The Giuliani Thread

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
source: The New York Times

Should there be a fire fighters justice for truth?

For Giuliani, Ground Zero as Linchpin and Thorn
By RUSS BUETTNER
Published: August 17, 2007

As Rudolph W. Giuliani campaigns around the country highlighting his stewardship of New York City after the Sept. 11 attacks, he is widely hailed for bringing order to a traumatized city. But he has also raised the hackles of rescue and recovery workers by likening his experience to theirs.

On at least three occasions, in responding to accusations that the city failed to adequately protect the health of workers in the wreckage, he has boasted that he faced comparable risks himself. In one appearance he declared that he had been in the ruins “as often, if not more” than the cleanup workers who logged hundreds of hours in the smoldering pile.

Another time he brushed aside safety claims by asserting that his long hours at the site had left him susceptible to “every health consequence that people have suffered.”

So, how much time did Mayor Giuliani spend at ground zero?

A complete record of Mr. Giuliani’s exposure to the site is not available for the chaotic six days after the attack, when he was a frequent visitor. But an exhaustively detailed account from his mayoral archive, revised after the events to account for last-minute changes on scheduled stops, does exist for the period of Sept. 17 to Dec. 16, 2001. It shows he was there for a total of 29 hours in those three months, often for short periods or to visit locations adjacent to the rubble. In that same period, many rescue and recovery workers put in daily 12-hour shifts.

“I think Mayor Giuliani did a fine job as mayor during probably the most difficult time in American history, especially in New York history,” said Michael J. Palladino, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association of New York City. “Having said that, it’s unfair for him to characterize himself as being in the same position as the first responders.”

Mr. Palladino said many of his members logged 30 hours in the first two days after the attacks, and most averaged more than 400 hours at ground zero and in the debris pile at the Staten Island landfill. They are among thousands who claim long-term health damage from the exposure.

The details of those weeks are important for Mr. Giuliani’s campaign as he seeks to win the Republican nomination for president. His performance in those harrowing months after the attacks has become the main pillar of his case to become the next commander in chief, and something he reminds voters of frequently in debates and speeches.

The logs illuminate in minute detail what it was like to be mayor of a damaged city seeking to regain its footing after the attacks. The more than 600 pages include unscheduled stops and time blocked out for events with his children.

The 29 hours Mr. Giuliani spent at ground zero involved 41 appearances, mostly to give tours to other officials and foreign dignitaries. Many entries include meetings away from the site before the tour. For instance, the schedule included 30 minutes on Nov. 15, 2001, for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but Mr. Putin’s tour of ground zero was widely reported to have lasted 13 minutes.

Asked to reconcile what the records show with Mr. Giuliani’s public comments about the extent of his exposure to the site, his campaign provided a written statement from Joseph J. Lhota, a former deputy mayor.

“Hundreds of thousands of people around the country and the world saw Rudy Giuliani’s steadfast and determined leadership firsthand at a time when we needed it most,” the statement said. “In the days surrounding September 11th, the safety and health of all those involved in the search and recovery efforts was Mayor Giuliani’s No. 1 one priority. Make no mistake, it is the very same concern Mayor Giuliani continues to express today when it comes to all those who have made tremendous sacrifices at ground zero.”

The months after the attack have emerged as the focus of a contentious battle over the health effects of the cleanup, with workers at the site saying that their long-term exposure to toxins there caused serious illnesses, and that the Giuliani administration failed to recognize the risks in pushing for a speedy cleanup.

The firefighters’ union has also taken umbrage at Mr. Giuliani’s rhetorical claims of being “one of them.”

John J. McDonnell, a battalion chief and president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in New York, said many of his members worked weeks of consecutive 12-hour shifts on the rubble pile, interrupted only by nights sleeping on the floor of a nearby church.

It was in the context of the debate over health effects at ground zero that Mr. Giuliani said he spent at least as much time at the site as most of the rescue and recovery workers.

“I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers,” Mr. Giuliani said last week in Cincinnati. “I was there working with them. I was there guiding things. I was there bringing people there. But I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I’m one of them.”

The next day, in an interview with Mike Gallagher, a talk show host, he expressed regret for the tone of his remarks, but reiterated the substance of them.

“I wasn’t trying to suggest a competition of any kind, which is the way it came across,” Mr. Giuliani said. “You know, what I was saying was, ‘I’m there with you.’ Gosh almighty, I was there often enough, even though they were there, people there more and people there less, but I was there often enough so that every health consequence that people have suffered, I could also be suffering.”

And in September 2006, The Associated Press quoted him as saying of ground zero, “I spent as much time here as anyone,” and then adding, “I was here five, six times a day for four months. I kind of thought of it as living here.”

A sample by Mount Sinai Medical Center of 1,138 participants in its study of health problems among rescue, recovery and debris removal workers found that they had spent a median of 962 hours at the World Trade Center site, or the equivalent of about 120 eight-hour days.

The days after the attack for which no detailed records exist were when the dust from smoldering rubble was its thickest, and were also the most dangerous for exposure. Mr. Giuliani was engulfed in the smoke and debris from the collapsing towers the day of the attacks, and escorted President Bush to the site three days later.

The schedules, beginning Sept. 17, show a mayor wrestling with a crushing burden of events.

On Thursday, Sept. 20, for example, he gave three nationally televised interviews before his daily 8 a.m. staff meeting at the command center on Pier 92. At 9:15 a.m., he presided over the opening of Nasdaq trading at Times Square. At 11 a.m., he led a United States Senate delegation on a tour of ground zero, followed that afternoon by a news conference and meetings with Muhammad Ali, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and another staff meeting. At 5:30 p.m., he left for Washington to attend President Bush’s address to Congress and returned to La Guardia Airport at midnight.

Alan I. Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University who specializes in voter behavior, said the Giuliani campaign’s focus on his Sept. 11 record has raised the stakes for any mischaracterization of his actions during that period.

“Its sort of like John Kerry making his war heroism a central focus,” Mr. Abramowitz said, “which may have contributed to the attention that was given to the swift boat veterans’ attacks on him.”

Anthony DePalma contributed reporting.
 
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thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
source: The Washington Post.com

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 24, 2007; Page A01

As Rudolph W. Giuliani campaigns for president, he rarely misses a chance to warn about the threat from terrorists. "They hate you," he told a woman at an Atlanta college. They "want to kill us," he told guests at a Virginia luncheon.

The former New York City mayor exhorts America to fight back in what he calls the "terrorists' war on us" and accuses Democrats of reverting to their "denial" in the 1990s, when, he said, President Bill Clinton erred by treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter, not a war.

Democrats, he said in July, have "the same bad judgment they had in the 1990s. They don't see the threat. They don't accept the threat."

It is a powerful message coming from the man who won global acclaim for his calm and resolve after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But it is undercut by Giuliani's record as mayor and by his public statements about terrorism since the 1990s, which document an evolution in thinking that began with a mind-set similar to the one he criticizes today.

In presenting himself as the candidate most knowledgeable about terrorism, Giuliani stakes the same claim he used to build a successful consulting firm after leaving City Hall: that he is not only a strong leader in a crisis, but someone who was deeply engaged with the Islamic extremist threat long before planes hit the World Trade Center.

But for most of Giuliani's career as a Department of Justice official, prosecutor and New York's chief executive, terrorism was a narrow aspect of his broader crime-fighting agenda, which was dominated by drug dealers, white-collar criminals and the Mafia. Giuliani expressed confidence that Islamic extremism could be contained through vigorous investigation by law enforcement agencies and prosecution in the court system -- the same approach he now condemns.

His public warnings about the threat were infrequent. To the extent that he mentioned terrorism in his aborted run for the Senate in 2000, for example, it was to call for more spending on intelligence. Even in the weeks after Sept. 11, he framed the attacks in the language of crime, describing the hijackers as "insane murderers" and calling for restoration of the "rule of law."

As mayor, Giuliani made decisions that seemed to discount the gravity of the terrorist threat, such as placing his emergency command center at the World Trade Center a few years after the 1993 bombing attack there, against the wishes of top advisers. By his own account, it was after Sept. 11 that he started reading up on al-Qaeda, devouring a book that his then-girlfriend Judith Nathan bought for him.

As terrorist incidents occurred sporadically in the 1990s, Giuliani sought to keep them in perspective. He urged against publicizing terror drills, to avoid needlessly scaring New Yorkers. He resisted branding as terrorism smaller-scale acts of Islamic violence in the city.

In late 1999, as authorities scrambled to unravel a worldwide "millennium plot" and a top former FBI official advised people not to attend the New Year's Eve festivities in Times Square, Giuliani warned against overreacting. "I would urge people not to let the psychology of fear infect the way they act. Otherwise we have let the terrorists win without anybody striking a blow," he said.

Among those who have watched with interest as Giuliani takes up the antiterrorism mantle is Peter Gross, a New Jersey lawyer. Gross's son suffered brain damage when he was shot by a 69-year-old Palestinian man on top of the Empire State Building in 1997, an outburst that killed one and injured six.

Giuliani declined to label the shooting as terrorism, saying the gunman was just deranged, even though the shooter had a note declaring hatred for "Zionists" and their American allies and a wish to "strike at their own den in New York."

Gross still marvels at Giuliani's concern for his son, recalling how often the mayor visited the hospital, and watched as he took the same approach, on a much larger scale, after Sept. 11.

"I do think he rose to greatness after the World Trade Center, but it wasn't because he was an expert on terrorism but because he was an affected and obviously level-headed leader when we didn't need cheerleading, we needed honesty," Gross said. "That's the tone he set. But it wasn't because he was some kind of expert on terrorism."

One of Giuliani's rivals for the Republican nomination, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), made a similar distinction, saying recently that while "the nation respects the mayor's leadership after 9/11," it is unclear that it "translates, necessarily, into foreign policy or national security expertise. I know of nothing in his background that indicates that he has any experience in it."

Giuliani, through his campaign, declined to discuss his record on terrorism. But supporters say he gained unique insight into the issue when he witnessed people jumping from the twin towers and was almost trapped in a nearby building when the South Tower collapsed.

"You have to understand what the results of [terrorism] entail, and that's very personal. If you have compassion for that, you can lead this effort, and if you don't understand the personal consequences, you can't," said Lewis Schiliro, who ran the FBI's New York office in the late 1990s.

Others say Giuliani's experience with terrorism is not the point. What matters to voters, they say, is that he is a strong leader who has taken on scourges such as the Mafia and the New York murder rate, and so can be trusted to triumph over a new threat. "Giuliani does have a track record of being a no-nonsense S.O.B., a really tough guy," said New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat. "Rudy is not someone you can picture waffling when it comes to terrorism."

As Mayor, a Focus on Crime



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Giuliani argues that his experience with terrorism long predates Sept. 11. His campaign notes that his work as a Justice Department official and as a U.S. attorney in New York included several encounters with the issue, such as serving on a 1976 task force, writing a 1982 letter to the State Department recommending counterterrorism legislation and prosecuting a member of a Puerto Rican terrorist group, FALN, for making false passports.

On the campaign trail, Giuliani particularly stresses the time he spent as U.S. attorney investigating Yasser Arafat for his role in the death of a wheelchair-bound New Yorker, Leon Klinghoffer, in the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. "I investigated Yasser Arafat before anybody knew who he really was," Giuliani said in Las Vegas.

But prosecutors who led that case say Giuliani overstates his role. He assisted in the later, failed attempt to evict the Palestine Liberation Organization from its New York office, but the investigation of an Arafat link to the ship hijacking was handled by the Justice Department in Washington, say former Justice officials, including Stephen Trott, now a federal appeals judge.

Jay Fischer, a lawyer who represented the Klinghoffer family, said he never talked with Giuliani about the case. "When I heard [him] just in the last six months making a speech that he knew about terrorism because he had led the investigation, I recall turning around to my wife and saying, 'That comes as news to me,' " Fischer said.

Giuliani's focus throughout the 1990s was on reducing crime -- New York had more than 2,000 murders a year when he took office as mayor. So fixated was he on crime during his 1993 campaign against David Dinkins that Giuliani said little on the trail about the explosion, that Feb. 26, of a 1,200-pound bomb in a rental van in a garage beneath the World Trade Center. That blast killed six and injured 1,000 in the first major attack by Islamic extremists on U.S. soil.

After winning that fall, he invoked the attack in his inaugural speech in passing, as a sign of the city's resilience: "It was a day in which 50,000 New Yorkers took charge of themselves and each other."


As he campaigns for president, Giuliani describes the 1993 attack as having been forefront in his mind throughout his mayoralty, saying it was others who failed to reckon with the blast.

"Islamic terrorists killed Americans. Slaughtered Americans. Bombed the World Trade Center. Bombed it," he said in July. "You know what the reaction of the Clinton administration at the time was? It was a crime. It was another group of murders. . . . Well, it wasn't just another group of murders."

But the 1993 attack also receded on City Hall's radar screen. During Giuliani's search for a police commissioner, terrorism did not come up, according to four candidates and three members of the hiring panel interviewed by Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, authors of the 2006 book "Grand Illusion." Giuliani never asked his successor as U.S. attorney about the cases against the attackers or about other terrorism cases, said a source familiar with the office who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Securing the World Trade Center against another attack also got little attention from City Hall. The buildings' owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, made some safety upgrades, but the city set aside a task force's findings on building-code flaws revealed by the attack, as well as findings by fire chiefs. The city held several terrorism drills during Giuliani's tenure, but they focused on biological or chemical attacks, not high-rise evacuations.

Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor under Giuliani, said the threat of terrorism was taken seriously, with City Hall constantly reacting to police or FBI alerts. But the city's planning tended to focus more on the subway system and sports facilities than on high rises, he said; City Hall -- like everyone else -- simply did not envision an airborne attack on the twin towers.

"There were numerous exercises, to the point where I knew all the exitways from Madison Square Garden," Lhota said.

Giuliani often cites the 1993 attack as a motivation for his creation of an Office of Emergency Management, in 1996. But those present at the agency's creation say it was intended to give the mayor oversight over more routine emergencies.

Jonathan Best interviewed for the job of leading the agency and said the subject of terrorism barely arose. "That wasn't the focus of what they were looking at," Best said. "They were interested in hurricanes. Hurricanes were big."

In 1997, the city decided to place an emergency command center for the agency on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center, across from the twin towers. Several top officials argued for a lower-profile site, such as an office complex across the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn.

But Giuliani was adamant about having a site within walking distance of City Hall, recalled Jerome Hauer, then the emergency management commissioner. Hauer left City Hall in 2000 and had a falling-out with Giuliani after Sept. 11 over Hauer's endorsement of a Democrat to replace the mayor.

On Sept. 11, the $13 million center was quickly evacuated, and 7 World Trade Center collapsed later in the day.

Giuliani and his advisers have rejected criticism of the site selection, saying no one could have predicted the collapse of the towers. But Louis Anemone, a top-ranking police officer who has since retired, disagrees. The World Trade Center "was number one on our list of the most vulnerable and critical and symbolic locations in the city. The place had been attacked once before, and they had been threatening to bring those towers down again," Anemone said. "For those of us who lived and breathed this stuff day in and day out, it boggled the imagination."

Throughout his tenure as mayor, Giuliani had to contend with more limited incidents of politically tinged violence, often involving Islamic extremism. But, not wanting to cause undue alarm, he described the attacks as isolated events and repeatedly expressed faith in the ability of law enforcement agencies to contain any threat.

When, in 1994, a Lebanese livery car driver shot at a van carrying Hasidic students on the Brooklyn Bridge, killing one, Giuliani resisted declaring it terrorism and praised the police response. "The person who allegedly did this . . . is now going to be in a legal system that is really a very effective one," he said. When later that year a man set off a firebomb in a subway, Giuliani pushed for reinstating the death penalty, calling it the "ultimate deterrent" against terrorism.

And after the 1997 shooting atop the Empire State Building, Giuliani said it was "irresponsible" to label it terrorism, a judgment that brought criticism from the Anti-Defamation League after the gunman's anti-Israel note surfaced.

Giuliani's desire to keep terrorism in perspective could be discerned even on Sept. 11, 2001, and in the days following, when he sought to marginalize the attackers and the threat they represented. Asked on the day of the attacks whether they constituted an "act of war," he said, "I don't know that I want to use those words. . . . I'm totally confident that American democracy and the American rule of law will prevail."

In an interview later that month, he noted that one of the inexplicable things about the attacks was that, unlike the attack on Pearl Harbor, they lacked broader context: "This has no purpose," he said. "They're not going to gain freedom as a result of this. They're not going to win a war as a result. They're not going to stop us. America's not going to stop as a result of this."

But Giuliani's rhetoric changed as time went on. Campaigning for President Bush in 2004, he described the attacks as part of an existential war for survival -- "the worst crisis in our history" -- that had been going on for years, but that Clinton and others had failed to recognize. It was, he said in his speech at the 2004 GOP convention in New York, "much like observing Europe appease Hitler or trying to accommodate the Soviet Union through the use of mutually assured destruction."

On the trail this year, he has noted that the lack of awareness about terrorism was widely shared before Sept. 11. But this statement often precedes an attack on Democrats for lapsing into the "big mistake" of the 1990s. The Democratic candidates, he warned members of the National Rifle Association last week, would, if elected, cause a "slip back to the Clinton era of playing defense against Islamic terrorism. . . . That may be the single defining issue."

Lhota, the former deputy mayor, said Giuliani's shift from not dwelling on terrorism to his full-throated warnings today could be attributed to the difference between being a mayor and being a presidential candidate. "It's really the role of the [mayor] to reassure the public that the situation is under control. It's the role of national leader to tell Americans that we are vulnerable," he said.

Hauer, the former emergency commissioner, said he does not know what to make of the rhetorical shift. In the 1990s, Giuliani "wanted to play the threat down," he said. "Rudy felt like talking about [terrorism] was alarmist. He never talked about it except in reaction to something. Now he's screaming that the sky is falling."
 

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[FLASH]http://www.liveleak.com/player.swf?token=d96_1192311169[/FLASH]:yes:It looks like Bernard Kerik, a close associate of Rudy Giuliani, is about to be indicted for bribery, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice. But Kerik isn't the only corrupt figure in Giuliani's inner circle.
 
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MASTERBAKER

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'[FLASH]http://www.liveleak.com/player.swf?token=0f1_1193290634[/FLASH]Critics claim Obama lacks experience in lieu of a proven track record. Yet a cross-dressing City Mayor with a seriously flawed record is leading the Republican candidates. Draw your own conclusions.:smh:
 
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thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Regan Lawsuit: News Corp. Exec Wanted Me To Lie To Protect Giuliani… Giuliani Speaks

source: The New York Times.com

Ex-Publisher’s Suit Plays a Giuliani-Kerik Angle

Judith Regan, the former book publisher, says in a lawsuit filed yesterday protesting her dismissal by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate, that a senior executive there encouraged her to lie to federal investigators about her past affair with Bernard B. Kerik after he had been nominated to become homeland security secretary in late 2004.

The lawsuit asserts that the News Corporation executive wanted to protect the presidential aspirations of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor, who had appointed him New York City police commissioner and had recommended him for the federal post.

Ms. Regan makes the charge at the start of a 70-page filing that seeks $100 million in damages for what she says was a campaign to smear and discredit her by her bosses at HarperCollins and its parent company, News Corporation, after her project to publish a book with O. J. Simpson was abandoned amid a storm of protest.

In the civil complaint filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Ms. Regan says the company has long sought to promote Mr. Giuliani’s ambitions. But the lawsuit does not elaborate on that charge, identify the executive who she says pressured her to mislead investigators, or offer details to support her claim.

In fact, the allegation about the executive makes up a small part of a much broader array of claims about what she says was her improper removal from a job atop one of the more commercially successful book publishing operations.

A News Corporation spokeswoman who declined to be named said that the company saw no merit in the filing. A spokeswoman for Mr. Giuliani declined to comment.

Ms. Regan had an affair with Mr. Kerik, who is married, beginning in the spring of 2001, when her imprint, ReganBooks, began work on his memoir, “The Lost Son.” In December 2004, after the relationship had ended and shortly after Mr. Kerik’s homeland security nomination fell apart, newspapers reported that the two had carried on the affair at an apartment near ground zero that had been donated as a haven for rescue and recovery workers.

Mr. Kerik claimed in 2004 that he had withdrawn his nomination because of problems with the hiring of a nanny. He was indicted last week on federal tax fraud and other charges.

“Defendants were well aware that Regan had a personal relationship with Kerik,” the complaint says. “In fact, a senior executive in the News Corporation organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani’s presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik.”

One of Ms. Regan’s lawyers, Brian C. Kerr of the firm of Dreier L.L.P., said she had evidence to support her claim that she had been advised to lie to federal investigators who were vetting Mr. Kerik and who might have sought to question her about their romantic involvement. But Mr. Kerr declined to discuss the nature of the evidence.

The lawsuit does not say whether Ms. Regan was, in fact, interviewed as part of the inquiry into Mr. Kerik’s fitness for the federal post, and if she was what she told investigators.

The News Corporation controls many media outlets worldwide, including Twentieth Century Fox, The New York Post and the Fox News Channel, where Ms. Regan was once host of a talk show.

The Fox News Channel’s coverage of the presidential race has been a topic of some discussion within rival campaigns because the channel is directed by Mr. Giuliani’s friend of 20 years, Roger Ailes. But the network has strongly defended the balance of its coverage under Mr. Ailes, who served as media consultant to Mr. Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign in 1989. Mr. Giuliani, as mayor, later officiated at Mr. Ailes’s wedding.

Ms. Regan was fired on Dec. 15, 2006, after a month of withering publicity surrounding her plan to publish a hypothetical confession of O. J. Simpson to the murders of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald L. Goldman. The release of the book, “If I Did It,” was to be tied to the broadcasting of Ms. Regan’s interview of Mr. Simpson on Fox.

A second book, a novel that imagined drunken and lascivious escapades by Mickey Mantle, drew another round of outrage.

At the time, Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corporation, called the Simpson book “ill considered.” Ms. Regan was fired and her imprint shut down after a HarperCollins lawyer, Mark Jackson, claimed she had used an anti-Semitic remark in describing the internal campaign to fire her as a “Jewish cabal.”

It was a tremendous fall for a woman who had, over a dozen years, built her own imprint into a best-seller juggernaut. It captured headlines by printing memoirs and other books by popular figures like Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, and the porn star Jenna Jameson that were often overlooked by old-line publishing houses, as well as more traditional offerings, like “The Zero,” a novel set in the aftermath of 9/11, which was a finalist for a National Book Award in 2006.

Ms. Regan asserts in her lawsuit that she never used the term “Jewish cabal” and that both the Mantle book and the Simpson project were approved by a range of HarperCollins executives.

Mr. Murdoch himself, the suit says, signed off on the Simpson book during a dinner with Ms. Regan on Feb. 14, 2006.

Most of the complaint explores what Ms. Regan says was an effort to discredit and defame her starting in November 2006, including the release of what she calls false and defamatory statements by company executives to The New York Post, which is owned by the News Corporation, and to The New York Times.

“We are fully confident that the evidence will show that Judith Regan was the victim of a vicious smear campaign engineered by News Corporation and HarperCollins,” Mr. Kerr said.

The assertion that the News Corporation has sought to protect Mr. Giuliani appears in the opening page of the filing. The document later revisits aspects of the assertion without providing a full account of what is alleged to have occurred or how it might be substantiated in court.

Ms. Regan says in the suit, though, that when she realized the company had been assembling material with which to justify firing her she called a company lawyer. She says she wanted to confirm that accusations she had made about executives’ creating a hostile workplace had been included in her personnel file. One of those accusations was that an executive had advised her to lie about Mr. Kerik to protect Mr. Giuliani.

“This smear campaign was necessary to advance News Corp.’s political agenda, which has long centered on protecting Rudy Giuliani’s presidential ambitions,” the court papers say.

In 2004, Mr. Giuliani was being discussed as a potential presidential contender in 2008 but was more than two years away from openly talking about a run.

The complaint asserts that a second unnamed executive advised her “not to produce clearly relevant documents in connection with the government’s investigation of Kerik.”

“Thus, because of the damaging information that defendants believed Regan possessed, defendants knew they would be protecting Giuliani if they could pre-emptively discredit her,” the lawsuit says.

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Why Does Fox News Favor Giuliani? Well, Lots Of Reasons

source: Salon.com

Rudy Giuliani's ties to Fox News

Judith Regan's lawsuit against News Corp. alleges that Rupert Murdoch's firm, which owns Fox News, wants Giuliani to be president. A look at links between the candidate and the company.

By Alex Koppelman and Erin Renzas

Nov. 15, 2007 | Of all the allegations contained in former ReganBooks Publisher Judith Regan's lawsuit against her one-time employers at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the most explosive is the first. Regan charges that News Corp. executives wanted to destroy her reputation because she knew too much about her ex-boyfriend, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, and that what she knew could be harmful to the presidential hopes of Rudy Giuliani -- whom she depicts as the preferred candidate of News Corp. and its subsidiary, Fox News. According to Regan's suit, "This smear campaign was necessary to advance News Corp.'s political agenda, which has long centered on protecting Rudy Giuliani's presidential ambitions."

Regan and the married Kerik had a well-publicized yearlong affair. Their assignations often took place in a lower Manhattan apartment that had been specifically reserved for the use of workers in the aftermath of 9/11. After Giuliani left the mayor's office on January 1, 2002, Kerik went to work for him as a consultant at Giuliani Partners. Kerik and Regan broke up later in 2002. In December 2004, according to Regan's complaint, when President Bush tapped Kerik, at Giuliani's recommendation, to head the federal Department of Homeland Security, Regan was pressured to keep quiet, and asked to lie on Kerik's behalf. "[A] senior executive in the News Corp. organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani's presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik. ... [D]efendants knew they would be protecting Giuliani if they could preemptively discredit her."

This is not the first time that News Corp. has been accused of having a political agenda. Fox News is often accused of favoring Republicans. In the current presidential election cycle, however, there have also been repeated suggestions, from critics on both the right and the left, that the network prefers Giuliani over the other GOP contenders.

As it happens, Giuliani and News Corp. do have a history. Giuliani has several personal and financial connections to News Corp. and Fox News -- beginning with Fox's top executive -- and those connections seem to have proven mutually beneficial:

Roger Ailes: The head of Fox News, Ailes was a veteran Republican operative long before he was a news executive, having worked as a media consultant in the presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush. In 1989, he worked as a media consultant on the unsuccessful first mayoral campaign of a former federal prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani, with whom he had bonded at dinner parties over their shared admiration for Ronald Reagan. Since then, Giuliani and Ailes have remained good friends. Giuliani officiated at Ailes' wedding and brought presents to Ailes' room when Ailes was hospitalized in 1998. The New York Times has reported that aides to the two men say they don't see each other often, but they did sit together at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in April 2007 -- which Giuliani attended as a guest of News Corp. (Ailes has also socialized with Bernie Kerik.)

The Time Warner lawsuit: In 1994, according to the New York Times, Giuliani prepared a speech for a reception honoring Ailes in which he wrote, "Roger has played an important role in my own career." In 1996, Giuliani had an opportunity to repay the favor. Fox News was launching, with Ailes at the helm, and Time Warner, which provided cable service to 12 million homes nationwide, had decided it would not carry Fox News. Time Warner was the dominant cable operator in New York City, meaning that not only would 1.1 million city homes not get Fox, but the fledgling network would go unseen by media powerbrokers in the nation's media capital.

Three days after Murdoch learned of Time Warner's decision, a call from Ailes to Giuliani set in motion a series of unprecedented moves in favor of a cable network by the Giuliani administration. As calls and meetings continued between Fox and city officials, including Giuliani, the Giuliani administration reportedly threatened Time Warner executives with the loss of their cable franchise if the cable provider didn't accept a deal in which the city would give up one of its own government channels so Fox News could take the slot. (Some 30 other cable networks had tried and failed to win channel space on Time Warner.) When Time Warner refused to take the deal, the city announced that it would go ahead with the plan anyway and force the cable provider to carry Fox News. A legal battle ensued.

Ultimately, the two warring parties made peace and Fox won carriage, but not before a judge and an appeals panel both ruled against the city's plan. In granting Time Warner a temporary injunction, a federal district court judge issued a harsh rebuke to the Giuliani administration, saying the city had repeatedly shifted the legal justifications for its stand, indicating that "the City does not believe its own positions." The judge further wrote, "The City's purpose in acting to compel Time Warner to give Fox one of its commercial channels was to reward a friend... The very fact that the City chose Fox News out of all other news programs -- not to mention the significant number of other programs which have been denied space on Time Warner's commercial network -- is by itself substantial evidence that the City chose Fox News based on its content."

Lobbying: Giuliani's connections to News Corp. extend to his law and lobbying firm, Bracewell & Giuliani. Giuliani announced his partnership in the firm previously known as Bracewell & Patterson in March 2005. Beginning the next month, according to congressional lobbying disclosure records, the firm billed News Corp. and DirecTV, which was then a subsidiary of News Corp., for $120,000 in federal lobbying during 2005. The firm represented News Corp. on issues including regulations on violent and indecent programming and the potential re-write of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. In the years prior to Giuliani joining the firm, congressional records do not show any lobbying work performed for News Corp.

Airtime: Earlier this year, a study by the political journal Hotline found that Giuliani had been interviewed on Fox News during the first 196 days of 2007 for a total of 115 minutes, more than any other presidential contender, and 14 minutes more than the runner-up, the then-undeclared Fred Thompson.

Sean Hannity: In Fox's defense, the bulk of the time Giuliani was on the network he was talking to Sean Hannity, the Long Island-bred cohost of "Hannity & Colmes." And no wonder -- though Hannity claims not to be supporting a candidate (a denial he was forced to make when Ariz. Sen. John McCain accused him on-air, albeit obliquely, of supporting Giuliani), he flew to Ohio to introduce the former mayor at a campaign fundraiser in August. When a New York Times reporter asked a Fox spokeswoman about the Hotline figures, she responded that Hannity makes his own booking decisions. Hannity has also handled post-debate anchor duties for all three Fox GOP debates held to date.

Cease-and-desist: In October, Fox lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to John McCain's campaign after he included footage from Fox's October 21 Orlando debate in a TV commercial. The ad featured a McCain quip aimed at Senator Clinton's push for a so-called "Woodstock museum." The letter demanded McCain pull the ad and remove footage of the debate from his Web site, according to Talking Points Memo.

However, similar letters were not sent to two other GOP presidential hopefuls who were also using footage from the Fox debate -- Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. After initial reports showed that only McCain had been sent such an order, a Fox spokesperson told the New York Times, "Our legal team has been alerted and there will be cease and desist orders." Letters were sent to both the Romney and Giuliani campaigns, but they are apparently not being heeded. Giuliani's Web site still makes liberal use of Fox footage, including one clip added at least a week after the date of the cease and desist letter. Romney's site also continues to feature material from the debate.

Steve Forbes: Himself a former Republican presidential candidate, the magazine magnate is now a national co-chair and senior policy advisor with the Giuliani campaign. He's also, in the words of a Giuliani campaign press release, "a frequent business commentator for Fox News Channel's 'Forbes on Fox.'" Though that show is actually hosted by a Fox News employee, David Asman, its guests come from the editorial staff of Forbes Magazine. Steve Forbes is both the editor-in-chief of Forbes Magazine and the president and CEO of its publisher, Forbes, Inc.
 

African Herbsman

Star
Registered
Re: Why Does Fox News Favor Giuliani? Well, Lots Of Reasons

Why does Rupert Murdoch support Hillary Clinton?


Murdoch fund-raiser for Clinton outrages liberals
By Anne E. Kornblut
Published: THURSDAY, MAY 11, 2006

WASHINGTON: Strengthening a pragmatic rapprochement, Rupert Murdoch has agreed to give a fund-raiser this summer for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the latest sign of cooperation between the conservative media mogul and the Democratic lawmaker who has often been a prime target of his newspaper and television outlets.

Asked about her relationship with Murdoch, Clinton described him as simply "my constituent," and she played down the significance of the fund-raiser. Both sides said Murdoch and Clinton were joining forces for the good of New York, where Murdoch's $6 billion News Corp. employs about 5,000 workers.

"I am very gratified that he thinks I am doing a good job," Clinton said in the Capitol on Tuesday, according to a transcript made available by her office after word of the fund-raising event was first reported by The Financial Times.

Yet the developing relationship between Clinton and Murdoch - who has built an empire in part on the strength of media outlets like Fox News and The New York Post that delight in skewering the Clintons - has drawn special attention, perplexing some political analysts and infuriating some liberals already suspicious of Clinton's centrist positioning. Although she is ostensibly raising money for her re-election to the Senate this year, she is widely considered to be laying the groundwork for a presidential bid in 2008.

"The brazenness of this move is almost too much to stomach," wrote David Sirota, a liberal commentator, on his blog. "Here you have a leading Democratic U.S. senator engaging in a 'mating ritual' with the head of the news network that has overtly worked to systematically destroy both the Democratic Party and her own husband's administration."
Today in Americas
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U.S. states, impatient with Washington, are creating accords to cap greenhouse gases

Murdoch, known for shrewd business skills and his tendency to prize political power over ideology, gave a similar fund-raiser for Senator Charles Schumer, also a Democrat, in 2003, and has donated money to several Democrats.

In Britain, Murdoch reached out to Tony Blair in 1995 and ultimately, through his British newspaper holdings, helped put the New Labour leader into power in 1997. Murdoch and Blair have shared hawkish policy views in the years since, especially on the war in Iraq.

Paul Waldman, a senior fellow at the liberal advocacy group MediaMatters.org, said the outcry from U.S. liberals over the Murdoch fund-raiser was to be expected. "People on the left don't like it because they find new things not to like about Hillary all the time," he said. At the same time, he said, Murdoch would only stand to gain by helping elevate a political figure who helps drive up ratings and circulation.

"Nothing could be better for his media properties than for her to be president of the United States," Waldman said. "I just can't figure out what's in it for her. She doesn't need the money, and it doesn't really buy her any credentials as a moderate."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/10/news/clinton.php
 

ron2k7

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Re: Why Does Fox News Favor Giuliani? Well, Lots Of Reasons

fuck Yeah!! I Saw When That Fox News Dickhead, Sean Hannity Kissing Rudy Giuiliani's Ass. He Wants Him To Beat Hillary Clinton During Next Year's Presidental Election!

Sean Hannity Hates Hillary Clinton And Bill, Since When "hannity & Colmes" Show Came On T.v. In 1996!
 

MASTERBAKER

༺ S❤️PER❤️ ᗰOD ༻
Super Moderator
N.Y. City Fire Chief *Giuliani is a coward who ran away on 9/11*

[FLASH]http://www.liveleak.com/player.swf?token=16c_1195684321[/FLASH]New York City Fire Chief Jim Riches says Rudy Giuliani among other things, is a coward who ran away on September 11th
 

Deuterion

Support BGOL
Registered
Re: N.Y. City Fire Chief *Giuliani is a coward who ran away on 9/11*

damn he ripped into Mr. 9/11 something vicious. 5 star thread!
 

Mr MajestiK

Rising Star
Registered
Re: N.Y. City Fire Chief *Giuliani is a coward who ran away on 9/11*

Fuck Rudy Giuliani.

5 Star thread most def.
 

Actor4Truth

Star
Registered
Re: N.Y. City Fire Chief *Giuliani is a coward who ran away on 9/11*

The REAL Giuliani..!!!


[FLASH]http://www.youtube.com/v/J3go02EomuM&rel=1[/FLASH]
:dance::dance::dance::dance::dance:

Oh and the only reason he came to power in the first place is because Nicky "Mr. Untouchable" Barnes ratted after Giuliani cut him a deal..!!:hmm:
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Re: N.Y. City Fire Chief *Giuliani is a coward who ran away on 9/11*

New York City Fire Chief Jim Riches says Rudy Giuliani among other things, is a coward who ran away on September 11th

I heard Riches say in the video that Guiliani ran away on 9-11, but he did he provide any details of that??? I may have missed it, but I did see where Riches showed any proof.

QueEx
 

Makkonnen

The Quizatz Haderach
BGOL Investor
Re: N.Y. City Fire Chief *Giuliani is a coward who ran away on 9/11*

I heard Riches say in the video that Guiliani ran away on 9-11, but he did he provide any details of that??? I may have missed it, but I did see where Riches showed any proof.

QueEx
search youtube for his chris mathews hardball interview- there is no lack of evidence or details - he also blames Ghouliani for the deaths of fire personnel in the WTC
 

biggearl

wannabe star
Registered
Re: N.Y. City Fire Chief *Giuliani is a coward who ran away on 9/11*

never did like bighead rudy, never did trust him
 

MASTERBAKER

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Super Moderator
Giuliani - A question of Security ( ad parody )

[FLASH]http://www.liveleak.com/player.swf?token=0b1_1196750803[/FLASH]Rudy Giuliani had New York pick up the tab for his mistress to be driven around town - Thats not a bad thing is it? This is the video to answer that.:smh::D
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Several threads on Rudy Giuliani are combined and merged into this,
the Official Rudy Giuliani thread
 

MASTERBAKER

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Super Moderator
Firefighter: Giuliani 'ran like a coward on 9/11'

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Firefighters across the United States are joining forces to try to sink Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign effort.

Some local firefighters said they call his recollections of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and promises of fighting terrorism a myth and insult.

A firefighters' union on North Orange Blossom Trail was the first stop in a series of rallies on Tuesday. Members urged voters not to support Giuliani for president.

The rally was organized by the International Association of Firefighters and family members of the victims of Sept. 11.

They said Giuliani is a fraud when he claims to be a leader in the wake of the terrorist attacks, and a liar for claiming to protect firefighters during the excavation of ground zero.

They also said he's weaving a myth on the campaign trail when he claims to have prepared New York City in the wake of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.



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:angry:
 

actinanass

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
*sigh*

I still like his tax cuts though.

Oh yea, btw, EVERY POLITICIAN HAVE TIES TO FOX NEWS. Remember FOX NEWS started out with people who left CNN. So why is that a bad thing?
 

muckraker10021

Superstar *****
BGOL Investor
Giuliani_Police_State.jpg



The walking skeleton who answers to the name Giuliani is about to have his farcical dream about being US President cremated.
980900ee12d546d3f164c5f7e52a6d292af10353_m.jpg

As a lifelong New York City resident, I have watched the neo-fascism of Benito Giuliani up-close for decades. You would be hard pressed to find individuals who evolved into a viler, contemptible, scurrilous waste of DNA.
Yes I said evolve, Giuliani was a George McGovern supporter in the 1972 presidential election.

By 1975 Giuliani had become a full fledged neo-fascist. In 1994 he gave a speech proudly extolling the virtues of fascism. An excerpt is below.

If ever there was an archetypal anti-libertarian, a politician whose views exemplify all the very worst aspects of the authoritarian personality, then that man is Rudy Giuliani, who infamously intoned:

"We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

This quote just about sums up his almost cartoonish ability to embody the values and rhetorical style of what Lew Rockwell has trenchantly described as "red-state fascism " state-worship, the cult of the leader, and, most of all — the bedrock upon which the entire rotten edifice rests — an aggressive foreign policy that virtually guarantees perpetual war.

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11732


And of course unless you’ve been comatose for the last 20 years, you know about Giuliani’s special hatred of Black people. As mayor of New York City he unleashed the New York Police Department onto the streets of the city to harass, brutalize, jail & kill as many Black men as possible. The article links below contain all the gory details.

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CDw46aGWEAInZlz.jpg

Bl3qxOkIAAAcGpF.png


louima.dailynews.jpg


http://www.cnn.com/US/9708/14/police.torture/

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...35751C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/30/52928/416/592/404168

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/1999/05/26/louima/

[FLASH][/FLASH]


51P4AXAUQDL._SS500_.jpg



Why Blacks Fear Americas Mayor

</font>
 
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MASTERBAKER

༺ S❤️PER❤️ ᗰOD ༻
Super Moderator
Rudy Giuliani at United Nations Rally

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:hmm:
 

MASTERBAKER

༺ S❤️PER❤️ ᗰOD ༻
Super Moderator
Rachel Maddow Goes Off On Rudy Giuliani Over 9/11 Comments

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by Joe Coscarelli - 8:57 am, January 9th, 2010

The media reaction to Rudy Giuliani’s “no domestic attacks under Bush” super gaffe has been both huge and varied. The former mayor claims he was misunderstood — he meant post-9/11 and on American soil. But here’s a big surprise: that wasn’t enough for Rachel Maddow, who last night attempted to eviscerate Giuliani on her broadcast, relen More..tlessly proving the one-time presidential candidate wrong with history and his own words.

Maddow suggested that this week’s events — mainly Giuliani’s appearances on Good Morning America and Larry King Live — could spell the end of his political career. His entire brand, she said, is built on September 11th and Giuliani’s “expertise” on terrorism and these shaky statements will be too big to ignore.

Failing to give Giuliani the benefit of the doubt when it comes to misspeaking, Maddow instead listed numerous historical examples of terrorism (often attempted) that occurred under the Bush administration, thus rendering Giuliani’s statement false under any circumstances. “There is no possible way in which he is making sense,” Maddow said. What it comes down to, she continued, is political spin, and it could become a larger problem, should the rewriting of history become a trend.
 

VegasGuy

Star
OG Investor
Re: Rachel Maddow Goes Off On Rudy Giuliani Over 9/11 Comments

WTF?? Republiklan members know that most of their backwater ass supporters around the country don't won't turn the heat on in their houses unless fokkk news tells em it's cold outside.
They are making a collective decision to run on this bullshit story to feed those backwater ass rednecks this lie knowing all the while their is a sizable numer of their supporters who can't think worth a damn. The move is to plant the idea that 9/11 happened under Bill Clinton.

-VG
 

redemption

Star
Registered
Re: Rachel Maddow Goes Off On Rudy Giuliani Over 9/11 Comments

WTF?? Republiklan members know that most of their backwater ass supporters around the country don't won't turn the heat on in their houses unless fokkk news tells em it's cold outside.
They are making a collective decision to run on this bullshit story to feed those backwater ass rednecks this lie knowing all the while their is a sizable numer of their supporters who can't think worth a damn. The move is to plant the idea that 9/11 happened under Bill Clinton.

-VG

Or in an even worse case scenario, that Obama's mistakes overshadow any catastrophe that occurred during the Bush Administration. It's as if they are trying to turn Obama into the Democrat equivalent of Bush. However, for the simple fact dude can read, write, and is able to put together a complete sentence outweighs any such attempts.
 

MASTERBAKER

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Super Moderator
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Since Republicans blocked the Transparency Act, which would show all political donations (to see if there is corruption). I thought i would share a clip from only a few years ago.

Let us reflect on Republican Values ;)

Im sure the reason very republican voted to block the transparency act, was because they have something to hide! Something big to hide.

Corruption.. :smh:
 

MASTERBAKER

༺ S❤️PER❤️ ᗰOD ༻
Super Moderator


Rudy Giuliani is now one of Trump's personal legal advisers — throwback to this cringe-worthy moment
 
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