Homeland Security Facade Director

The Bernie Kerik story just gets better and better (and the Times is finally getting off its proverbial behind, having spent the weekend getting scooped by Newsweek, Newsday and the NY Daily News).

This passage from Elisabeth Bumiller's piece isn't getting a lot of play, but I find it fascinating.

A major problem, law enforcement officials said, was that the White House did not have the benefit of any F.B.I. investigation into Mr. Kerik's past. Mr. Kerik, as New York City's police commissioner on Sept. 11, 2001, had been offered a high security clearance by federal officials so he could receive classified intelligence about the city's security, a law enforcement official said. But he failed to return a questionnaire needed for the F.B.I. to conduct a background check, and he never received that clearance, the law enforcement official said.

Mr. Kerik said on Tuesday night through his spokesman, Christopher Rising, that he could not remember receiving the questionnaire. Mr. Kerik still received classified information from the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. regarding security issues in New York, the law enforcement official said, although the police commissioner was not given the most sensitive intelligence about the sources of the data. He served as police commissioner through the end of 2001.

One of the major complaints mayors and police commissioners have leveled at the Federal Government in the wake of September 11, 2001,was the lack of intelligence they were being given. And here's the Commiss in New York City, where the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history has just occurred, and he can't be bothered to fill out the requisite form to receive his security clearance.

Yep, he's the guy Bush had such a crush on, he couldn't wait to announce his nomination.

But never mind, as his spokesman said the other day, "He's a patriot."

Indeed.

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.

It makes me wonder if these people used the view of the still smoking rubble of the World Trade Center as an "intimacy aid."

If anything good comes out of this, perhaps this will begin to wash the veneer of saintly herodom off of "America's Mayor (TM)," unmasking his hypocrisy which was the model for Kerik's.