'No Skeletons in My Closet!'

posted: November 1, 2007 3:53 EST

Oh yeah? How Mukasey and Kerik are haunting Rudy's run.

By Wayne Barrett, Village Voice

The Democrats who questioned attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey at his recent Senate confirmation hearing outdid one another in a frustrating effort to get the former judge to assert his independence from the Bush White House. With his predecessor, Bush pal Alberto Gonzales, finally forced from office, the senators were hoping for a nominee with fewer complicating relationships.

Fat chance. The question for Mukasey is not what he'll do at Justice for the soon-to-be- departing Republican president, but what he'll do for the putative next one, his lifelong friend Rudy Giuliani. Mukasey and Giuliani were young federal prosecutors together in the early 1970s and then practiced at the same Manhattan law firm, Patterson Belknap, where Mukasey returned in 2006 when he retired after 18 years on the federal bench in New York. Giuliani chose Mukasey to swear him in at his inaugurals in 1994 and 1998.

The question of Mukasey's strong ties to Giuliani got the light touch from Senator Pat Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman who opened the two-day proceeding by saying that he assumed Mukasey would "totally recuse" himself from "any involvement with Mr. Giuliani or any other candidate for president." Mukasey laughed at the question, as if the answer was obvious, and quickly agreed. But that chuckle rings a little hollow when you look at who had come with him to the hearing: his wife Susan, who volunteered almost daily in the Giuliani mayoral campaigns; his stepson Marc, who was a staff assistant in one campaign and currently is a partner at the Texas-based law firm that Giuliani recently joined, Bracewell & Giuliani; and Louis Freeh, the former FBI director who recently endorsed Giuliani and worked closely with him as a federal prosecutor. Marc Mukasey is currently representing Giuliani Partners in the federal probe of Bernard Kerik, a onetime member of the consulting firm. Freeh's appearance, sitting beside the family, was a stark indication of just how unconsciously political Mukasey's key relationships are. (For Democrats on the committee, the sight of Freeh, who led multiple probes of both Clintons, might have been an indication of Mukasey's partisanship. In Freeh's recent autobiography, he concluded that "the presidency hit an all-time low" under Bill Clinton—who named him to head the FBI, only to wind up as the target of multiple Freeh probes—adding that if he were Clinton, "I might never show my face in public again.")

Mukasey has so far indicated that he will recuse himself in the ongoing probe of Kerik, the ex–police commissioner and onetime Giuliani-backed nominee for homeland security secretary, who has already pleaded guilty in a state case and is facing a mountain of federal charges. But Mukasey's recusal shouldn't really be a problem. The Justice Department agreed months ago to extend the statute of limitations on the case against Kerik to November 17, when his expected indictment may suddenly emerge as a national story haunting the Giuliani campaign. The case is so layered in conflict that Alberto Gonzales is a likely witness. It was Gonzales who vetted Kerik for the homeland-security post in 2004 and was swamped by false claims about him emanating from the fax machines and computers at Giuliani Partners' Times Square headquarters. The Washington Post reported in April that Kerik was "likely" to be indicted for "bald-faced lies" during the White House clearance process, including possible misstatements on forms filled out with the assistance of Giuliani's firm.

read on . . .

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» categories: Bush regime | Rudy Giuliani | Wayne Barrett

Public Displays of Disaffection

posted: August 15, 2007 3:59 EST

Now Rudy begs for privacy for his kids? Recalling his very public humiliation of his family.

By Wayne Barrett, Village Voice

When it was revealed last week that Rudy Giuliani's 17-year-old daughter, Caroline, had described herself as a member of "One Million Strong for Barack" in a Facebook profile, a family spokeswoman quickly issued a statement claiming that the posting was merely "an expression of interest in certain principles," not an endorsement of Obama. After she grew up for eight years in the Giuliani war zone that was Gracie Mansion, it's hardly surprising that Harvard-bound Caroline might now be interested in another presidential candidate's "principles." The question is: Should we be interested in any of this family intrigue?

Rudy has given us his answer.

On the stump in Iowa, he said he wants "to give the maximum degree of privacy" to his children. "If you want the press to leave the children alone," Giuliani said, "the best way to do it is not to comment." What he meant was that if a candidate wants the press to ignore his messy personal life—including facts that might shock even the 50 percent of Americans who are divorced—the way to do it is to label any examination of it an "out-of-bounds" intrusion. And if using the vulnerability of his children will help insulate him from examination, this father is ready to show that he really does know best, especially when it comes to protecting himself.

That’s why he’s said: “Judge me by my public performance — whatever mistakes I’ve made in my personal life, I’m sorry for them.” It’s a laughable dichotomy, as if one’s personal and professional lives are wholly separable, as if blowing up an 18-year marriage rather than finding a way to end it reasonably says nothing about how a presidential prospect might handle a squabble with Congress. New Yorkers, of course, know that Rudy’s self-absorbed humiliation of his wife Donna Hanover—informing her that he wanted a divorce on television, inviting the press to a “walking my baby back home” stroll over Mother’s Day weekend with newly announced girlfriend Judi Nathan — was utterly consistent with the in-your-face way he governed. His lawyer and friend Raoul Felder called Donna an “uncaring mother” over that Mother’s Day weekend in 2000, said she was “howling like a stuck pig,” and accused her of “clinging to the chandeliers” in Gracie Mansion. For those used to the tone that Giuliani applied to enemies large and small at City Hall, it was clear that Felder was merely a bullhorn for his client.

Why are the following samples from the Caroline grievance list irrelevant to the character test we apply to our presidential candidates?

Giuliani brought her to City Hall for Take Your Daughter to Work Day in 1994 and 1995, the first two years of his mayoral term, and never brought her again. By 1996, the relationship between Giuliani and his twentysomething press secretary had so poisoned the marriage that all such family events were impossible. In fact, Giuliani took a family vacation in November 1993, shortly after his election, and never took another one in his life. His family was so invisible in his public life that neither Donna nor the kids attended his victory party when he won re-election in 1997, and Donna refused to tell reporters at the polls if she voted for him. On the night of the millennium, with a billion people watching Giuliani drop the ball on a new century, Caroline, son Andrew, and Donna had their own small party in an office tower overlooking Times Square. Though Giuliani was still months away from publicly revealing his relationship with Nathan, he squired her around all evening — to the city facility at the square, the new emergency-command center, and a party he hosted at a nearby café.

Once Giuliani filed for divorce, he brought Nathan to a Gracie Mansion event, which sparked a court ruling barring her from the premises in the interests of the children. The judge branded his lawyer's public tirades "embarrassing and no doubt painful for these children." Giuliani complained in court that he wanted to introduce Nathan to the kids on Father's Day in 2001 and that Donna had blocked it. She might have still have been smarting from Father's Day in 1995 — a day of revelation for her — when Rudy told reporters after a morning event that he was going back to the mansion to play ball with Andrew, but instead went to a deserted City Hall and headed for a basement suite with his ever-present press secretary. An enraged Donna arrived three hours later, only to be stopped from entering the suite by a Giuliani aide.

The breakup was so botched that everyone is still scarred. The kids aren't listed on Giuliani's website bio. Donna wasn't acknowledged in a four-page list of the hundreds of important people in Giuliani's life at the end of his bestseller Leadership, though the dog Goalie did get a thank-you. Giuliani didn't go to Andrew's high-school graduation, and, just a couple of months ago, he insisted on bringing Nathan to Caroline's. He and Judi wound up sitting in the balcony and leaving without speaking to her. No wonder Caroline told reporters at the graduation: "I am celebrating with my mom, my stepfather, my brother, and our other family members."

That wasn't a presidential endorsement either.

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» categories: Conversions | Rudy Giuliani | Wayne Barrett

Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11

posted: August 8, 2007 6:30 EST

On the stump, Rudy can't help spreading smoke and ashes about his lousy record.

By Wayne Barrett, Village Voice
With special research assistance by Alexandra Kahan

Nearly six years after 9/11, Rudy Giuliani is still walking through the canyons of lower Manhattan, covered in soot, pointing north, and leading the nation out of danger's way. The Republican frontrunner is campaigning for president by evoking that visual at every campaign stop, and he apparently believes it's a picture worth thousands of nights in the White House.

Giuliani has been leading the Republican pack for seven months, and predictions that the party's evangelicals would turn on him have so far proven hollow. The religious right appears as gripped by the Giuliani story as the rest of the country.

Giuliani isn't shy about reminding audiences of those heady days. In fact he hyperventilates about them on the stump, making his credentials in the so-called war on terror the centerpiece of his campaign. His claims, meanwhile, have been met with a media deference so total that he's taken to complimenting "the good job it is doing covering the campaign." Opponents, too, haven't dared to question his terror credentials, as if doing so would be an unpatriotic bow to Osama bin Laden.

Here, then, is a less deferential look at the illusory cloud emanating from the former mayor's campaign . . .

John Kascht

"As United States Attorney, I investigated the Leon Klinghoffer murder by Yasir Arafat," he told the Jewish audience, referring to the infamous 1985 slaying of a wheelchair-bound, 69-year-old New York businessman aboard the Achille Lauro, an Italian ship hijacked off the coast of Egypt by Palestinian extremists. "It's honestly the reason why I knew so much about Arafat," says Giuliani. "I knew, in detail, the Americans he murdered. I went over their cases."

On the contrary, Victoria Toensing, the deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department in Washington who filed a criminal complaint in the Lauro investigation, says that no one in Giuliani's office "was involved at all." Jay Fischer, the Klinghoffer family attorney who spearheaded a 12-year lawsuit against the PLO, says he "never had any contact" with Giuliani or his office. "It would boggle my mind if anyone in 1985, 1986, 1987, or thereafter conducted an investigation of this case and didn't call me," he adds. Fischer says he did have a private dinner with Giuliani in 1992: "It was the first time we talked, and we didn't even talk about the Klinghoffer case then."

The dinner was arranged by Arnold Burns, a close friend of Fischer and Giuliani who also represented the Klinghoffer family. Burns, who was also the finance chair of Giuliani's mayoral campaign, was the deputy U.S. attorney general in 1985 and oversaw the probe. "I know of nothing Rudy did in any shape or form on the Klinghoffer case," he says.

Though Giuliani told the Conservative Political Action conference in March that he "prosecuted a lot of crime — a little bit of terrorism, but mostly organized crime," he actually worked only one major terrorism case as U.S. Attorney, indicting 10 arms dealers for selling $2.5 billion worth of anti-tank missiles, bombs, and fighter jets to Iran in 1986. The judge in the case ruled that a sale to Iran violated terrorist statutes because its government had been tied to 87 terrorist incidents. Giuliani has never mentioned the case, perhaps because he personally filed papers terminating it in his last month as U.S. Attorney: A critical witness had died, and a judge tossed out 46 of the 55 counts because of errors by Giuliani's office.

"Then, as mayor of New York," Giuliani's July speech continued, "I got elected right after the 1993 Islamic terrorist attack . . . I set up emergency plans for all the different possible attacks we could have. We had drills and exercises preparing us for sarin gas and anthrax, dirty bombs."

In fact, Giuliani was oblivious to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing throughout his mayoralty. A month after the attack, candidate Giuliani met for the first time with Bill Bratton, who would ultimately become his police commissioner. The lengthy taped meeting was one of several policy sessions he had with unofficial advisers. The bombing never came up; neither did terrorism. When Giuliani was elected a few months later, he immediately launched a search for a new police commissioner. Three members of the screening panel that Giuliani named to conduct the search, and four of the candidates interviewed for the job, said later that the bombing and terrorism were never mentioned — even when the new mayor got involved with the interviews himself. When Giuliani needed an emergency management director a couple of years later, two candidates for the job and the city official who spearheaded that search said that the bombing and future terrorist threats weren't on Giuliani's radar. The only time Giuliani invoked the 1993 bombing publicly was at his inauguration in 1994, when he referred to the way the building's occupants evacuated themselves as a metaphor for personal responsibility, ignoring the bombing itself as a terrorist harbinger.

read on . . .

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» categories: Alternate reality | GWOT | Presidential campaign | Rudy Giuliani | The press | Wayne Barrett

No Wafer for Rudy

posted: June 28, 2007 12:56 EST

Giuliani campaigns as a Catholic, but he's on the outs with God.

By Wayne Barrett, Village Voice

When Pope Benedict XVI attacked Catholic politicians in Mexico who supported abortion rights last month, Rudy Giuliani was asked for his opinion. The presidential candidate replied in the language of the church: "Issues like that are for me and my confessor. I'm a Catholic, and that's the way I resolve those issues, personally and privately."

Giuliani has invoked his Catholic heritage on Larry King; he's been described by the Washington Post as a "devout Catholic"; he's appeared on Fox News with the label "Catholic" floating on-screen; and he's handled a CNN debate question about a bishop who denounced him with a declaration unfamiliar to those who covered him as mayor. "I respect the opinion of Catholic and religious leaders of all kinds," he said. "Religion is very important to me. It's a very important part of my life."

The ex-mayor's newfound piety also includes a mantra about abortion that wasn't heard while he was in City Hall. "I hate abortion," he now says across America and, in a proposed 12-point plan, he declares that he's committed to decreasing the number of abortions. "I would encourage someone to not take that option," he says, though as a candidate for mayor he said he would pay for an abortion for his daughter. Today, he says it would be "OK to repeal" Roe v. Wade, though he hosted celebrations of its anniversary three times at City Hall. His wholesale reversal on Medicaid funding, late-term abortions, and parental consent are all part of a repackaging designed to soften not just his New York public record, but also the inconvenient details of his personal life.

Married three times, Giuliani simply isn't the Catholic candidate he claims to be. He can't have a confessor. He can't receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist, or marriage. While bishops disagree about whether or not a Catholic politician who supports abortion rights can receive the sacraments, there is no disagreement about the consequences of divorcing and remarrying outside the church, as Giuliani did a few years ago.

Young Rudy went through 16 years of Catholic education, flirted with the priesthood, and trekked to East New York to teach catechism lessons. The 803-page catechism — reissued in 1994 under the supervision of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who has since become pope — lays out the ways in which Giuliani's personal decisions have estranged him from the church. "Divorce brings grave harm to the deserted spouse. . . [and] to children traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn between them," reads the catechism. But it is remarriage, not divorce, that's a deal-breaker for Catholics. "Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture; the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery."

This may sound harsh in a culture where half of Americans divorce. The question, however, is not whether this church teaching is fair, or whether it's compatible with American social standards. The question is: Can Giuliani run for president as a Catholic — identifying with the swing vote that has picked the winner in virtually every modern presidential race — when he is so out of step with the church's code of personal conduct? We're all familiar with Catholic politicians who defy the church with their positions on issues like abortion or contraception. But Giuliani is the first major national figure to run for high office as a Catholic even though he has defied church law in his personal life.

read on . . .

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» categories: Church/sex | Church/state | Presidential campaign | Rudy Giuliani | The press | Wayne Barrett

Warning: Check for the Union Label

posted: June 20, 2007 8:18 EST

By Ward Harkavy, Village Voice

Despite the starry-eyed report in this morning's L.A. Times about Democratic presidential candidates holding hands yesterday with union leaders and liberal activists at two D.C. conclaves, don't start singing "Kumbaya" just yet.

In the real world, putative presidential contenders Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg know how to co-opt unions; they have street cred for doing so in New York City (Regarding Bloomberg's, read my colleague Wayne Barrett's August 2005 piece, "Billionaire Buys Union." Or go to a library and steal one of Barrett's books about Giuliani).

So much for the unions' perceived faithfulness to Democrats.

As for Hillary Clinton's fealty to the workers those unions represent, she has more experience as Wal-Mart's First Lady than she does on the picket line.

Check for the legit union label if the power suit belongs to Clinton. Despite what those right-wing anti-feminist critics of Hillary say, there really are reasons to distrust her.

read on . . .

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» categories: Conversions | Hillary Clinton | Presidential campaign | Rudy Giuliani | Unfounded Optimism | Ward Harkavy | Wayne Barrett

The Yankees' Clean-Up Man

posted: May 9, 2007 11:01 EST

By Wayne Barrett, Village Voice

The greatest love affair of Rudy Giuliani's life has become a sordid scandal.

His monogamous embrace of the New York Yankees as mayor was so fervent that when he tried to deliver a West Side stadium to them early in his administration, or approved a last-minute $400 million subsidy for their new Bronx stadium, New Yorkers blithely ascribed the bad deals to a heaving heart.

It turns out he also had an outstretched hand.

It is only now, however, as Giuliani campaigns for president, that we are beginning to learn how deep this relationship went. Giuliani has been seen on the campaign trail wearing a World Series ring, a valuable prize we never knew he had. Indeed, the Yankees have told the Voice that he has four rings, one for every world championship the Yankees won while he was mayor. Voice calls to other cities whose teams won the Series in the past decade have determined that Giuliani is the only mayor with a ring, much less four. If it sounds innocent, wait for the price tag. These are certainly no Canal Street cubic zirconia knockoffs.

With Giuliani's name inscribed in the 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000 diamond-and-gold rings, memorabilia and baseball experts say they are collectively worth a minimum of $200,000. The Yankees say that Giuliani did pay for his rings—but only $16,000, and years after he had left office. Anyone paying for the rings is as unusual as a mayor getting one, since neither the Yankees nor any other recent champion have sold rings to virtually anyone. The meager payment, however, is less than half of the replacement value of the rings, and that's a fraction of the market price, especially with the added value of Giuliani's name.

What's more troubling is that Giuliani's receipt of the rings may be a serious breach of the law, and one that could still be prosecuted. New York officials are barred from taking a gift of greater than $50 value from anyone doing business with the city, and under Giuliani, that statute was enforced aggressively against others.

His administration forced a fire department chief, for example, to retire, forfeit $93,105 in salary, and pay a $6,000 fine for taking Broadway tickets to two shows and a free week in a ski condo from a city vendor. The city's Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) has applied the gift rule to discounts as well, unless the cheaper rate "is available generally to all government employees."

When a buildings department deputy commissioner was indicted in 2000 for taking Mets and Rangers tickets, as well as a family trip to Florida, from a vendor, an outraged Giuliani denounced his conduct as "reprehensible," particularly "at high levels in city agencies," and said that such officials had to be "singled out" and "used as examples."

read on . . .

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» categories: Presidential campaign | Rudy Giuliani | Wayne Barrett