KERIK LOVE NEST FACED GROUND ZERO PIT .. Developing..

(slapping forehead) Good Grief!

slepping = spelling

I'm off to look for my daughters junior dictionary

Apartment Said to Have Been Scene of a Kerik Affair
By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Published: December 15, 2004

Frances Roberts for The New York Times

The apartment building in Battery Park City that was used by Mr. Kerik, and where he is said to have met with Judith Regan, his publisher.

An apartment in Battery Park City that former Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik secured for his personal use after Sept. 11 was originally donated for the use of weary police and rescue workers who were helping at ground zero, according to a real estate executive who has been briefed about the apartment.

After the cleanup had settled into a routine that fall, the executive said, Mr. Kerik, who was still police commissioner, asked to rent the two-bedroom apartment for his own use. During his use of the apartment, Mr. Kerik and Judith Regan engaged in an extramarital affair there, according to someone who spoke to Mr. Kerik about the relationship. Ms. Regan published his best-selling autobiography in 2001.

Rescue workers were combing through the World Trade Center rubble around the clock when Mr. Kerik called Anthony Bergamo, a well-connected vice chairman of the Milstein family real estate company and a police buff, and asked for help finding a place for the workers to rest during breaks, the executive said.

The family owned Liberty View, a 28-story yellow brick tower two blocks southwest of the trade center at the corner of West Street and Third Place.

According to the executive, who knows Mr. Bergamo, the vice chairman arranged for Mr. Kerik to have the use of an apartment there. Several apartments in the buildings had been used by rescue workers on breaks, and by Red Cross staff who were treating them, in the months after 9/11, according to a real estate executive.

Mr. Bergamo, founder of the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation, which raises money to help families of injured or slain F.B.I. agents, is a well-known figure among law enforcement officers for his interest in all things related to policing. He was made an honorary police commissioner several years ago by Police Commissioner Howard Safir.

Mr. Bergamo is licensed by the Police Department to carry a Colt .45 handgun and two Smith & Wesson handguns, a .38-caliber revolver and a 9-millimeter pistol, the police said. He has renewed the license repeatedly over the last decade or so, the police said.

According to the executive, Mr. Kerik "went to Bergamo asking for an apartment for emergency service workers."

It is unclear exactly who used the apartment and for how long, but after the cleanup of the site settled into a routine, the executive said Mr. Kerik "said he wanted to rent the apartment." Mr. Bergamo rented it to him. Mr. Kerik paid for use of the apartment, but the amount was not clear. Many apartments that were available in Battery Park City after the attack on the trade center were rented at well below market rates for months afterward.

After taking the apartment, Mr. Kerik, who is married with two children and lived at the time in Riverdale, the Bronx, began to meet there with Ms. Regan, said the person who spoke to Mr. Kerik about the matter.

That person said that one bedroom faced the pit of ground zero, and that Ms. Regan visited it while Mr. Kerik was police commissioner, meaning between Sept. 11 and Dec. 31, 2001. Mr. Kerik refused to answer any questions yesterday regarding the apartment.

Ms. Regan, like Mr. Bergamo, received an honorary badge on Dec. 31, 2001, this one from Mr. Kerik himself. It was Mr. Kerik's last day as police commissioner.

Questions have been raised in the past about the tradition of bestowing these ceremonial badges, and whether they create the appearance that those who receive them are in debt to those who grant them. Bearers of the shields are not to become involved in law enforcement activities.

Many residents of the apartment tower said this week that they were unaware of Mr. Kerik's presence, although one man who requested anonymity said that he boarded an elevator six months ago with him. "I said to myself, 'Hey, that's Bernie Kerik,' " the man recalled. "It was surprising. But then I thought, well, maybe he keeps a place down here because he's involved with security and 9/11."

Contacted at the annual Milstein holiday party at the New York Public Library on Monday night, Mr. Bergamo declined to comment and had a reporter escorted out of the building.

Several people who know him describe Mr. Bergamo, who once ran the Milstein family's Milford Plaza Hotel, as a police buff, a man who is fascinated by law enforcement officers. In 1987, he was one of the founders of the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation, whose board included Ronald Perelman, chairman of Revlon, and Tommy Mottola, the music executive.

Mr. Bergamo told Newsday last fall that each member must contribute or raise $30,000 for the foundation. Some members, like Mr. Bergamo, Mr. Perelman and Mr. Mottola, were made honorary police commissioners and given badges. The group also issued parking placards like those used by the New York police.

Several years ago, Mr. Bergamo undertook an assignment for his boss, Howard Milstein, in connection with a $100 million lawsuit filed by Mr. Milstein against John Kent Cooke, the former owner of the Washington Redskins, over the developer's failed attempt to buy the football team.

Posing as "Anthony Burke" and using a hidden tape recorder, Mr. Bergamo arranged to bump into Mr. Cooke and the former Redskins general manager, Charley Casserly, during a trip to Bermuda in an effort to elicit damaging information.

He did not obtain any incriminating statements, but he did chalk up over $6,500 in expenses.

You were correct in your earlier assessment after the revelation of his neglected Korean child. Gross failures of character are seldom isolated incidents.

That may be true, but your assessment was so much more eloquent --he's a dirtball.

The women - publishing tycoon Judith Regan and Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero - were simultaneously involved in extramarital affairs with Kerik, sources told the New York Daily News.

In the harrowing weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Kerik romanced both women at a secret New York City apartment, according to the sources, who have intimate knowledge of the liaisons.

As the women kept silent Monday, Kerik held an impromptu press conference outside the Times Square offices of his friend and business partner Rudy Giuliani.

Wearing a Yankees cap, Kerik acknowledged "very close" relationships with both women.

"We had a very close relationship," Kerik said of Pinero. "She is someone who worked for the Department of Correction. I've been friends with her ever since. During the time of that relationship, she was separated. I was not married."

Kerik's lawyer has told the New York Daily News that Kerik's "friendship" with Pinero ended in 1996. But the sources insisted the affair carried on through 2001.

"With regard to Judith Regan," Kerik continued, "most of you know Judith Regan published my book... She was not only extremely professional, she was very close to me."

"We had a close relationship," he said. "I'm not going to get into the details of either of those. I think that's my personal business."

Kerik also insisted a federal lawsuit claiming he had punished a correction employee who crossed Pinero would be dismissed. The city last year settled a suit making similar claims for $250,000.

Giuliani said only Kerik could answer questions about his personal relationships.

"I have confidence in Bernie," the ex-mayor said.

Regan, head of her own multimillion-dollar publishing and television empire, left town early Monday on a planned business trip, sources close to her said. The trip kept the attractive 51-year-old mother of two away from the throngs of television cameras outside her office.

Pinero also was missing from her job Monday, according to department sources, and was believed to be spending time with her husband of many years. He has vowed to stand by his wife.

It was not clear Monday how Kerik's wife of six years, Hala, reacted to the news. Outside the Maywood, N.J., home of Hala's sister, a woman answered the door but said little.

"This is a personal family matter," said the woman, who declined to identify herself.

Kerik said the scandals surrounding his failed nomination have taken a toll on the family.

"It's a difficult time," he said. "You know, you want to attack me, attack me. Don't attack my family."

Kerik apparently became close with Regan while writing his book, "The Lost Son," in which he described being abandoned by his prostitute mother.

The relationship first drew scrutiny in 2001 after Kerik reportedly dispatched detectives to question people whom Regan had accused of stealing her cell phone. In 2002, Kerik was ordered to pay a conflict-of-interest fine for using three police officers to do research about his mother for the book.

Other recent reports claim that around the time of the alleged affairs, Kerik accepted unreported gifts of thousands of dollars in cash and other items from associates at a New Jersey construction company while serving under then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, first as correction chief, then as police commissioner. Authorities suspect the company, Interstate Industrial Corp., has ties to organized crime.

Kerik said he was unaware of any mob allegations involving Interstate, which has denied any wrongdoing.

Giuliani insisted Kerik would have been a "very, very good choice" for homeland security secretary if not for the nanny problem.

"Everyone thinks he would have been superbly qualified," he said, adding that Kerik would remain a partner at the firm, Giuliani Partners.

snip

Those around Kerik — and even Kerik himself — may have paid the price for becoming too enamored of his image as a brash, self-made law enforcer, said Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychoanalyst at the City University of New York's Graduate Center in Manhattan.

"Kerik is a great rags-to-accomplishment story and Bush really likes that because it fits into is view of the American dream," Renshon said. "What's different about them is that Bush is pretty much a straight shooter. He's a straight-and-narrow kind of guy, and Kerik clearly is a lot less that."

I thought this was just about sex.

Heck, that argument worked for X42, why not now?

ping

Since your are in the Big Apple, maybe you can answer my question, just what did he ever do, to merit praise?

Besides being a good police commissioner who did his job -- helped keep crime down to record lows -- he did a great deal of the "behind the scenes" stuff on 9/11. For one thing, he quickly thought to call Washington to get our airspace closed down and to get the military planes that were patrolling over us that morning.

Honestly, I like him and thought he was a good choice for Homeland Security, but not any longer.

Yeah, this is pretty bad. What the Hell was Kerik thinking?

LOL

I can't believe Kerik though. And who would know this? Who knew they were doing this? Did Judith tell her girlfriends?

Well, i think this is pretty sick. Who does it hurt? Does it hurt Bush? I haven't figured that part out yet...

Good question. Who is the media really going after with this? Kerik is just their vehicle. Is this to hurt Bush and/or Giuliani? I am trying to figure that part out.

Ok Carville. You are a sleeper freeper. I'm onto you.

I don't think thats similar. Screwing to spite the Commies or with the possibility of having the Commies invade is one thing. Screwing on the gravesite of 3000 Americans is low life stuff.

I got one.... how about Britney Spear's boy toy, Kevin Federline.

Is this to hurt Bush and/or Giuliani?

Probably both.

Am I the only one who doesn't think she is a great looking dame? She is a handsome woman, but no sexpot by any means.

I used to think highly of Judith Regan, who is no dummy....except apparently in her personal life. I always found Kerik to be dirty, dirty, dirty....not so much because of this stuff as his disgusting war profiteering.
Good riddance. He's a stiff and a self-promoter. I could never understand why he's been deified virtually for the last 3 years. Political BS.