LOU CARBONETTI

TOM ROBBINS, VILLAGE VOICE, 2004 - Lou Carbonetti, Rudy Giuliani's childhood pal and failed patronage appointee, stood repentant before a Manhattan criminal judge last week to confess three counts of perjury. It was his fourth scandal in less than a decade and his first conviction, making his the toughest hard-luck story in an administration with an otherwise charmed life. Carbonetti, 56, admitted to Acting Supreme Court Justice Brenda Soloff that he had lied when he told the city's Department of Investigation last year that while serving as director of the Fulton Mall Improvement Association in downtown Brooklyn - a post he owed to his friend, the former mayor - he'd never been hired as a consultant to drum up business for Techsolve, a Long Island-based computer firm. The question was important because Carbonetti had awarded the firm a $25,000 contract to design the association's website. He'd lied as well when he said the firm never paid him any money. He'd lied again when the question was repeated in a slightly different form intended to cover all bases. . . In fact, as prosecutors revealed last week, the computer company and Carbonetti had signed a contract in March 2000, back when Carbonetti still had strong connections in City Hall. . . If the emblem of the Giuliani years seared in public consciousness remains the hard-charging, crime-busting mayor with the unfortunate combover, then its flip side is poor Lou Carbonetti, a schlepper whose repeated city appointments gave the lie to Giuliani's claims to have staffed his City Hall only with the best and the brightest. Time and again, the affable yet feckless Carbonetti was boosted aboard the mayor's political gravy train only to slide miserably back off again.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0406,robbins,50931,5.html

FAMILY TIES

VILLAGE VOICE 2000 - The Voice's revelation this month that Rudolph Giuliani's father served time in prison for robbery and later worked as a collector for the mayor's mob-tied uncle gave birth to a wide array of reactions. . . Wayne Barrett, the Voice senior editor who disclosed the information in Rudy! An Investigative Biography, a new book about the mayor, was simply capitalizing on the public's lust for "the allure and intrigue" of Mafia tales, said former governor Mario Cuomo. . . "Rudy Giuliani is being smeared with the dishonest blood of family members," wrote Stanley Crouch, also in the News.

The other, more muted response was one of consternation and anger at a mayor who had judged so many others so harshly. "I come from a family that is extremely proud of its Italian heritage," said Chiara Colletti, a vice president with a college testing organization and former spokeswoman for the Board of Education. "We are much more sensitive to Italian stereotyping than we ever let on. But what [the book] revealed is relevant to the life of a public figure because this is a person who casts judgments on others who are involved in crime, even exposing the pasts of others for his own convenience." Louis Mangone, an attorney active in Italian American affairs, remembered hearing the mayor extol his father's honesty at a gathering at the Columbus Club, the city's premier Italian gathering spot. Giuliani, whose prosecutions as a U.S. Attorney had been targeted at friends of many of those present, got a chilly reception. "You can't visit the sins of the father on the children; we know that very well. But he's been so sanctimonious on this very issue with others," said Mangone.

And then there was the response of Sal Mondrone, who so far has been unable to qualify for a waste-hauling license. "I was told by my lawyer I knew too many people," he said. "I think it's two standards here. [Giuliani's] father hung out with gangsters. His cousin had mob affiliations.". . . If anyone made the mayor's father a worthy subject for further exploration it was the mayor himself. He has cited his father's influence to every journalist undertaking a profile of him since he first made headlines as a prosecutor in the mid-1980s. As recently as this April, when he announced his prostate cancer, he described Harold Giuliani as "a very, very important reason for why I'm standing here as the mayor of New York City."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0029,robbins,16567,5.html

WAYNE BARRETT'S ARTICLE
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0027,barrett,16192,1.html

GIULIANI PARTNERS

DAVID SALTONSTALL, NY DAILY NEWS - In the five years that Giuliani has worked in the private sector, his clients have run the gamut, from gambling interests like the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, which may further trouble Christian conservative voters, to large power-generators like the Atlanta-based Southern Co., which environmentalists regard as among the worst polluters in the nation. He has lent his name to every corner of the energy industry - representing nuclear, oil and natural gas concerns - and worked with the pharmaceutical industry to keep cheap prescription drugs from flowing into the U.S. from Canada. And that's just what is publicly known. Giuliani Partners and its subsidiaries are all privately held companies, and the former mayor has refused to release a full client

HAWKS ON HIS SHOULDER

ALTERNET - In a must-see, six-minute clip, Josh Marshall explains that Giuliani's foreign policy team is made up of "all the guys who were too nuts or too extreme to make the cut with George W. Bush."

For those who can't watch the video online, Josh identifies Giuliani's top four advisors:

Norman Podhoretz: The "Godfather of modernb neoconservatism," who believes America has to go to war with Iran as quickly as possible.

Daniel Pipes: A man who has "a long and distinguished career of advocating war against every Arab and Muslim country in the world." He's also called for racial profiling of Muslim government employees in the United States, who, in true McCarthyite fashion, he believes may be a secret threat to the country.

Thomas Joscelyn: Giuliani's terrorism advisor, Joscelyn has argued repeatedly that Saddam Hussein was connected to al Qaeda, and now believes Iran is connected to al Qaeda.

Michael Rubin: Giuliani's Iran advisor, Rubin has been closely connected to Ahmad Chalibi, and signed on with Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans in 2002. Rubin, too, has been aggressively for an Iranian invasion.

A very scary bunch, indeed.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/65435/

KEN SILVERSTEIN, HARPER'S - It's easy to see where Giuliani gets his ideas on foreign policy, given the team of foreign policy advisors he announced last month Norman Podhoretz's name attracted the most attention when the list was announced. . . Podhoretz portrays a military attack on Iran as not only the best option but the only option. There are a number of other notable hardliners advising Giuliani. Charles Hill of the Hoover Institution, the campaign's chief advisor, joined a number of leading neo-conservatives in signing a September 20, 2001 letter to President Bush that said that even if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, "any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove [him] from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism." During a March 2003 debate at Yale, shortly before the Iraq war began, Hill said: "The U.S. has the power to do this operation swiftly, and it will be a war that will not do great damage to Iraq, to its installations, to its infrastructure, or to its people." . . . There's also Martin Kramer, who spent 25 years at Tel Aviv University and whose Middle East policy can basically be summarized as "What's Good for Israel," and former Senator Robert Kasten of Wisconsin, whose career was best known for his loopy attacks on the United Nations and for being arrested for drunk driving after running a red light and driving down the wrong side of the road. I asked Augustus Richard Norton of Boston University, an expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group, for his take on Giuliani's crew. He dubbed the group "AIPAC's Dream Team." http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90001048

KEN SILVERSTEIN, HARPERS - Add another neoconservative adviser on the Middle East to an already impressive roster-Daniel Pipes signed on with Rudy Giuliani's campaign. . . I think it's fair to say that Pipes is even further out ideologically than Norman Podhoretz, another Giuliani adviser.

THE RUDY GIULIANI Presidential Committee has announced that former advisors to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Robert Conquest and Dr. Nile Gardiner are supporting Mayor Giuliani for President. Conquest will serve as a member of the Senior Foreign Policy Advisory Board and Gardiner, the Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, will serve as a member of the European Advisory Board.

The other new addition to the Mayor's foreign policy team is National Review Senior Editor David Pryce-Jones, who joins as a Senior Foreign Policy Advisor. Reports the Angry Arab blog: "In the first edition of his lousy book, The Closed Circle, the book lists Turkey as an Arab country. So he knows the Middle East as much as Rudy."

Thatcher was the brains behind Ronald Reagan. True, Reagan was not as corrupt as Nixon or Clinton, nor as gleefully imperial as George Bush the Lesser, and the damage he did was largely unintentional, the fatal mischief of a small minded man granted too much power.

But the result was to begin the decline and fall of the first American republic by convincing its leaders, media, and citizens that the main thing they needed for happiness was a free, unfettered market accompanied by sufficient faux cowboy rhetoric. That there was never any empirical evidence for the absurd economic assumptions didn't matter; his charm sufficed where logic failed.

The result: a a middle class with substantially greater problems, a lower class far more ignored, an ecology far more damaged, a much larger gap between rich and poor and between CEO and employee, Medicare and Social Security in danger and a culture of greed and narcissism that has buried ideals of democracy, community, and cooperation.

MORE ON REAGAN
http://prorev.com/reagan.htm

RUSSELL HARDING

PATRICIA HURTADO, NEWSDAY, 2005 - A former top Giuliani administration official insisted mental illness made him do "all these wacky things" -- like embezzling hundreds of thousands of city dollars -- but a federal judge Thursday didn't buy it, sentencing him to 63 months behind bars. Russell Harding, 40, former president of the New York City Housing Development Corp., pleaded guilty in March to stealing more than $400,000 for his personal use and possessing child pornography. Prosecutors charged that Harding spent thousands on trips to Hong Kong, Las Vegas and Vancouver, a bachelor party dinner for a friend and spa treatments he listed as agency expenses. As part of the probe, the child porn was found on his computer. . .

http://www.armchairsubversive.com/Russell_Harding.htm

BERNIE KERIK

NY DAILY NEWS - Bernard Kerik's legal nightmare is about to get worse, with federal prosecutors expected to file charges against the former police commissioner that will likely include allegations of bribery, tax fraud and obstruction of justice, the Daily News has learned. The indictment, expected next month, could prove to be an embarrassing obstacle for Kerik's former mentor Rudy Giuliani, who is cruising at the top of the polls heading into the presidential primary gauntlet.

WASHINGTON POST - When former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani urged President Bush to make Bernard B. Kerik the next secretary of homeland security, White House aides knew Kerik as the take-charge top cop from Sept. 11, 2001. But it did not take them long to compile an extensive dossier of damaging information about the would-be Cabinet officer. They learned about questionable financial deals, an ethics violation, allegations of mismanagement and a top deputy prosecuted for corruption. Most disturbing, according to people close to the process, was Kerik's friendship with a businessman who was linked to organized crime. The businessman had told federal authorities that Kerik received gifts, including $165,000 in apartment renovations, from a New Jersey family with alleged Mafia ties. Alarmed about the raft of allegations, several White House aides tried to raise red flags. But the normal investigation process was short-circuited, the sources said. Bush's top lawyer, Alberto R. Gonzales, took charge of the vetting, repeatedly grilling Kerik about the issues that had been raised. In the end, despite the concerns, the White House moved forward with his nomination -- only to have it collapse a week later. . . During an appearance in Florida last weekend, Giuliani told reporters that they had a right to question his judgment in putting Kerik in charge of the New York Police Department and recommending him to Bush. "I should have done a better job of investigating him, vetting him," Giuliani said. "It's my responsibility, and I've learned from it.". . . Aides said they now believe they were lulled by Kerik's swaggering Sept. 11 reputation, and were too passive in accommodating the president's desire for secrecy and speed and too willing to trust Giuliani's judgment. "There is no question the mayor's support for Kerik was important," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. . . A quick FBI search and research by the White House turned up a host of problems in the couple of weeks before the nomination was announced. According to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of White House policy against discussing personnel matters, Bush aides discovered that: - Kerik was fined $2,500 by New York City for using police detectives to help him with his autobiography. He was also a defendant in a civil lawsuit accusing him of retaliation against a corrections official who had disciplined a female prison guard with whom Kerik was having a relationship. . . - One of Kerik's former top deputies was convicted of stealing money from a foundation that Kerik ran while serving as Giuliani's corrections chief. The foundation was funded by rebates from tobacco companies selling cigarettes to prison inmates. - Kerik, who filed for bankruptcy as a police officer, became rich almost overnight after leaving office. Just before his nomination, he made a quick $6.2 million without investing a dime by exercising stock options from his service on the board of Taser International, a stun-gun firm seeking business with homeland security agencies. - Kerik's tenure in Iraq generated strong criticism of his management. Iraqi officials complained to U.S. authorities about $1.2 billion Kerik spent to train Iraqi police officers in Jordan, spending they called wasteful. Iraqis also questioned why Kerik spent tens of millions of dollars to buy weapons for Iraqi trainees when the U.S. military had confiscated plenty of such weapons after the invasion. . . The loudest alarm bell was Kerik's relationship with Lawrence Ray. The best man at Kerik's wedding in 1998, Ray went to work for a New Jersey construction company, Interstate Industrial Corp., that was seeking a big New York City contract and trying to overcome concerns inside Giuliani's administration that it had mob ties.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/07/AR2007040701398_pf.html

WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM, NY TIMES - Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik's relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik's appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records. Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony. Mr. Giuliani's testimony amounts to a significantly new version of what information was probably before him in the summer of 2000 as he was debating Mr. Kerik's appointment as the city's top law enforcement officer. Mr. Giuliani had previously said that he had never been told of Mr. Kerik's entanglement with the company before promoting him to the police job or later supporting his failed bid to be the nation's homeland security secretary. In his testimony, given in April 2006, Mr. Giuliani indicated that he must have simply forgotten that he had been briefed on one or more occasions as part of the background investigation of Mr. Kerik before his appointment to the police post. He said he learned only in late 2004 that the briefing or briefings had occurred, after the city's investigation commissioner reviewed his own records from 2000. To this day, Mr. Giuliani testified, he has no specific recollection of any briefing or the details of what he was told. But he said he felt comforted because the chief investigator had cleared Mr. Kerik to be promoted. . . Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty last summer to improperly allowing the company, Interstate Industrial Corporation, or its subsidiaries, to do $165,000 worth of free renovations on his Bronx apartment in late 1999 and 2000. The company has denied paying for the work, and has disputed any association with organized crime. But the two brothers who run it have been indicted in the Bronx on charges they lied under oath about their dealings with Mr. Kerik. There is no evidence that Mr. Giuliani knew about the apartment renovation before promoting Mr. Kerik to police commissioner. But the top investigator who briefed Mr. Giuliani in 2000, the transcript shows, was aware that Mr. Kerik's brother and a close friend had been hired by an affiliate of the company, which for years had been struggling to secure a city license.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/us/politics/30rudy.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

JOSH MARSHALL, TALKING POINTS MEMO - Mayor Rudy put a cop with numerous alleged mob ties in charge of the NYPD. And Kerik's main credential going in was that he'd been Rudy's driver. Here's a clip from a post I did on December 12th, 2004, cataloguing everything that had then come out at a relatively early stage in his ill-fated nomination to be Secretary of DHS:

||| They seem to be stipulating to their knowing about and being untroubled by a) Kerik's long-standing ties to an allegedly mobbed-up Jersey construction company [or] that Kerik received numerous unreported cash gifts from Lawrence Ray, an executive at said Jersey construction company (Ray was later indicted along with Edward Garafola, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano's brother-in-law, and Daniel Persico, nephew of Colombo Family Godfather Carmine "The Snake" Persico and others on unrelated federal charges tied to what the Daily News called a "$40 million, mob-run, pump-and-dump stock swindle." b) that Riker's Island prison became a hotbed of political corruption and cronyism on his watch, c) that he is accused by nine employees of the hospital he worked at providing security in Saudi Arabia of using his policing powers to pursue the personal agenda of his immediate boss, d) that a warrant for his arrest (albeit in a civil case) was issued in New Jersey as recently as six years ago, e) that as recently as last week he was forced to testify in a civil suit in a case covering the period in which he was New York City correction commissioner, in which the plaintiff, "former deputy warden Eric DeRavin Icontends Kerik kept him from getting promoted because he had reprimanded the woman [Kerik was allegedly having an affair with], Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero," f) his rapid and unexplained departure from Baghdad.|||

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/012977.php

WIKPEDIA - Bernard Kerik was Police Commissioner of the City of New York (2000-2001). In December 2004, George W. Bush nominated Kerik as Secretary of Homeland Security. A week later, Kerik withdrew his acceptance, explaining that he had employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny; subsequently, numerous allegations surfaced which may have led to a difficult confirmation battle. . . Kerik was declared bankrupt in March 1988, but today he is a multimillionaire, the result of a lucrative partnership with former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and a profitable relationship with a stun-gun manufacturer. His relationship since 2002 with Taser International, a Scottsdale, Arizona, manufacturer of stun guns, has by far been the biggest source of his newfound wealth, earning him more than $6.2 million in pre-tax profits through stock options he was granted and then sold, mostly in November 2004. Kerik has been married three times. His present wife since November, 1998 is Syrian born Hala Matli (born 2/3/72). He has four children, his youngest, Celine Christina and Angelina Amber are both the God children of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. . . Kerik worked from 1982 to 1984 as chief of investigations for the security office at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, one of the kingdom's premier hospitals, where members of the royal family are treated. Six members of the hospital security staff, including Kerik, were fired and deported after an investigation in 1984 by the Saudi secret police. . . In May, 2003, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kerik was appointed by the Bush Administration as the Interim Minister of Interior of Iraq and Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Presidential Envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. . . Following his departure from the New York City Police Department, he was employed by Giuliani Partners, a consulting firm formed by the former Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani. . . Shortly after withdrawal of the nomination, the press reported on several other incidents which might also have posed difficulties in gaining confirmation by the Senate. These include: questions regarding Kerik's sale of stock in Taser International shortly before the release of an Amnesty International report critical of the company's stun-gun product; a sexual harassment lawsuit; allegations of misuse of police personnel and property for personal benefit; connections with a construction company suspected of having ties to organized crime; and failure to comply with ethics rules on gifts. On June 30, 2006, after an eighteen month investigation conducted by the Bronx District Attorney's Office, Kerik pled guilty to two ethics violations (unclassified misdemeanors) and was ordered to pay $221,000 in fines at the 10-minute hearing. Kerik acknowledged that he failed to document a personal loan on his annual New York City Conflict of Interest Report (a violation of the NYC Administrative Code) and accepting a gift from a New Jersey construction firm (or ones of their subsidiaries) attempting to do business with the city, (a violation of the NYC Charter. . . Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg immediately removed Kerik's name from the Manhattan Detention Complex, a New York jail that had been renamed in Kerik's honor on Dec 21, 2001 by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Subsequently on July 20, 2006, the two New Jersey contractors were indicted on perjury charges, accused of lying to the Bronx grand jury in the Kerik investigation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Kerik

ROBERT SCHEER, NATION, 2004 - How revealing that the nomination of Bernard Kerik as Homeland Security chief should be derailed not by the former New York City police commissioner's alleged violations of conflict-of-interest laws, mob connections and post-9/11 security industry profiteering but rather by his rueful admission that he paid no taxes for his "illegal immigrant" baby-sitter. . . Once his act went national, cracks in Kerik's facade started to look a lot worse. One of the most detailed exposes stressing Kerik's alleged ties to New York mobsters ran in the New York Daily News. Why didn't those in the administration who vetted Kerik for this job know any of this? Giuliani told Time magazine after Kerik's withdrawal that although he knew there were black marks on Kerik's record, "everything seemed pretty normal, at least by Washington or New York standards." Talk about your moral relativism! Or family values. On Monday, the NY Daily News reported that Kerik had juggled two extramarital affairs while police commissioner. Bottom line: A smart guy like Giuliani should have suspected something in 1998, when his wife and his deputy mayor attended Kerik's lavish wedding, which was dotted with mob-connected characters. This was two years before he appointed Kerik to head the New York City Police Department. To be fair, it would be only later that the Daily News reported the wedding was paid for with money from folks with city contracts and mob connections, some of whom were later indicted. But anyone knowledgeable about Kerik should have known that he could not afford his sumptuous lifestyle, given his bankruptcy and, according to Newsweek magazine, a contempt citation for failing to pay a debt in a business dealing. . . Why wouldn't Giuliani push his onetime chauffeur and now a senior vice president in his firm to be Homeland Security czar, overseeing twenty-two federal agencies with a combined budget of $37.7 billion? The war on terror is a mother lode to be mined by those who are connected. Come to think of it, Kerik shouldn't have been rejected by the Bushies. If they were honest, they would celebrate him as the prototypical GOP operator, playing the people for a profit.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041227/scheer1224

DEMOCRACY NOW, 2004 - Newsweek uncovered that an arrest warrant was issued for Kerik as recently as six years ago over a dispute involving unpaid bills. The 1998 warrant was issued as part of a series of lawsuits relating to unpaid bills on his condominium in New Jersey. The New York Daily News reports that Kerik had illegally accepted thousands of dollars in cash and gifts while a public official. A Daily News probe revealed that for many years, one of Kerik's main benefactors was Lawrence Ray. Ray was later indicted on unrelated federal charges tied to what the Daily News called a "$40 million, mob-run, pump-and-dump stock swindle." The Washington Post reports that nine employees of the hospital Kerik worked at providing security in Saudi Arabia accused him of using his policing powers to pursue the personal agenda of his immediate boss. Questions have also been raised about Kerik's misuse of police power while the head of the New York police department. In one example, he was fined for using the services of three police officers to help research his autobiography "The Lost Son." He was also accused of sending homicide police officers to question Fox News journalists after the book's publisher, Judith Regan, lost a mobile phone after an interview at the Fox studios. It turned out to have just been misplaced.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/13/1457224

OXYCONTIN

ABC NEWS BLOTTER - Rudolph Giuliani and his consulting company, Giuliani Partners, have served as key advisors for the last five years to the pharmaceutical company that pled guilty to charges it misled doctors and patients about the addiction risks of the powerful narcotic painkiller Oxycontin. Federal officials say the company, Purdue Frederick, helped to trigger a nationwide epidemic of addiction to the time-release painkiller by failing to give early warnings that it could be abused. Prosecutors say "in the process scores died." Drug Enforcement Administration officials tell the Blotter Giuliani personally met with the head of the DEA when the DEA's drug diversion office began a criminal investigation into the company. According to the book "Painkiller," by New York Times reporter Barry Meier, both Giuliani and his then-partner Bernard Kerik "were in direct contact with Asa Hutchinson, the administrator of DEA."

MONSIGNOR ALAN J. PLACA

SHAUN SUTNER, WORCESTER TELEGRAM & GAZETTE - Republican presidential candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani has close ties to a Catholic priest accused of sexually molesting boys and who also was the lawyer for a now-closed Whitinsville counseling house for troubled priests that has been described as the center of a pedophile sex ring. Monsignor Alan J. Placa, who works for Mr. Giuliani's consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, was legal adviser in the 1980s to the House of Affirmation, where priests accused of sexual abuse were sent for psychotherapy and other counseling services. The center closed in 1987 amid a financial scandal. Monsignor Placa, who while an active priest arranged the annulment of Mr. Giuliani's first marriage, baptized his two children and officiated at the funeral of his mother, is a childhood friend of Mr. Giuliani and they both attended Manhattanville College.

He was stripped of his duties as a priest, but not defrocked, after Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, published a story in 2002 about young men who alleged that Monsignor Placa abused them in the 1970s. He has been on administrative leave since and has worked for Mr. Giuliani for the past five years. Catholic activists who are fighting the church over the clergy sex abuse issue say Mr. Giuliani's association with the monsignor raises serious questions about the former New York mayor's candidacy.

http://telegram.com/article/20070722/NEWS/707220489/1116

THOMAS RAVENEL

WLTX - South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel has been suspended from office, following his indictment by a federal grand jury for distribution of cocaine. . . The indictments accuse Ravenel, 44, and Michael Miller, 25, of distributing less than 500 grams of cocaine starting in late 2005. They're officially indicted on charges of conspiracy to possess and intent to distribute. Officials say Ravenel bought the drugs from Miller to share with other people. U.S. Attorney Reggie Lloyd says Ravenel didn't sell any of the drugs. Lloyd says the investigation is just beginning. . . [Ravenel] serves as the state chairman for former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Late Tuesday, Giuliani's campaign announced he stepped down from that role. Both men face a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

http://www.wltx.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=50785

MICHAEL RUBIN

BODY POLITIK - Josh Marshall notes that Rudy Giuliani has hired "Michael Rubin as Senior Iran and Turkey Advisor and Middle East Advisory Board Member." Rubin worked at "Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans" and "like the most interesting and frightening neos, Michael is that perfect mix of extreme factual knowledge and extreme lack of judgment, Prone to wild-eyed theories and fantasies of various sorts but all in the end leading inexorably toward catastrophic policy moves for the United States." Below is a sampling of Rubin's greatest hits:

- IRAQ: "The question with Iraq is not whether they were involved on Sept. 11. The question with Iraq is, do we think they have the capacity, the will and the means to create mass casualties in the United States. I think they do. . .

- The New York Times reports that Rubin advised The Lincoln Group, a Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print American propaganda, on the content of the propaganda campaign in Iraq.

- IRAN: "U.S. and Iranian interests in Iraq are diametrically opposed, and will continue to be until one side wins and the other loses." . . .

- "In the wake of Sadr's uprising, Washington is faced with the same choice: End Iran's infiltration through forceful action, or wish it away. How long can we afford to keep choosing the latter?" . . .

- ISLAMIC WORLD: "In the Islamic world, confrontation may work better than dialogue. . .

- REGIME CHANGE IN SYRIA: The Asia Times reported that Michael Rubin and the usual neo-con suspects "signed a report released three years ago that called for using military force to disarm Syria of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to end its military presence in Lebanon." . . . ]

http://bodypolitik.org/2007/10/11/giuliani-ramps-up-iran-hawkishness-hires-neo-con-michael-rubin/

DAVID VITTER

TOM BRUNE, NEWSDAY - Another key supporter of Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani suffered an embarrassment when he admitted last night the "serious sin" of at one time calling an escort service accused of being a prostitute ring. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who is Giuliani's most prominent Southern conservative supporter, was implicated when the so-called "D.C. Madam" disclosed that his telephone number was found among the telephone records of the escort service, Pamela Martin and Associates, in a period before he was elected to Senate in 2004. . . A staunch conservative, Vitter gave Giuliani's campaign an early boost when he endorsed the former New York City mayor in March.

http://weblogs.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/blog/2007/07/giulianis_key_supporters_ensna.html