You Are Your Friends - Dime con quién andas y te digo quién eres.

Guiliani and Kerik












Dime con quién andas y te digo quién eres - translation - Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are. That's a phrase my Dad would often use when I was a teenager and was hanging around with someone he thought would be a bad influence on me. He seemed to know all about what was going on in our little town - which kids had been arrested, who drank too much, who had a bad reputation.

An editorial in today's NYT tells us the same thing about Kerik and Guiliani without the folk saying. Did most of NY know about Kerik's activities, but just didn't say?

from NYT editorial:

"Mr. Kerik’s whole troubled record raise questions about Mr. Giuliani’s judgment. The men have an extraordinarily close bond. Mr. Giuliani plucked Mr. Kerik from obscurity to make him correction commissioner. He made him police commissioner even though he may have been briefed about Mr. Kerik’s ties to the company suspected of links to organized crime. Mr. Giuliani also made him a partner in his security business and promoted him for the Homeland Security Department post."

Remember that Guiliani is one of those candidates that is trying to look tough on immigration, when he really wasn't while mayor of New York. What does it mean that Kerik is his buddy? What kind of Michael Chertoff would Kerik make? Now that is scary.


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Editorial

Indicting Mr. Kerik
New York Times
Published: November 10, 2007


Bernard Kerik’s indictment on fraud and corruption charges is disturbing on its own, but it also raises broader issues. It is sobering to think how close Mr. Kerik came to becoming secretary of the Homeland Security Department, and it is also troubling that Rudolph Giuliani, a leading candidate for president, has been so close to him for so long, as a friend, boss and business partner.

Because of Mr. Giuliani’s role in Mr. Kerik’s life, the nation has a compelling interest in learning more about the former police chief’s misdeeds.

Mr. Kerik has been accused of accepting renovations to his Bronx apartment from a company that was suspected of having ties to organized crime and was seeking a license from the city. He allegedly used his office to help the company obtain the license. Mr. Kerik also has been accused of hiding the renovation income on his tax returns, along with more than $200,000 in rent payments on an Upper East Side apartment that a developer allegedly paid on his behalf.

It is always a sad day, as United States Attorney Michael J. Garcia noted, when a law enforcement official is accused of breaking the law. That is especially true when the official was New York’s top jailer, the head of the nation’s largest police department, and nearly became the chief of a 180,000-member federal department charged with keeping America safe.

Mr. Kerik must be presumed innocent. But he has already pleaded guilty to state charges arising out of the home renovations. After he did, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stripped his name from a Manhattan jail that had been named for him. Even those charges were not Mr. Kerik’s first brush with the law. He was fined by the city for sending police officers to do research on a book he was writing. His associates have also had more than their share of troubles. When he was correction commissioner, one of Mr. Kerik’s top deputies was convicted of taking $142,000 from a charity he managed and another was convicted of using department staff to work on Republican political campaigns.

Yesterday’s indictment and Mr. Kerik’s whole troubled record raise questions about Mr. Giuliani’s judgment. The men have an extraordinarily close bond. Mr. Giuliani plucked Mr. Kerik from obscurity to make him correction commissioner. He made him police commissioner even though he may have been briefed about Mr. Kerik’s ties to the company suspected of links to organized crime. Mr. Giuliani also made him a partner in his security business and promoted him for the Homeland Security Department post.

As recently as this week, Mr. Giuliani made the remarkable statement that any mistakes Mr. Kerik made were outweighed by his success in fighting crime — presumably not including the crimes Mr. Kerik himself was committing. Mr. Giuliani has since spoken more critically of him, but the public is entitled to know more.

Two important questions are precisely what are the mistakes the former mayor thinks he made in trusting Mr. Kerik, and how can voters be sure that he would not make them again as president, when the stakes for a disastrous appointment would be so much higher.


photo: http://www.allreaders.com/pictures/rudy_giuliani_kerik.jpg