Tough Guy Kerik Often
Lived on the Edge
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Rob Bennett for The New York Times
Bernard B. Kerik outside the courthouse. He rose
quickly after he began working for Rudolph W. Giuliani |
By RUSS BUETTNER,
nytimes.com from the Web, November 10, 2007
In late 2001, at the end of his
16-month term as New York police commissioner, the reckless side of Bernard B.
Kerik played out on three stages.
In the Bronx, Mr. Kerik had put his apartment up for sale at an asking price
boosted by lavish renovations paid for by a contractor. Prosecutors say
Mr. Kerik had tried to help that contractor while he was a city official.
In Manhattan, he had moved into a luxury apartment paid for by a real estate
executive, a gift prosecutors say he accepted without paying taxes.
And overlooking the still smoldering ruins at ground zero, he was using an
apartment that had been donated to the city as a respite for recovery workers as
a rendezvous for trysts with his paramour, Judith Regan, the publisher of his
memoir.
Tough guy. Innovative manager. Charmer. Loyal friend.
Mr. Kerik, 52, has a many-sided personality that has endeared him to a full
slate of powerful people, including a publisher, a mayor and a president.
But, as yesterday’s indictment illustrates, he often also appears to enjoy
living on the edge, repeatedly exposing himself to situations that could destroy
his personal and professional life.
“Bernie is a multidimensional character who is street-smart, emotional,
fearless, picks up complex organizational issues quickly, and is also a
risk-taker,” said Michael P. Jacobson, a former city correction commissioner who
served as Mr. Kerik’s boss. “Those are all qualities that can make one an
effective leader — and get one into trouble at the same time.”
By his own account, Mr. Kerik’s first sojourn to Saudi Arabia in 1978 was
formative. During 30 months working security at a construction site in the
desert, Mr. Kerik, then 22, learned from a squad of mercenaries and
disillusioned Vietnam War veterans how to carry himself with a “quiet, dignified
confidence.” He also developed a taste for the spoils of mercenary pay:
Gucci shoes, Rolex watches, European suits, according to his memoir.
As a city police officer, his professed dream career, he would rise to
detective, distinguishing himself on dangerous undercover drug investigations
during seven years on the job. He was still a police officer in 1993 when
he began working security and as a driver for Rudolph W. Giuliani, then a
mayoral candidate. The relationship would set the course for the rest of
his life.
In early 1995, Mayor Giuliani appointed Mr. Kerik first deputy commissioner of
the city’s Correction Department, the second-highest rank in a agency. The
same year, Mr. Kerik met Lawrence V. Ray, a businessman willing to share the
money he had made in various insurance and technology endeavors. The two
became friends, regularly working out and dining together.
About a year later, when Mr. Ray was warned that a mobster wanted him dead
because of a business deal gone bad, Mr. Kerik called a friend at the F.B.I. to
set up a meeting between Mr. Ray and agents.
Nothing about the episode prompted Mr. Kerik, a law enforcement official, to
distance himself from Mr. Ray. Rather, he continued to ask Mr. Ray for
money and other gifts, including help in buying an apartment and subsidizing his
wedding reception. He would continue to call Mr. Ray his best friend until
Mr. Ray was indicted in March 2000 for a minor role in the mobster’s stock fraud
scheme.
By then, Mr. Kerik had made other friends through Mr. Ray from whom he accepted
gifts. One, a real estate developer named Nathan Berman, invited Mr. Kerik
to vacation at his family’s seaside villa in Majorca and provided him with a
personal loan of $28,000 to help buy the Bronx apartment in 1999.
Mr. Ray also introduced Mr. Kerik to Frank DiTommaso, the owner of a
construction company that had long battled allegations that it was too close to
organized crime figures. Prosecutors say Mr. DiTommaso’s companies paid
$165,000 to renovate Mr. Kerik’s Bronx apartment, starting just months after the
two met and at a time when the company was seeking help with city officials who
were withholding a city license from the firm. Mr. Kerik met and called
city officials involved in the license review on the company’s behalf,
investigators say.
Mr. Kerik also took risks in his personal life. He dated a married
subordinate in the Correction Department, Jeannette Pinero; Mr. Kerik has said
the affair ended before he married his current wife, Hala, in 1998. In
2001, he also dated his publisher, Ms. Regan.
When a necklace he had given to Ms. Regan seemed to disappear, along with her
cellphone, from a television studio, homicide detectives were dispatched to the
station’s make-up artists’ homes in the middle of the night.
And when he sought to learn about his mother’s life and death, for his memoir
that Ms. Regan was publishing, he sent police officers who worked for him to
Ohio.
As charming and self-deprecating as he often was, Mr. Kerik also survived in
public life because some people felt intimidated by him.
In early 1995, he sat in front of the grizzled wardens of Rikers Island, his
bulky frame tucked into a dapper suit. A series of embarrassing
revelations had just led to the departure of Giuliani’s first correction
commissioner, Anthony Schembri. Some wardens were suspected of leaking the
information and Mr. Kerik was the new deputy in the department.
“I am a hunter of men,” Mr. Kerik said, according to several people who were
present. He spoke of employing a management style akin to that of Attila
the Hun and promised to destroy the career of anyone who crossed him.
When Mr. Kerik left city service in 2002 and joined Mr. Giuliani in the private
sector, he enjoyed not only the fame that came with his association with the
heroism of 9/11, but also newfound wealth. Taser International, a maker of
stun guns, put him on its board and he earned more than $5 million by selling
stock options in the company several years ago. Mr. Giuliani also paid him
a salary of $500,000.
Still, according to yesterday’s indictment, he welcomed the help of Steven C.
Witkoff, a commercial real estate developer and something of a cop buff, who
picked up his annual rent of more than $100,000 on the Manhattan apartment.
None of Mr. Witkoff’s gift was reported as income, according to federal
prosecutors who view such conduct as not only reckless, but criminal.
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