Posted on 12/10/2004 8:09:32 PM PST by Jeff Head
In a surprise move, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik abruptly withdrew his nomination as President Bush (news - web sites)'s choice to be homeland security secretary Friday night, saying questions have arisen about the immigration status of a housekeeper and nanny he employed.
The decision caught the White House off guard and sent Bush in search of a new candidate to run the sprawling bureaucracy of more than 180,000 employees melded together from 22 disparate federal agencies in 2003.
Kerik informed Bush of his decision to withdraw in a telephone call at 8:30 p.m. EST. "I am convinced that, for personal reasons, moving forward would not be in the best interests of your administration, the Department of Homeland Security or the American people," Kerik said in a letter to the president.
The White House said Bush accepted Kerik's decision.
One administration official helping prepare Kerik for Senate confirmation, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Kerik's unexpected decision shocked senior leaders at the Homeland Security Department. This official said Kerik still had not filled out all his ethics filings — which would detail his sources of income and financial liabilities — and said the FBI (news - web sites) background investigation of Kerik was still incomplete.
But the only moderately troubling information uncovered about Kerik so far was news that Kerik had earned $6.2 million by exercising stock options he received from Taser International, which did lucrative business with the Department of Homeland Security, this official said.
Kerik said the problematic issue arose as he was completing documents required for Senate confirmation. "I uncovered information that now leads me to question the immigration status of a person who had been in my employ as a housekeeper and nanny. It has also been brought to my attention that for a period of time during such employment required tax payments and related filings had not been made."
Kerik said he feared that the disclosure of the issue would generate intense scrutiny that would "only serve as a significant and unnecessary distraction to the vital efforts of the Department of Homeland Security."
Amnesty
He should have toughed it out -- if this was all there was. I think it shows a little flakiness other wise. Like him a lot, but he shouldn't have wilted so easily. It would be good if Bush could salvage the nomination, but i doubt it.
Would you be saying the same thing if a RAT was involved?
Granted, a RAT wouldn't have been forced to even consider stepping down, but WE would be screaming resignation from the top of our lungs.
I'm sorry to lose Bernie, but if he's dirty, we can't make excuses.
" I can see how it could easily have slipped through."
No you don't. You would have known exactly who was caring for your kids and I doubt it would have been someone breaking the law.
Merry Christmas, Jeff, to you and yours. I promise I'll read that book one day! I'm outta here for a while.
Not so cut and dry. If she was a salaried employee of his, it would be that easy. On the other hand, if she were a contract employee, (i.e., technically a small business owner) he is simply a customer of hers and its up to her to pay taxes. Since his home is not a business, it's even more likely she was a contract employee.
I know that a RAT would not even be vetted, but I don't care right now who is presented as long as they are qualified. The problem is the fact that the PC culture demands that anyone coming onstage be "so nice" and carry no baggage. We are still suffering from the Jimmy Carter perspective of who qualifies for these positions. This country is going to have to be slapped across the face in a very rude mannner to eventually awaken and shirk these qualifications that seem to exist in this PC culture.
I think it is time for the Republicans to up the stakes.
I hope that the Republicans "play the race card" and say that the reason that Dem's did what they did was because of Mr. Kerik's race. That Dem's are anti-Hispanic. Yes, I think that even if it is not true, the "race card should be played."
I still remember an early Baghdad press conference where reporters appeared to be questioning his truthfulness and integrity. He tolerated none of it. Put a stop to it on the spot. No reporter squeaked back a follow-on.
Paging Tommy Franks . . . !
Oliver North was the US counter-terrorism coordinator from 1983-1986. He would really drive the libs nuts though the libs might have some fun too trying to bring up his possible involvement in drug smuggling.
The Dems had nothing to do with it.
Bernie had two illegal aliens working as a nanny and housekeeper and knew he would get hammered for it.
Questions for Kerik
Is he qualified to run the Department of Homeland Security?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Dec. 3, 2004, at 10:58 AM PT
When Bernard Kerik, President Bush's choice to be the new homeland security secretary, testifies at his Senate confirmation hearings next month, someone should ask him the following questions:
What did you do to combat terrorism, either as New York City police commissioner or as a partner at Giuliani Associates (his former boss's consulting firm)?
What did you accomplish as Iraq's interim interior minister in the summer of 2003, and why did you leave that job two and a half months earlier than you'd planned?
What in your experience qualifies you to run the largest federal department created in the last half-century?
Let's start addressing some of these matters now.
A good man is hard to find. Keep looking.
The quick answer to the first question: not much. Kerik became commissioner not by rising through the ranks of the NYPD but through his loyalty to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. This is worth noting since, according to today's Washington Post, Kerik got his new job only after Giuliani "made an impassioned personal plea" to President Bush on his behalf. Today's New York Daily News quotes a "White House source" as saying, "Rudy cashed in a chip on this one."
Specifically, Kerik started his rise to power as a veteran street cop tasked to be Giuliani's driver and bodyguard during the 1993 mayoral election. The two became friends. Giuliani made him commissioner of the Corrections Department—where, it must be said, Kerik did a bang-up job, reducing gang violence at Riker's Island by 90 percent. He then became deputy commissioner of the NYPD and, finally, the commish.
He was the city's top cop for the last 16 months of Giuliani's tenure. For the first 13 of those months, terrorism wasn't much of an issue. Kerik's three main priorities, as he laid out in a talk at the Manhattan Institute in March 2001, were reducing crime (which had been plunging for eight years already), boosting police morale (which had recently been damaged by rancorous labor negotiations), and "improving community relations" (a euphemism for "saying hello to black people once in a while," which Giuliani had barely done since his first year as mayor).
Kerik did well in all three areas. But they had nothing to do with countering terrorism—an issue that Giuliani preferred to manage himself (with much enthusiasm, but mixed results, as when, for instance, he decided to put his multimillion-dollar anti-terror command headquarters on the 23rd floor of the World Trade Center).
Not to denigrate Kerik's job performance, but he spent much of his own term writing an autobiography (which became a best seller). He used active-duty police officers to help with research on the book, a violation of policy for which the city's Conflicts of Interest Board fined Kerik $2,500. And when someone stole his publisher's cell phone and necklace, he assigned some homicide detectives to the case—a move that caused some outrage in the ranks.
Giuliani stepped down as mayor just three and a half months after the 9/11 attacks, because of term-limit laws. When he left office, Kerik went with him and joined his consulting agency—where, reports suggest, he spent most of his time giving speeches.
The point here is that Kerik was no longer in office when the NYPD started mounting its intensive effort toward preventing and fighting terrorism. That campaign was jump-started by Raymond Kelly, the commissioner named by Giuliani's successor, Mike Bloomberg. If President Bush had wanted to hire a city cop with broad and deep experience at homeland security, Kelly would have been his man—but, alas, Kelly has worked for too many Democrats. He was police commissioner in David Dinkins' final year as mayor (when, most people forget, crime started to creep down). He was undersecretary of treasury, in charge of border security, under President Clinton. In his first two days on the job under Bloomberg, he set up a counterterrorism division; hired David Cohen, a 35-year CIA veteran, to run the shop; and lavished the operation with piles of department money.
The second question—Kerik's time in Baghdad—is a more mysterious matter, but from what's known about it, still more dismaying. In mid-May 2003, the Defense Department gave Kerik a $140,000-a-year contract to go train the new Iraqi police force. He told reporters, "I will be there at least six months—until the job is done." He came back to New York in early September, a little more than three months later, just as the insurgency began to grow, saying, "Everything that had to be done that I could possibly do, it was done."
Whatever Kerik did, it wasn't much. The Iraqi police forces were—and still are—notoriously ill-trained and ill-equipped for the gigantic challenges they face. It's not clear why Kerik left earlier than scheduled. By all accounts, he was a wash-out. One Pentagon official who was in Baghdad at the time calls Kerik's tenure "notably unspectacular." His tenure did produce some grist for scandal. Members of Iraq's interim governing council expressed loud dismay that Kerik spent $1.2 billion to train 35,000 Iraqi police in Jordan. More annoying still was his decision to buy from Jordan 20,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 50,000 revolvers, and 10 million rounds of ammunition, when he could have rounded up all those weapons far more cheaply—if not for free—from the disbanded Iraqi army.
Finally, as for Kerik's ability to run a bureaucratic monstrosity that consists of 22 federal agencies, again, there's not much there there. One thing can be said for Kerik: He is, at heart, a big-city cop. In other words, he appreciates that homeland security is principally an urban phenomenon; therefore, he might try to reshape the counterterrorism funding formula that currently gives Montana more federal dollars per capita than it gives New York. Kerik has also been on the receiving end of the FBI's tendency not to share information with state and local law enforcement. When he was New York police commissioner, Kerik was properly appalled that the FBI told him nothing about the anthrax scare, nothing about a smattering of dirty-bomb scares, and—though neither he nor Giuliani have said so publicly, out of loyalty to Bush—he must have been especially appalled that no one told him or his boss about the famous Aug. 6 President's Intelligence Brief that mentioned possible impending terrorist strikes in New York City.
In short, he comes to the job with a predisposition to improving relations between Washington and the cities and states. If he focuses on that—and leaves other managerial matters to qualified deputies—he might make a good go at it.
Otherwise, Kerik has little background in management and no experience in dealing with Washington or with any government entity larger, or less simpatico, than Rudy Giuliani's City Hall. Despite his résumé, he comes to this job not as a professional expert but as a political operator. He owes his career to Giuliani, who just purchased Ernst & Young's financial-services division, which may develop some monetary interest in companies dealing with homeland security. He campaigned vigorously for President Bush in the 2004 election, an activity that entailed bashing Sen. John Kerry as "clueless" on terrorism and getting a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.
In short, the senators at Kerik's confirmation hearings should ask him why they should expect the Department of Homeland Security under his command to be any more credible—to be perceived as any less of a White House shill—than it was under Thomas Ridge.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He was the Boston Globe's New York bureau chief from 1995-2002.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2110638/
"I don't care if Kerik is a cross-dressing monkey lover"
You just made me spit Pepsi on my keyboard. Cleaning it up sucked, but worth the laugh. Priceless.
If this article is correct and Bush didn't want Kerik, he looks like a weakling for appointing him.
Master politician? I don't think so.
Maybe I'm not making myself clear. We are still suffering from a 1970's approach to our frontline defense. And the barriers are being created by the pussies in the media who think that CIA guys need to be panty-wearing, cross-dressing, sensitive type guys who have never even thought about hiring a sortof-maybe-kinda illegal to place the poinsetta at the front door just so.
Oh, you gave me a homework assignment for the weekend? Boston Globe's New York bureau ? This is easy!
".... you gave me a homework assignment for the weekend?"
No, LOL.
But this guy was hardly "perfect", nevermind TASER and the NANNY. Being Giuliani's boy has done wonders for him, though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.