The Giuliani Papers

Anthony "Fat Tony" Carbonetti: Giuliani's Hit Man

The Carbonetti family has a three-generation connection to the Giuliani family that reads like a knock-off of Mario Puzo. Mobbed up petty criminals who like to beat people up.

But you wouldn't know that from the profile of Giuliani's closest advisor Anthony "Fat Tony" Carbonetti by Lois Romano in The Washington Post. She is clearly in awe:

Tony Carbonetti's persona swallows a room, not unlike the man he has worked for his entire adult life.

He is Rudy Giuliani's closest adviser, the archetypal alter ego -- a stocky, cards-on-the-table New Yorker who conveys absolute authority in his main area of expertise: Rudy.

He is the affable final buffer between an exacting, edgy politician and the world. He knows what the candidate wants to eat, when he sleeps (rarely) and what will set him off like a Fourth of July rocket. And he can take the heat. It was Carbonetti who, as the New York mayor's chief of staff, famously relieved Giuliani's then-wife Donna Hanover of her duties as the city's first lady during the public spectacle of Giuliani's extramarital affair.

Romano's version of the Carbonetti connection:

Carbonetti's grandfather, Louis, a local Democratic community leader, and Rudy's father, Harold, were best friends a generation ago, when the Giulianis lived in Brooklyn and the Carbonettis lived in East Harlem (then known as Italian Harlem). Giuliani's Uncle Rudy was a cop in East Harlem, and Harold and Louis used to pick him up from his shift.

Carbonetti's father, Lou, and Giuliani were not close, but reacquainted when Giuliani became a public figure. So, when Giuliani first ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1989, the younger Carbonetti didn't think twice about leaving Boston University to become a gofer.

What she neglects to mention is how Lou Sr. and Harold Giuliani were tied to the mob and to corrupt judges. And how Lou Jr., during the Giuliani administrations, pled guilty to perjury in a no-bid contract scandal. Or how Lou Jr. was involved in another no-bid $43 million city contract in a corrupt privatization scheme that also involved his son Louis (the 3rd), who was hired by the no-bid contract company, and his son Anthony ("Fat Tony"), who managed to lose all the computer files related to the scheme while acting as Giuliani's appointments secretary.

There's more. You can read about the Carbonetti clan in a previous post here and here and here.

Giuliani's Senior Campaign Advisor Linked to "Preppy Murder" Bar Owners

Anthony "Fat Tony" Carbonetti, Giuliani's senior campaign advisor, Giuliani Partners executive, former mayoral chief of staff and son of Rudy crony and confessed perjurer Lou Carbonetti, Sr., is married to Carol Dorrian, youngest daughter of Jack Dorrian owner of Dorrian's Red Hand, infamous upper eastside bar where in 1986 Robert Chambers met Jennifer Levin who he murdered in Central Park in what would be called the "preppy murder" case.

Carol's brother Michael had his own problem with a murder in 2006. The Village Voice reported:

Michael Dorrian was pacing back and forth inside his now infamous Falls bar in Soho, stopping occasionally to peer through the curtains at the media circus parked on his doorstep. It was Friday, March 10, two weeks to the day since Imette St. Guillen, a dean's list student at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, had her last drink in Dorrian's place before her ravaged body turned up near the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. Now Dorrian's whole block was lined with TV news trucks, come to see the dozen protesters demanding the bar answer to charges of misleading police and hiring Darryl Littlejohn, a seven-time violent felon who is now the prime suspect in the rape and murder of the 24-year-old St. Guillen. It's illegal for bars to employ felons.

Inside the Falls, about 20 regulars and family faithful did their best to ignore the fracas, tipping back pints and watching basketball on the widescreen TV as generic '80s rock thumped from the speakers. Michael Dorrian huddled at the end of the long wooden bar with a group of male friends who were joking with him and slapping him on the back, as if keeping their chins up could dispel the ignominy of this crime and the mounting demands to shutter the bar.

"I can't say anything about anything," Michael responded with an exasperated shrug, his face flushed, when asked about the public crucifixion of his family's bar dynasty.

State Liquor Authority records, though, have plenty to say. The files for the Falls and other bars and restaurants owned by members of the Dorrian family reveal that since 1996, the SLA has fined the family's enterprises a total of $29,500, for 19 offenses.

Rudy's Welfare Privatization Scheme was a 3-Carbonetti Scandal

The Bush administration and Giuliani's mayoral years have much in common when it comes to the blind urge to privatize governement for personal gain and to put incompetent cronies in charge of it.

In 1995 Rudy was hot to put in private hands the oversight of welfare recipients to make sure that they were attending required programs such as drug and alcohol treatment. The administration wanted the contracts awarded without competitive bidding to a private agency in Queens politically and financially connected to high-level officials in Giuliani's administration and their friends and family.

The New York Times followed the scandal:

For much of the spring and summer of 1995, veteran city workers grew alarmed as the Giuliani administration pushed them relentlessly to award multimillion-dollar contracts to oversee thousands of New Yorkers on welfare.

Many of the employees said they had become concerned that senior officials were pressing them to bypass basic rules of government contracting, in the rush to contract out to a private agency such responsibilities as making sure single adults on welfare are attending alcohol and drug-abuse treatment programs.

Some workers said they had warned superiors but had been told to follow orders. Even the chief contracting officer at the Human Resources Administration, the city agency that oversaw the bidding, had his concerns overridden, law enforcement officials said they were told. Some H.R.A. employees said they began to avoid signing routine documents, for fear that some day they might be blamed for irregularities. Several looked for new jobs.

State and Federal prosecutors, along with city investigators, are looking into many aspects of the contracts, including how two relatives of administration officials got jobs with Hanac, which for two decades has provided home care for the elderly and other social services.

A senior executive, George Sarant, at the Queens agency, Hellenic American Neighborhood Action Committee, or Hanac, was a chief fundraiser and supporter of Giuliani. Through his connections with the administration the $43 million in contracts was awarded to Hanac.

The Times reported:

Among Mr. Sarant's political and personal acquaintances are a number of mayoral aides, including Kathy Giuliani, who is married to a cousin of the Mayor and who works in the Mayor's Community Assistance Unit in Queens. Another friend is Louis Carbonetti Sr., a lifelong friend of the Mayor's who was director of the Community Assistance Unit in 1994. Mr. Carbonetti's son, Louis Jr., was hired by Mr. Sarant to work on the welfare oversight project. Another of Mr. Carbonetti's sons, Anthony, is the Mayor's appointments director.

As the investigation into the contract progressed it was discovered that files kept by Anthony Carbonetti as appointments director were mysteriously missing. According to The Times:

Portions of a computerized appointment calendar for an aide to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani who has been questioned as part of a Federal investigation into the awarding of contracts have been lost because of a computer problem, the Mayor's press secretary said yesterday.

The records of Anthony Carbonetti's appointment calendar between January and September of 1995 -- covering the months when the city's Human Resources Administration was awarding the contracts to Hanac -- disappeared because of a problem with a computer program called "On Time," said the Mayor's press secretary, Colleen A. Roche.

Louis Sr. later pled guilty to perjury about another patronage investigation.

Anthony "Fat Tony" Carbonetti is now a chief advisor to Giuliani's presidential campaign.

Giuliani's Rove is Fat Tony Carbonetti

It's so ridiculously easy and obvious to make Sopranos/Giuliani analogies. But it is also extraordinarily apt.

Giuliani stopped being a crime-fighter the minute he took the oath of office for Mayor. His two administrations were riddled with patronage, corruption and cronyism.

The same names come up again and again over the years as Rudy appointees were investigated and/or indicted. A name that appears frequently is Carbonetti. Senior, junior, father, son, sister, brother -- Carbonettis are all over the Giuliani years in New York.

Anthony Carbonetti is a senior advisor to Rudy's current campaign. He is the son of Louis Carbonetti Sr., an old friend of Giuliani and a confessed perjurer -- but that's another story.

Tony has his own Giuliani tale to be told. Part of it is related this week by Tom Robbins in the Village Voice. Robbins gives his article the headline 'Rudy's Brain.' But Fat Tony the Enforcer might be a better moniker:

It wasn't all fun and games, however. In the spring of 2001, the mayor called on his faithful aide to handle one more firing—that of his wife.

Giuliani was in the process of separating from Donna Hanover, his spouse of 16 years, who was still living in the mayoral residence at Gracie Mansion with their two children. For some reason, she had strenuously objected when Giuliani brought his new girlfriend to the mansion. Despite the estrangement, she said, she was still the city's First Lady and thus entitled to a certain level of respect.

Carbonetti was now dispatched to handle this most delicate of situations. His solution has been enshrined in the city's Municipal Archives, where is found this memorable memo he sent to the mayor's wife on May 22, 2001:

"In light of the quite public parting of the ways between Donna Hanover and the Mayor, it is obviously disingenuous and inappropriate for Donna Hanover to continue to act as First Lady or in any other way as a representative of the Mayor." Making sure there were no misunderstandings, he continued: "Donna Hanover will no longer serve as First Lady, and my office will designate spokespersons, as appropriate, to act on behalf of the Mayor."