Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was briefed on Bernard Kerik’s reported link to a company suspected of ties to organised crime before he appointed him the city’s police commissioner and Giuliani has now reiterated it was a mistake to nominate Kerik in the failed bid to head the Department of Homeland Security.
In sworn testimony before a Bronx grand jury last year, Giuliani said though he had no memory of the meeting his former chief investigator recalled informing him about aspects of Kerik’s relationship with the company. Giuliani has not denied that the briefing took place.
The allegations surrounding Kerik have made him a liability to Giuliani’s bid for the Republican nomination for President. In the meantime, Kerik, who is still being investigated in relation to a range of allegations in the US, was hired by the Guyana Government at the start of the year as a security advisor to President Bharrat Jagdeo. He has been contracted to provide general advisory services to Jagdeo and the Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee. However Kerik’s appointment has been met with heavy criticism as federal investigators are exploring a range of charges about Kerik, including accusations he conspired to help a former district attorney, Jeanine Pirro, plant listening devices to catch her husband in an extramarital affair. Kerik and Pirro were captured on a state wiretap discussing such a plan. Investigators have also been reviewing the circumstances under which Kerik accepted US$165,000 in free renovations to his Bronx apartment in 1999 from Interstate Industrial Corporation, a New Jersey contractor, or a subsidiary. Kerik pleaded guilty last year to improperly allowing the free renovations. The company has denied paying for the work, and has disputed any association with organized crime. But the two brothers who run it have been indicted in the Bronx on charges they lied under oath about their dealings with Kerik. Kerik also recently declined a plea deal which would have seen him spending time in jail. He now faces a possible indictment.
According to the New York Times (NYT), a recently obtained 101-page transcript of Giuliani’s April 2006 testimony offers a significantly new version of what information was probably before him as he was debating Kerik’s appointment as the city’s top law enforcement officer in the summer of 2000. Giuliani had previously said he had never been told of Kerik’s entanglement with the company before promoting him to the police job or later supporting his failed bid to be America’s homeland security secretary.
In testimony, Giuliani indicated that he must have simply forgotten that he had been briefed on one or more occasions as part of the background investigation of Kerik before his appointment to the police post. He said he learned only in late 2004 that the briefing or briefings had occurred, after the city’s investigation commissioner reviewed his own records from 2000. However, he maintained that he had no specific recollection of any briefing or the details of what he was told. He added that he felt comforted because the chief investigator had cleared Kerik to be promoted.
“He testified fully and cooperatively,” a statement on Thursday from Giuliani’s consulting firm said of his grand jury appearance. It added, “Mayor Giuliani has admitted it was a mistake to recommend Bernie Kerik for D.H.S. and he has assumed responsibility for it.”
The New York Times said that for Giuliani, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president and who has done well in early polls, his history with Kerik looms as a likely issue in the campaign. His own aides have anticipated that questions are likely to arise about Giuliani’s judgment in, among other things, promoting Kerik to one of the country’s most important national security posts. Giuliani, whose private company provides background checks for companies as part of its services, may as a result have to explain his response to the information that was provided to him in 2000. His company’s statement on Thursday said that Giuliani was not concerned that issues surrounding Kerik would become a liability to his presidential campaign.
In his testimony, Giuliani suggested that he might have been presented with only limited information about Kerik. He added that the city investigators who did the background check on Kerik ultimately cleared him to be hired as police commissioner. He said the background investigators’ approval might explain why he, and aides who were involved, could not recollect any briefing.
According to the NYT, Bronx prosecutors tried repeatedly to determine how much the mayor remembered being told about Kerik’s problems and what he had done about the information. A prosecutor for the Bronx district attorney’s office told Giuliani that Edward J Kuriansky, the commissioner of the city’s department of investigation and his investigators had compiled a considerable body of knowledge about Kerik’s relationship with the company before his appointment as police commissioner. The NYT said that Kerik, who was then the city’s commissioner of correction, had himself come forward months earlier to tell investigators that the company had recently given jobs to his brother, Donald, as well as the best man from his wedding, Lawrence Ray and that he himself had interceded on the company’s behalf as it sought a city licence. Kerik also told the investigators that Ray had been indicted on federal criminal charges, along with Edward Garafola, a reputed Gambino soldier, the brother-in-law of Salvatore Gravano, the former mob underboss known as Sammy the Bull.
An Interstate affiliate was at that time seeking a licence to operate a waste transfer station on Staten Island. The NYT says that city officials refused to license the transfer station because of the organized crime allegations.
Giuliani said the facts about Kerik might not have been presented to him in as much detail and with as much emphasis back in 2000. The prosecutor then asked Giuliani whether, if the information had been presented to him with as much emphasis, he would have appointed Kerik police commissioner.
“If he told it to me the way you described it to me, no,” Giuliani replied. “If he had told it to me in a different way because, maybe he didn’t know all of the facts, or had come to a different conclusion about the facts, then maybe I would have – I can’t tell you that.”
Interstate is a construction company based in New Jersey that undertakes large public and private projects in the metropolitan area. It has long denied the accusation of mob ties, and New Jersey regulators issued a licence to the company in 2004, allowing it to do construction work on Atlantic City casinos after a lengthy review of the same material. That licence was suspended after the owners were charged with perjury last year.
Giuliani was eventually a key backer of Kerik when US President George Bush nominated him to be homeland security secretary in 2004. Kerik subsequently withdrew his name a week later, citing possible tax and immigration problems involving his family’s nanny.
Kerik’s Guyana contract is for one year and it is renewable. Recently, his international security consultancy firm, the Kerik Group, was contracted to provide its services to Trinidad and Tobago.
