Pledging Allegiance

After Giuliani left office, Placa's New York diocese suspended him from the priesthood after child molestation allegations. Giuliani, who by then had established a security consulting firm, came to his old friend's rescue. He hired Placa at Giuliani Partners and has remained his steadfast benefactor and defender ever since, even as detractors demand that he explain his close relationship with, as one child abuse activist has put it, "a credibly accused child molester."

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

The Placa friendship has been a delicate matter for the Giuliani campaign. But Giuliani, given the anguish of his father's restroom incident, has long harbored skepticism about morals charges, O'Leary says. And Placa never has been charged. "I've known Alan for 50 years," Giuliani says. "I know the wonderful person he is. . . . So of course I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. He said he didn't do this. I believe him."

It is the same personal allegiance that helped Bernard Kerik, Giuliani's former driver, rise to become the commissioner of the New York Police Department and a partner at Giuliani's security consulting business. In 2004, Giuliani recommended to the Bush administration that Kerik be appointed homeland security secretary. Even after embarrassing disclosures about his private life torpedoed Kerik's chances for the position, Giuliani was slow to distance himself. Only later, after Kerik pleaded guilty to corruption charges in New York, did Giuliani finally cut ties. "Rudy probably did that a little late," says Ray Jacobelli. "He and his dad believed in sticking by people to the end."

What Giuliani expected in return was absolute loyalty and, perhaps, fealty. If there has been a constant in Giuliani's relationships since childhood, it is that he has always been the one in control -- at least if the relationships were to endure. His friends and acolytes have been mocked as "YesRudys." His longest-lasting alliances have always been with men content to labor in his shadow. Those who haven't, such as his former police commissioner William J. Bratton, generally don't last long.

* * *

No one in his personal circle has ever outshined or upstaged Giuliani. His fraternity brothers immediately saw a young college man with an ambition to be in charge of others. "He was a leader, not somebody's follower," remembers fraternity brother Gene Hart. "Rudy would have been the first to say that he couldn't have done what he did later without somebody like Peter Powers there for him -- but Rudy was the leader. . . . He had to be."

Harold Giuliani, recognizing his son's talents and ambition, tried to help him stand out at Manhattan College. Having long since snapped out of his deep depression and returned to work at his brother-in-law's bar, Harold picked up the phone one day and called Rudy's rival in an upcoming election for the presidency of the Phi Rho Pi fraternity.

"His father asked me to withdraw my name from the election," Sal Scarpato remembers. "He said Rudy would be able to benefit more than I would from being fraternity president -- because Rudy was going places. It was a short conversation. I just said, 'No, sir.' " Giuliani won the election.

The next fall, he was leading a fraternity meeting in a classroom when Scarpato, objecting to Giuliani's refusal to let him introduce a new topic for discussion, exploded. "I don't even remember anymore what I wanted to talk about -- probably having a party or something," he explains. "Rudy didn't like interference. He'd instituted Robert's Rules of Orders, and he blocked me from bringing anything up. I was frustrated. I threw a glass bottle of 7-Up, and it cracked the blackboard in the classroom."

Giuliani and Scarpato exchanged heated words and challenged each other to fight. Accompanied by other fraternity members, they took a short walk down a hill to Van Cortlandt Park, where a brief clash ensued. Many years earlier, Harold Giuliani had taught his son how to fight. Scarpato never stood a chance.

"I just remember a few blows, and I remember that at some point he had me on the ground," Scarpato says. "He said, 'Say uncle,' and I said, 'Yeah, I give up.' Then we shook hands, walked back up the hill and resumed the meeting."

Over time, Scarpato acquired a grudging respect for Giuliani, and later a deep admiration. "The way he used Robert's Rules of Orders -- it was clever," remembers Scarpato, a Giuliani campaign contributor who now lives in Westlake Village, Calif. "He was young, but he knew that whoever controlled the agenda of something controlled everything. . . . He was already thinking about serious things. I remember him saying he was going to go after the mob someday. He said that he had been exposed to problems that people had in running a bar in Brooklyn and that he would go into government and go after the mob. He had a plan."