Rudy Giuliani

Republican Presidential Candidate for 2008: For those of us who believe George W. Bush selected the wrong people to help him destroy our nation, Rudy Giuliani, if elected, will do an even worse job. Bernard Kerik, was a Giuliani man. Read about Rudy's sidekick and good friend. This is only one example of Giuliani's judgement. Picture of Giuliani and Kerik. I close my case.

Bernard Kerik
Bernard Bailey Kerik, (born September 4, 1955 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American law-enforcement officer. Kerik was Police Commissioner of the City of New York from 2000 to 2001. In December 2004, George W. Bush nominated Kerik as Secretary of Homeland Security. A week later, Kerik withdrew his acceptance, explaining that he had employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny; subsequently, numerous allegations surfaced which might have led to a difficult confirmation battle.

Personal
The son of Donald Raymond Kerik, Sr. and Patricia Joann Bailey, Kerik was raised in Paterson, New Jersey. In 2001, Kerik published a memoir, The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice, in which he described how he came from a broken home. In the book, he said his parents divorced when he was 3 and his mother, an alcoholic and prostitute, was murdered when he was 9.

Kerik dropped out of high school, later receiving a General Equivalency Diploma. While New York City Police Commissioner, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Administration from Empire State College of the State University of New York.

Kerik is a former Military Police Officer (MP), a former bodyguard, a former jail warden and a former undercover narcotics detective, he is also a 5th Degree Black Belt Master Instructor in the Martial Arts, who holds Black Belts in both Japanese Karate and Korean tae kwon do.

Kerik declared bankruptcy in October 1987, but today he is a multimillionaire, the result of a lucrative partnership with former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and a profitable relationship with a stun-gun manufacturer. His relationship since 2002 with Taser International, a Scottsdale, Arizona, manufacturer of stun guns, has by far been the biggest source of his newfound wealth, earning him more than $6.2 million in pre-tax profits through stock options he was granted and then sold, mostly in November 2004.

Kerik has been married three times. His present wife since November 1998 is Syrian-born Hala Matli (born February 3, 1972). He has four children, his youngest, Celine Christina and Angelina Amber are both the godchildren of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York City.

Military and police experience
Kerik enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1975 and became a Military police officer (MP) assigned to Korea and to the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In 1978, he received an honorable discharge from the Army and returned to New Jersey.

Kerik worked from 1982 to 1984 as chief of investigations for the security office at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, one of the kingdom's premier hospitals, where members of the royal family are treated. Six members of the hospital security staff, including Kerik, were fired and deported after an investigation in 1984 by the Saudi secret police. (reported by the Washington Post)

Kerik served as Warden of the Passaic County jail, the largest county adult correctional facility in New Jersey, from January 1986 to July 1986. There, he also served as the Department's Training Officer and Commander of the Special Weapons and Operations units, and received the Medal of Honor from the City of Paterson and a Presidential Commendation from President Ronald Reagan, both for Heroism.

Kerik served with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) from July 1986 to May 1994, in both uniformed and plain clothes duty. While assigned to the US Justice Department's New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, he was one of two case agents responsible for overseeing one of the most substantial narcotic investigations in the history of the department, resulting in the conviction of more than 60 members of the Cali Cartel. He earned thirty (30) medals for meritorious and heroic service, including the department's Medal for Valor for his involvement in a gun battle in which his partner was shot and wounded. In December 1997, he was appointed by the Mayor to the New York City Gambling Control Commission. Kerik also chaired the Michael Buczek Foundation's annual fund-raiser that honors law enforcement across the nation.

Commissioner of NYC Department of Correction
Kerik served as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, a position to which he was appointed on January 1, 1998. He previously served for three years as the Department of Correction's First Deputy Commissioner and, prior to that, as the agency's Executive Assistant to the Commissioner and Director of the Investigations Division. He is credited with dramatically improving the safety of the city's jail system, reducing inmate-on-inmate violence by 93% over a 5 year period, and staff use of force by 76%. His tenure was also marked by greatly improved agency efficiency, including a 44% reduction in agency overtime expenditures and a 31% reduction in staff sick leave. In 2000, his Total Efficiency Accountability Management System (T.E.A.M.S.) was a finalist for the prestigious Innovations in American Government Award sponsored by Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

New York City Police Commissioner
Kerik was appointed the 40th New York City Police Commissioner by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on August 21, 2000. He left office at the end of Giuliani's term on December 31, 2001. Kerik's selection came despite the fact that he lacked a college degree - a requirement established in 1985 by then-Commissioner Benjamin Ward for anyone promoted above the rank of Captain. There have been questions raised regarding the fact that the City of New York's Department of Investigations bypassed the normal vetting process in appointing Kerik police commissioner. The accusation among others were that his chief qualification appeared to be that he had served as Giuliani’s driver and bodyguard.

As the leader of the largest municipal police department in the United States, Commissioner Kerik oversaw a uniformed force of more than 41,000 officers, a civilian force of more than 14,500 which included the 3,500 member School Safety Division and 2,000-member Traffic Control Division, and an annual budget of more than $3.2 billion. Kerik was serving as Police Commissioner during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and oversaw the law-enforcement response.

After the attacks, Kerik took control of an apartment donated for the recovery efforts at Ground Zero, using it as a rent-free "love nest" to meet with his girl friends, including Judith Regan, the publisher of "The Lost Son".
Interim Minister of Interior of Iraq

In May 2003, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kerik was appointed by the George W. Bush Administration as the Interim Minister of Interior of Iraq and Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Presidential Envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. He was responsible for reconstituting the Iraqi Ministry of Interior which had dissolved into the community during the U.S. led coalition's invasion of Iraq. The Iraq Interior consisted of the National Police, Intelligence Service and Border and Customs Police. In Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book on Iraq, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Kerik was said to be arrogant, incompetent, and undedicated in his position.

Consulting work
Following his departure from the New York City Police Department, he was employed by Giuliani Partners, a consulting firm formed by the former Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani. He served as a Senior Vice President at Giuliani Partners and as Chief Executive Officer of Giuliani-Kerik LLC, an affiliate of Giuliani Partners. Kerik resigned from these positions in December, 2004. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Kerik served from May to September 2003 as Iraq’s interim Minister of Interior where he oversaw the re-constitution and reconstruction of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, including the national police service and border enforcement units. Kerik is currently the Chairman & CEO of The Kerik Group LLC, a New York City based consulting firm specializing in Homeland Security, Counter-Terrorism and Law Enforcement and Jail/Prison Management services.

Nomination as Secretary of Homeland Security
On December 3, 2004, Kerik was nominated by President Bush to succeed Tom Ridge as United States Secretary of Homeland Security. But on December 10, after a week of press scrutiny, Kerik withdrew acceptance of the nomination. Kerik stated that he had unknowingly hired an undocumented worker as a nanny and housekeeper who had used someone else's social security number. Similar violations of immigration law had previously caused the withdrawal of the nominations of Linda Chavez as Secretary of Labor by George W. Bush and of Zoe Baird as Attorney General by Bill Clinton.

Shortly after withdrawal of the nomination, the press reported on several other incidents which might also have posed difficulties in gaining confirmation by the Senate. These include: questions regarding Kerik's sale of stock in Taser International shortly before the release of an Amnesty International report critical of the company's stun-gun product; a sexual harassment lawsuit; an affair with Judith Regan; allegations of misuse of police personnel and property for personal benefit; connections with a construction company suspected of having ties to organized crime; and failure to comply with ethics rules on gifts.

Investigation results
On June 30, 2006, after an eighteen month investigation conducted by the Bronx District Attorney's Office, Kerik pled guilty to two ethics violations (unclassified misdemeanors) and was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines at the 10-minute hearing.

Kerik acknowledged that he failed to document a personal loan on his annual New York City Conflict of Interest Report (a violation of the New York City Administrative Code) and accepting a gift from a New Jersey construction firm (or ones of their subsidiaries) attempting to do business with the city, (a violation of the New York City Charter). During the court hearing, the Assistant Bronx District Attorney stated that "although some may draw inferences from this plea, there is no direct evidence of an agreement between Kerik and the New Jersey construction firm". Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg immediately removed Kerik's name from the Manhattan Detention Complex, a New York jail that had been renamed in Kerik's honor on December 21, 2001 by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Subsequently, on July 20, 2006, the two New Jersey contractors were indicted on perjury charges, accused of lying to the Bronx grand jury in the Kerik investigation.