Giuliani and his mobbed up chief of police, Bernard Kerik

The New York Times, Giuliani's hometown newspaper, has a long story Saturday about Rudy's relationship with "the mobbed-up former jail warden who nearly became the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security."

David Kurtz at Talking Point Memo has a striking quotation from the NY Times article:

Mr. Kerik was a comic book hero come to life, a decorated undercover detective with a ponytail and earrings, thick biceps and a taste for four-letter words as nouns, verbs and adjectives. He cultivated relationships with powerful people, including an influential sheriff who five years earlier had made him the youngest jail warden in the history of Passaic County, N.J.

When Mr. Giuliani ran for mayor in 1993, Mr. Kerik organized his security detail of off-duty officers, reserving the weekend shift for himself.

When Mr. Giuliani became mayor, he gave Mr. Kerik a job in the Correction Department. A year later, the mayor asked him to drop by Gracie Mansion.

The two men sat upstairs and shared a bottle of red wine, a gift to the mayor from Nelson Mandela. Mr. Giuliani said he planned to appoint Mr. Kerik as first deputy correction commissioner.

Mr. Kerik, who wrote of this in his autobiography, “The Lost Son,” was taken aback; he was a year removed from being a police detective.

“Mayor, I appreciate your confidence in me, I really do,” he said. “But I ran a jail. One jail. Rikers is like 10 jails.”

Just do it, the mayor replied.

Mr. Kerik followed Mr. Giuliani downstairs to a dimly lighted room. There waited Mr. Giuliani’s boyhood chum Peter J. Powers, who was first deputy mayor, and other aides. One by one, they pulled Mr. Kerik close and kissed his cheek.

“I wonder if he noticed how much becoming part of his team resembled becoming part of a mafia family,” Mr. Kerik wrote. “I was being made.”

[Highlighting mine - Editor WTF-o]

Kerik was later recommended by Rudy to President Bush as the leader in Iraq for training Iraqi police, where he lasted a very short time with no distinction and no reputation for working at all. Then Bush tried to appoint Kerik as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and the resulting close inspection of his record showed how close Kerik was to the mob in New York.

Rudy has poor judgment in his subordinates. I comment on Norm Podhoretz at Giuliani - Clinton, the Presidential election and beyond, particularly under the heading of "Foreign Policy Rudy."