| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
15 Dec 2004 09:26:18 PM |
| Object: |
Where Was Phony Photo-Op "Hero" Rudy In the Kerik Mess? |
http://www.observer.com/pages/conason.asp
December 15, 2004
Where Was Rudy In the Kerik Mess?
by Joe Conason<
In the wake of the Bernard Kerik fiasco, nearly everyone who endorsed
the former New York Police Commissioner looks naïve at best and
irresponsible at worst. The President’s attempt to place this
disreputable figure in charge of the Department of Homeland Security
reads like a bad sitcom plot.
Such blunders are inevitable when the chief executive prefers
political fidelity and tough posturing to competence and judgment.
It’s hardly surprising that George W. Bush would be attracted to a
figure like Mr. Kerik, who apparently compensates for his meager
credentials with extra swaggering.
The White House counsel’s office, under the direction of Alberto
Gonzales, our next likely Attorney General, has yet to justify its
failure to uncover Mr. Kerik’s checkered history. The President’s
advisors have faulted Mr. Kerik himself, as if the government could
simply depend on nominees for self-vetting. Evidently they were unable
to discover anything he didn’t remember to tell them. (Their strange
passivity reflects the same Bush administration attitude that trusts
major corporations to report their own environmental pollution and
consumer swindling.)
Any exercise in shifting blame inevitably pointed to Mr. Kerik’s most
important endorser: his mentor, confidant, employer and business
partner, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Whether the former Mayor actually
accepts any responsibility for the Kerik error wasn’t clear from his
public statements, but he apologized to Mr. Bush at a White House
dinner.
Unfortunately for Mr. Giuliani, no apology will satisfy the press
appetite for tawdry Kerik tales. Very rarely does a story exposing
abuse of police authority include such beguiling details as a
jewel-encrusted badge, a mobbed-up crony, a multimillion-dollar stock
trade and a flashy mistress. The more we hear about the bodyguard and
driver whom Mr. Giuliani promoted to police commissioner, the more we
also learn about the man who likes to be called America’s Mayor.
The scrutinizing of Mr. Kerik reopened questions about the Giuliani
administration that once seemed to have been closed forever on Sept.
11, 2001. Everything has changed since that day, perhaps—but not
everything has been forgotten.
A government that prides itself on ostentatious religiosity and
moralizing is probably most embarrassed by the sexual peccadilloes of
its New York backers. But what could embarrass Mr. Giuliani is his
wayward protégé’s coddling of a city contractor with alleged Mafia
connections.
That firm, known as Interstate Industrial Corporation, hired Mr.
Kerik’s close friend Lawrence Ray to overcome obstacles to doing
business with the city. Interstate’s main problem was that city
officials suspected the New Jersey company and its principal, Frank
DiTommaso, of long and intimate ties with organized crime. According
to reports in the Daily News and The New York Times, Mr. Ray gave Mr.
Kerik "more than $7,000 in cash and other gifts while Mr. Kerik was
commissioner of correction and the police."
At some point in 1999, when he was running the city’s prisons, Mr.
Kerik reportedly spoke up for Interstate in a chat with Raymond V.
Casey, the chief of enforcement for the city’s Trade Waste Commission.
Although Mr. Kerik says he doesn’t recall the conversation, Mr. Casey
told reporters that Mr. Kerik had vouched for the integrity of Mr.
Ray, the Interstate lobbyist, which he considered a "weird" sort of
endorsement by the then-corrections commissioner. Mr. Ray was indicted
in 2000 for his role in a mob-connected financial fraud. And it later
turned out that Mr. Kerik was also quite friendly with Mr. DiTommaso,
who vehemently denies doing business with the Gambino and DeCavalcante
crime families, as government agencies have alleged.
Turning the multibillion-dollar Homeland Security budget over to a
hack who took money and favors in that seedy milieu doesn’t seem
prudent, but it almost happened.
So the Mayor who sponsored his rise has some explaining to do. What
did Mr. Giuliani know about his corrections commissioner’s "weird"
relationships and behavior when he promoted him to police
commissioner? He might well have learned about the Interstate matter
from Mr. Casey, a regulator he appointed who also happens to be his
cousin.
Two months before Mr. Kerik was named Mr. Giuliani’s police
commissioner, the city Department of Investigation opened an inquiry
into Mr. Kerik’s relationship with Mr. DiTommaso. Mr. Giuliani says he
was not aware of the probe at the time.
The former Mayor has welcomed Mr. Kerik back into the fold at Giuliani
Partners, where the disappointed office-seeker will presumably remain
discreet about their shared secrets.
Much like the President he plans to succeed in office, Mr. Giuliani as
Mayor increasingly surrounded himself with a tight circle of lackeys
and cronies. His post-disaster performance obscured those negative
qualities for a while, and rightly so. But now we’re reminded how the
former prosecutor discarded important values of independence and
integrity when they conflicted with his political needs.
He’ll make a terrific Presidential candidate.
You may reach Joe Conason via email at: jconason@observer.com.
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This column ran on page 5 in the 12/20/2004 edition of The New York
Observer.
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