The Giuliani Papers

Grand Jury Details Actions of Giuliani's Pedophile Priest

Details of the molestation MO of Rudy's chum and employee at Giuliani Partners Msgr. Alan Placa were published in the Village Voice this week.

The reports from the Suffolk County Supreme Court describe the behavior of "Priest F" with the young men entrusted to his care:

"Once, when he was working at the rectory on a slow evening, the boy was in the office watching TV, Priest F came in and asked if he could join him. He pulled a chair up next to the boy and put his right hand on his thigh. Slowly his hand began to creep up towards the boy's genital area. Alarmed, the boy covered his crouch. After Priest F's efforts to push his arm away failed, Priest F gave up and left. The boy remembered that Priest F was very nervous. He never told anyone at the time because he didn't think anyone would believe him"

And:

"Priest F was cautious, but relentless in his pursuit of victims. He fondled boys over their clothes, usually in his office. Always, his actions were hidden by a poster, newspaper or a book. He talked continuously as he fondled them. Everyone in the school knew to stay away from Priest F."

A footnote in the report about one of those instances of alleged abuse contains an absurd but heartbreaking detail: "One of the victims remembers the first incident of abuse taking place when preparations were underway to attend a right-to-life march on the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. The students were making banners with Priest F's help. It was a banner that was used as the foil on this occasion."

A link to a few of the Court pages is here.

Giuliani still insists that the charges against Placa, now defrocked by the Church, are unfounded. Placa works for Giiuliani Partners.

Giuliani's Pedophile Priest

It's a story that has been around for a long time: "Rudy Giuliani's close association with, employment of and loyalty to a priest credibly accused of child molestation."

Giuliani has known the now-defrocked Alan Placa since they went to Brooklyn's Bishop Loughlin High School together. In addition to "fixing" Long Island molestation cases in the church's favor, Placa also fixed the annulment of Rudy's first marriage to his cousin.

Now Placa seems to be relying on Giuliani to fix his own little problem:

In 2003 a grand jury report of Suffolk County, NY, accused Placa of sexually abusing multiple victims.

A spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners told Salon Magazine that the former New York City mayor believes Placa was "unjustly accused." The grand jury report contains accusations from three alleged victims, including two children (Placa is named as "Priest F" in the report.) According to testimony before the grand jury, "Everyone in the school knew to stay away from Priest F."

Placa has been suspended from his priestly duties for the past five years...

The grand jury report includes excerpts from a letter in which Placa brags about his ability to settle multi-million dollar clergy abuse claims for "$20,000 to $100,000."...

During the 1980s, Placa was the legal advisor to the House of Affirmation in Worchester, MA, which offered counseling services to priests accused of sexual abuse. One person who worked at this facility called it a "pedophile boot camp." An abuse victim referred to it as a "breeding ground for sexual predators."

How long can MSM give Rudy a free pass on this shit?

Giuliani's Newest Corrupt Buddy

The latest in Giuliani's endless stream of criminal associates and supporters is Bob Asher, who did time for a government bribery scheme (his co-defendant killed himself on TV).

ABC News reported:

Bob Asher, a major Pennsylvania Republican player as a national party committeeman, was one of four hosts for the $2,300-a-person event. Asher was convicted in 1986 on charges stemming from a bribery scheme intended to win a $300,000 state government contract. The case gained national attention when his co-defendant in the case, Pennsylvania state treasurer R. Budd Dwyer, committed suicide at a televised news conference. Asher was sentenced to serve one year in prison.

Loyalty, Giuliani-Style

With the Kerik indictments in the news, much has been written about Giuliani's need for "loyalty" among his colleagues and those who work for him. Often "loyalty" becomes the same as "blind faith," emphasis on "blind."

Some have noticed the similarity of this trait to the same brand of "loyalty" used by president Bush to select advisors and judge allies. Like Musharaff:

Having declared General Musharraf a friend and an ally, Mr. Bush is not ready to give up on him. The president places a high premium on loyalty; when top aides like Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, and Alberto R. Gonzales, the former attorney general, disappointed him, he was reluctant to cut them loose. So it is with General Musharraf.

Will Kerik Finally Open Media Eyes to Giuliani's Shady Associates?

One would think that the Kerik indictment would shine a spotlight on Giuliani's long history of appointing corrupt and incompetent cronies. It should but it probably won't.

The Wall Street Journal's Mary Jacoby notes some of the personnel problems (she's the reporter who wrote about Giuliani Partners' client Qatar last week):

The expected federal indictment of Rudy Giuliani's close friend and ex-business partner Bernard Kerik highlights a potential weak spot for the Republican presidential front-runner: his judgment in picking associates.

Mr. Kerik isn't the only Giuliani intimate facing questions about unethical or illegal actions. The common thread in these relationships is Mr. Giuliani's unswerving loyalty to people who have earned his trust. "Clearly there's a bond that he has with some people, as most of us do," said Fran Reiter, a former deputy mayor to Mr. Giuliani who now supports Hillary Clinton for president.

Msgr. Alan Placa, a childhood friend of Mr. Giuliani who is now a consultant to Giuliani Partners LLC, the candidate's consulting firm, went on administrative leave from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y., in 2003 after allegations surfaced that he had conspired to protect priests accused of improper sexual contact with boys.

Msgr. Placa has acknowledged he is the person described as "Priest F" in a 2003 Suffolk Country, N.Y., grand jury report. The grand jury alleged that "Priest F" tried to grope teenage boys three decades ago and, in the 1990s, used hardball legal tactics to keep allegations of sexual misconduct against other priests out of public view.

As New York mayor in the 1990s, Mr. Giuliani weathered other scandals involving people in his political orbit.

Charles Hughes, a major union supporter of Mr. Giuliani, went to prison after pleading guilty in 2000 to stealing $2 million from union members.

Russell Harding, the son of a lobbyist and close political adviser to Mr. Giuliani, went to prison in 2005 for embezzling $400,000 from the New York City Housing Development Corp., where he was president. Mr. Giuliani had appointed him to the post.

Giuliani and Robertson: Two Peas in a Berghof

Andrew Sullivan notes the similarities between those two cute 'n crazy christians:

Since the Bush right insists that Robertson is completely irrelevant to the current GOP, I have no idea why they are fixated by his endorsement of Giuliani. For me, however, it seals the deal. Robertson blamed Americans for causing 9/11. He is a charlatan and a religious phony. He has enriched himself at the expense of millions of gullible Christians who did not understand that this man's sole principle is his own power and wealth. It doesn't surprise me that he sees eye to eye with Giuliani. They are very similar characters. But he does represent what may be becoming the consensus among Christianists: that the war on Islamic terrorism is the prime issue; and that the way to tackle it is by increasing military aggression, bombing or occupying Muslim countries, preserving Israel solely to hasten the Apocalypse, and entrenching torture as a pillar of American national security policy. The fusion of Giuliani's authoritarianism with Robertson's Christianism is indeed one future path for the GOP. It is enlightening to me to witness two very similar politicians sink their differences to forge that new, fascistic direction.

A Giuliani Client Outed by WSJ

Finally some real journalism on Giuliani.

The Wall Street Journal unveils Qatar -- the Persian Gulf theocracy friendly to al Qaeda -- as a client of Giuliani Partners.

Rudy Giuliani is one of the few candidates ever to pursue the White House while maintaining a high-ranking role in a private-sector firm.

But since he became a candidate for president, the Republican front-runner has rebuffed all calls to disclose details about the clients and dealings of Giuliani Partners, the consulting firm he founded in 2002.

Some of those clients have controversial records. Among those he hasn't disclosed is the government of Qatar, a Persian Gulf state to whom the firm provided security advice, according to the former U.S. ambassador there. Qatar is a strategic U.S. military ally and energy supplier, yet also a country that has been criticized for its conduct toward al Qaeda -- a potential political pitfall for a candidate pitching himself as an uncompromising foe of Islamic terrorism.

While Qatar is a U.S. ally, it has drawn scrutiny for its involvement in the U.S. effort to combat terrorism. In 1996, the Federal Bureau of Investigation went to Qatar to arrest al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, then under indictment in New York for a plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners. But Mr. Mohammad slipped away, apparently tipped off by an al-Qaeda sympathizer in the Qatari government, U.S. officials told the bipartisan 9/11 commission. Mr. Mohammad went on to mastermind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

There are many more Giuliani client connections that need outing.

Giuliani & Mukasey & Kerik: Ties That Bind

The unspoken backstory to the Mukasey nomination for Attorney General is his longstanding and tangled relationship to Giuliani.

Wayne Barrett delineates the Mukasey/Giuliani connection this week in the Village Voice:

The question of Mukasey's strong ties to Giuliani got the light touch from Senator Pat Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman who opened the two-day proceeding by saying that he assumed Mukasey would "totally recuse" himself from "any involvement with Mr. Giuliani or any other candidate for president." Mukasey laughed at the question, as if the answer was obvious, and quickly agreed. But that chuckle rings a little hollow when you look at who had come with him to the hearing: his wife Susan, who volunteered almost daily in the Giuliani mayoral campaigns; his stepson Marc, who was a staff assistant in one campaign and currently is a partner at the Texas-based law firm that Giuliani recently joined, Bracewell & Giuliani; and Louis Freeh, the former FBI director who recently endorsed Giuliani and worked closely with him as a federal prosecutor. Marc Mukasey is currently representing Giuliani Partners in the federal probe of Bernard Kerik, a onetime member of the consulting firm. Freeh's appearance, sitting beside the family, was a stark indication of just how unconsciously political Mukasey's key relationships are. (For Democrats on the committee, the sight of Freeh, who led multiple probes of both Clintons, might have been an indication of Mukasey's partisanship. In Freeh's recent autobiography, he concluded that "the presidency hit an all-time low" under Bill Clinton—who named him to head the FBI, only to wind up as the target of multiple Freeh probes—adding that if he were Clinton, "I might never show my face in public again.")

Where Giuliani and Mukasey go, Kerik is not far behind.

If Mukasey's sudden rise to prominence, and his placement at Justice, is something of a boon to Candidate Rudy, another of his old cronies is likely to have the opposite effect. The badly timed implosion of Bernie Kerik may remind the public of all the unsavory characters that Giuliani, as mayor, drew like a magnet.

The question for Giuliani regarding Kerik is how he spent years ignoring alarms about the man he placed in one top law-enforcement job and then tried to install at the helm of our national defense.

The answer is that Giuliani dares the 'facts' to 'betray' him:

The presidential front-runner has been living on the edge in his personal, political, and corporate relationships for years, even conducting a semi-public affair with Judi Nathan as he prepared to run for the Senate in 1999 and 2000—his first, but perhaps not last, head-to-head match-up with Hillary Clinton. What few understand is that these bold and tawdry ties haven't been some incidental subplot to Rudy Giuliani's life. They are part of the main narrative, and, as Kerik proves, they provide a revealing look on the character and judgment that he would bring to the White House.

Giuliani Signals Barbour for VP

It's probably more accurate for this post's category to be "Barbour's Guys." The corrupt Mississippian likely has enough dirt on any and all the candidates to get whatever patronage position he wants, including VP, in any Repub administration.

So, Giuliani's homage at Barbour's altar yesterday doesn't mean much in particular. And that Rudy might give a powerful position to the corrupt and incompetent is certainly not news.

Some Haley highlights:

Family members and lobbyists profited from Katrina tragedy: “Among the beneficiaries are Barbour’s own family and friends, who have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from hurricane-related business. A nephew, one of two who are lobbyists, saw his fees more than double in the year after his uncle appointed him to a special reconstruction panel.”

Owned controlling interest in 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming company: For nearly two hours on election day 2002, subcontractors for the telemarketing firm GOP Marketplace tied-up Democratic and union phone banks with repeated hang up calls. Multiple GOP officials eventually either pled guilty to or were convicted of criminally violating federal communications law. Barbour’s investment group, Helm Partners, was not only a major investor in GOP Marketplace, but it also held a controlling interest in the firm.

As a lobbyist, he represented firm indicted in Tom DeLay’s money laundering scandal: As a lobbyist for Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Barbour represented The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care Inc., “a corporate coalition of 14 of the country’s largest for-profit nursing home companies.” The Alliance wrote a check for $100,000 “ended up illegally funding Republican candidates for the Texas statehouse” in 2002. The check was eventually used as evidence in the case that led to indictments for money laundering against former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX).

A former tobacco lobbyist, he killed Mississippi’s successful anti-smoking program: From 1998 to 2002, Barbour’s lobbying firm “was paid a total of $3.8 million by the tobacco companies.” As governor of Mississippi, he led an effort to defund and ultimately kill the state’s anti-smoking program, considered to be “the nation’s most successful anti-smoking programs.”

Directed large amounts of reconstruction funds to wealthy homeowners: Barbour and Mississippi’s two Republican Senators steered an “unprecedented” $23.5 billion in federal reconstruction aid, but by waiving a HUD requirement that “70 percent of the funds are supposed to be allocated to low- and moderate-income people.” Barbour “badly skewed” the funds towards “wealthy homeowners,” with only 25 percent reaching “the poorer segments of the population.”

Giuliani Campaign Uses Ielpi Again to Defend Rudy's 9/11 Exploitation

Once it was announced that Giuliani would speak at this year's 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero many firefighters and first responders objected to turning the event into a political photo op for Rudy.

Right on cue, the campaign brought Lee Ielpi on stage to make a comment defending Giuliani.

Newsday reported:

Firefighter Lee Ielpi, whose son died on 9/11, defended Giuliani. "The mayor was there for the city and our country on Sept. 11," he told The Associated Press.

And The New York Times had Ielpi saying:

Lee Ielpi, a retired firefighter who lost his son on Sept. 11 and is now supporting the Giuliani campaign, said in an e-mail message last night that Mr. Giuliani’s appearances at the commemorations are “critical to both the healing process and helping all to remember the courage, bravery and sacrifices made on that day.”

Ielpi is Giuliani's go-to guy when he needs a firefighter and 9/11 victim's family member who supports him. Like a few months ago when a firefighter's union released a video that criticized Giuliani's 9/11 performance. (See previous post.)

Ielpi is a former firefighter who lost a son at the WTC on 9/11. Since then he has kept himself in the spotlight by being a vocal activist with a variety of 9/11-related groups which claim to represent the families of victims and claim to honor the memory of victims. They are, in fact, political pressure groups who have used their relationship to the tragedy to impose a right-wing slant on the decision-making at Ground Zero.

A 2005 article in New York magazine described the role of Ielpi and the other activists:

Ielpi is a member of Take Back the Memorial, an alliance of family members that recently succeeded, after a loud and heated public battle, in derailing the International Freedom Center. Inspired by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the IFC was meant to be a companion piece to the proposed World Trade Center Memorial and Museum—the Michael Arad–designed complex with the immense twin reflecting pools intended to honor those killed on 9/11.

This was no longer just a local development fight. Now it was a struggle between down-home blue-collar American values and the self-loathing predilections of the liberal cultural elites—a red-state-blue-state battle. Overnight, the families became a conservative cause célèbre, and Take Back the Memorial was formally established. From the start, the group had right-wing connections. What was once a plea to remember September 11 became a crusade to save the memorial from interlopers; anyone who was for the IFC was, by extension, against the families, and anyone against the families was against America.

“The problem with the Take Back the Memorial families,” says Nikki Stern, a former director of a victims’ group called Families of September 11 who lost her husband, James Potorti, an analyst at Marsh & McLennan, “is they don’t differentiate between being heard and being obeyed.”

Ielpi was an early supporter of Giuliani's presidential run as reported in the New York Post, and has been the front man for supposed firefighter-for-Rudy organizations that are nothing more than phony web sites set up by the campaign.