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Ex-Partner Of Giuliani May Face Charges
In addition to charges involving false information and tax law, the U.S. attorney's office in New York City is also threatening to charge Kerik with conspiracy to commit illegal wiretapping in his dealings with the 2006 GOP candidate for New York attorney general, Jeanine F. Pirro, the sources said.
After Kerik left the Giuliani firm, Kerik arranged for two off-duty Giuliani firm employees to conduct surveillance on Pirro's husband. Pirro and Kerik also discussed bugging a boat where Pirro suspected her husband was having an extramarital affair. Kerik was heard on a wiretap telling Pirro that he did not want to do the bugging because it was illegal.
  Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, right, with former police commissioner Bernard B. Kerik in November 2003. (By Shirley Bahadur -- Associated Press) |
About a year earlier, Pirro, then the Westchester County district attorney, ordered the A&P supermarket chain to hire the Giuliani-Kerik security firm as part of a settlement agreement in a case involving underage alcohol sales. The security firm was ultimately paid $43,000, according to a knowledgeable source who spoke about the terms of the contract on the condition of anonymity.
Kerik's legal team has signaled its plan to fight any federal indictment, initiating an internal appeal to Justice Department officials about the possible tax charges -- a move that could delay any indictment for at least several weeks, the legal sources said.
Giuliani and Kerik first met in 1990 at a dinner for a fallen police officer, while Kerik was a narcotics detective. Three years later, Giuliani asked Kerik to be his driver and his mayoral campaign's advance man. After Giuliani was elected, he tapped Kerik to advise his corrections commissioner. Within a year, Kerik had become the commissioner, and his performance helped him become the city's top police official.
Kerik met Bush in the rubble of the World Trade Center. In 2003, he was dispatched by the Bush administration to Iraq to work with the Coalition Provisional Authority, which was helping train and organize a new Iraqi police force. His work in Iraq won personal accolades from the president.
After Bush was reelected, he nominated Kerik to be the nation's second secretary of homeland security.
But a week after his nomination, Kerik was forced to withdraw his name from consideration. The stated reason was his failure to pay Social Security taxes for a nanny. But other issues had also surfaced, including favors he did for romantic partners -- he once dispatched a homicide detective to find his girlfriend's lost cellphone -- and more serious legal concerns.
Within months, Kerik faced New York state charges -- to which he later pleaded guilty -- that he accepted nearly $200,000 in gifts while a public official -- including more than $165,000 spent on renovations to his apartment. The money came from companies affiliated with a New Jersey outfit that federal authorities and state gambling regulators had linked to organized crime.
In the fall of 2005, Kerik asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions before a New Jersey gaming regulatory body about his relationship to the people involved in the apartment renovations.
The contract with A&P was one of many deals -- some much more lucrative -- that the Giuliani-Kerik firm arranged using the partners' extensive political connections. The work included a Justice Department contract and multimillion-dollar consulting arrangements with business clients in the technology and security sectors worldwide.
In some cases, Giuliani and Kerik simultaneously advised a private company and the federal agency whose actions could affect it. Giuliani's firm, for instance, was hired by Purdue Pharma to help figure out how to keep sales of its popular painkiller OxyContin from being restricted by the government; street dealers were crushing and converting it into a powerful narcotic offering an instant high. Kerik was personally named to oversee security improvements at a New Jersey manufacturing plant.
At the same time, the Justice Department paid Giuliani-Kerik $1.1 million to conduct a management review of the organized-crime drug task force, whose responsibilities included stemming illegal use of OxyContin.
Likewise, Giuliani, Kerik and other firm partners were hired by cellphone carrier Nextel to win Federal Communications Commission approval for a new, emergency-only wireless spectrum for first responders.
The idea was to solve one problem for Nextel -- it had long been subject to complaints that its wireless signal sometimes interfered with the communications channels used by police, fire and rescue officials -- while creating an even stronger business opportunity for the cellular carrier.
At the same time, Giuliani's firm was brought in by the FCC to participate in a panel that was advising the agency in its efforts to address the future needs of a police, fire and rescue communications system in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
