LES PAYNE
December 19, 2004
'Blame it on Osama bin Laden.
Without the bearded fugitive, Bernard Kerik might be tending bar in Bayonne. He
may indeed land there soon enough after flunking his nomination to be Homeland
Security director. But that's getting ahead of the story about his debt to the
Saudi terrorist. It was bin Laden, you may help President Bush recall, who
engineered the catastrophic events of Sept. 11, 2001.
A piece of bin Laden's handiwork brought down the Twin Towers and smashed to
death nearly 3,000 innocent victims. The depression in the ground yawns today as
a monument to those who perished and a reminder to those who yet must heal. No
kind hearts were made glad by this dastardly act. None. But such a tragedy for
so many is an opportunity for a few.
And this is where Bernard Kerik comes in.
First, we must accept that the portrait of Bernard Kerik, as projected to the
White House, bore the unmistakable brush strokes of his mentor, Rudolph
Giuliani. It was the then Lord Mayor in 1993 who first took Kerik on as
bodyguard and chauffeur. The undercover detective had an uncanny nose for whose
head to knock and whose rear to kiss. The troubled, high-school drop-out and
martial arts expert attached himself to the law-and-order mayor as only a
chauffeur could.
If the gentleman is best known by his valet, the politician is best known by his
bodyguard and driver. No secret, no matter how intimate, escapes the eyes and
ears of the bodyguard/driver. We have since learned that, in his private life,
Mayor Giuliani did not comport himself in accordance with the public dictates of
the "moral values" crowd to which President Bush swears fealty, at least with
his lips.
In his autobiography, Kerik spared us whatever juice he may have observed while
chauffeuring Giuliani. In fairness, there may have been none. But the detective
and the former prosecutor have established a bond that surpasses all other
explanations.
After ascending to the throne, Mayor Giuliani set his GED-trained brass-knuckle
partner on an upwardly spiraling staircase with no ceiling in sight. Kerik was
anointed deputy commissioner, then head of the Department of Correction, and,
finally, to the amazement of all, the commissioner of the New York Police
Department. Only now, thanks to the Department of Investigations, do we learn
that he did not file a background form, as is customary, when accepting the top
appointment in 2000.
The oversight, if that's what it was, foreshadowed the once-over Kerick got from
the White House before his nomination as Homeland Security director was
embarrassingly torpedoed for misdeeds admitted and alleged. With Kerik's blood
in the water, separate probes, by the media and government agencies, will circle
in for a closer look. Kickback schemes are rumored, as well as conflicting
personal entanglements and even connections to organized crime.
Probes aside, it has clearly emerged that Kerik and his mentor, Giuliani, have
profited immensely in wake of the dastardly handiwork of Osama bin Laden. In
financial forms filed at the Pentagon last year, Kerik skimmed over properties
he owned or had access to, but admitted to receiving between $500,000 and $1
million for 25 or so speeches he delivered. His salary at Giuliani Partners,
Inc., was listed as $500,000.
Some dare call it exploitation. But, no matter, the post 9/11 windfall for the
two partners has brought in millions. The attack on the Twin Towers transformed
the opportunistic Giuliani from a philandering, lame-duck mayor of a city eager
to forget him to one hankered for by a forlorn nation.
Giuliani's very flaws, some of Shakespearean proportions, that had him heading
to the ash-heap at the dawn of Sept. 11, appeared to be the very properties that
led him to become the nation's heroic mayor. Those traits serving him so well
during the crisis were his incorrigible tendency toward self-righteousness,
provincialism, overzealousness and naked authoritarianism.
These same traits, it appears now, also afforded him the gall to promote his
flawed business partner as a super-impeccable candidate for one of the
high-visibility positions in the republic. Giuliani had to have known some of
Kerik's grand, disqualifying transgressions, but, in the former mayor's
self-righteousness they were probably rendered petit. After all, since Kerik's
days as a chauffeur, the man had served him well. Indeed, Kerik had witnessed
the collapse of the towers, authored a best-selling book in wake of that
calamity, and maintained his puppy-like loyalty to Giuliani as the duo raked in
the millions.
Kerik owes almost everything to Giuliani - whom he will likely see much less of
very soon. And, yes, the two millionaires indeed owe a lot to the handiwork of
Osama bin Laden.