Fuggedabout it! Rudy's Questionable Judgment Not Soon Forgotten

Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani is coming under increasing scrutiny as details of his testimony before a grand jury come to light. The new revelations show that the Rudy you don't know was briefed about Bernard Kerik's potential mob ties before Giuliani hired him for the position of Chief of Police. Giuliani hired him anyway, and subsequently recommended him to be chief of the nation's Homeland Security department years later.

According to the New York Times today, in "his testimony, given in April 2006, Mr. Giuliani indicated that he must have simply forgotten that he had been briefed on one or more occasions as part of the background investigation of Mr. Kerik before his appointment to the police post." [New York Times, 3/30/07]

On the same day the Times reported Giuliani's decision to hire Kerik despite warnings about possible mob ties, the Associated Press revealed that Giuliani has been widely criticized for ignoring warnings about communications problems plaguing New York's first responders after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Pressed by the 9/11 Commission about interoperability problems, Giuliani said, "[t]here was not a problem of coordination on Sept. 11." The 9/11 Commission later cited interoperability as one of the most glaring problems faced by first responders on September 11. [9/11 Commission Report, 7/22/04]

"Giuliani’s lapses in judgment show a pattern that raises serious questions about what he knew and when he knew it, and why in light of clear information about Kerik and the needs of first responders he ignored both," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Luis Miranda. "Mr. Giuliani owes voters in New York and across America answers."

THE RUDY YOU DON"T KNOW IGNORED POSSIBLE
MOB TIES AND FIRST RESPONDER WARNING

No Bull

Giuliani might think his alleged memory lapse means the issue is taken care of, but "[a]ccording to the grand jury transcript, a prosecutor for the Bronx district attorney's office told Mr. Giuliani that.his investigators had compiled a considerable body of knowledge about Mr. Kerik's relationship with" a company that performed $165,000 worth of renovations at no charge on Kerik's apartment, and which was operated by brothers who have now been indicted "on charges they lied under oath about their dealings with Mr. Kerik." Kerik had even admitted to investigators that a friend had been "indicted on federal criminal charges, along with...a reputed Gambino soldier, the brother-in-law of.the former underboss known as Sammy the Bull." [New York Times, 3/30/07]

"Part of the Problem"

According to the AP, Giuliani has been faulted on his "administration's failure to provide the World Trade Center's first responders with adequate radios, a long-standing complaint from relatives of the firefighters killed when the twin towers collapsed." Despite being in office for almost the entire time between the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and September 11, 2001, concerns over first responder interoperability went unanswered and the firefighters on 9/11 "were using the same ineffective radios employed by the first responders to the 1993 terrorist attack on the trade center." The AP noted that a mother of one of the firefighters lost "wants the American people to know," when Giuliani runs on his 9/11 credentials, that "he was part of the problem." [AP, 3/30/07]