If you thought Kerik was a goon but wasn't sure ...

[tk2kewl]

http://www.newsday.com/mynews/ny-uskeri094076729dec09,0,5420868.story

<snip>
Kerik personally surveilled some employees and confronted them with the results, employees said.

An official Saudi investigation of Feteih and the security team was begun in response to hospital employees' complaints of intimidation by Feteih and the security staff, according to the employees.

Six members of the hospital security staff, including Kerik, were fired and deported, and Feteih was sacked as hospital administrator.

The ex-employees said their allegations shed light on the extent of Kerik's loyalty to superiors. They involve his work from 1982 to 1984 as chief of investigations for the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh.

"Kerik was a goon," said John Jones, a former manager, who said he felt harassed by security men. "They were Gestapo."

"Kerik used heavy-handed tactics in following single men around and keeping them away from some women," said Dr. Ted Bailey.

Added paramedic Michael Queen, "Men and women had to be careful with security, but Bernie was the one we watched out for the most."
<snip>

[Norquist Nemesis]

1. Gestapo was my first reaction

when Bush named him Sec Homeland Security. To go from an individual with administrative (governor) experience straight to military/police experience says something...and it's "Police State".

[tk2kewl]

2. he has proven he has no skills

he only knows how to issue threats and carry them out

this is one of my favorite paragraphs from the article:

Dr. John Froude recalled that in one encounter with Kerik, "he summoned me to his office and slid a piece of paper toward me and said, 'I want you to tell me what is incorrect in this,'" Froude said. "It was an account of how I'd dated some women. I said, 'Besides the spelling errors, it's correct.' He got out of his chair and said, 'Don't get fresh with me, doc.'"

[colonel odis]

3. this guy was employed by the saudis?

who have funded terror?

a country where something like 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from?

you know, the worst thing about the bushies is that they have absolutely no shame.

[tk2kewl]

5. simply on the surface this guy is bad news

i can't imagine what would come up if people really started digging

[marc_the_dem]

4. Hoping....

I'm hoping he'll be exposed for the mental deficient he is and will have to resign and crawl under a rock somewhere.

[tk2kewl]

6. he should also be used to paint bush as an evil power monger

this whole administration is human garbage

[Dr.Phool]

7. I think this shows

With the new Patriot Act 2, the Department of Homeland Security isn't to protect us from terrorists or foreign enemies. It's directed against us.

Be scared-very scared.

[madinmaryland]

8. Interesting piece in the Wash-post today re:Kerik

This guy may be toxic:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49827-2004Dec8.html

(attached is the full article for those not subscribing:

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, December 9, 2004; Page A33

On the night of Nov. 28, 2001, crack homicide detectives fanned out all over New York City, one of them even going as far as New Jersey. In all, five detectives from the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force went to the homes of various suspects, fingerprinted some of them, interrogated all of them and told a few that they would have to take lie detector tests. The horrific crime? The police commissioner's friend was missing some items.

The commish at the time was Bernard B. Kerik, who just the other day was nominated by George W. Bush to be the next head of the vast Department of Homeland Security. The crime victim was Judith Regan, a publisher at HarperCollins, whose imprint, Regan Books, was publishing Kerik's autobiography, "The Lost Son." It tells the Cagneyesque tale of a kid who, though his alcoholic mother died a prostitute, nevertheless managed to become a cop, a corrections official, a bodyguard for the mayor and, in due course, police commissioner of the city of New York. The Manhattan South homicide cops were working for Kerik.

Regan's items apparently went AWOL from a studio at Fox News Channel, where she also worked. They included a cell phone, a necklace and a credit card. All the items were later accounted for. The necklace was found at the bottom of her handbag. The credit card had been left behind at a drugstore. As for the phone, it was later found in a trash basket -- and it is my guess that it was the real reason for such measured panic. You never know what numbers might be in a cell phone.

Right up front I should state that Kerik has always maintained that he had nothing to do with making homicide cops lost-and-found monitors. It's possible. Sometimes you don't have to order subordinates to do something. They just do it to please the boss. This was the case with Henry II of England. He uttered his famous lament about Thomas Becket, who was subsequently dispatched to sainthood by some overly zealous knights. We all know such things can happen.

For some reason, the Fox employees initially had a different take. They accused Kerik of abusing his authority and hired a lawyer, Robert M. Simels, who notified the city that he was about to sue. In the end he did not, because the employees dropped the matter. Nonetheless, in an interview with me, Simels had this to say about Kerik: "He abused his authority."

Maybe so. And if that's the case, we are beginning to see something of a pattern. Back in the 1980s, Kerik was working as chief of investigations for a hospital complex in Saudi Arabia, where he allegedly abused his authority to delve into the private lives of women with whom his boss was romantically involved. This saga, reported in The Post this week, is once again only an allegation (although from several people) -- and a dated one at that. But another has surfaced -- this one reported by Newsday. It says that Kerik "blocked the promotion of a qualified jail supervisor" because the man had reprimanded a female corrections officer Kerik had dated.

Is there anything here? I don't know. But I do know that as homeland security czar, Kerik will have plenty of police authority -- everything from border and transportation security to the Coast Guard and the Secret Service. This is a position with enormous power, and one where we really don't want a person who is tone-deaf to civil liberties and who is apt to send his guys out into the night on armed errands for his pals. What is needed, actually, is a top-notch administrator, a guy with a spreadsheet who can manage this huge and unwieldy department. President Bush, though, has chosen Kerik.

So be it. But the Senate should not go so gaga over Kerik's cinematic life story that it overlooks these troubling incidents. It could be that they all can be explained -- that in a long career of stepping on toes, Kerik has made some enemies, and the right type at that. But it could also be that Kerik cuts too many corners, that he has a certain understandable infatuation with his own image and a tendency to bully. Whatever the case, until these questions are answered, the proposed head of homeland security is making me, for one, feel anything but secure.

[tk2kewl]

9. this prick should be in jail, not in office

i'd love to see how he'd fair on the inside. })

[itzamirakul]

10. Info from NY Daily News and AAR...

From NY Daily News (Sun. Dec. 5, 2004, I think)
Kerick's mother was a "wild woman" who took her 4 year old son to Cleveland, Ohio and left him with her pimp's mother. It is suspected that it was the pimp who murdered her. He was later reclaimed by his father who brought him back to NY.

He dropped out of high school. He went to work as a corrections officer and worked his way up, eventually joining the NYPD.

From Air America Radio's Majority Report (Monday, Dec. 6, 2004)
He used money taken from prisoners to have busts made of himself to give as gifts. He used police investigators to do research for a book on himself. I think he had to pay some money back for that one. He fathered and abandoned a baby in Korea. He bought a college degree. He declared bankruptcy while working for the NYPD when earning $40,000 per year. While he was head of the NYPD, a fund was created which took money from prisoners for telephone calls and cigarettes. It came to a huge amount. He later claimed to know nothing about this fund. He worked with the Iraq police force and "fcked it up." NYPD police sources call him a "walking time bomb." He has become a millionaire working with Guiliani since 911 in Guiliani's Private Security Company. He was with Guiliani on 911 when Rudy declared the infamous words, "THANK GOD GEORGE BUSH IS PRESIDENT" If he becomes head of Homeland Security, Guiliani's Company will be the "Halliburton" of National Security.
Thee was lots more, but I cannot remember it all now. I just related what I took down in notes.

From NY Daily News (Wed. Dec. 8, 2004)
<snip>Bernard Kerik, nominated by President Bush to protect the homeland, could not keep the creditors away from his own door when he was a young cop.

The now-49-year-old former NYPD commissioner filed for Chapter Seven bankruptcy protection in October 1987, claiming he had no way of paying his $12,000 debts.

Among Kerik's liabilities were a $2,089 Visa bill, a $174 Sunoco tab and a $949 debit at Sears, the Smoking Gun Web site reported yesterday.

Kerick, then 32, had just 15 bucks in his pocket and another $50 in a checking account.

He listed his 1986 salary at $40,000, which included a big bump up from the $27,000 he pulled in the year before.

In March, 1988, court-appointed trustee Albert Togut filed a report stating that Kerik had no assets. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Cornelius Blackshear signed an order releasing him "from all dischargable debts."

Kerik rose through the ranks of the NYPD, landed a job running the jail in Passaic County, NJ., and returned to the city as corrections commissioner.

The longtime pal of then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was named top cop on Sept 5, 2000. A year and a week later, he helped his boss lead the city through he nation's worst terror attack.

Money is hardly a problem these days for Kerik. He has earned big bucks working for Giuliani's consulting firm and recently landed a $6 million windfall in a company that makes stun guns.
by Dave Goldiner