to clarify his
comments. 'If there's another terrorist attack, I don't want John
Kerry in the White House,' he said, adding he was simply trying to
distinguish between Bush and Kerry." On the July 28 edition of
CNN's American Morning, Kerik attempted to clarify his comments
to the Daily News, telling CNN anchor Bill Hemmer: "I said
that I fear another attack, and I fear that attack with a John Kerry,
Senator Kerry, being in office, responding to it."
In Kerik's November 1 op-ed
in the New York Post, titled "Promise Keeper: How Bush
earned my vote," Kerik wrote that Bush "understood what John
Kerry cannot grasp -- that our nation cannot endure another 9/11, that
we can't afford to be defensive in the War on Terror, that the next
plot might not be against our skyscrapers but our schools, that the
next Madrid could be Penn Station and the next Beslan, Russia could be
Bayonne, New Jersey." The Post failed to note Kerik's Bush
ties in identifying him for his op-ed.
An October 20, 2003, Newsdayarticle
quoted Kerik as saying to critics of the Iraq war: "Political
criticism is our enemies' best friend." Moreover, regarding the
Bush administration and others' dubious attempts to connect Saddam
Hussein to Al Qaeda, Kerik was quoted as saying, "Saddam didn't
do 9/11. But did Saddam fund, and train al-Qaida? The answer is yes.
Then ask yourself, who hit the [World Trade Center] towers?" In
fact, the 9-11
Commission report found that "no credible evidence that Iraq
and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States,"
and that "there was no 'convincing evidence that any government
financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11' other than the limited
support provided by the Taliban when [Osama] bin Laden arrived in
Afghanistan," as CNN reported.
The Newsday article did note that Kerik's comments "reveal[ed]
him as a four-square supporter of President George W. Bush's
policies."
2B.8
Did Kerik's "nanny" actually exist?
Josh Marshall first noted
some discrepancies about the nanny story here:
I
must confess
that I'm still
trying to find out any solid details about Bernard Kerik's alleged
nanny.
On Sunday, December
12th, the local paper, the Bergen Record, reported
that Kerik spokeswoman Sunny Mindel told them that "the
housekeeper worked in his Old Mill Road home in 2003 while Kerik was
in Iraq training police in Baghdad."
The very same day,
though, the Washington Post -- usually a reliable outfit -- reported
that Kerik's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, told them that "she
worked for Kerik for about 18 months and had returned to Mexico six
weeks ago, in keeping with a plan she had for several months."
But, yet again on the
same day, the LA Timesreported
that the woman, "left the country about two weeks ago, under
circumstances Kerik has not described."
Perhaps someone can
help me straighten all this out?
Yet six days after Mr.
Kerik withdrew his nomination, citing "questions about the
immigration status of a person who had been in my employ," the
figure central to the scandal - the nanny - remains a complete
mystery.
The White House has
been unwilling to discuss any specifics of the nanny herself,
including whether anyone in the administration had asked Mr. Kerik for
details about her identity, status or nationality. Answers were not
forthcoming from Mr. Kerik's camp, either. "We are not going to
discuss the nanny any further," said Christopher Rising, general
counsel at Giuliani-Kerik L.L.C., who is acting as a spokesman for Mr.
Kerik.
Among the unanswered
questions are where she came from, and even whether she was actually
working in the country illegally when Mr. Kerik said she served as a
housekeeper and nanny for his two small daughters. In a statement last
Friday announcing his withdrawal, Mr. Kerik said he had
"uncovered information that now leads me to question the
immigration status" of someone who worked for him.
None of this means that
the mysterious nanny could not emerge from the shadows tomorrow to
speak on television talk shows. At least one of Mr. Kerik's neighbors
in
New Jersey was able to describe the woman yesterday.
A neighbor who lives
next door to the Keriks in Franklin Lakes, N.J., said that until a few
weeks ago she would see a woman she believed to be the nanny playing
ball with the two Kerik children in a side yard. But even that
neighbor, who described the children's playmate as a young,
olive-skinned woman who did not drive, had never met the woman or
learned where she came from. The neighbor spoke on the condition of
anonymity.
But many others have
either been reluctant or unable to talk about her, including other
nannies in the neighborhood, relatives of Mr. Kerik's wife, Hala, even
Mr. Kerik's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina.
Mr. Tacopina, who has
also been fielding calls from the press on Mr. Kerik's behalf, said he
knows nothing about the nanny's identity, the length of her employment
or even her nationality, despite news reports that she was
Mexican that were mistakenly attributed to him.
"I never met
her," he said. "I don't know what country she came from. I
don't know her nationality. I don't know her name." Pressed, he
added, "I know she's not a phantom, because a document was
applied for and received."
The document to which
Mr. Tacopina referred is itself secret, however. A registration form
that New Jersey requires of employers of household workers, state
officials said, it was issued to Mr. Kerik on Nov. 17, shortly before
President Bush announced his nomination, and its contents are private
- including the name and Social Security number listed for the
employee in question.
Mr. Tacopina said that
he had not prepared or seen the documents - withholding-tax forms and
a report on wages paid - but that he believed they had been filed
"in conjunction with the paying of the taxes."
Mr. Kerik's statement
withdrawing his name alluded to such belated tax payments, noting that
he had "already initiated efforts to fulfill any outstanding
reporting requirements and tax obligations related to this
issue."
Mr. Tacopina said the
taxes were not paid at first because Mr. Kerik "had an accountant
handling his finances. When he did the proper state paperwork for the
nanny, the taxes were already in the process of being rectified."
He said the nanny recently returned to her own country, but he could
not supply a date or a destination.
Last night, Mr. Kerik
was told that skeptics in city government circles were questioning the
very existence of the nanny, and he was pressed to provide any kind of
evidence to document that she was real. But after taking time to
consider the request, Mr. Kerik again decided to remain silent on the
subject.
Most puzzled about the
nanny, perhaps, are former neighbors of the Keriks and their kin. In
the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where the family lived in a
first-floor apartment for years before moving last year into the
Franklin Lakes home they had extensively renovated, neighbors did not
recall any household help. One neighbor, Dennis Doyle, noted that Mr.
Kerik's wife, Hala Matli Kerik, a former dental hygienist, not only
seemed to care for Celine, now 4, by herself, but that she did her own
laundry as well.
In the blue-collar
neighborhood of Elmwood Park, N.J., where Mrs. Kerik's mother, Zakia,
lived in a rented duplex for years, neighbors reacted with surprise to
questions about a nanny, and said that Mrs. Kerik's mother had moved
into the Kerik home about a year ago.
"They never came
around here with a nanny," said Sophie Borsuk, 55, the longtime
landlady and downstairs neighbor of Mrs. Kerik's mother. "I never
saw any nanny. This is the first time I heard about a nanny."
But in Franklin Lakes,
a town of vast lawns and winding driveways, nannies are practically an
expected status symbol, according to the owners of nanny agencies that
serve the area, all of which denied supplying the Keriks with a nanny.
"He had to have
known the status of his nanny," said Christine Sandrib, who has
operated Nannies N More for 14 years. "If she's illegal, anybody
in his position had to have known."
Like Christy Ann
Bozanian, owner of A Better Nanny, Ms. Sandrib stressed that an agency
was responsible for determining that any employee it placed was legal.
Their own agencies require a green card or work authorization as well
as a criminal background check. Both said the demand for legal,
thoroughly vetted nannies had risen dramatically in recent years.
"In particular
post 9/11, there's a greater concern about knowing who is in their
home," Ms. Sandrib said. "This neighborhood is full of
attorneys, physicians, people involved in politics at some sort of a
level. They're not interested in illegal candidates. An educated
person should know to ask for that."
Brief
note: In
today's Times piece on whether the Kerik nanny even exists, the
authors report,
apparently on Kerik lawyer Joe
Tacopina's say-so, that "news reports that she was Mexican
... were mistakenly attributed to [Tacopina]."
On the contrary, says
Tacopina, he has no idea where the woman came from or where she went.
As near as I can tell,
the first published account to source this apparently false claim to
Tacopina was the Sunday piece
in the Post by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen.
So did they get it
wrong?
I dropped a line to
Mike Allen. And he says, no way (my phrasing, not his). According to
him, Tacopina did tell them that the woman returned to Mexico
six weeks ago, just as they reported on Sunday.
3. KERIK AND
THE COMPASSIONATE MEDIA
The media has ably gotten
into investigating and reporting on Kerik now, but that wasn't the
case until recently.
White
House Reporting: Not Even a Hint of Skepticism?
NPR.org,
December 15, 2004 · Bernard
Kerik's rapid rise and fall as recounted by NPR was for some
listeners, like Carmen Ferguson, a case of rewriting White House
press releases. Said Ferguson:
I listened to the
Kerik report and couldn't believe my ears -- the fawning and lack of
critical investigating for Bush's pick [for Homeland Security
chief]. I had already read many things about Kerik's history and
problems -- financial, management, personal -- that led me to
conclude that he was not a good candidate. I believe that the
information I read was available to your reporters as well. ...
Perhaps it would be useful if your reporters spent more time on the
Internet than on repeating press releases from the government.
Laudatory, Not
Reportorial
Kerik, a former New
York City police commissioner, was nominated to replace Tom Ridge as
secretary of Homeland Security. NPR (and most other media) seemed to
give him a hero's welcome.
· Kerik is a very
strong supporter of President Bush. In fact, he gave a prime-time
speech at the Republican convention this past summer. He is also a
close friend and work associate of [former] New York Mayor Rudy
Giuliani. He's credited with reducing violence in New York jails...
· Kerik is also a
loyal supporter of the president. At the administration's request,
he spent several months last year helping Iraq rebuild its police
force. This year, he went out on the campaign trail, arguing that
President Bush's counterterrorism policies would be far more
effective than those of John Kerry.
· [Kerik] had
taken over after a series of high-profile racial shootings had
really soured relations between the police and the community, but he
has a real street-cop sensibility. He used to go out and make his
own arrests. And as corrections commissioner, he was a little more
controversial.
Nowhere in any of the
12 initial NPR reports on Bernard Kerik was there ever any
suggestion of what those controversies might be.
… there were
already investigations into [Kerik's] private life after he left the
New York City Police Department. He's on the board of a company that
sells Tasers, stun guns, and recently made more than $6 million when
he exercised stock options. That's a company that has a contract
with the Homeland Security Department. There are also questions
about his tenure in Iraq. He worked for the Coalition Authority for
3 1/2 months after the war helping to train Iraqi police officers,
an Iraqi police force, and he left early. He left after only 3 1/2
months, and there are plenty of reports that he ruffled feathers,
that he wasn't as effective there as he could have been.
That came too late.
In the rush to proclaim Kerik the next secretary of Homeland
Security, NPR sounded as though it were reporting on behalf of the
White House, not about the White House.
The media's Kerik-love may
have disappeared now, but look at how compassionate the media coverage
was prior to the nomination, as Media
Matters has usefully documented:
Throughout the 2004
presidential campaign, Bernard Kerik was a forceful and vocal advocate
for President Bush. The Bush-Cheney '04 campaign could count on Kerik,
and Kerik could count on the media to air his praise for Bush and his
attacks on Senator John Kerry, including his suggestion that a
terrorist attack was more likely if Kerry were elected. He was a
frequent presence on network and cable news shows and frequently
quoted in newspapers, which, perhaps like the Bush administration,
assumed that his stature as former New York City police commissioner
and as a senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior in
charge of training the Iraqi police force allowed him near-immunity
from scrutiny. He made dozens of appearances on television in support
of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq and on terrorism and the
president's reelection.
Much about Kerik has
been uncovered by the media since his nomination for Department of
Homeland Security secretary, and even more since that nomination was
withdrawn, including allegations of corruption and abuse of authority
during his tenure as police commissioner, questions surrounding his
business associations and transactions, and questions about his abrupt
departure from Iraq. But even before his nomination, there was plenty
of available information -- including the very stridency of his
attacks on Kerry -- that should have raised serious questions about
his credibility. But the media, which so willingly gave him a forum to
tout the president's war on terrorism (and rail against the purported
threat Kerry posed to the country's security), never pursued those
questions.
Between January 1 and
November 2, 2004, Kerik made 15 guest appearances on CNN, 12
appearances on FOX News Channel, and six on MSNBC (CNN aired
previously recorded Kerik quotes an additional 14 times, FOX and MSNBC
aired clips of Kerik one time each), according to a search of
transcripts available on Nexis. Kerik made one appearance on NBC News
(on the March 13 edition of the Today show, where he was asked
to comment in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings); CBS News
aired one clip of Kerik, and Kerik did not appear on ABC News.
Kerik used his media
exposure to support the Bush administration's policies in Iraq,
support Bush's reelection, and to unleash attacks against Kerry.
Notable among those attacks was Kerik's suggestion, in the words of an
April 22 New York Daily Newsreport,
that "another 9/11 attack is more likely if the Democrat [Kerry]
wins the White House." The Daily News noted: "After a
Bush-Cheney campaign official was asked if Kerik's assertion reflected
the campaign's position, Kerik called The News back to clarify his
comments. 'If there's another terrorist attack, I don't want John
Kerry in the White House,' he said, adding he was simply trying to
distinguish between Bush and Kerry." On the July 28 edition of
CNN's American Morning, Kerik attempted to clarify his comments
to the Daily News, telling CNN anchor Bill Hemmer: "I said
that I fear another attack, and I fear that attack with a John Kerry,
Senator Kerry, being in office, responding to it."
In Kerik's November 1 op-ed
in the New York Post, titled "Promise Keeper: How Bush
earned my vote," Kerik wrote that Bush "understood what John
Kerry cannot grasp -- that our nation cannot endure another 9/11, that
we can't afford to be defensive in the War on Terror, that the next
plot might not be against our skyscrapers but our schools, that the
next Madrid could be Penn Station and the next Beslan, Russia could be
Bayonne, New Jersey." The Post failed to note Kerik's Bush
ties in identifying him for his op-ed.
An October 20, 2003, Newsdayarticle
quoted Kerik as saying to critics of the Iraq war: "Political
criticism is our enemies' best friend." Moreover, regarding the
Bush administration and others' dubious attempts to connect Saddam
Hussein to Al Qaeda, Kerik was quoted as saying, "Saddam didn't
do 9/11. But did Saddam fund, and train al-Qaida? The answer is yes.
Then ask yourself, who hit the [World Trade Center] towers?" In
fact, the 9-11
Commission report found that "no credible evidence that Iraq
and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States,"
and that "there was no 'convincing evidence that any government
financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11' other than the limited
support provided by the Taliban when [Osama] bin Laden arrived in
Afghanistan," as CNN reported.
The Newsday article did note that Kerik's comments "reveal[ed]
him as a four-square supporter of President George W. Bush's
policies."
The New York Timeseditorialized
on December 9 that Kerik's fearmongering on the campaign trail should
have itself raised questions about his fitness for the job of Homeland
Security secretary:
But other parts of
his record are less reassuring. A homeland security secretary should
be above politics and respectful of civil liberties. But when he
stumped for President Bush this year, Mr. Kerik engaged in
fearmongering. He told The New York Daily News that he was worried
about another terrorist attack and that "if you put Senator
Kerry in the White House, I think you are going to see that
happen." And he was quoted in Newsday as saying this about
opponents of the Iraq war: "Political criticism is our enemies'
best friend."
But Kerik's
fearmongering appeared not to have given pause to television news
bookers. In many instances, though not all, CNN, MSNBC, and CBS News
identified Kerik as part of the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign and/or noted
that he was appointed by Bush to serve as a senior policy adviser in
the Interior Ministry in Iraq. But FOX News failed to mention Kerik's
Bush connections even once, identifying him only as a former New York
City police commissioner or as an adviser to the Iraqi interior
ministry without making clear that he had been chosen by Bush.
While most of the
allegations did not emerge until after his nomination to the Cabinet,
there were some reports about the multitude of personal and ethical
problems surrounding Kerik before and during the 2004 presidential
campaign. His strident comments and "fearmongering" on the
campaign trail alone should have raised red flags among media outlets
about the appropriateness of continuing to provide a forum for him to
speak on the administration's terrorism policies and to stump for the
campaign; but in addition, the reports that did exist should have
raised further questions among media outlets about continuing to
feature the avid Bush campaigner.
Concerning his
activities as New York City correction commissioner and police
commissioner, a May 19, 2003, New YorkDaily News
article reported that Kerik "once ordered a coverup of
accusations that his top aide had beaten up a girlfriend and
threatened her at gunpoint." A March 11, 2002, New York Times
article discussed other alleged instances of Kerik's abusing his power
as police commissioner. The article mentioned the dispatch in November
2001 of "at least five of the city's leading homicide
investigators" to investigate reports of a missing cell phone and
necklace belonging to former FOX News host Judith Regan, with whom
Kerik was linked romantically and who was the publisher of Kerik's
autobiography, The
Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice (HarperCollins, 2001).
The article also noted: "Last month, the Conflicts of Interest
Board fined Mr. Kerik $2,500 for using a police sergeant and two
detectives to do some of the research for his book." None of
these reports were mentioned by any of the networks or cable news
channels.
On May 16, 2003, the Daily
Newsreported
that Kerik would be traveling to Iraq to "help restore police,
prisons, border security and other vital operations as coalition
forces transfer control to an interim government." According to
the article, Kerik said he would be in Iraq "in excess of six
months, but no one really knows ... as long as it takes to get the job
done." A May 16, 2003, New York Times profile of Kerik
noted: "He ran afoul of the city's Conflict of Interests Board,
however, and was fined for using police personnel to conduct research
on his mother's death for a book he was writing." In early
September of that year, after only three and a half months, Kerik
suddenly left Iraq and his duties; the Iraqi police force remained
largely ineffectual against insurgent violence.
There were some
questions raised around the time of Kerik's abrupt departure from his
position in Iraq. A September 5, 2003, Associated Press report
acknowledged that "Kerik's departure comes amid severe security
problems in Iraq," and noted that "Kerik was quoted in
published reports as saying he would stay in the job for at least six
months." The AP story also reported that Defense Department
officials claimed that Kerik had stayed in Iraq longer than they had
originally anticipated, and that "[a] spokeswoman for Kerik in
New York said his job was supposed to have lasted only 90 days."
A September 5 New York Sun article reported that "[T]ough-talking
former New York City police chief, Bernard Kerik, who was taken on as
a security adviser by the coalition in Iraq, has left his job in Iraq
and returned home. ... Officials did not say why Mr. Kerik had left
his post." A September 7, 2003, New York Post article
reported Kerik as saying of his job in Iraq: "I came to stand up
the Ministry of the Interior, and it's back up and running all the way
to the level of the minister himself." However, Iraq's police
forces, which Kerik was charged with developing, were still largely
ineffectual at the time of his departure. A September 16, 2003, New
York Times article reported: "The main problem with the
[Iraqi] police, senior officials admit, is that there are just not
enough and they remain ill equipped. Three weeks ago, the 60 officers
at Al Nasr shared seven guns, two cars and no radios." Kerik
himself was not available for questioning by the media following his
return from Iraq, as he was on vacation at an undisclosed location.
Even before Kerik's
nomination, the media were aware that questions surrounded his stint
in and departure from Iraq. A November 18 New York Daily News
article weighed various candidates for the position of Homeland
Security Secretary and mentioned that Kerik was thought to not likely
be in contention for the position because he "left after only
four months to return to work as a highly paid consultant for another
long-shot successor to Ridge, Rudy Giuliani. And the new Iraqi police
force has been notoriously ineffective and corrupt."
Though no answers have
been provided as to why Kerik abruptly abandoned his position in Iraq,
his nomination brought increased attention to his time spent there.
The post-nomination questions raised by media figures about Kerik's
departure from Iraq suggest that there is plenty the media should have
perhaps been more curious about when he first returned from Iraq and
when he was given such a high media profile during the presidential
campaign:
An editorial in this
morning's USA Todayargues
that Bernard Kerik's withdrawal from consideration to be the next
head of Homeland Security was "fair," because Kerik's
nanny problems "went to the heart of his character, exposing
his questionable judgment."
That's one of way
looking at it -- although it's not as if Kerik would have been the
first member of Bush's cabinet to display "questionable
judgment" over the last few years. Some have even done so when
the stakes
have been higher than an illegal nanny, and we don't remember USA
Today ever suggesting they were unfit to serve.
What's particularly
absurd about the editorial, though, is that it takes at face value
the administration's (and Kerik's) contention that it was the
illegal nanny alone that did Kerik in. The only hint given that
there could be anything further to the story is the assertion that
"more may still be learned about the tough former New York
police commissioner."
Well actually, more has
been learned. USA Today's editorial was published after
all of the following pieces of information had come to light:
- "[As a top
NYPD official], Kerik accepted thousands of dollars in cash and
gifts without making proper public disclosures." (New
York Daily News)
- "A New Jersey
judge had issued an arrest warrant for him in 1998 as part of a
lawsuit over unpaid bills on a property he owned." (Newsweek)
- "On Thursday,
the day before he took his name from contention, Kerik, 49, was
forced to testify in a civil lawsuit about an alleged affair with a
subordinate ... Plaintiff Eric DeRavin III contends Kerik kept him
from getting promoted because he had reprimanded the woman,
Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero." (Newsday)
- "In the three
years since Mr. Kerik left city government, he has made millions of
dollars in the private sector, much of it working for companies that
do business with the Department of Homeland Security and that are
seeking to expand their sales." (New
York Times)
- "On six-month
Pentagon assignment in mid-2003 to train Iraqi security forces,
Kerik left abruptly after 3 1/2 months." (Newsday)
- "Kerik had to
pay $2,500 after New York City's Conflict of Interest Board found he
improperly used three city cops to travel to Ohio to learn details
about his mother for his autobiography, The Lost Son. He also
sent detectives to the homes of Fox television employees after his
book's publisher, Judith Regan, said her cell phone was stolen while
she was on a Fox show." (Newsday)
- "[Kerik] was
expelled from Saudi Arabia amid a power struggle involving the head
of a hospital complex where Kerik helped command a security staff.
[He] said it was necessary because of the Saudis' laws prohibiting
drinking and mingling of the sexes in public." (Washington
Post)
In other words, by
this morning, no sentient human being following this story believed
that Kerik's withdrawal was solely, or even primarily, because of
the nanny problem. As a Democratic source told Newsday,
"I don't think [the nanny problem] was it. There were so many
questions in so many areas -- I think the nanny was just a
convenient way to get out of it."
But hey, the White
House says it was all about the nanny. And that's good enough for USA
Today.
