Indictment offers a look at Giuliani's inner circle

WASHINGTON — Being a top aide to New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani allegedly brought a lot of perks to Bernard Kerik -- a new Jacuzzi, a "marble entrance rotunda" installed in a Bronx apartment, $9,000 a month in rent payments for a flat on the Upper East Side -- many of them paid for by people who had business with the city.

Those and other favors were laid out Friday in a corruption indictment against Kerik, New York's former police commissioner. The charges open a window on Republican presidential candidate Giuliani's inner circle, detailing how Kerik lived the high life during Giuliani's law-and-order administration.

The indictment, with details that would fit an episode of "The Sopranos," could create problems for the GOP front-runner, who has built his candidacy on his image as an efficient manager and dogged crime fighter.

Kerik was a police detective and onetime driver for Giuliani who the then-mayor elevated first to corrections commissioner and then in 2000 to police commissioner. Kerik faces 14 charges, including criminal conspiracy, tax evasion and making false statements to White House officials considering him for Homeland Security secretary.

President Bush nominated Kerik to the cabinet post in 2004 on Giuliani's recommendation. The nomination was withdrawn after a torrent of revelations about Kerik's finances, including some of the allegations in the indictment.

At a news conference Friday, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, a post Giuliani held during the 1980s, accused the former mayor's protege of "in effect selling his office, in violation of his duty to the people of the city."

Sensing an opening, Giuliani's presidential opponents pounced.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney picked Friday morning to release a statement pledging "strong ethics and accountability in government."

Arizona Sen. John McCain's campaign suggested that Giuliani's support of Kerik was an ethical failing. "Rudy Giuliani's history with Bernie Kerik is a story of poor judgment," the campaign said. "A president's judgment matters, and Rudy Giuliani has repeatedly placed personal loyalty over regard for the facts."

Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor to Giuliani and now an advisor to his campaign, fired back by mentioning the main scandal of McCain's public life: his role as one of the "Keating Five," senators who were tied to the collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan Assn. and its chairman, Charles H. Keating Jr.