Giuliani's Kerik Woes Resurface

Washington Post: Informant Sheds Light On Candidate's Relationship With Ex-Police Chief

(Washingtonpost.com)  This story was written by John Solomon and Matthew Mosk .

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In the heady days of the 1990s when Rudolph W. Giuliani was mayor of New York and Bernard B. Kerik was one of his most trusted lieutenants, Lawrence Ray enjoyed his own wild ride.

Ray was one of Kerik's closest friends and the best man at his 1998 wedding. As Kerik was rising to become New York's police commissioner, Ray was in touch with him regularly -- lending him money, discussing possible business opportunities, and using Ray's contacts in Russia to arrange a meeting for Giuliani with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Much has changed since then. Giuliani is now a leading Republican presidential candidate. Kerik has pleaded guilty to state ethics charges and is under federal indictment. And Ray, a convicted felon now in prison on a parole violation, has turned on his former friend. He has provided to state and federal authorities half a dozen boxes of e-mails, memos, faxes, financial statements, photographs and other materials about Kerik's alleged wrongdoing.

That evidence, reviewed by The Washington Post, shows that Kerik brought Ray into contact with Giuliani on a handful of occasions documented in photos and that he invoked Giuliani's name in connection with a New Jersey construction company with alleged mob ties that is now at the heart of the criminal cases.

While campaigning, Giuliani has sought to distance himself from Kerik, his mounting legal problems and associates such as Ray. Asked about Kerik and Ray during a recent appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," he said: "I made a mistake in not vetting [Kerik] carefully enough. And it's my responsibility. I should have."

This spring, Ray's friend Sidney Baumgarten, a New York lawyer, told former deputy mayor and longtime Giuliani ally Ninfa Segarra that Ray was embroiled in a bitter divorce and an even worse custody dispute over his two daughters. Baumgarten said he told Segarra that Ray possessed "damaging" information about Giuliani but that he would not go public with his allegations if he could receive help with the mounting legal troubles.

"That was the implied quid pro quo," Baumgarten recalled in an interview with The Post, saying the conversation stemmed solely from his desire to help Ray's children in the custody case.

The following day, Baumgarten received an e-mail from Segarra advising Ray to call an acquaintance of hers, a "political heavyweight" lawyer who could assist Ray in the custody dispute in New Jersey. "For now I would ask not to identify me as the referral," Segarra wrote in the March 5 e-mail obtained by The Post.

In an interview, Segarra said she recommended the lawyer for Ray after talking with Baumgarten but did not consult with the Giuliani campaign or anyone else. She said she was not motivated by Baumgarten's offer that Ray would keep silent.

"Baumgarten described to me a very nasty child custody battle," said Segarra, who spoke with The Post at the request of Giuliani aides. "He may have implied something like that and I emphatically told him I didn't want to get involved. Because the welfare of children was at issue, I recommended a well-respected lawyer that was capable of dealing with the child custody issue in New Jersey."

Ray, who has been in prison since July on a parole violation, never acted on the referral. Instead, he reported it to the FBI, wearing a wire to record his friend recounting the referral.

Giuliani's aides dismissed Ray as not credible.

"Larry Ray's accusations are completely false and without merit," said Daniel Connolly, a partner in Giuliani's security consulting firm. "Let us remember Mr. Ray is a convicted felon with a track record of dishonesty whose statements continue to lack one iota of credibility. As anyone familiar with Mr. Ray's history will attest, his character, credibility and motives are all quite suspect and any statements he makes should be judged accordingly."

Kenneth Breen, an attorney for Kerik, said: "As we have consistently maintained, Bernie Kerik denies the allegations in the indictment and will address them in court. Larry Ray's accusations are not worthy of a response."

Speaking last Wednesday from the federal detention center in Brooklyn, Ray said that his motivation is to get the truth out.

"I could have negotiated a great deal for myself," he said in a telephone interview that was monitored by corrections officials. "If I wanted to forget about this thing, I could. But ultimately, this is about the truth. There's no motivation for me to walk away from the truth."

'Too Many Questions'

Larry Ray's five-year friendship with Kerik spanned the same time period that is now at the heart of the federal case against Kerik.

Ray, 48, met Kerik at a New Jersey bar during Kerik's rise through the ranks of the Giuliani mayoral administration. In the mid-1990s, Ray said, he and Kerik saw each other almost daily and they e-mailed frequently. Kerik often signed his missives to Ray, "I Love You -- B." In fall 1997, Kerik asked Ray to use his contacts in Russia to try to arrange a meeting between Giuliani and Gorbachev, Ray said. Among his many hats, Ray said that he had managed to become a security advance man for some of Gorbachev's trips to the United States.

"At first, I told him there was no way," Ray said in an interview. "Gorbachev met world leaders, not city mayors. But Bernie kept insisting, and eventually I made it happen."

Ray provided law enforcement officials with photos of the gathering that showed himself, Gorbachev, Giuliani and Kerik at City Hall as well as a letter from Gorbachev via an interpreter thanking him for arranging the New York visit. In addition, Ray provided copies of memos showing that he coordinated the visit with Kerik.

One December 1997 fax from Kerik to Ray, sent on the eve of Gorbachev's arrival, suggested that the city, not the FBI, should provide security for the visit. "This is not an official government trip. FBI is not indemnified being on duty. Off duty if something happens, there will be too many questions . . . that we don't want to be involved in," Kerik wrote. "There would be no questions of City personnel, not to mention the mayor is aware of the trip."

Connolly, Giuliani's partner, said the former mayor "denies making any request of Bernie Kerik or Larry Ray to arrange a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev."

In the late 1990s, Ray worked as a security consultant for Interstate Industrial, a New Jersey construction company that had been wrestling with allegations of ties to a New York crime family. Kerik, then commissioner of New York's corrections department, offered to help Interstate contest those allegations so it could win contracts from Giuliani's administration, according to the indictment. At the same time, Kerik accepted $255,000 in illegal gifts from Interstate that included extensive renovations to one of his apartments, prosecutors say in court records. The Giuliani administration never approved Interstate for the contracts.

New York investigators told The Post that Ray provided evidence to them before Kerik pleaded guilty in June 2006 to two state misdemeanor charges involving the gifts. Ray also provided similar evidence to the FBI before the recent federal indictment of Kerik on corruption and tax charges, according to interviews with law enforcement officials and e-mails between Ray and the FBI obtained by The Post.

FBI documents show that while Ray has served as a confidential informant, agents have at times questioned his credibility. He can ramble for hours, weaving conspiratorial theories with folksy tales about his high-flying days as Kerik's buddy and his secretive work for the FBI and U.S. military.

Ray was described as a "calculating, manipulative and hostile man" in a psychological evaluation conducted by an expert his wife hired for the divorce case.

Ray's expert provided a more favorable analysis. Earlier this year, federal officials gathered evidence suggesting that he had, for a second time, violated his probation in connection with his conviction in an earlier organized-crime securities fraud case. They declared him a fugitive, even as Ray continued talking to and e-mailing the FBI.

U.S. marshals spent weeks tracking Ray's cellphone traffic across New York, with agents working 24-hour shifts until they caught his signal in July in an apartment on the city's Upper East Side. Five marshals burst in, pinned him to the floor and handcuffed him, breaking his arm. Inside, they found two computers, six cellphones and photographs of Kerik. As they hauled Ray away, one marshal recalled hearing his 18-year-old daughter scream, "Police corruption! This is because of Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Bernard Kerik!"

His legal problems aside, Ray has supporters in government circles who say that over the years he assisted them with delicate matters. Ray's court files include a letter from NATO thanking him for his "efforts to ensure good communication and understanding between ourselves and the Russian leadership" in reaching a deal to end bombing during the Kosovo crisis in the late 1990s. FBI files reflect his help with organized-crime cases.

[crater7]

CROOKS HONOR !!!!!

AWE YES, KERIK, THE GUY THAT BUSH WANTED TO LEAD AMERICA''S SECURITY. HMMMMMMMMMM

RUDY''S AIDES, RAY, IS NOT CREDIBLE.......

VOTE FOR RUDY..................

[neoconrcrazy]

the "hero" of 911 !

what hype, what chutzpah!

this guy is dirty and no amount of "vetting" will explain away his unsavory brand of politics.

the real heros of 911 are the NY police & fire departments - not Rudy G.

[sgtrds]

Rudy might as well wrap it up and go home. No one is going to pick a sleazey, adulterous, dirty mob-connected, goon, as president.

Posted by kansas1946 at 10:26 PM : Dec 19, 2007

Well I don''t know. I mean some ignorant people voted for a lying, cheating, moronic, idiotic, alcoholic, ex-coke using, yellowbellied, pus*sy, gutless coward of a spoiled frat momma''s boy the last two elections, so anything is possible.

[kansas1946]

Rudy might as well wrap it up and go home. No one is going to pick a sleazey, adulterous, dirty mob-connected, goon, as president.

[rowdytexan2]

These two guys are just SOME of Guiliani scumbag associates. They haven''t even gotten into his relationship with the terrorist scum YET!

Too bad the Neocons pet rat is being scumbled out before they can get him elected.

[prinzowhales]

Romney ''inspiring''? Perhaps,...if you are a shut-in or a desk monkey in some cubicle in ''ell...a twisted little Bush supporter looking for another father substitute to replace ''the daddy of the country'' as Bush once described himself, and continue the wars that this monster lied us into....

Romney gained millions using off shore tax havens-- that are built into the IRS tax code...Hucksterbee says he''s going to get rid of the Income Tax...He plans to replace it with the "Fairtax" which is going to transfer the entire tax burden to the shoulders of Americans and let people who take their earnings out of the country to escape untaxed...

The more you listen to the two of them, the more you realize they are cut from the same miserable cloth. Both of them are concerned with selling working Americans a pant load of ''change'' which in Republicanese means ''absolute inertia''. I''m sure the fool vote that put Bush in office will be behind them like a trail of toilet paper hanging from the buttocks of a fat woman hurrying to Fanny Farmers.

[sgtrds]

He laid down with dirty dogs (the mob) and he got back up with fleas. Goodbye Rudy. We won''t miss you at all.

[mediapreachr]

These issues keep coming up because Giuliani is a sleazy dirtbag who has more concern for his political agendas, se.xual liaisons and power grabs then the people of NY or the rest of the nation. He''''s a thug.

If, by some bizarre twist of fate, this man ends up in the White House we will all regret it.
Posted by roger_inkart at 01:47 PM : Dec 19, 2007''
Don''t worry,Giuliani campaign is going into the gutter;he''s going to crash and burn,giving the media material for years to come.

[mediapreachr]

Look at the photo, and behold the horrors of inbreeding.
Posted by FeelFree1 at 02:55 PM : Dec 19, 2007
Rofl.Who needs writers when we got our own clowns.

[usbrit-2009]

I thought Drudge was dead. He''s become so irrelevant I hadn''t heard anything from him in years. But I guess this shows he''s up to the same old retarded high school scuttlebut that he''s so good at and that the righties follow avidly with their fly open and ready to go.

[pollroller1]

Y''all need to take a good look a Ron Paul. He is the right man to be president. That is if honesty and good old common sense mean anything.

[feelfree1]

Look at the photo, and behold the horrors of inbreeding.

[roger_inkart]

These issues keep coming up because Giuliani is a sleazy dirtbag who has more concern for his political agendas, se.xual liaisons and power grabs then the people of NY or the rest of the nation. He''s a thug.

If, by some bizarre twist of fate, this man ends up in the White House we will all regret it.

[blancadebree]

Wearing dresses, mob ties, who does Rudy think he is? J. Edgar Hoover?

http://blancadebree.blogspot.com

[abbe91]

And what about Giuliani''s ties with terrorists ?

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0748,barrett,78478,6.html

[nolalou]

tomdawg6, I try to ignore comments from Ron Paul supporters, I really do, but you people are so uninformed about that nut job, it scares me! Ron Paul wants us out of the UN, NATO, and just about any other international organization you can think of! He is a radical isolationist. He also wants to get rid of goverment agencies like FEMA, MEDICARE, and MEDICADE. FEMA is in desperate need of reform, but not elimination! If you think he''s an alternative to the Christian right-wingers, think again, he doesn''t believe in the seperation of church & state either!
For god''s sake, former KKK leader David Duke is for this guy!

[briannorwood]

perception5:

Mitt Romney inspirational? I guess if you consider a guy who''s flip-flopped on virtually all the issues important to the GOP base (gun control, abortion, taxes, gay rights)-- then he''s your man!

[agarwal1]

watch Guliyani pulling hairs Wig of his Chin pole aide
.... caught on camera !!!

Watch the video... first time..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J16yZMkRBg&feature=related

[fornicario]

September 11th made this combative New Yorker "America''s Mayor." Will he also be America''s president?

I wonder who America''s Mistress will be then?

[ov442]

We should still vote for Giuliani, hes the ring leader of the new generation of NYC crime. He got rid of the old generation to make way for his cronies, like Rupert Murdoch, Kerik, etc.