Thursday, December 02, 2004

Kerik Named to Lead Homeland Security

President Bush has chosen former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who helped oversee the city's response to the 9/11 attacks, to run the Department of Homeland Security, a senior administration official said Thursday [link].

I thought it might be fun to post some pieces of Kerik's bio and some of his statements that you may not hear much about in other places.

From the New York Press
As Rudy Giuliani’s last police commissioner, [Kerik] decided not to fire the four cops involved in the Amadou Diallo incident, reminding New York that you have to shoot an unarmed black man at least fifty times before you lose your badge. Prior to his distinguished reign as the police commissioner, was the head of a state corrections department that for years was the city’s most dependable source of scandal and bureaucratic skullduggery. The promotional blurb for his memoir, The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice, describes him as "a jail warden with a black belt and a background in international security and anti-terrorism." His gigantic, circa-1977 mustache almost redeems him, but not quite.
From a recent appearance on The O'Reilly Factor
Kerik: "The overall coverage in general of what's going on in Iraq is not being handled correctly or accurately. You have enormous progress throughout Iraq in economics, in hospitals, in education, in various areas of security, in the every day life of the Iraqis. You don't see any of that, any of that published or publicized on any of the news stations."
(Enormous progress? Really? He's right -- I haven't seen that on TV, either.)

From the New York Daily News
[Kerik] went to Iraq to help rebuild its police force, saying he would stay "in excess of six months... as long as it takes to get the job done" but returned after just four. Despite his efforts, Iraq's police force is still seen as corrupt and weak.

Kerik found himself denying any role in a scandal that erupted in New York after he left his job as top cop: a former boss at Rikers Island whom he promoted multiple times was accused of marshaling correction officers to work on Republican campaigns.

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