Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Identified as a trouble maker by the authorities since childhood, and resolved to live up to the description, Charles Carreon soon discovered that mischief is most effectively fomented through speech. Having mastered the art of flinging verbal pipe-bombs and molotov cocktails at an early age, he refined his skills by writing legal briefs and journalistic exposes, while developing a poetic style that meandered from the lyrical to the political. Journey with him into the dark caves of the human experience, illuminated by the torch of an outraged sense of injustice.

Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Sun Oct 06, 2013 7:36 am

ARRIVEDERCI BIANCA? -- THE CITIZENS OF ASHLAND REJECT THE CHIEF'S RESIGNATION, by Charles Carreon

01/10/07

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On Tuesday, April 4th, the last hours of Mike Bianca’s tenure as Ashland Chief of Police were ticking away. The rumor was everywhere that he had been fired or would resign. Young people were speaking about the departure of the popular Chief in somber tones. One young many stated his feelings bluntly — “I’m scared the cops are gonna get rougher.” There was more than enough shock and surprise to go around. Most solid citizens thought that the Chief’s position was secure, and that a team of consultants hired by the City were working out problems in management at the APD.

Sure, this was probably naïve, but the City had been all reassurances as part of cleaning up the highly public mess made last year by APD officers and their off-duty boosters, who went public with groundless complaints against the Chief in what appeared to be a bungled attempt to oust a popular City officer. The City hired consultants, the answer to every problem in governance, to iron things out within the APD, or at least that was the story. Anybody who ever worked at a large corporation knows that if your bosses hire consultants to help manage your department, the consultants have been hired to tell your bosses how to get along without you. It’s common sense – in an organization, the organization can never be the problem – it’s always the individual who is at fault. But people in Ashland are idealists, not realists, and they particularly put on their rosy lenses when viewing local politics. Good thing, too, otherwise the corpselike hue of corruption would depress them.

The Tuesday City Council meeting on April 5th was the natural flashpoint for widespread citizen anger about Bianca being forced out. As per its usual stealth methodology, the Council hadn’t put any item on the agenda that remotely related to Mike Bianca, but agenda item or no, folks who knew and cared geared up for one more showdown with a City government that seems bent on showing citizens that the job of governing is a party to which they are not invited.

As shadows stretched across the town under cloudy skies, a small group of Bianca’s supporters gathered in front of City Hall to oppose his rumored resignation. At around six o’clock, an hour before the scheduled City Council meeting, the Chief came out to speak to the group, and announced his resignation. Asked whether the Chief’s brief announcement took the fight out of the crowd, one observer said that Chief Bianca himself appeared to have little fight left in him. That tallied with my own observation of the Chief when I spoke with him briefly at another City Council meeting about a month ago. However, he said nothing about resigning, and instead said he was looking forward to making a presentation in May that would review the status of his Department and his achievements. Asked how the personnel problems were working out, he responded with only a touch of bitterness – “I just wish people would spend as much time working for the community as they spend fighting with me.”

City Councilor Cate Hartzell rose to the occasion by writing an extensive and candid essay on the lynching of the popular Chief, and no doubt this heartened his supporters, almost entirely a thoughtful, older crowd. These type of people are hard to buffalo, but that doesn’t mean the Mayor can’t try. As usual when a popular item crams the Council Chamber with citizens, the Mayor was at his most indulgent with allowing extensive discussion on every other agenda item until the time came for the Public Forum. Then the pace of the proceedings accelerated like Charlie Chaplin’s factory clock in “Modern Times” when the lunch hour comes around. A dozen speakers, all speaking in the Chief’s favor, were given only two minutes each, and Mayor Morrison absorbed their testimony with a stony visage.

One after another, the witnesses retraced the route to betrayal that the Mayor and other undisclosed parties had followed – giving reassurances of due process for the Chief that have proven false, making promises to allow citizen involvement that have not been fulfilled, and scheduling future proceedings to reach a community solution that has now been aborted. And never, ever, ever a peep out of the Council or the Mayor that Chief Bianca’s wagon was rumbling toward the guillotine.

Rarely do City Council meetings ring with eloquence like the polished presentation of Ralph Temple, a former ACLU lawyer from Washington D.C. Ralph presented a simple case against the Mayor’s unilateralist action, revealing the entire process for the backroom deal it obviously is, and closing with a moving plea for a reversal of the decision to demand, and then accept, the Chief’s resignation. Providing historical precedent for rejecting resignations of good people, Mat Marr informed the City Council that “Abraham Lincoln rejected the resignation of Samuel Chase seven times.” As applause rolled in for Ralph, Mat, and other speakers, Mayor Wet-blanket rigidly adjured the citizens to hold their applause. He just hates hearing people say they disagree with him, especially when he’s made up his mind to ignore them. But serious faces don’t deter John Dowd, who handily ticked off every occasion when the Chief had garnered support from citizens during the summer and fall of last year, including the letters to the newspaper, the rallies, the six pages of signatures on the petition that John circulated personally. He sounded like someone who knows how to demand customer service when he pointedly asked the Council, “Weren’t you listening?” The audience was behind him as he declared, “The citizens of Ashland reject Chief Bianca’s resignation!” But the issue seemed clearest when Linda Richards stepped forward with a slender blade of sharp insight that slid through the Mayor’s chain mail — “If you do not reverse this decision, I will always think that something corrupt happened.” Wow! That got their attention!

Well, it was déjà vu all over again as Cate Hartzell raced toward the end zone with one thing on her mind — to delay the outcome. She moved the Council to delay voting on the matter of the Chief’s resignation until at least an Executive Session of the Council at 4 pm on Thursday. That’s after press time, so we’ll have to report later on what means were deployed to subvert the public will.

If I’m wrong about the outcome, which seems predestined in spades, I will gladly eat this page of the Ashland Free Press. After all, it’s not about Mike Bianca – it’s the principle of the thing. If you let the people have a police chief who treats them like people, they’ll get used to it, and that’s not only dangerous, it’s disrespectful of a police officer’s right to be superior to ordinary citizens in all things. The power to stop people, search them, muscle them around, put them in handcuffs, and threaten to shoot them is not small stuff. All those personal, physical interactions raise a cop’s testosterone level, and that makes them moody, truculent, confidently paranoid. Their work allows them to bolster their self-image by carrying deadly weapons. They get paid good money to separate themselves from the rest of us and bond with each other by wearing uniforms, driving hopped-up cars, speeding down the main drag for no reason, and landing like a pack of dogs on any of the usual suspects they so easily find. Being policed by such people at least means we tolerate their juvenile behavior for our own safety, and cut them some slack, officially and personally, because we understand their position. But some people want to go much farther, insulating police from citizens, letting them live in an enclave of paramilitary narcissism, and uniformly backing them in any dispute with a citizen. For those who spit bile in Chief Bianca’s direction, his big defect is that he listens to citizens, and gives them the idea they matter. For this, some of his subordinates think he's a traitor who encourages citizens to mutiny against the overlords. One look at Morrison’s stone face will tell you what side of the argument he’s on, and one look at Bianca’s back will tell you whose dagger is lodged there.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Sun Oct 06, 2013 10:31 pm

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO WHITEWASHES GUILIANI'S RELATIONSHIP WITH KERIK, by Charles Carreon

03/14/07

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I listen to NPR because I can't help myself. They soft pedal everything, and turn every issue into a weak broth salted with liberal schmaltz. Sometimes, though, I get my hopes up, because I'm an eternal optimist. So when they started in on a discussion of the hurdles that Giuliani faces in trying to occupy the Oval Office, I thought maybe, just maybe, since his erstwhile pal Bernard Kerik had just been in the news the same day, they would mention him. No, the whitewash bucket is still full at NPR. So here's the email I sent 'em. Think they'll read it on the air?

As I listened to your story discussing the impediments to Mayor Giuliani's presidential campaign, I expected that you would address the biggest blot on his character — his former partnership with Bernard Kerik, disgraced Police Chief of New York City. Kerik has pled guilty to State court charges of accepting graft, and is likely to be indicted for conspiring with former New York Attorney General candidate Jeanine Pirro to place illegal wiretaps on her husband. Kerik took over $7 Million in stock profits by plugging the TASER lethal-non-lethal stun gun to police agencies across the nation, while being a TASER stockholder and the Police Chief of New York. Then he went into business with Giuliani, who put him up for the office of Head of Homeland Security after Tom Ridge resigned. But you didn't mention Kerik at all, even though the news of his impending indictment appeared in the New York Times on Wednesday March 14th, the same day as your article. Way to drop the ball!


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Crime pays, Kerik plays, Giuliani stays away

June 30, 2006
Kerik Pleads Guilty for Gifts and a Loan
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and JOHN HOLUSHA

Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, pleaded guilty today to two misdemeanor charges as the result of accepting tens of thousands of dollars of gifts and a loan while he was a city official in the late 1990's.

He entered the pleas, one to a violation of the city charter and the other of the city administrative code, in a Bronx courtroom before Justice John P. Collins and was sentenced to a total of $221,000 in fines. He was accompanied by three lawyers and three supporters for the proceeding, which lasted about 10 minutes.

Speaking in a quiet voice, Mr. Kerik admitted that he had accepted renovations to his Bronx apartment from a company he believed to be “clean.”

Justice Collins acknowledged Mr. Kerik's past career. “The court recognizes the contributions made by Bernard Kerik, particularly on Sept. 11, 2001, and the days after. Still, the defendant has violated the law for personal gain.”

Outside the court, Mr. Kerik said he should have been more “focused and sophisticated” in dealing with contractors who worked on his Bronx apartment.

“From this moment on, it's back to work,” he said before getting into a black B.M.W. and driving south on the Grand Concourse toward Manhattan.

City officials insisted that Mr. Kerik received no special treatment. “He was arrested and booked,” said Rose Gill Hearn, the city's investigations commissioner. “He was fingerprinted and photographed like every other perp who gets arrested and processed.”

One of Mr. Kerik's lawyers, Joseph Tacopina, disputed this account. He said Mr. Kerik was not arrested or processed in central booking like a common criminal. He was instead afforded the opportunity to be processed at the district attorney's office and allowed to walk to court. He was fingerprinted in the executive wing, Mr. Tacopina said.

Robert T. Johnson, the Bronx district attorney, noted that the grand jury considered and rejected more serious charges of bribery. He termed the outcome “fair and just” based on the evidence and circumstances and questions about how the statute of limitations applies to public officials.

The pleas completed a stunning fall from grace for a public official who rose in a decade's time from a third-grade police detective to police commissioner and a nomination as secretary of the federal Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Kerik accepted the subsidized work on his Bronx apartment in the late 1990's, while he was correction commissioner under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, according to investigators.

Investigators said Mr. Kerik paid about $30,000 for renovations worth about $200,000, a violation of the city's administrative code. The work was performed by an affiliate of a construction company that the city has accused of having ties to organized crime.

The company, Interstate Industrial Corporation, had sought Mr. Kerik's assistance in obtaining a license from the city to operate a construction debris transfer station and held meetings in Mr. Kerik's office. The license was ultimately not granted.

One of Mr. Kerik's pleas was for accepting the gift of the subsidized remodeling. The other was for failing to report a loan of $29,000 from a friend for a down payment on the apartment.

Mr. Kerik, a former driver and bodyguard for Mr. Giuliani while he was campaigning for mayor, was named police commissioner in 2000 and held that post on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked.

On the basis of his performance then, President Bush nominated him to be the head of the Homeland Security Department in December 2004. But he withdrew a week later, citing possible tax problems related to the family's nanny.

Mr. Kerik also left Mr. Giuliani's private consulting firm within days of his failed federal nomination. He has been doing independent security consulting work since then, most recently in Jordan.

Alan Feuer contributed reporting for this article.

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Here's a good blog post on the subject

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

This could be fun:

News Channel 4 has learned former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik has rejected a plea deal offered by federal prosecutors that would have required Kerik to serve time in prison.

Federal prosecutors offered Kerik a deal where he would plead guilty to tax fraud and illegal eavesdropping conspiracy charges, sources familiar with the negotiations say.

In exchange for his guilty plea, investigators were willing to end the federal criminal probe into Kerik's alleged wrongdoing which includes allegations of mortgage fraud, tax fraud, conspiracy to eavesdrop and making false statements on his application to become U.S. Homeland Security Secretary....

Quite a list. Oh, and that's “conspiracy to eavesdrop” as in “conspiracy to bug the yacht of the felon husband of the Westchester County DA, Jeanine Pirro, who thought hubby was having an affair.”

More from The New York Times:

...Daniel C. Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Fordham University School of Law, said that when plea negotiations fail, federal prosecutors nearly always seek an indictment....

An indictment would be a setback for the presidential campaign of Mr. Giuliani, who supported Mr. Kerik in his failed bid to become the nation's Homeland Security director in 2004....

Would an indictment mean a high-profile trial? Just as the GOP race heats up?

Now, it's quite possible that all those Rudy-crazed Republicans don't know who Kerik is, or just don't associate him with Giuliani. If so, Rudy dodges another bullet.

But it may be enjoyable to find out.

http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Sun Oct 06, 2013 10:33 pm

BUSH'S CHRISTMAS GIFT TO US ALL: SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, by Charles Carreon

12/25/06

Someone must have told Bush he would go to hell, or jail, if he withdraws from Iraq. I for one am not going to get exercised about his double-down strategy. I understand the man. Caving in to majority rule at this stage of the deception just wouldn't be prudent. Without the war, he wouldn't be A war president, which is to say, he'd have no justification to spy on all Americans, jail some of us in solitary confinement, and torture them until they're so crazy the doctor says they can't even aid in their own defense at trial, subpoena documents to keep them secret, repeatedly try to jail journalists to extort information from them they can easily obtain elsewhere, and all that other good stuff that a “war president” gets to do. No, better the suicide gambit. Use all Americans as human shields, and American soldiers as expendable weapons in a global gambit to keep his family, and the Saudi's power and influence at the top of the guns and gas hierarchy. Merry Christmas, my fellow citizens.

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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Sun Oct 06, 2013 10:37 pm

KEN OLBERMANN'S "PRESIDENT WHO CRIED WOLF", by Charles Carreon

01/13/07

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Bush's legacy: The president who cried wolf

Click here to download AZ.KO.WOLFBUSH.mp3.

And lastly, as promised, a Special Comment about the President's address last night.

Only this President, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even Messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.

Only this President, could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say "where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me" -- only to follow that, by proposing to repeat the identical mistake in Iran.

Only this President could extol the "thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group," and then take its most far-sighted recommendation -- "engage Syria and Iran" - and transform it into "threaten Syria and Iran" -- when Al-Qaeda would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when President Ahmmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.

This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes.

And to Iran and Syria -- and, yes, also to the insurgents in Iraq -- we must look like a country, run by the equivalent of the drunken pest, who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet, and shouts at the other guy's friends, "ok, which one of you is next?"

Mr. Bush, the question is no longer "what are you thinking?," but rather "are you thinking at all?"

"I have made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended," you said last night.

And yet -- without any authorization from the public who spoke so loudly and clearly to you in November's elections; without any consultation with a Congress (in which key members of your own party like Senator Brownback and Senator Coleman and Senator Hagel are fleeing for higher ground); without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker-Hamilton urged you to do, you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment (on America's behalf) to do whatever you want, in Iran.

Our military, Mr. Bush, is already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq, that even a majority of serving personnel are willing to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war.

It is so weary, that many of the troops you have just consigned to Iraq, will be on their second tours, or their third tours, or their fourth tours -- and now you're going to make them take on Iran and Syria as well?

Who is left to go and fight, sir?

Who are you going to send to "interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria"? Laura and Barney?

The line is from the movie "Chinatown" and I quote it often. "Middle of a drought," the mortician chuckles, "and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.!"

'Middle of a debate over the lives and deaths of another 21,500 of our citizens in Iraq... and the President wants to saddle up against Iran and Syria.'

Maybe that's the point: to shift the attention away from just how absurd and childish, is this latest war strategy (strategy, that is, for the war already under way, and not the one, on deck).

We are to put 17,500 more troops into Baghdad and 4,000 more into Anbar Province to give the Iraqi government "breathing space."

In and of itself, that is an awful and insulting term.

The lives of 21,500 more Americans endangered, to give "breathing space" to a government that just turned the first and perhaps the most sober act of any Democracy -- the capitol punishment of an ousted dictator -- into a vengeance lynching so barbaric, and so lacking in the solemnities necessary for credible authority, that it might have offended the Ku Klux Klan of the 19th Century.

And what will our men and women in Iraq do?

The ones who will truly live -- and die -- during what Mr. Bush said last night will be a "year ahead" which "will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve"?

They will try to seal up Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad, in which the civil war is worst.

Mr. Bush did not mention that while our people are trying to do that, the factions in the civil war will no longer have to focus on killing each other but rather, they can focus anew on killing our people.

Because last night the President foolishly all but announced that we will be sending these 21,500 poor souls over -- but, no more after that -- and if the whole thing fizzles out, we're going home.

The plan fails militarily.

The plan fails symbolically.

The plan fails politically.

Most importantly, perhaps, Mr. Bush, the plan fails because it still depends on your credibility.

You speak of mistakes, and of the responsibility "resting" with you. But you do not admit to making those mistakes.

And you offer us nothing to justify this clenched fist towards Iran and Syria.

In fact, when you briefed news correspondents off-the-record before the speech, they were told, once again, "if you knew what we knew... if you saw what we saw..."

"If you knew what we knew," was how we got into this morass in Iraq, in the first place.

The problem arose, when it turned out that the question wasn't whether or not we knew what you knew but whether you knew what you knew.

You, sir, have become the President who cried wolf.

All that you say about Iraq now, could be gospel. All that you say about Iran and Syria now, could be prescient and essential.

We no longer have a clue, sir. We have heard too many stories.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the Director of National Intelligence over to the State Department, because he thought you were wrong about Iran.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran.

Your assurances, sir, and your demands that we trust you, have lost all shape and texture.

They are now merely fertilizer for conspiracy theories.

They are now fertilizer indeed.

The pile has been built slowly and with seeming care.

I read this list last night, before the President's speech, and it bears repetition, because its shape and texture are perceptible only in such a context.

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America. Now he says it is vital.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Last night he promised to embed them, in Iraqi units.

He told us about WMD. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubes. Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary because Saddam was a material threat. Because of 9/11. Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda. Terrorism in General. To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases. Because this was a guy who tried to kill his Dad.

Because 439 words in to the speech last night, he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. To get Muqtada Al-Sadr.
To get Bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than the Generals told him to.

He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government "De-Baathified."

He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. Gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

He and his government told us "America had prevailed", "Mission Accomplished", the resistance was in its "last throes".

He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.

He has insisted it's up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points: The fall of Baghdad; the death of Uday and Qusay; the capture of Saddam; A provisional government; a charter; a constitution; the trial of Saddam; elections; purple fingers; another government; the death of Saddam.

He has assured us: we would be greeted as liberators with flowers; as they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about "stay the course." We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And last night, that to gain Iraqis' trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was Al-Qaeda, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.

The war would pay for itself. It would cost 1.7 billion dollars. 100 billion. 400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night's speech alone cost another six billion.

And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Mr. Bush, this is madness.

You have lost the military.

You have lost the Congress to the Democrats.

You have lost most of the Iraqis.

You have lost many of the Republicans.

You have lost our Allies.

You are losing the credibility, not just of your Presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.

And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!

This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your "fellow citizens" you just sent to their deaths?

And for what, Mr. Bush?

So the next President has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?

Good night and good luck.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Tue Oct 08, 2013 12:35 am

THE DEMOCRATIC DUNKIRK -- ALL HANDS ON DECK!, by Charles Carreon

02/09/07

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It is a novel way of doing battle the Democrats have given us — storm the beach, then fall to squabbling among yourselves. There is always some shibboleth than no one dares to criticize. Today it is the fear that Congress will “cut off funds for the troops,” and National Guards -- people will have to hitchhike home. Will be left to fend for themselves without cell phones, MREs, body armor, or Evian. Will run out of gas at a lonely oasis and be shot up by “insurgents.” While all the guys from Blackwater pull out of the Sheraton just ahead of the final blast in black SUVs stuffed with duffel bags full of hundred dollar bills. Well actually it might be that way, if we let the Bush administration handle it.

Dunkirk was the major battle of World War II, where “over 338,000 Allied troops were cut off in northern France by a German armoured advance.” (Wikipedia) The shores of Calais were teaming with the cream of British manhood, all shot to bits, looking for a lift across the pond. The people of England famously rose to the occasion, as every skiff capable of making the crossing headed out across the English Channel to rescue the boys.

We need to mobilize in the same spontaneous way now. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans “in harm's way” in Iraq. They are also in the way of harming others, and of irritating an open wound much like the bouncing banderillas that madden a fighting bull into a rage. No one can complain of a rattlesnake's bite who has thrust his hand into its den. The proper response is to extract the injured limb promptly and repair to the medical precincts.

No need to get angry with Congress. They are dumb animals easily controlled with electrodes to the genitals or bottles of Johnny Walker. Simply stick with the program of bombarding them with your contemptuous disapproval, and when their pitchmen call, tell them “Tell Nancy and Harry there's no money until you bring my brothers and sisters home.” They like it when you get right to the point.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Tue Oct 08, 2013 12:43 am

IT'S TIME TO CAN ALBERTO GONZALES, by Charles Carreon

03/14/07

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Okay, it's time to remove the ten pounds of ugly fat disfiguring the area between Alberto Gonzales' shoulders. Fortunately, it can be recycled by shipping the product back to Texas, where they've been eating this garbage for years. Let's not just blog about it, though. Write to Congress. It's the only way they can tell you care, unless you can send money. (When will Congress start taking PayPal?) Here's the letter I sent to my lobbyist-appeasing, pork-dealing, rights-stealing representatives. Feel free to copy any parts of it that seem useful to you, and click here to send them to your representatives. (That's the easiest part!) Libby's got his, but when they're runnin' it's time to really open fire. Once we get rid of Gonzales, the next one to aim at is Cheney. Then mister pud-whacker himself. Then I'll say, “Mission Accomplished!”

Dear Senator / Congress-person:

As one of your voting constituents, I would like to be heard on the issue of the Attorney General scandal. It is time for Alberto Gonzales to return to Texas. He has done enough damage in Washington to merit pulling him off the field. You have a good memory, no doubt, but to refresh my own recollection, and explain my position, allow me to recap some of Mr. Gonzales’ “greatest hits.”

Legalizing Torture

My dissatisfactions with Mr. Gonzales began when I read some of the memoranda that he approved, urging President Bush to apply a hyper technical, absurd definition of “torture” to skirt the obvious meaning of the term. While the “Geneva Conventions” have been the focus of the flap in the public eye, the focus of John Yoo’s memo to Mr. Gonzales on the subject was 18 USC § 2340, that makes it a felony to commit torture under color of law outside the United States, and a capital offense to kill someone while torturing them. The attempt to circumvent the obvious effect of US law in order to give US soldiers and interrogators immunity to do what Congress declared repugnant was truly shocking.

Offshoring Justice

I was further disturbed by Mr. Gonzales’ use of a strategy to assert that the executive branch could avoid the jurisdiction of the US Courts by holding “enemy combatants” in Cuba. This is a new use for a Communist jurisdiction that would truly make Mephistopheles clap his hands in glee! In olden times, the Devil merely quoted scripture. Nowadays, with Mr. Gonzales’ assistance, he would simply create his own Holy Writ.

Spying on Americans

Along with Sen. Specter, I became disturbed about NSA spying, and suffered disappointment when nothing came of his rhetoric. All of this spying hasn’t turned up any real terrorists anywhere. Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield got an apology and a settlement of $2 Million after his home and office were sneak-searched by the FBI, and he was secretly interned at who-knows-what location. Fortunately he wasn’t sent to Syria, like poor Mr. El-Masri, and fortunately his lawsuit wasn’t filed in the Fourth Circuit, or he would have gotten nothing. Mr. Mayfield has received a measure of vindication. But where will our nation go to recover its honor?

Justifying the Abuse of National Security Letters

Now we have FBI Director Mueller tossing out mea culpas over the abuse of National Security Letters. Congress had an opportunity to return the nation to somewhat of the civil rights status quo when National Security Letter legislation was about to expire back at the end of 2005, but Congress renewed this power. The Dept of Justice fought and won a lawsuit that would’ve required a more detailed accounting of the FBI’s use of NSL’s, because the people are supposed to “trust.” Now we discover, no surprise, that trust has been grossly abused. As Congressman Barr said back in 2005:

“The beef with the NSLs is that they don't have even a pretense of judicial or impartial scrutiny. There's no checks and balances whatever on them. It is simply some bureaucrat's decision that they want information, and they can basically just go and get it.”

No surprise to discover that without judicial oversight, the bureaucrats have gone hog-wild. And please don’t tell me nobody has been harmed. Can you imagine the harm you would suffer, without even discovering the cause of the harm, if one of our “Men In Black” went to your employer, bank, business associates, local police, Internet service provider and cell phone company, and gave them a letter that required them to turn over your records? In a small town in Oregon, that could be the end of your business reputation, and you would never know why.

Discarding the Good Prosecutors, Keeping the Corruptible

Now, we have the newest scandal – the firing of seven – not just one, but seven US Attorneys. I have practiced in Federal Court for twenty years. US Attorneys are generally considered unassailable, and for good reason. Prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald make the nation proud, and cleanse the system of corruption, unless they are themselves purged. These seven US Attorneys who were fired are also just the tip of the iceberg. They are only the ones who fought the corrupting pressures that were brought to bear upon them! What tainted acts were others forced to commit in order to avoid losing their positions? And Mr. Gonzales calls it an “overblown personnel matter.” Well, speaking of personnel matters, it’s high time he received an exit interview!

Time for An Exit Interview

Mr. Gonzales has been at the helm next to our Chief Executive during six years of sailing ever farther into strange and hazardous waters. Congress must not stand idle while he pilots us even farther away from the safe harbor of justice and fair play. As my representative, and that of all Americans who are alert to the threats to our freedom and dignity as a nation “of laws, not men,” I implore you to call for Mr. Gonzales to resign his office immediately.


March 15 -- Today's Letter to Ron Wyden

I sent this email to Sen. Ron Wyden today. I am one of those who believes that, when you cannot achieve your goal directly, you proceed incrementally. That means that, in order to impeach Bush, we must destroy all of his foundations. Does anyone play chess? You don't give up the game because you can't checkmate immediately. You plan, you strategize, you penetrate the adversary's defenses, and you chip away at every vulnerability. What you do not do is rest. You work, and work, and work. That's how bad people win, and that's how good people win. Lazy people do not win. Don't be lazy. Write a letter to your Congresspersons and Senators. Make a phone call. And tell them “No campaign dollars until you perform your promises. Out of Iraq. Now.”

Please act with alacrity to get to the bottom of US Attorney-gate. Congress must subpoena former White House Counsel Harriet Myers to testify concerning her efforts to purge the entire United States attorney corps, and her conspiracy with Mr. Sampson to engage in a targeted campaign to destroy obstacles to vote manipulation. The claim that the discharged US Attorneys were unwilling to pursue “vote fraud” cases is as familiar as Jim Crow, the Poll Tax, and the KKK.

Let's face it, the Republicans, under the leadership of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, were trying to rig the 2008 election, by pursuing dirty tricks in crucial electoral states, in an effort to subvert the popular will. This was a “Plot Against America,” and you must either expose it, or allow it to continue.

Power-intoxicated criminals have their hands on the throat of the American people, and they will not rest, as the Declaration of Independence states, until we are “reduced to a state of absolute subjection.” The American people have already endured “a long train of abuses” aimed at achieving this repugnant goal.

Let us dig up the entire graveyard, and put the skeletons on view! Courage is required at this time, of course, but nothing like the courage our Founding Parents showed when they faced the wrath of George III. Think nothing for your career, and abandon diplomacy — this is the time for heroic action. Make a bet on freedom. Take a risk, and you will take the pot.

Keep your spirits up. The American people are behind all of your best impulses. You are a good man, and many of us are counting on you.

Very truly yours,
Charles Carreon
Attorney at Law
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Tue Oct 08, 2013 1:07 am

WHITE MAN'S LACK OF RHYTHM CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING, by Charles Carreon

04/08/07

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Global Warming is so yesterday. Let’s talk about Global Rhythm. All life is based on rhythm, and I don’t mean of the beat-box variety. The rhythm I’m talking about is what we might call Planetary Predictability. The sun rises every morning, the moon and the tides follow rhythms, and the seasons repeat themselves year after year. Rainfall, wind, and heat, alternate and blend rhythmically in what has become a relatively predictable pattern. That's all changing as the Earth's patterns are stretching, slipping, and falling apart altogether. The Earth, already warmed to perfection by the sun's rays, is being whipped into a fever by human carbon burning. As a result Earth is getting dizzy, missing some of her dance steps, and losing her sense of rhythm.

Unfortunately for us, even though our human lifestyles have evolved from hunting and gathering to herding and horticulture, to agribusiness and manufacturing, our current survival style is based on predictable seasonal patterns. Plants and animals can be knocked out of rhythm with devastating results by what seem like tiny changes in rainfall, temperature, prevailing winds, and ambient water conditions. Fish die out altogether simply because there's not enough water in the stream at spawning time, or it's too hot, too cold, too acid or to alkaline for fish eggs to survive. Caribou starve when they are unable to break through the ice covering their forage, that forms when warm days melt snow, and cold nights freeze it. Fishermen and caribou hunters are then forced to abandon their ancestral homes and livelihood. Even mechanized agribusiness will find it ever more difficult to power its way through the increased complexity of keeping the planet fed when the seasons come at the wrong time.

It’s not just a matter of things getting too hot. That might be the case if the planet were a simple system like a building with a cooling system, which when it goes down, will cause there to be more sweat on your beer bottle in the hotel bar. But the Earth is so much more complex than that, and the complexity of the Earth’s rhythms relates directly to the productivity of people and land. If the prices of producing products change too rapidly, markets will simply dry up. Agricultural businesses will stop producing very quickly if prices go out of whack, and even ordinary weather fluctuations cause commodity crises. Wait until crop yields start fluctuating radically due to changing seasonal rhythms. Being a farmer will be as exciting as playing video poker, and about as profitable.

Right now, the planet is being rocked out of rhythm by the excessive energy inputs of industry. I visualize the people responsible for the loss of Global Rhythm as some old white guys in Panama suits, drinking cold beer and mopping their brows, talking about the price of coffee and gold, oil and mercury, women and cocaine. I imagine these can-do guys calling the shots in mining and logging, fishing and ranching, dam construction and electrical generation, manufacturing junk, polluting skies and rivers, taking their cut of the gold, and leaving others waste. If they had been Martians, we would have recognized them as enemies of humanity and of Earth. They have controlled the industrial leviathan for nearly two centuries, and our nation now sits astride a collapsing planetary ecosystem and economy, the world's greatest energy hog, declaring that it will never change its ways.

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The acme of this folly is the way the Bush regime is flirting with Armageddon in a run-up to the Hundred Years’ Oil War, as if no life would be worth living without the black juice, as the makers of Road Warrior put it prophetically. A friend of mine once said he hated Road Warrior because it was utterly inane to imagine that people who were running out of gas would still be revving their engines and engaging in vehicular aggression. The more I look at the current situation in Iraq, the less this seems like a legitimate objection to the film.
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Tue Oct 08, 2013 1:16 am

PART 1 OF 2

KERIK, GIULIANI & BUSH -- LONGTIME PARTNERS IN CRIME, by Charles Carreon

04/29/07

On Why Both Giuliani and Bush Loved Bernard Kerik So Much

The Post-911 Star Couple


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As the obviousness of the WTC attack being an inside job dawns on many people, they are trying to figure out the membership of the 911 Cabal. I figure we might as well start right there at Ground Zero. Let's ask a few questions:

Who attempted to cast himself as a heroic Police Commissioner, even though everything went wrong on his watch, from the moment the planes hit the Trade Center Towers?

Who failed to secure any evidence or procure a single prosecution for the largest single mass homicide in US history?

Who built a secret hideaway where he could boff New York City police employees in a boudoir overlooking Ground Zero?

Who lied about having organized crime redecorate that love-nest for free?

Who stood ready to take the office of the head of Homeland Security?

Who went off to found a partnership with former Mayor Giuliani, to provide "security consulting?"

Who profited from the sale of TASER stock after flogging the product to police chiefs all over the country?

Bernard Kerik did all these things. And he did all of it working in close association with Republican Presidential Candidate Rudolph Giuliani.

Giuliani's Partner and Loyal Bushie

Recently, I discovered a little detail about Kerik's charmed life as a Republican Sleazoid -- aka, a "Bushie," according to Kyle Sampson, a guy who should know. I was reading about how the "Coalition Provisional Authority" in Iraq had turned into a summer camp for politically-correct Republicans, incapable of doing anything useful for Iraq, beyond promulgating inane, impractical policies. There, in the midst of the danger and privilege of the Green Zone, I spotted Kerik's bombastic profile, helping Bush inflate the Big Lie that we were rebuilding Iraq. So important was Kerik's work that on October 4, 2003, Bush told the nation in his morning radio address, that Iraqi police are "instructed by professionals like New York City's outstanding former police chief, Bernard Kerik." Talk about giving Iraq access to our nation's best people -- but what could he teach the Iraqis about graft and corruption that they didn't already know? Then again, maybe Bush didn't want to take any chances.

Painting Baghdad Red

Undoubtedly, Kerik reminisces fondly about the good old days in Baghdad. What did Kerik actually do in Iraq? At that time, Kerik was a partner at Giuliani-Kerik, LLC, that was collecting money from the Pentagon as a "security consultant. It turns out he spent his days sleeping, and his nights prowling around doing "raids" with "security forces" all night in Baghdad. Closely associated with organized crime in New York, Kerik decided to try his hand at hardassing organized crime in Baghdad, and formed a paramilitary unit for that purpose. Apparently, the crime scene wasn't all that promising, possibly because there's so much chaos in Baghdad even criminals can't get organized, because after a 90-day stint of kibitzing with other gun-toting tough guys, he blew the hell right out of town. Kerik's announcement was delivered completely without prior notice, at a meeting of local police chiefs in Baghdad's Convention Center. Explaining his behavior, Kerik said, "I did my own thing." One year later, Bush nominated Kerik to be Secretary of Homeland Security.

Flying Too Close To the Sun

Giuliani and Kerik -- what a star couple they were! How happy their association for so many years, until Bush, excited about the prospects for getting a genuine criminal to be the nation's top law enforcement officer, proposed a ménage a trois. Poor Kerik, who had the misfortune to catch the monarch's admiring gaze, drawing the dreaded Media Eye to focus on him, inciting reporters to dig until they found damning shit. Then the worm Giuliani had kept under wraps in the Big Rotten Apple crawled out and smiled. It was that darned old Italian Mafia, up to its corrupting ways again, and Kerik, who'd risen from being Giuliani's driver to having a ringside seat at 911, came plummeting down from the skies, another fat Icarus who flew too close to the sun. Surprisingly, it was one of those scandals that somehow passed most people by, as if they couldn't understand why having a criminal as the nation's head of security would be a bad idea. Then again, you can't blame people who watch TV too much. When Kerik said he was withdrawing his candidacy for the job because he'd failed to pay taxes on his immigrant nanny, there were actually news outlets that gave this story a full run, without sniggering. Soon thereafter, Giuliani kicked Kerik out of their security company, Giuliani & Kerik, LLC. Bush never said a bad word about Kerik, and didn't even try to explain how with all the spying on American citizens, his people couldn't even vet a resume for a Cabinet-level position. The "Decider" just turned away from the spectacle and let shit roll downhill.

The Henhouse Is Secure In Enemy Hands

It is often said of the Republicans that they are loyal. Being loyal to other gangsters is not a virtue. When we rate Bush and Giuliani, we must remember that they jointly endorsed Kerik as a candidate for Head of Homeland Security, and both overlooked Kerik's mob connections even as they sought to elevate him to the position of the nation's Top Cop. Giuliani had a hard time convincing a New York prosecutor that he really didn't know about Kerik's cozy friendships with the Gambino Crime Family. Why? For the same reason that they put foxes in charges of the henhouse everywhere -- to do PR and eat fried chicken!

Heroes of The Big Lie

Kerik is an aggressive bullshitter, the type of guy Bush and Giuliani rely on to get things done. Or rather, to get nothing done, when it comes to investigating 911, or rebuilding Iraq. If you think Kerik failed to do his job through incompetence, you misunderstand him, and Giuliani, and Bush. You would make a poor Republican. Kerik was a good Bushie because he remembered he was working for Bush at all times. It was his job to prop up fairy stories, to feed the public a flow of comforting tough-guy attitude. Regarding 911, he did a hero act that distracted people from pursuing any real investigation. Regarding Baghdad policing, he supplied phony evidence that security was getting a jumpstart in Iraq.

Let's Give This Man A Comeback!

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Kerik performed well, like Mike Chertoff, who ended up running Homeland Security and let New Orleans drown first and rot later, another Giuliani protege who received a warm welcome at the White House. Remember, Chertoff will still be there when Bush walks out, either due to impeachment or under his own power, ready for employment under the next President. Do you want four more years of Big Lies, patronage appointments, corruption and waste? You'll get them from Giuliani. And just imagine if Kerik, a loyal Bushie who has been unfairly convicted of crimes by the People of New York, scores a pardon from Bush. (Don't tell me Bernie won't ask!) Then Giuliani, put into office by a third Republican-rigged election, can bring Kerik back in from the cold, like Bush did to Admiral Poindexter, making him head of "Total Information Awareness." That would be comforting for fascists from Saudi Arabia to North Carolina, and might spark a boom in love-nest construction worldwide.

http://www.ragingblog.com


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Rudy Says Bye, Bye Bernie

Kerik, Amidst Investigation, Resigns From Giuliani Partners

NEW YORK, Dec. 22, 2004

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Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, right, gestures while he speaks with reporters as former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani looks on in this Nov. 7, 2003 file photo. (AP Photo)

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Rudy Giuliani, with President Bush at the Republican convention in New York, has apologized to the president for the scandal involving his close associate Bernard Kerik. (AP)

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Kerik, left, speaks after President Bush nominated him for Homeland Security Secretary. (AP)

(CBS/AP) Bernard Kerik and Rudy Giuliani have parted ways, at least in business. Kerik resigned late Wednesday afternoon from Giuliani Partners, the former mayor's local consulting firm. Giuliani says he accepted the resignation reluctantly.

Kerik, the former police commissioner of New York City and one-time Bush Cabinet nominee said at a news conference that he had apologized to Giuliani for being a distraction because of his messy withdrawal as a candidate to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Kerik had been CEO of Giuliani-Kerik LLC, an affiliate of Giuliani Partners LLC. In a statement Wednesday, Giuliani said Giuliani-Kerik would be renamed Giuliani Security & Safety.

Kerik said he told Giuliani his resignation would be effective immediately. He said he would seek other unspecified business opportunities, and did not take questions from reporters.

President Bush tapped Kerik, 49, earlier this month as his nominee for homeland security secretary, but Kerik abruptly withdrew his name Dec. 10 after revealing that he had not paid all required taxes for a family nanny-housekeeper and that the woman may have been in the country illegally.

He has been hit with other allegations as well, including that he had connections with people suspected of doing business with the mob and that he had simultaneous extramarital affairs with two women.

Kerik's nomination became a political embarrassment for Giuliani, a rising star in the GOP who had recommended his friend and business partner to Mr. Bush.

After leaving the police department in 2002, Kerik joined Giuliani Partners, becoming a security consultant and then signing on to help launch the Iraqi police force.

Giuliani Partners has advised business and government agencies on security, leadership and other issues. The consulting firm advised Trinidad in its battle against a rise in kidnappings and murders and was paid $4.3 million by Mexico City officials for advice on reducing crime there.

©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq

Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01

Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.

The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.

Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.

"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."

Endowed with $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds and a comparatively quiescent environment in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the CPA was the U.S. government's first and best hope to resuscitate Iraq -- to establish order, promote rebuilding and assemble a viable government, all of which, experts believe, would have constricted the insurgency and mitigated the chances of civil war. Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq -- training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation -- could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.

But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.

By the time Bremer departed in June 2004, Iraq was in a precarious state. The Iraqi army, which had been dissolved and refashioned by the CPA, was one-third the size he had pledged it would be. Seventy percent of police officers had not been screened or trained. Electricity generation was far below what Bremer had promised to achieve. And Iraq's interim government had been selected not by elections but by Americans. Divisive issues were to be resolved later on, increasing the chances that tension over those matters would fuel civil strife.

To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.

Smith said O'Beirne once pointed to a young man's résumé and pronounced him "an ideal candidate." His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.

O'Beirne, a former Army officer who is married to prominent conservative commentator Kate O'Beirne, did not respond to requests for comment.

He and his staff used an obscure provision in federal law to hire many CPA staffers as temporary political appointees, which exempted the interviewers from employment regulations that prohibit questions about personal political beliefs.

There were a few Democrats who wound up getting jobs with the CPA, but almost all of them were active-duty soldiers or State Department Foreign Service officers. Because they were career government employees, not temporary hires, O'Beirne's office could not query them directly about their political leanings.

One former CPA employee who had an office near O'Beirne's wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: "I watched résumés of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to 'the President's vision for Iraq' (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was 'uncertain.' I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors."

As more and more of O'Beirne's hires arrived in the Green Zone, the CPA's headquarters in Hussein's marble-walled former Republican Palace felt like a campaign war room. Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising President Bush were standard desk decorations. In addition to military uniforms and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" garb, "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirts were among the most common pieces of clothing.

"I'm not here for the Iraqis," one staffer noted to a reporter over lunch. "I'm here for George Bush."

When Gordon Robison, who worked in the Strategic Communications office, opened a care package from his mother to find a book by Paul Krugman, a liberal New York Times columnist, people around him stared. "It was like I had just unwrapped a radioactive brick," he recalled.

Finance Background Not Required

Twenty-four-year-old Jay Hallen was restless. He had graduated from Yale two years earlier, and he didn't much like his job at a commercial real-estate firm. His passion was the Middle East, and although he had never been there, he was intrigued enough to take Arabic classes and read histories of the region in his spare time.

He had mixed feelings about the war in Iraq, but he viewed the American occupation as a ripe opportunity. In the summer of 2003, he sent an e-mail to Reuben Jeffrey III, whom he had met when applying for a White House job a year earlier. Hallen had a simple query for Jeffrey, who was working as an adviser to Bremer: Might there be any job openings in Baghdad?

"Be careful what you wish for," Jeffrey wrote in response. Then he forwarded Hallen's resume to O'Beirne's office.

Three weeks later, Hallen got a call from the Pentagon. The CPA wanted him in Baghdad. Pronto. Could he be ready in three to four weeks?

The day he arrived in Baghdad, he met with Thomas C. Foley, the CPA official in charge of privatizing state-owned enterprises. (Foley, a major Republican Party donor, went to Harvard Business School with President Bush.) Hallen was shocked to learn that Foley wanted him to take charge of reopening the stock exchange.

"Are you sure?" Hallen said to Foley. "I don't have a finance background."

It's fine, Foley replied. He told Hallen that he was to be the project manager. He would rely on other people to get things done. He would be "the main point of contact."

Before the war, Baghdad's stock exchange looked nothing like its counterparts elsewhere in the world. There were no computers, electronic displays or men in colorful coats scurrying around on the trading floor. Trades were scrawled on pieces of paper and noted on large blackboards. If you wanted to buy or sell, you came to the exchange yourself and shouted your order to one of the traders. There was no air-conditioning. It was loud and boisterous. But it worked. Private firms raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling stock, and ordinary people learned about free enterprise.

The exchange was gutted by looters after the war. The first wave of American economic reconstruction specialists from the Treasury Department ignored it. They had bigger issues to worry about: paying salaries, reopening the banks, stabilizing the currency. But the brokers wanted to get back to work and investors wanted their money, so the CPA made the reopening a priority.

Quickly absorbing the CPA's ambition during the optimistic days before the insurgency flared, Hallen decided that he didn't just want to reopen the exchange, he wanted to make it the best, most modern stock market in the Arab world. He wanted to promulgate a new securities law that would make the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry, with its own bylaws and board of directors. He wanted to set up a securities and exchange commission to oversee the market. He wanted brokers to be licensed and listed companies to provide financial disclosures. He wanted to install a computerized trading and settlement system.

Iraqis cringed at Hallen's plan. Their top priority was reopening the exchange, not setting up computers or enacting a new securities law. "People are broke and bewildered," broker Talib Tabatabai told Hallen. "Why do you want to create enemies? Let us open the way we were."

Tabatabai, who held a doctorate in political science from Florida State University, believed Hallen's plan was unrealistic. "It was something so fancy, so great, that it couldn't be accomplished," he said.

But Hallen was convinced that major changes had to be enacted. "Their laws and regulations were completely out of step with the modern world," he said. "There was just no transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam and his friends to buy up private companies that they otherwise didn't have a stake in."

Opening the stock exchange without legal and structural changes, Hallen maintained, "would have been irresponsible and short-sighted."

To help rewrite the securities law, train brokers and purchase the necessary computers, Hallen recruited a team of American volunteers. In the spring of 2004, Bremer approved the new law and simultaneously appointed the nine Iraqis selected by Hallen to become the exchange's board of governors.

The exchange's board selected Tabatabai as its chairman. The new securities law that Hallen had nursed into life gave the board control over the exchange's operations, but it didn't say a thing about the role of the CPA adviser. Hallen assumed that he'd have a part in decision-making until the handover of sovereignty. Tabatabai and the board, however, saw themselves in charge.

Tabatabai and the other governors decided to open the market as soon as possible. They didn't want to wait several more months for the computerized trading system to be up and running. They ordered dozens of dry-erase boards to be installed on the trading floor. They used such boards to keep track of buying and selling prices before the war, and that's how they'd do it again.

The exchange opened two days after Hallen's tour in Iraq ended. Brokers barked orders to floor traders, who used their trusty white boards. Transactions were recorded not with computers but with small chits written in ink. CPA staffers stayed away, afraid that their presence would make the stock market a target for insurgents.

When Tabatabai was asked what would have happened if Hallen hadn't been assigned to reopen the exchange, he smiled. "We would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but those ideas did not materialize," Tabatabai said of Hallen. "Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia."

'Loyalist' Replaces Public Health Expert

The hiring of Bremer's most senior advisers was settled upon at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon. Some, like Foley, were personally recruited by Bush. Others got their jobs because an influential Republican made a call on behalf of a friend or trusted colleague.

That's what happened with James K. Haveman Jr., who was selected to oversee the rehabilitation of Iraq's health care system.

Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.

Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.

Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.

He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government."

But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the president.

Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities. He liked to talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached problems the way a health care administrator in America would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment.

He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team -- who turned out to be a closet smoker himself -- to lead the public education effort. Several members of Haveman's staff noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their daily lives than tobacco. The CPA's limited resources, they argued, would be better used raising awareness about how to prevent childhood diarrhea and other fatal maladies.

Haveman didn't like the idea that medical care in Iraq was free. He figured Iraqis should pay a small fee every time they saw a doctor. He also decided to allocate almost all of the Health Ministry's $793 million share of U.S. reconstruction funds to renovating maternity hospitals and building new community medical clinics. His intention, he said, was "to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you don't get health care unless you go to a hospital."

But his decision meant there were no reconstruction funds set aside to rehabilitate the emergency rooms and operating theaters at Iraqi hospitals, even though injuries from insurgent attacks were the country's single largest public health challenge.

Haveman also wanted to apply American medicine to other parts of the Health Ministry. Instead of trying to restructure the dysfunctional state-owned firm that imported and distributed drugs and medical supplies to hospitals, he decided to try to sell it to a private company.

To prepare it for a sale, he wanted to attempt something he had done in Michigan. When he was the state's director of community health, he sought to slash the huge amount of money Michigan spent on prescription drugs for the poor by limiting the medications doctors could prescribe for Medicaid patients. Unless they received an exemption, physicians could only prescribe drugs that were on an approved list, known as a formulary.

Haveman figured the same strategy could bring down the cost of medicine in Iraq. The country had 4,500 items on its drug formulary. Haveman deemed it too large. If private firms were going to bid for the job of supplying drugs to government hospitals, they needed a smaller, more manageable list. A new formulary would also outline new requirements about where approved drugs could be manufactured, forcing Iraq to stop buying medicines from Syria, Iran and Russia, and start buying from the United States.

He asked the people who had drawn up the formulary in Michigan whether they wanted to come to Baghdad. They declined. So he beseeched the Pentagon for help. His request made its way to the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center in San Antonio.

A few weeks later, three formulary experts were on their way to Iraq.

The group was led by Theodore Briski, a balding, middle-aged pharmacist who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Haveman's order, as Briski remembered it, was: "Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home." By his second day in Iraq, Briski came to three conclusions. First, the existing formulary "really wasn't that bad." Second, his mission was really about "redesigning the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was a complete change of scope -- on a grand scale." Third, Haveman and his advisers "really didn't know what they were doing."

Haveman "viewed Iraq as Michigan after a huge attack," said George Guszcza, an Army captain who worked on the CPA's health team. "Somehow if you went into the ghettos and projects of Michigan and just extended it out for the entire state -- that's what he was coming to save."

Haveman's critics, including more than a dozen people who worked for him in Baghdad, contend that rewriting the formulary was a distraction. Instead, they said, the CPA should have focused on restructuring, but not privatizing, the drug-delivery system and on ordering more emergency shipments of medicine to address shortages of essential medicines. The first emergency procurement did not occur until early 2004, after the Americans had been in Iraq for more than eight months.

Haveman insisted that revising the formulary was a crucial first step in improving the distribution of medicines. "It was unwieldy to order 4,500 different drugs, and to test and distribute them," he said.

When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad's hospitals were as decrepit as the day the Americans arrived. At Yarmouk Hospital, the city's largest, rooms lacked the most basic equipment to monitor a patient's blood pressure and heart rate, operating theaters were without modern surgical tools and sterile implements, and the pharmacy's shelves were bare.

Nationwide, the Health Ministry reported that 40 percent of the 900 drugs it deemed essential were out of stock in hospitals. Of the 32 medicines used in public clinics for the management of chronic diseases, 26 were unavailable.

The new health minister, Aladin Alwan, beseeched the United Nations for help, and he asked neighboring nations to share what they could. He sought to increase production at a state-run manufacturing plant in the city of Samarra. And he put the creation of a new formulary on hold. To him, it was a fool's errand.

"We didn't need a new formulary. We needed drugs," he said. "But the Americans did not understand that."

A 9/11 Hero's Public Relations Blitz

In May 2003, a team of law enforcement experts from the Justice Department concluded that more than 6,600 foreign advisers were needed to help rehabilitate Iraq's police forces.

The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik.

Bernard Kerik had more star power than Bremer and everyone else in the CPA combined. Soldiers stopped him in the halls of the Republican Palace to ask for his autograph or, if they had a camera, a picture. Reporters were more interested in interviewing him than they were the viceroy.

Kerik had been New York City's police commissioner when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. His courage (he shouted evacuation orders from a block away as the south tower collapsed), his stamina (he worked around the clock and catnapped in his office for weeks), and his charisma (he was a master of the television interview) turned him into a national hero. When White House officials were casting about for a prominent individual to take charge of Iraq's Interior Ministry and assume the challenge of rebuilding the Iraqi police, Kerik's name came up. Bush pronounced it an excellent idea.

Kerik had worked in the Middle East before, as the security director for a government hospital in Saudi Arabia, but he was expelled from the country amid a government investigation into his surveillance of the medical staff. He lacked postwar policing experience, but the White House viewed that as an asset.

Veteran Middle East hands were regarded as insufficiently committed to the goal of democratizing the region. Post-conflict experts, many of whom worked for the State Department, the United Nations or nongovernmental organizations, were deemed too liberal. Men such as Kerik -- committed Republicans with an accomplished career in business or government -- were ideal. They were loyal, and they shared the Bush administration's goal of rebuilding Iraq in an American image. With Kerik, there were bonuses: The media loved him, and the American public trusted him.

Robert Gifford, a State Department expert in international law enforcement, was one of the first CPA staff members to meet Kerik when he arrived in Baghdad. Gifford was the senior adviser to the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the police. Kerik was to take over Gifford's job.

"I understand you are going to be the man, and we are here to support you," Gifford told Kerik.

"I'm here to bring more media attention to the good work on police because the situation is probably not as bad as people think it is," Kerik replied.

As they entered the Interior Ministry office in the palace, Gifford offered to brief Kerik. "It was during that period I realized he wasn't with me," Gifford recalled. "He didn't listen to anything. He hadn't read anything except his e-mails. I don't think he read a single one of our proposals."

Kerik wasn't a details guy. He was content to let Gifford figure out how to train Iraqi officers to work in a democratic society. Kerik would take care of briefing the viceroy and the media. And he'd be going out for a few missions himself.

Kerik's first order of business, less than a week after he arrived, was to give a slew of interviews saying the situation was improving. He told the Associated Press that security in Baghdad "is not as bad as I thought. Are bad things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it getting better? Yes." He went on NBC's "Today" show to pronounce the situation "better than I expected." To Time magazine, he said that "people are starting to feel more confident. They're coming back out. Markets and shops that I saw closed one week ago have opened."

When it came to his own safety, Kerik took no chances. He hired a team of South African bodyguards, and he packed a 9mm handgun under his safari vest.

The first months after liberation were a critical period for Iraq's police. Officers needed to be called back to work and screened for Baath Party connections. They'd have to learn about due process, how to interrogate without torture, how to walk the beat. They required new weapons. New chiefs had to be selected. Tens of thousands more officers would have to be hired to put the genie of anarchy back in the bottle.

Kerik held only two staff meetings while in Iraq, one when he arrived and the other when he was being shadowed by a New York Times reporter, according to Gerald Burke, a former Massachusetts State Police commander who participated in the initial Justice Department assessment mission. Despite his White House connections, Kerik did not secure funding for the desperately needed police advisers. With no help on the way, the task of organizing and training Iraqi officers fell to U.S. military police soldiers, many of whom had no experience in civilian law enforcement.

"He was the wrong guy at the wrong time," Burke said later. "Bernie didn't have the skills. What we needed was a chief executive-level person. . . . Bernie came in with a street-cop mentality."

Kerik authorized the formation of a hundred-man Iraqi police paramilitary unit to pursue criminal syndicates that had formed since the war, and he often joined the group on nighttime raids, departing the Green Zone at midnight and returning at dawn, in time to attend Bremer's senior staff meeting, where he would crack a few jokes, describe the night's adventures and read off the latest crime statistics prepared by an aide. The unit did bust a few kidnapping gangs and car-theft rings, generating a stream of positive news stories that Kerik basked in and Bremer applauded. But the all-nighters meant Kerik wasn't around to supervise the Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping.

Several members of the CPA's Interior Ministry team wanted to blow the whistle on Kerik, but they concluded any complaints would be brushed off. "Bremer's staff thought he was the silver bullet," a member of the Justice Department assessment mission said. "Nobody wanted to question the [man who was] police chief during 9/11."

Kerik contended that he did his best in what was, ultimately, an untenable situation. He said he wasn't given sufficient funding to hire foreign police advisers or establish large-scale training programs.

Three months after he arrived, Kerik attended a meeting of local police chiefs in Baghdad's Convention Center. When it was his turn to address the group, he stood and bid everyone farewell. Although he had informed Bremer of his decision a few days earlier, Kerik hadn't told most of the people who worked for him. He flew out of Iraq a few hours later.

"I was in my own world," he said later. "I did my own thing."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company


________________________________________


President Nominates Bernard Kerik as Secretary of Homeland Security

by http://www.Whitehouse.gov

The Roosevelt Room

9:54 A.M. EST

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President George W. Bush announces his nomination of Bernard B. Kerik, the New York police commissioner during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as the new Department of Homeland Security Secretary in the Roosevelt Room Friday, Dec. 3, 2004. White House photo by Tina Hager

Image
President George W. Bush announces his nomination of Bernard B. Kerik, the New York police commissioner during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as the new Department of Homeland Security Secretary in the Roosevelt Room Friday, Dec. 3, 2004. White House photo by Tina Hager

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. I'm proud to announce my nomination of Commissioner Bernard Kerik as the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Bernie Kerik is one of the most accomplished and effective leaders of law enforcement in America. In his career, he has served as an enlisted military police officer in Korea, a jail warden in New Jersey, a beat cop in Manhattan, New York City corrections commissioner, and as New York's 40th police commissioner -- an office once held by Teddy Roosevelt. In every position, he has demonstrated a deep commitment to justice, a heart for the innocent, and a record of great success.

I'm grateful he's agreed to bring his lifetime of security experience and skill to one of the most important positions in the federal government. Bernie is a dedicated, innovative reformer who insists on getting results. As the head of New York City jails, he cut inmate violence by more than 90 percent. As Mayor Rudy Giuliani's police commissioner, he had great success in reducing crime in New York City. His broad, practical, hands-on experience makes Bernie superbly qualified to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

When confirmed by the Senate, Bernie Kerik will build on the historic accomplishments of Secretary Tom Ridge. As the Department's first leader, Tom oversaw the large reorganization -- the largest reorganization of the government in nearly a half-century. He met urgent challenges with patience and purpose, and because of his service our country is safer.

Tom also carried out his duties with skill and honesty and decency. He's been my friend for more than 20 years. He is one of the great public servants of our generation. Tom Ridge has our nation's gratitude, he's got my gratitude, and I wish he and Michele all the best.

My nominee to succeed Secretary Ridge has the background and the passion that are needed to protect our citizens. As police commissioner on September the 11th, 2001, Bernie Kerik arrived at the World Trade Center minutes after the first plane hit. He was there when the Twin Towers collapsed. He knew the faces of the rescuers who rushed toward danger. He attended the funeral of the officers who didn't come back. Bernie Kerik understands the duties that came to America on September the 11th. The resolve he felt that morning will guide him every day on his job. And every first responder defending our homeland will have a faithful ally in Bernie Kerik.

As he prepares for new responsibility, Bernie Kerik has the love and support of his family: his wife, Hala; his children, Joseph, Celine and Angelina and Lisa. He will always be inspired by his father and hero, Donald Kerik, Sr., and his caring step-mother, Clara. Bernard Kerik has devoted his life to protecting his fellow citizens, and his example has led many others to take up that calling. He loves his country. He has gained the trust and admiration of millions. I call on the Senate to promptly confirm his nomination as the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Thank you for serving, Bernie, and congratulations.

MR. KERIK: Mr. President, thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir.

MR. KERIK: Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President. I am deeply honored and humbled by the opportunity to serve you and this great country. You have been a strong, effective and inspirational leader in the war for freedom and against terror. Should I receive the consent of the Senate, I will devote every power I possess toward fulfilling the vital mission you have set before me and the Department of Homeland Security.

I will be particularly honored, if confirmed, to accept the torch passed from Secretary Tom Ridge, a decorated veteran, faithful public servant, and courageous trail blazer who stood at the helm of the largest reorganization of our federal government in 50 years. Our nation is truly safer because of Secretary Ridge and his tireless efforts.

To all the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security and to their partners in the federal, state, and the local government -- especially the police officers, the firefighters, the emergency medical technicians, and all other first responders -- it is your skill, sacrifice and dedication that has made the lives of all Americans more secure. You have my respect, my admiration, and I look forward to the opportunity to join with you in protecting the nation we all love.

Mr. President, I understand, as you do, the tremendous challenge that faces America in securing our nation and its citizens from the threat of terrorism. And I know what is at stake. On September 11, 2001, I witnessed firsthand the very worst of humanity, and its very best. I saw hatred claim the lives of 2,400 innocent people, and I saw the bravest men and women I will ever know rescue more than 20,000 others. There isn't a day that has passed since the morning of September 11th that I haven't thought of the sacrifices of those heroes and the losses we all suffered. I promise you, Mr. President, that both the memory of those courageous souls and the horrors I saw inflicted upon our proud nation will serve as permanent reminders of the awesome responsibility you place in my charge. I pledge to work tirelessly to honor them, and your trust in me.

I would like to thank and recognize those whose love, support and sacrifice have brought me to this day -- most particularly my wife, Hala; my children, Celine, Angelina, Joseph and Lisa; and my friend and mentor Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. I would also like to express my gratitude to the dedicated men and women of the New York City Police and Correction Departments and the many other law enforcement agencies with whom it was my honor and privilege to serve. It is you and our great country that made it possible for a young boy raised on the modest streets of Patterson, New Jersey, whose dream was to become a cop, to stand today at the side of the President of the United States and accept this extraordinary nomination.

Mr. President, thank you again for this tremendous opportunity and your confidence in me.

THE PRESIDENT: Good job. Thank you, sir.

MR. KERIK: Thank you, thank you.

END 10:01 A.M. EST
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PART 2 OF 2 (KERIK, GIULIANI & BUSH)

Why Did Bernard Kerik Really Bow Out?

Bernard Kerik may have a nanny problem. But is that the only reason he’s bowed out of the Homeland Security job?

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President Bush announces Kerik’s nomination

By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Updated: 11:59 p.m. PT Dec 18, 2004

Dec. 11 - It’s hard to know what was the last straw. Ever since President Bush announced on Dec. 3 that Bernard Kerik was his choice to replace Tom Ridge as Secretary of Homeland Security, official circles in Washington and New York have been buzzing with stories about Kerik’s potential liabilities. A hard-charging former New York City police commissioner, Kerik made many enemies and seemed to be dogged by minor scandals. He was a rags-to-riches story whose climb may have been a little too precipitous; in any case, his tangled personal life caught up with him.

On Friday night, Kerik abruptly informed the White House that he was withdrawing from the nominating process, citing potential problems with the immigration and tax status of a former nanny. “I am convinced that, for personal reasons, moving forward would not be in the best interests of your administration, the Department of Homeland Security or the American people,” Kerik said in a letter to President Bush.

But there may have been other issues at play. Kerik, who recently made millions in the private sector, once filed for personal bankruptcy as a New York cop. And just five years ago he was in financial trouble over a condominium he owned in New Jersey. More serious trouble than anyone realized: NEWSWEEK has discovered that a New Jersey judge in 1998 had issued an arrest warrant as part of a convoluted series of lawsuits relating to unpaid bills on his condo. The magazine faxed documents, including the arrest warrant, over to the White House around 6:00 p.m. Friday, asking for comment. Neither Kerik nor the White House had any immediate response. At 8:30 p.m., Kerik had submitted his letter to the president.

Sources close to Kerik and the White House insist the arrest warrant was not the reason Kerik withdrew. The immediate cause was the nanny problem, the sources say, the same issue that took down Bill Clinton’s nomination of Zoe Baird to be Attorney General in 1993. Kerik explained to the White House that while he was preparing documents for his Senate confirmation hearings, he uncovered information “that now leads me,” he wrote, “to question the immigration status” of someone he had been employing as a housekeeper and nanny. For a period of time, Kerik reported, “required tax payments and related filings had not been made.” According to a Kerik associate, having this kind of nanny problem would have been untenable for the head of the Homeland Security department, which oversees the government's immigration agencies.

The lawsuit relating to Kerik’s apartment stems from his failure to pay maintenance fees. A court found that Kerik owed about $5,000 on the unit. When Kerik failed to comply with a subpoena related to the unpaid bill, a judge on Aug. 24, 1998 issued a warrant for Kerik’s arrest. It is unclear whether the warrant was ever served or withdrawn. Court computer records indicate that the lawsuit remains open, but there was some confusion on Friday over the location of the full record.

Kerik was also coming under close scrutiny for his windfall profit from stock options in Taser International, a company that makes high-voltage stun guns. He netted more than $6 million on the options, without ever having invested any of his own money. Kerik joined the Taser board after leaving his police commissioner’s job in 2002 . New York City was a purchaser of the stun guns, as was the Department of Homeland Security. Kerik sold the stock in early November, shortly before an Amnesty International report charged that there had been more than 70 Taser-related deaths since 2001.

Kerik's biggest booster for the job was former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani. Last night, an aide to Guiliani told NEWSWEEK that Kerik had made "the proper judgment" to withdraw.

With Kathryn Williams[/quote]


________________________________________

Ex-NYPD Commissioner Admits Guilt

Bernard Kerik Pleads Guilty To Accepting $165,000 Worth Of Gifts

NEW YORK, June 30, 2006

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Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik pleaded guilty on June 30, 2006, to charges that he accepted tens of thousands of dollars in gifts. (AP Photo)

"The last year and a half has been a tremendous burden. But today it's over. Now I can get on with my business." Bernard Kerik


(AP) A year and a half after his Homeland Security nomination sank over ethics questions, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik pleaded guilty Friday to charges of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in gifts while he was a top city official.

Kerik was convicted on a pair of misdemeanors in a deal that spared him any jail time. He instead was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines at the 10-minute hearing.

Kerik acknowledged accepting $165,000 worth of renovations on his Bronx apartment from a company attempting to do business with the city — a New Jersey construction firm with alleged links to the mob. He also admitted failing to report a loan as required by city law.

The plea bargain allows Kerik to continue his new career as a security consultant in the Middle East.

Prosecutors had considered bringing felony bribery charges against him based on allegations that in exchange for the renovations he helped the company, Interstate Industrial Corp., seek business with the city.

In entering his plea, Kerik admitted speaking with city officials about Interstate but never acknowledged a link between the renovations and his support of the company. Outside court, Kerik showed no sign of remorse and offered no apology.

"The last year and a half has been a tremendous burden," Kerik said. "But today it's over. Now I can get on with my business."

Through his attorney, Kerik had previously denied any wrongdoing, saying that he paid every bill he received for the job — about $30,000 — and that he never intervened for Interstate.

The home, bought in 1999 for $170,000, sold in 2002 for $460,000 after real estate advertisements described it as a "gem" adorned with marble and granite.

Kerik first drew national attention while leading the Police Department's response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks. By late 2004, President Bush wanted him for homeland security chief, but he withdrew after acknowledging he had not paid all taxes for a family nanny-housekeeper and that the woman may have been in the country illegally.

More problems surfaced last year when the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement filed court papers seeking to revoke Interstate Industrial's license to work on casinos in Atlantic City. The papers cited testimony by mob turncoats that owners Frank and Peter DiTommaso were associates of the Gambino organized crime family.

The civil complaint also detailed Kerik's cozy relationship with an Interstate official. In 1999, he sent a series of e-mails to the official that "indicated his lack of sufficient funds to both purchase and renovate his new Bronx apartment" and "indicated he would provide information to Frank DiTommaso regarding New York City contracts," the papers said.

In recent months, a grand jury has heard conflicting testimony from the DiTommaso brothers — who denied paying for the renovations — and from a contractor who said they picked up most of the tab. Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a close friend of Kerik and his one-time boss, also testified.

Giuliani said Friday that the guilty pleas do not diminish Kerik's accomplishments.

"This should be evaluated in light of his service to the United States of America and the City of New York," Giuliani said in a statement.

©MMVI, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.



________________________________________


People-Picking Problems For Rudy?

American Prospect: Kerik, Chertoff Could Hurt Rudy Giuliani In 2008

February 15, 2006

by Greg Sargent.

Image
Rudy Giuliani was the voice of reason and calm after the 9/11 terror attacks. (AP)

"It's not an overstatement to say that Giuliani wants audiences to see him as nothing less than the primary living, breathing embodiment of the city's — and the country's — ability to rally after the Twin Towers disaster."


What do Bernard Kerik and Michael Chertoff have in common?

Both have proven to be disastrous choices to head the Department of Homeland Security. But that's not the only thing they share. Both were enthusiastically championed for this all-important post by Rudolph Giuliani.

As it happens, Giuliani was largely responsible for putting each man on the political map and helping launch their careers. Kerik was once Giuliani's driver. Giuliani subsequently made him his city corrections chief and, eventually, his top cop. Kerik's 2004 nomination as Homeland Security chief was aggressively pushed by Giuliani, which helped persuade Bush to take a flyer on nominating him. We all remember how well that turned out. Kerik's nomination promptly imploded after a host of ethical and financial problems surfaced, and Giuliani subsequently had to apologize to the president.

Chertoff, too, owes a great deal to Giuliani. When the former mayor was U.S. Attorney in the 1980s, he hired Chertoff as a prosecutor and mentored him. Chertoff sent a bunch of wise guys to the slammer, effectively launching his career, and last year, Giuliani was gung-ho about the choice of Chertoff for head of Homeland Security.

Now Republicans in the House are about to launch a searing report about Katrina that demonstrates that the choice of Chertoff has been nothing short of disastrous. As yesterday's Times puts it, Chertoff "drew some of the most scathing criticism in the report" for failing to anticipate the damage the storm would do and failing to determine rapidly that the storm had breached a major levee.

Is Giuliani to blame for Chertoff? Not really. After the Kerik fiasco, Giuliani understandably didn't appear to play a role in the selection of Chertoff. Still, Giuliani wholeheartedly endorsed Chertoff. As he told the Houston Chronicle at the time: "Having already assumed a great deal of responsibility in the investigations of al Qaeda, Michael Chertoff has made clear his commitment to keeping America safe. He'll be a superb Department of Homeland Security secretary."

The fact that Giuliani championed both these men for this job should tell us something about his judgment. His presidential campaign, assuming he runs, will rest largely on the same rationale that transformed him into a national figure to begin with: He led New York in the aftermath of September 11. If you think Bush's reliance on Sept. 11 is a tad over-the-top, wait until you see Giuliani in action. He's given many, many speeches since leaving office, and in them, he likes to urge his audiences to remember Sept. 11. What Giuliani really means by this, of course, is that audiences shouldn't forget his performance in the aftermath of that day. It's not an overstatement to say that Giuliani wants audiences to see him as nothing less than the primary living, breathing embodiment of the city's — and the country's — ability to rally after the Twin Towers disaster.

Now, however, thanks to the implosion of Kerik and the immense failure of Chertoff, these audiences may end up remembering something else about Giuliani. It's clear that the mere fact that Rudy happened to be mayor that day — and his undeniably admirable performance after the attack — has not translated into an ability to recognize in people the qualities needed to carry out the job of protecting the homeland from all manner of catastrophes, man-made and otherwise. Being able to pick the right person for a job as important as this one is, of course, a rather crucial trait in a president. Giuliani's 2008 primary foes will likely do all they can to make sure that audiences don't forget this.

There's a larger point here. Both Bush and Rudy chose Kerik, and now Chertoff, largely because of one reason: They appeared to see the nature of the terrorist threat in exactly the same light as Bush did. Kerik was police commissioner on 9-11, and supposedly bonded with Bush atop the smoking rubble; Chertoff, as assistant attorney general, was widely criticized for helping implement the Bush administration's policy of rounding up hundreds of Arab and South Asian men without charges for months after the disaster.

In both cases, that narrow way of evaluating a potential head of Homeland Security led Bush, and Rudy, to overlook the enormous flaws these two men possessed — in Kerik's case, his many ethical problems, and in Chertoff's case, his well-known lack of managerial experience. Clearly, then, a willingness to see the terrorist threat as a dire one is hardly by itself a guarantor of success in a Homeland Security chief or, for that matter, in a president. If Republicans — and the rest of us — keep that in mind in 2008, that could bode ill for a man who's all but certain to try to sell himself as presidential material largely on the basis of his actions in the aftermath of that terrible day.

Greg Sargent, a contributing editor at New York magazine, writes bi-weekly for The American Prospect Online. He can be reached at greg_sargent@newyorkmag.com.



________________________________________


Former NYPD Chief Kerik Pleads Guilty to Accepting Gifts in Bribery Probe

Friday, June 30, 2006

Associated Press

More than 18 months after his Homeland Security nomination sank over ethics questions, former police commissioner Bernard Kerik pleaded guilty Friday to accepting tens of thousands of dollars in gifts while he was a top city official.

Kerik pleaded guilty to a pair of misdemeanors in state Supreme Court in the Bronx in a deal that spared him any jail time. Kerik was instead ordered to pay a total of $221,000 in fines at the 10-minute hearing.

Kerik acknowledged accepting $165,000 worth of renovations on his Bronx apartment from a company attempting to do business with the city — a New Jersey construction firm with alleged links to the mob. And he admitted failing to report a loan as required by city law.

The plea bargain allows Kerik to continue his new career as a security consultant in the Middle East.

Prosecutors had considered bringing felony bribery charges against Kerik based on allegations that in exchange for the renovations he helped the company, Interstate Industrial Corp., seek business with the city.

Through his attorney, Kerik had previously denied any wrongdoing, saying that he paid every bill he received for the job — about $30,000 — and that he never intervened for Interstate. The home, bought in 1999 for $170,000, sold in 2002 for $460,000 after real estate advertisements described it as a "gem" adorned with marble and granite.

Kerik first drew national attention while leading the New York Police Department's response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks. By late 2004, President Bush wanted him for homeland security chief, but he withdrew after acknowledging he had not paid all taxes for a family nanny-housekeeper and that the woman may have been in the country illegally.

More problems surfaced last year when the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement filed court papers seeking to revoke Interstate Industrial's license to work on casinos in Atlantic City. The papers cited testimony by mob turncoats that owners Frank and Peter DiTommaso were associates of the Gambino organized crime family.

The civil complaint also detailed Kerik's cozy relationship with an Interstate official. In 1999, he sent a series of e-mails to the official that "indicated his lack of sufficient funds to both purchase and renovate his new Bronx apartment" and "indicated he would provide information to Frank DiTommaso regarding New York City contracts," the papers said.

In recent months, a grand jury in the Bronx has heard conflicting testimony from the DiTommaso brothers — who denied paying for the renovations — and from a contractor who said they picked up most of the tab. Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a close friend of Kerik, also testified.




________________________________________


Pentagon plans cyber-surveillance system

Anti-terror tool would expand access to data

Robert O'Harrow Jr., Washington Post

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

A new Pentagon research office has started designing a global computer surveillance system to give U.S. counter-terrorism officials access to government and commercial databases around the world.

The Information Awareness Office, run by former national security adviser John Poindexter, aims to develop new technologies to sift through "ultra-large" data warehouses and networked computers in search of threatening patterns among everyday transactions, such as credit card purchases and travel reservations, according to interviews and documents.

Authorities already have access to a wealth of information about individual terrorists, but they typically have to obtain court approval in the United States or make laborious diplomatic and intelligence efforts overseas.

The system proposed by Poindexter and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at about $200 million a year, would be able to sweep up and analyze data in a much more systematic way. It would provide a more detailed look at data than the super-secret National Security Agency now has, the former Navy admiral said.

"How are we going to find terrorists and pre-empt them, except by following their trail?" asked Poindexter, who brought the idea to the Pentagon after the Sept. 11 attacks and now is beginning to award contracts to high-technology vendors.

"The problem is much more complex, I believe, than we've faced before," he said. "It's how do we harness with technology the street smarts of people on the ground, on a global scale."

Though formidable foreign policy and privacy hurdles remain before any prototype becomes operational, the initiative shows how far the government has come in its willingness to use information technology and expanded surveillance authorities in the war on terrorism.

Poindexter said it would take years to realize his vision, but the office has already begun providing some technology to government agencies. For example, Poindexter recently agreed to help the FBI build its data warehousing system. He's also spoken to the Transportation Security Administration about aiding its development of a large-scale passenger profiling system.

In his first interview since he started the "information awareness" program, Poindexter, who figured prominently in the Iran-Contra scandal more than a decade ago, said the systems under development would, among other things, help analysts search randomly for indications of travel to risky areas, suspicious e-mails, odd fund transfers and improbable medical activity, such as the treatments of anthrax sores. Much of the data would be collected through computer "appliances" -- some mixture of hardware and software -- that would, with permission of governments and businesses, enable intelligence agencies to routinely extract information.

Some specialists question whether the technology Poindexter envisions is even feasible, given the immense amount of data it would handle. Others question whether it is diplomatically possible, given the sensitivities about privacy around the world. But many agree, if implemented as planned, it probably would be the largest data surveillance system ever built.

EXPERT VOICES DOUBTS

Paul Werbos, a computing and artificial-intelligence specialist at the National Science Foundation, doubted whether such "appliances" could be calibrated to adequately filter out details about innocent people that should not be in the hands of the government. "By definition, they're going to send highly sensitive, private personal data," he said. "How many innocent people are going to get falsely pinged? How many terrorists are going to slip through?"

Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, a member of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, said there was no question about the need to use data more effectively. But he criticized the scope of Poindexter's program, calling it "total overkill of intelligence" and a potentially "huge waste of money."

'ORWELLIAN CONCEPT'

"There's an Orwellian concept if I've ever heard one," Hart said when told about the program.

Poindexter said any operational system would include safeguards to govern the collection of information. He said rules built into the software would identify users, create an audit trail and govern the information that is available. But he added that his mission was to develop the technology, not the policy. It would be up to Congress and policymakers to debate the issue and establish the limits that would make the system politically acceptable.

"We can develop the best technology in the world, and unless there is public acceptance and understanding of the necessity, it will never be implemented," he said. "We're just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy."

POINDEXTER'S COMEBACK

Getting the Defense Department job is something of a comeback for Poindexter. A former national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan, he was convicted in 1990 of five felony counts of lying to Congress, destroying official documents and obstructing congressional inquiries into the Iran-contra affair, which involved the secret sale of arms to Iran in the mid- 1980s and diversion of profits to help the contra rebels in Nicaragua.



________________________________________


The Long Run -- In Matters Big and Small, Crossing Giuliani Had Price

January 22, 2008

By MICHAEL POWELL and RUSS BUETTNER, New York Times

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Mark Green, left, the former public advocate, with Rudolph Giuliani in December 2000. The two men often clashed, and in 1999, Mr. Giuliani attempted to rewrite the City Charter to prevent Mr. Green from succeeding him as mayor.

Rudolph W. Giuliani likens himself to a boxer who never takes a punch without swinging back. As mayor, he made the vengeful roundhouse an instrument of government, clipping anyone who crossed him.

In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani’s radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. When the call yielded no results, Mr. Schillaci turned to The Daily News, which then ran a photo of the red light and this front page headline: “GOTCHA!”

That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci’s doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not.

They slapped on handcuffs and took him to court on a 13-year-old traffic warrant. A judge threw out the charge. A police spokeswoman later read Mr. Schillaci’s decades-old criminal rap sheet to a reporter for The Daily News, a move of questionable legality because the state restricts how such information is released. She said, falsely, that he had been convicted of sodomy.

Then Mr. Giuliani took up the cudgel.

“Mr. Schillaci was posing as an altruistic whistle-blower,” the mayor told reporters at the time. “Maybe he’s dishonest enough to lie about police officers.”

Mr. Schillaci suffered an emotional breakdown, was briefly hospitalized and later received a $290,000 legal settlement from the city. “It really damaged me,” said Mr. Schillaci, now 60, massaging his face with thick hands. “I thought I was doing something good for once, my civic duty and all. Then he steps on me.”

Mr. Giuliani was a pugilist in a city of political brawlers. But far more than his predecessors, historians and politicians say, his toughness edged toward ruthlessnessand became a defining aspect of his mayoralty. One result: New York City spent at least $7 million in settling civil rights lawsuits and paying retaliatory damages during the Giuliani years.

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Members of Housing Works, a nonprofit group that had challenged Mr. Giuliani’s AIDS policies, marching near City Hall in 1998. The police placed snipers atop City Hall during the march and monitored it by helicopter.

After AIDS activists with Housing Works loudly challenged the mayor, city officials sabotaged the group’s application for a federal housing grant. A caseworker who spoke of missteps in the death of a child was fired. After unidentified city workers complained of pressure to hand contracts to Giuliani-favored organizations, investigators examined not the charges but the identity of the leakers.

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MARILYN GELBER The former Giuliani official says people were “marked for destruction.”

“There were constant loyalty tests: ‘Will you shoot your brother?’ ” said Marilyn Gelber, who served as environmental commissioner under Mr. Giuliani. “People were marked for destruction for disloyal jokes.”

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EDWARD I. KOCH His ceremonial portrait was removed from the Blue Room at City Hall.

Mr. Giuliani paid careful attention to the art of political payback. When former Mayors Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins spoke publicly of Mr. Giuliani’s foibles, mayoral aides removed their official portraits from the ceremonial Blue Room at City Hall. Mr. Koch, who wrote a book titled “Giuliani: Nasty Man,” shrugs.

“David Dinkins and I are lucky that Rudy didn’t cast our portraits onto a bonfire along with the First Amendment, which he enjoyed violating daily,” Mr. Koch said in a recent interview.

Mr. Giuliani retails his stories of childhood toughness, in standing up to bullies who mocked his love of opera and bridled at his Yankee loyalties. Years after leaving Manhattan College, he held a grudge against a man who beat him in a class election. He urged his commissioners to walk out of City Council hearings when questions turned hostile. But in his 2002 book “Leadership,” he said his instructions owed nothing to his temper.

“It wasn’t my sensitivities I was worried about, but the tone of civility I strived to establish throughout the city,” he wrote. Mr. Giuliani declined requests to be interviewed for this article.

His admirers, not least former Deputy Mayor Randy M. Mastro, said it was unfair to characterize the mayor as vengeful, particularly given the “Herculean task” he faced when he entered office in 1994. Mr. Giuliani’s admirers claimed that the depredations of crack, AIDS, homicide and recession had brought the city to its knees, and that he faced a sclerotic liberal establishment. He wielded intimidation as his mace and wrested cost-savings and savings from powerful unions and politicians.

“The notion that the city needed broad-based change frightened a lot of entrenched groups,” said Fred Siegel, a historian and author of “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life.” “He didn’t want to be politic with them.”

He cowed many into silence. Silence ensured the flow of city money.

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ANDY HUMM The gay activist says he muzzled himself to keep financing for AIDS programs.

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Giuliani in Drag

Andy Humm, a gay activist, worked for the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which pushed condom giveaways in public schools. When Mr. Giuliani supported a parental opt-out, the institute’s director counseled silence to avoid losing city funds. “He said, ‘We’re going to say it’s not good, but we’re not going to mention him,’ ” Mr. Humm said.

“We were muzzled, and it was a disgrace.”

Picking His Fights

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James Schillaci, top, was arrested after he sought media attention about a police sting in the Bronx. He eventually called The Daily News, which put his complaint on the front page. “The mayor tarred me up,” he says.

Mr. Giuliani says he prefers to brawl with imposing opponents. His father, he wrote in “Leadership,” would “always emphasize: never pick on someone smaller than you. Never be a bully.”

As mayor, he picked fights with a notable lack of discrimination, challenging the city and state comptrollers, a few corporations and the odd council member. But the mayor’s fist also fell on the less powerful. In mid-May 1994, newspapers revealed that Mr. Giuliani’s youth commissioner, the Rev. John E. Brandon, suffered tax problems; more troubling revelations seemed in the offing.

At 7 p.m. on May 17, Mr. Giuliani’s press secretary dialed reporters and served up a hotter story: A former youth commissioner under Mr. Dinkins, Richard L. Murphy, had ladled millions of dollars to supporters of the former mayor. And someone had destroyed Department of Youth Services records and hard drives and stolen computers in an apparent effort to obscure what had happened to that money.

“My immediate goal is to get rid of the stealing, to get rid of the corruption,” Mr. Giuliani told The Daily News.

None of it was true. In 1995, the Department of Investigation found no politically motivated contracts and no theft by senior officials. But Mr. Murphy’s professional life was wrecked.

“I was soiled merchandise — the taint just lingers,” Mr. Murphy said in a recent interview.

Not long after, a major foundation recruited Mr. Murphy to work on the West Coast. The group wanted him to replicate his much-honored concept of opening schools at night as community centers. A senior Giuliani official called the foundation — a move a former mayoral official confirmed on the condition of anonymity for fear of embarrassing the organization — and the prospective job disappeared.

“He goes to people and makes them complicit in his revenge,” Mr. Murphy said.

This theme repeats. Two private employers in New York City, neither of which wanted to be identified because they feared retaliation should Mr. Giuliani be elected president, said the mayor’s office exerted pressure not to hire former Dinkins officials. When Mr. Giuliani battled schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines, he demanded that Mr. Cortines prove his loyalty by firing the press spokesman, John Beckman.

Mr. Beckman’s offense? He had worked in the Dinkins administration. “I found it,” Mr. Beckman said in an interview, “a really unfortunate example of how to govern.”

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JOEL BERGER Ran afoul of Mr. Giuliani after representing victims of police brutality.

Joel Berger worked as a senior litigator in the city corporation counsel’s office until 1996. Afterward, he represented victims of police brutality and taught a class at the New York University School of Law, and his students served apprenticeships with the corporation counsel.

In late August 1997, Mr. Berger wrote a column in The New York Times criticizing Mr. Giuliani’s record on police brutality. A week later, a city official called the director of the N.Y.U. law school’s clinical programs and demanded that Mr. Berger be removed from the course. Otherwise, the official said, we will suspend the corporation counsel apprenticeship, according to Mr. Berger and an N.Y.U. official.

“It was ridiculously petty,” Mr. Berger said.

N.Y.U. declined to replace Mr. Berger and instead suspended the class after that semester.

‘Culture of Retaliation’

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RAYMOND HORTON President of the Citizens Budget Commission, which the mayor denounced.

The Citizens Budget Commission has driven mayors of various ideological stripes to distraction since it was founded in 1932. The business-backed group bird-dogs the city’s fiscal management with an unsparing eye. But its analysts are fonts of creative thinking, and Mr. Giuliani asked Raymond Horton, the group’s president, to serve on his transition committee in 1993.

That comity was long gone by the autumn of 1997, when Mr. Giuliani faced re-election. Ruth Messinger, the mayor’s Democratic opponent, cited the commission’s work, and the mayor denounced the group, which had issued critical reports on welfare reform, police inefficiency and the city budget.

So far, so typical for mayors and their relationship with the commission. Mr. Koch once banned his officials from attending the group’s annual retreat. Another time, he attended and gave a speech excoriating the commission.

But one of Mr. Giuliani’s deputy mayors, Joseph Lhota, took an unprecedented step. He called major securities firms that underwrite city bonds and discouraged them from buying seats at the commission’s annual fund-raising dinner. Because Mr. Lhota played a key role in selecting the investment firms that underwrote the bonds, his calls raised an ethical tempest.

Apologizing struck Mr. Giuliani as silly.

“We are sending exactly the right message,” he said. “Their reports are pretty useless; they are a dilettante organization.”

Still, that dinner was a rousing success. “All mayors have thin skins, but Rudy has the thinnest skin of all,” Mr. Horton said.

Mr. Giuliani’s war with the nonprofit group Housing Works was more operatic. Housing Works runs nationally respected programs for the homeless, the mentally ill and people who are infected with H.I.V. But it weds that service to a 1960s straight-from-the-rice-paddies guerrilla ethos.

The group’s members marched on City Hall, staged sit-ins, and delighted in singling out city officials for opprobrium. Mr. Giuliani, who considered doing away with the Division of AIDS Services, became their favorite mayor in effigy.

Mr. Giuliani responded in kind. His police commanders stationed snipers atop City Hall and sent helicopters whirling overhead when 100 or so unarmed Housing Works protesters marched nearby in 1998. A year earlier, his officials systematically killed $6 million worth of contracts with the group, saying it had mismanaged funds.

Housing Works sued the city and discovered that officials had rescored a federal evaluation form to ensure that the group lost a grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Martin Oesterreich, the city’s homeless commissioner, denied wrongdoing but acknowledged that his job might have been forfeited if Housing Works had obtained that contract.

“That possibility could have happened,” Mr. Oesterreich told a federal judge.

The mayor’s fingerprints could not be found on every decision. But his enemies were widely known.

“The culture of retaliation was really quite remarkable,” said Matthew D. Brinckerhoff, the lawyer who represented Housing Works. “Up and down the food chain, everyone knew what this guy demanded.”

The Charter Fight

The mayor’s wartime style of governance reached an exhaustion point in the late 1990s. His poll numbers dipped, and the courts routinely ruled against the city, upholding the New York Civil Liberties Union in 23 of its 27 free-speech challenges during Mr. Giuliani’s mayoralty. After he left office, the city agreed to pay $327,000 to a black police officer who was fired because he had testified before the City Council about police brutality toward blacks. The city also agreed to rescind the firing of the caseworker who talked about a child’s death.

In 1999, Mr. Giuliani explored a run for the United States Senate. If he won that seat, he would leave the mayor’s office a year early. The City Charter dictated that Mark Green, the public advocate, would succeed him.

That prospect was intolerable to Mr. Giuliani. Few politicians crawled under the mayor’s skin as skillfully as Mr. Green. “Idiotic” and “inane” were some of the kinder words that Mr. Giuliani sent winging toward the public advocate, who delighted in verbally tweaking the mayor.

So Mr. Giuliani announced in June 1999 that a Charter Revision Commission, stocked with his loyalists, would explore changing the line of mayoral succession. Mr. Giuliani told The New York Times Magazine that he might not have initiated the charter review campaign if Mr. Green were not the public advocate. Three former mayors declared themselves appalled; Mr. Koch fired the loudest cannonade. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Mayor,” he said during a news conference.

Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., chairman of a Charter Revision Commission a decade earlier, wrote a letter to Mr. Giuliani warning that “targeting a particular person” would “smack of personal politics and predilections.

“All this is not worthy of you, or our city,” Mr. Schwarz wrote.

Mr. Mastro, who had left the administration, agreed to serve as the commission chairman. He eventually announced that a proposal requiring a special election within 60 days of a mayor’s early departure would not take effect until 2002, after both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Green had left office. A civic group estimated that the commission spent more than a million dollars of taxpayer money on commercials before a citywide referendum on the proposal that was held in November 1999.

Voters defeated the measure, 76 percent to 24 percent. (In 2002, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg advocated a similar charter revision that passed with little controversy.)

Mr. Green had warned the mayor that rejection loomed.

“It was simple,” Mr. Green said. “It was the mayor vindictively going after an institutional critic for doing his job.”

None of this left the mayor chastened. In March 2000, an undercover officer killed Patrick Dorismond, a security guard, during a fight when the police mistook him for a drug dealer. The outcry infuriated the mayor, who released Mr. Dorismond’s juvenile record, a document that legally was supposed to remain sealed.

The victim, Mr. Giuliani opined, was no “altar boy.” Actually, he was. (Mr. Giuliani later expressed regret without precisely apologizing.)

James Schillaci, the Bronx whistle-blower, recalled reading those comments and shuddering at the memory. “The mayor tarred me up; you know what that feels like?” he said. “I still have nightmares.”
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Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

Postby admin » Tue Oct 08, 2013 1:57 am

HUNTER S. THOMPSON'S WORK-IN-PROCESS: "THE SILK ROAD", by Charles Carreon

07/14/07

History will remember Hunter S. Thompson as the man who, in a single blast of supercharged acceleration, blew the doors off the literary establishment, rendered the definitive portrait of Vegas, and defined the outer limits of derangement in his novelistic tour de force “Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.”

I remember HST most particularly for introducing the concept of “bad craziness.” It was a force I'd known existed, and had even brushed up against, but Hunter had named it, and when I read the words, it was like our eyes met, and we both knew what he was talking about. Bad crazy. Hunter showed us blood-drinking lizards dining on each other in a Vegas lounge, his Samoan lawyer thrashing in the paroxysms of something between death and orgasm, and many other examples of bad craziness. It's like candy laced with heroin. Bad crazy. Loved by his fans for the breakneck pace of his diction, his ability to pen one single-sentence paragraph after another, and string them together into narratives that were brilliant and breathtaking, Hunter operated a solitary outpost of humanity in the jungle of suburbo-corporate America. We miss him, and I so wish I could have said RIP Bush Gang before I had to say RIP HST, so he could have been here to see the crashing and burning of this regime that he so despised. I will drink to its demise for you, Hunter, and for my son Josh, two warriors who didn't get to see the end of the battle.

The piece posted below is from an uncompleted novel Hunter titled “The Silk Road.” and introduces us to the main character, Gene Skinner, “a professional adventurer who worked in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot for a CIA-owned property called Air America and who now lives with his beautiful half-Cuban fiancee in a trailer park on Marathon Key ... which is nine worlds away from Long Island in every way except that it sits upon the edge of the sea and fits Skinner's idea of The American Dream in the same way that West Egg fit Gatsby's.” I like playing with character names and one thing I'll say is a name like “Gene Skinner” sounds tailor-made for somebody good at getting into people's pants. Enjoy the read — this piece is a gut-buster.

Hunter S. Thompson's Work-In-Process: "The Silk Road"
FISHHEAD BOYS
By Hunter S. Thompson
From The Silk Road: Fast Boats on The Ocean At Night

We were calling a cab in the Key West airport when I saw these two Fishhead boys grab my bags off the carousel. The skinny one was halfway to the parking lot with the big red, white, and blue seabag full of diving gear before I realized what was happening ...

No, I thought. No, this can't be true. Not right here in front of my eyes, in the blue-lit glare of the breezeway in this friendly little airport, with palm trees all around and Mother Ocean rolling up on the beach just a few hundred yards to the south.

It must be a setup, I thought; some nark in the pay of the White House that evil bastard Hamilton has been trying to bust me ever since I set him on fire in Orlando ... and this was, after all, another election year.

In the good old days I might have thought it was Gordon Liddy, just running one of his capers. But Gordon doesn't work for the White House anymore, and Hamilton has other problems -- like trying to reelect what Dick Goodwin calls “the only truly Republican president since Herbert Hoover” on the Democratic ticket.

So, for the White House and even the DEA ... and on a “need to be busted” basis, I figured my name was not even on the list for 1980. I was not even covering the campaign.

***

I still had the phone in my hand when I saw the fat one. He came shuffling out of the darkness, where he'd obviously been standing lookout for his buddy; he glanced around to see that nobody was watching, then reached down and picked up my triple-locked leather satchel.

Whoops, I thought, let's have a word with these boys. They were locals — punks, maybe nineteen or twenty years old, and they did it so casually that I knew they had been here before. Semipro luggage thieves, the lowest and cruelest kind of scum. I felt the phone pulling out of the wall as I suddenly moved toward the action.

Cut the thumbs off these vultures, I thought. Carve on them.

Then I remembered that my bone knife was in the red, white, and blue diving bag. All I had for leverage was this baby blue telephone receiver that I'd just ripped off the wall by the Travelers' Aid counter. It was trailing about six feet of coiled blue rubber wire as I ran.

"Goddamn you rotten bastards I'll kill you goddamn brainless --"

This savage screaming confused me for a moment. Then I realized it was me. Was I moving faster than my own sounds?

Maybe not. But pure rage is a serious fuel, and now I was moving at least like Dick Butkus on speed toward this poor doomed screwhead who had already staggered and fallen to one knee under the weight of my leather satchel. I was still about 100 feet away when he heard my screams and saw me coming. I knew I had the angle on him, even before he staggered ... he was out in the open now and his face was stupid with terror.

“Eat shit and die!”

It was a thundering brutal scream, and for a moment I thought it was me again, still moving faster than sound ....

But this time the scream was really behind me. It was Skinner: He'd been raving, drooling drunk all the way from Aruba, but the sudden screech of battle had jerked him awake from his stupor and now he was right behind me, screaming as he ran. I pointed left toward the parking lot, at the skinny geek with my diving bag. I smelled the whiskey pumping up from Skinner's lungs as he passed me and angled left to where I'd pointed.

It was not quite an hour after sunset. We had come in on the last flight and then lingered for a while in the pilots' lounge, so now there was nobody else in that end of the airport. A magic moment in the tropics: just the four of us, like beasts gone into a frenzy, back to the fang and the claw ... and for just a few seconds the only other sound in that empty white corridor where we were closing with terrible speed and craziness on these two Fishhead boys was the high speed rubbery slap of Skinner's new Topsiders on the tile as we bore down on them ... wild shouts and the squeal of new rubber ....

***

A punk's nightmare: like getting sucked into the blades of a jet engine, for no good reason at all ...

Right. Just another late gig at the airport .... Just you and Bubba, like always; maybe two or three times a week: just hang around the baggage area until something worth stealing shows up late on the carousel ... and then, with perfect dumb style and timing, you seize the bags you've been watching and ...

YE FUCKING GODS! Two drunken screaming brutes, coming wild out of nowhere and moving with awesome speed ...

“Hey Bubba! What's all that screaming? I thought there was nobody --”

“O God, no! Run, Bubba, run!"

Killer Drunks! They jumped us like mad dogs. At first I saw only one of them. He had big brown eyes and no hair ... I was scared, man. I mean the way he was running and screaming just scared the shit out of me .... It was CRAZY.

Bubba never had a chance. These were serious Killer Drunks, man. I mean they were out of their fucking minds. The last thing I remember is when Bubba started to scream and then all of a sudden I didn't hear anything ... and that's when the other one hit me. It almost broke my back, and all I remember after that is pain all over my head and somebody yelling, ”Eat Shit and Die!“ They were serious, man. They were trying to kill us. They were crazy!

***

Well ... maybe so. But we were there to cover the Boat Race, not to act crazy.

And certainly not to kill Fishhead boys ... although Skinner was so crazed on whiskey that for a while I thought he really was going to kill that skinny bleeder he ran down out there in the parking lot.

"You screwhead bastard!" he was yelling. Then I heard the awful smack of bone against bone .... The sound drove me wild; somewhere in that madness I recall a flash of remorse, but it had to be very brief. My last coherent thought before we made physical contact with these people was, Why are we doing this?

There was not much time to think. All of a sudden the whole airport came alive with the sounds of violence. A pitiful cry drifted in from the palm-shrouded darkness of the parking lot as Skinner made his hit ... and then I crashed into the fat boy at top speed, leg-whipping him in the groin as we collided and then tumbled wildly across the tile floor and into the wall of the Avis booth.

I grabbed him by the hair and bit deeply into the flesh on the side of his neck. The sudden taste of hot blood caused me to bite him twice again before he went stiff and started making sounds like a chicken. I got a grip on his hair and dragged him out to the parking lot, where I heard Skinner still whipping on the other one.

"Let's tie these bastards to a tree and play hurricane," I said. He was still kicking the body of the unconscious thief -- but he heard what I said, and smiled.

So we lashed these two Fishhead boys to a palm tree with some yellow nylon cord from my diving bag; then we beat them with tree limbs for twenty or thirty minutes. Finally, when we were too exhausted to whip on them anymore, I wanted to cut off their thumbs with the bone knife, but Skinner said it would be wrong.

***

Later, in my penthouse suite at the Pier House, I felt vaguely unsatisfied.

"We don't need it," Skinner insisted. "The joke's over when you start mutilating people -- hacking off thumbs and weird shit like that. We're not in Damascus, Doc. Get a grip on yourself."

I shrugged. Why not? Why push it?

Skinner was drinking heavily now, but his mind seemed clear. "There could be a few questions when they find those boys tied up to that tree in the morning," he said.

"Never mind that," I told him. ”We have work to do in the morning; we have our own questions to ask."

He stared into his drink for a long moment. "Ah yes,” he said finally, “The Race.”

***

Indeed. We were there to cover the boat race -- big off-shore boomers like Cigarettes and Scarabs and Panteras, ninety miles an hour on the open sea. When I asked if I could ride in one of the race boats, the driver replied, “Sure you can -- but if you have any fillings in your teeth, you'll probably lose them.”

“What?”

“That’s right,” he said. “We kick ass. We never slow down.”

"Okay," I said. "I guess I'll ride with you."

The driver looked up at me from his seat in the cockpit of the boat. It was forty feet long and the whole rear end was two 300-horsepower Chrysler engines. "No you won't," he said after waiting a moment while Skinner took some pictures of his boat. "It's against the rules."

Skinner spit down into the cockpit. "Fuck you, man," he said. "We're riding on this boat. We're taking it to Cuba."

The driver seized a wrench handle and quickly stood up in the cockpit. "You conch bastard!" he snarled. "You spit on my boat!"

Skinner was wearing three Nikons around his neck, and I grabbed him by one of the straps. "Are you sick?" I said quietly. "Is this how you act when I finally get you a decent assignment?"
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