A TOUGH GUY TUMBLES
Richard (Bo) Dietl and Bernard Kerik have long been familiar figures in the flashy underside of New York City night life. They could be seen swaggering into Rao's, an exclusive Italian restaurant in Harlem, where mobsters and models and Wall Street masters of the universe drink shots and swap boasts. Both men were up-from-nothing tough guys, former cops who now wore silk-threaded suits and thin-soled loafers. Sometimes Bo and Bernie were buddies, sometimes not. Lately they have been friends again. Bo is in the security business; Bernie had just been nominated as secretary of Homeland Security by President Bush. Never know when a friend might come in handy.
So Dietl had taken to the airwaves, talking up what a great stand-up guy Bernie Kerik was on "Imus in the Morning" and CNBC's "Kudlow and Cramer." His friend Kerik called to thank him for the kind words, but he seemed worried. "A lot of people are trying to f--- with me," Kerik said, as Dietl recalls.
Apparently so. Within three days, Kerik was done for, compelled to withdraw his name as Homeland Security czar. For the record, the proximate cause was a nanny problem: in going over his financial records, Kerik informed the White House, he had discovered that his housekeeper/nanny appeared to be an illegal immigrant and that he had failed to pay all the necessary taxes for her. Since the Homeland Security Department runs the U.S. immigration agencies, it wouldn't do to have the secretary employing illegal aliens.
But few Washington or New York insiders believed that Kerik's problems stopped there. On his way up, Kerik had shown an inclination to make his own rules, and he had made some powerful enemies. The very qualities that appealed to President Bush--a willingness to get things done, and damn the naysayers--were bound to come back to haunt Kerik, especially in the equally vicious worlds of the New York glitterati and the Washington bureaucracy.
Consider, for instance, Kerik's relationship with Judith Regan. A flamboyant, stiletto-heeled--and highly successful--book publisher, Regan published Kerik's sensational memoir, which begins with the scene of Kerik's mother, a prostitute, murdered in her pimp's bed. Occasional workout partners, Kerik and Regan became close friends. But their relationship soured, and Regan told friends Kerik had hounded her, and that she hired a bodyguard. Kerik's lawyer confirmed that Regan and Kerik were friends, but says "there was nothing untoward about their relationship." The lawyer called the allegation that Kerik had hounded her "absurd."
Regan declined to comment. She also told NEWSWEEK she had never been questioned by the White House or FBI when Kerik was being considered for the Homeland Security job over the past month. White House officials are defensive about the vetting process. They say they depended on Kerik to be forthcoming, and he failed to warn them of the nanny problem. (Kerik claims he himself was unaware of the problem until last week.) But some administration officials acknowledge that the president's predilections work against a careful review. Bush hates leaks and enjoys popping surprise announcements on the press. He liked the idea of Kerik--the self-made tough guy--and he dismissed as gossip or press carping newspaper stories about Kerik's bending the rules.
The White House seemed to shrug off stories of Kerik's financial dealings a little too easily, like the $6 million he made--without investing a penny--by cashing in his stock options in a company that made stun guns sold to the government. Then there was the arrest warrant. In 1998, Kerik was sued for failing to pay about $5,000 in maintenance fees on a condo he owned in New Jersey. When Kerik failed to respond to a subpoena, NEWSWEEK learned, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest. A Kerik spokesman later said Kerik paid the fees and the warrant was withdrawn, but the existence of the warrant was news to the White House and Kerik's handlers.
Kerik's somewhat cavalier attitude is best captured by his time in Iraq. After the invasion in the spring of 2003, Kerik was sent to Baghdad to organize the Iraqi police. But Kerik didn't seem to show much interest in Iraqis, said a senior U.S. official who worked with him. He appeared to enjoy going on night raids against "bad guys" with some South African mercenaries who were serving as bodyguards to U.S. officials. On his screen saver, Kerik had a photo of a big house he had just bought in New Jersey that he said was across the street from former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms's. Kerik told his colleagues he planned to be in Baghdad for three months while the house was undergoing renovations. "So," the official says he told Kerik, "you're here because you needed a place to go while they're doing renovations on your house." Kerik grinned and cocked a finger as if to say, "You got it." A spokesman for Kerik said that story was "absurd" and that Kerik was a patriot.
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Mark Hosenball joined Newsweek as an investigative correspondent in November 1993, covering a range of issues for the National Affairs department. Most recently, he has written and reported numerous stories on terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks on America. He has also covered campaign finance, the Monica Lewinsky controversy, the death of Princess Diana, Whitewater, the crashes of EgyptAir flight 990 and TWA flight 800, as well as related air safety issues.
Hosenball came to Newsweek from "Dateline NBC," where he worked as an investigative producer. He also worked extensively as a print journalist, writing for a number of British and American publications, including the London Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard, Time Out, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. In addition, he has done commentaries for American Public Radio.
Hosenball has been honored with a number of prestigious awards. Most recently, along with a team of Newsweek correspondents, he was awarded the Overseas Press Club's most prestigious honor, the 2002 Ed Cunningham Memorial Award for best magazine reporting from abroad for Newsweek's coverage of the war on terror. His reporting and that of his colleagues earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002 for its coverage of September 11 and its aftermath. And a story he co-authored was highlighted in a citation Newsweek received by the White House Correspondents' Association when it awarded the magazine the 2002 Edgar A. Poe Award for "excellence on a story of national or regional importance. "Newsweek's September 11 coverage started long before the attacks. An article in the magazine's February 19, 2001 issue warned with chilling accuracy: 'The threat posed by (Osama) bin Laden is growing -- and coming ever closer to home."
Hosenball was a contributor to the CANAL + TV documentary, "L'Argent de la Drogue" (Drug Money), which was awarded the "Sept D'Or," the French equivalent of an Emmy. He also contributed to NBC News' coverage of the BCCI scandal, which earned a 1991 Peabody Award.
He attended the University of Pennsylvania and Trinity College in Dublin. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife and son.
Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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