SECURITY-DOOR JAM By CHRISTOPHER BYRON
December 13, 2004 -- THE news that Bernard Kerik withdrew his name from considera tion as President Bush's choice to become the nation's second Homeland Security czar is not really all that surprising. . .at least to those who knew the man as an actual human being.
But before getting into the details, first some broader thoughts on what Bernie Kerik's week-long streak through the headlines tells us about the opportunities, and perils, that await our urgent, and intensifying, new worship of that uniquely American creation: the one-eyed-Jack instant hero.
They are the Lenny Skutnicks of American history, and time and again we lift them to acclaim for some sudden and valorious act, then parade them before the throng to extol a lifetime of virtue.
There were many highly qualified individuals who could have been named Secretary of Homeland Security by President Bush on Dec. 3.
One thinks, for example, of Republican Congressman Christopher Shays of Connecticut, who has not only been the White House's most consistent Congressional supporter in the war against terrorism, but has stayed blemish-free in the public eye for more than 20 years.
Yet Bush went instead for the Jacksonian alternative to a man like Shays, and upon a laying on of the hands by uber-hero Rudolph Giuliani, chose Kerik, citing as his key accomplishment that he "was there when the Twin Towers collapsed."
In so doing, Bush got not just the "one-eyed Jack" but the real man on the other side. As a result, the legend of Bernie Kerik lasted for precisely one week.
One reason it crumbled so fast is that the vetting of the man seems to have consisted principally of a couple of Q&A sessions led by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.
If the Washington Post is to believed, Gonzales' idea of getting at the facts seems to have boiled down to little more than repeatedly admonishing Kerik to answer the questions truthfully — especially with regard to the employment and tax status of a nanny that the Keriks had hired to take care of their young children over an 18-month period that ended in November.
YET it now appears — circumstantially though rather obvi ously — that the woman was not just an undocumented alien worker for whom the Keriks had failed to pay FICA taxes, but that she left the country at apparently just about the time the President began looking at him as Homeland Security czar.
Kerik's lawyer was quoted over the weekend in the Washington Post as saying that the nanny left six weeks ago and had been planning to do so "for several months" but The New York Times quoted an anonymous official in New York as saying she left just two weeks ago. Neither Kerik nor his lawyer has said where the woman now is or provided any details as to how to contact her.
Meanwhile, Kerik has now advanced a story — complete with the earmarks of an artful dodger — to explain himself publicly on the matter, saying to reporters gathered in his driveway last Saturday morning that he had been busy at work only three days earlier, on the evening of Wednesday, Dec. 8, pulling together background-check papers for the White House when he stumbled upon documents suggesting that the family nanny might have had a "questionable immigration status."
As Kerik explained it, this revelation led to another in the two days that followed — namely, that there might have been "some problems with tax filings" involving the woman — and by Friday evening he had decided that, innocent though he was of any wrongdoing, he had no choice but to withdraw his name from nomination to avoid embarrassing the President.
So he thereupon phoned the White House with the news.
Well, I have a problem with that scenario because it is materially incomplete. On Mon., Dec. 6 — which is to say, two full days before Kerik now acknowledges that he had anything troubling to be concerned with — I published a column in this space calling attention to his fishily-timed sale last month of $6.2 million worth of stock in a stun gun company called Taser International, Inc., where he served as a board member.
It now appears that the stock sale, the departure of the nanny, and the news that he was being considered — on Giuliani's recommendation — to become the country's new homeland security head all occurred at around the same time in mid-November.
More importantly, the next day on the afternoon of Tues., Dec. 7, I received an unexpected call from a close Kerik confidante and friend who told me he had received a phone call from Kerik himself earlier in the day. According to the source, the would-be Homeland chief had been agitated and concerned over the column, which amounted to the first post-nomination shot across the bow regarding his credibility.
And, said the source, Kerik worried that he'd never be able to stand up against the herd of reporters that he now expected to begin stampeding his way.
BUT if Kerik, by his own admission, didn't yet know anything about the nanny-gate fiasco boiling up under him, and wasn't to get the first inkling of it until Wednesday evening, then what was he so worried about two days earlier that he figured he'd never be able to survive the questioning of the press?
Questioning about what? What other skeletons were locked up in Kerik's closet?
There are plenty, and relentlessly, the press is now digging them out, from his 1987 federal bankruptcy filing, to the arrest warrant that a New Jersey court issued for him after he repeatedly ignored an overdue $5,000 condo charge, to his bizarre role as chairman of a foundation that misallocated $1 million of public monies when he was running the NewYork City Dept. of Corrections.
Or how about his role as New York City Police Commissioner in the summer of 2001, when his department purchased nearly $200,000 worth of apparently useless security doors for 1 Police Plaza from a Queens company named Georal Inc. The doors were never installed and were soon lost. Kerik's successor as police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, has ordered an investigation into why the doors were purchased in the first place but no report has been published yet.
Meanwhile, Kerik went to work in November of 2003 as an outside advisor to a Hauppauge, Long Island penny stock company called Dataworld Systems, Inc., which several months later signed a distribution deal with Georal to market the Queens' company's security products.
Dataworld has since changed its name to Defense Technology Systems Inc.
In a press release at the time, Kerik called the deal a "milestone event" because "Georal's security products save lives." Thereafter, Kelly ordered the investigation into the NYPD's earlier purchase of Georal doors on Kerik's watch.
For his part, Kerik has denied any involvement in the matter.
Does any of this matter anymore? Obviously it does to Kerik, and ditto to Giuliani, who looks like the schnook of all time for failing to check out the bona fides of a man who works as his own junior partner at the Giuliani & Associates consulting firm before recommending him to the President.
But the real and larger lesson here is a cautionary tale for all of us: Beware the pitfalls that await those who rush to judgment when a single act of valor — or indeed venality — blots out the entire rest of a man's life.
If we learn that from the story of Bernie Kerik, it will have been a small price to pay.
*Please send e-mail to: cbyron@nypost.com |
