By now, everyone knows that Bernard Kerik, Bush’s choice to head the Department of Homeland Security, has withdrawn from the process. Everyone also probably knows that Kerik’s “nanny problem” was only part of a web of personal crises that doomed the nominee’s fate.
But I’d like to explore, for a moment, the question of White House incompetence.
Reports in Saturday’s papers indicated that Kerik, as part of a personal background check, had discovered just two days before his withdrawal that he had hired an illegal immigrant and “forgot” to pay her payroll taxes. But that hardly seems true if Kerik fired the housekeepers two weeks ago.
A former New York City official who knows the circumstances of the withdrawal said that the housekeeper, who had worked for the Kerik family for about a year, left for her home country two weeks ago.
Coincidence? Probably not. Kerik knew he had a problem and apparently hoped to cover it up. Did Bush’s vetting team somehow miss this?
The White House, at least at first, took the right political line, insisting that they were the victim of Kerik’s fraudulent attempts
White House officials yesterday blamed Bernard B. Kerik for repeatedly failing to disclose potential legal problems to administration lawyers vetting his nomination to be homeland security secretary.
At first blush, this is largely persuasive. Kerik was a fraud and the White House mistakenly took him at his word. It’s hardly the fault of presidential aides that Kerik lied about his background, right?
That’d be fine, except now the White House wants us to believe they were on top of Kerik’s problems all along.
Senior administration officials on Sunday defended the White House review of Bernard B. Kerik’s background before his nomination as secretary of homeland security. One official said that even “controversial” material uncovered in a weeklong review had not appeared to endanger Mr. Kerik’s confirmation.
In interviews, the officials denied that the White House review of Mr. Kerik’s background had been rushed. Scott McClellan, President Bush’s press secretary, called it “a very thorough vetting process” that “looked at all the issues relating to his public, financial and personal background.”
The poor White House is in a bit of a pinch, isn’t it? They don’t want to say they were duped, because that makes them appear incompetent. They don’t want to say their research was sloppy, because that also makes them appear incompetent. Instead, they’re saying they knew about Kerik’s “controversial” background all along.
I don’t think the Bush gang has thought this one through all the way.
Josh Marshall has a sampling of some of the implications.
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 (see yesterday’s piece in the Daily News and tomorrow’s in the Times), sub-a) 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 III contends Kerik kept him from getting promoted because he had reprimanded the woman [Kerik was allegedly having an affair with], Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero,” or f) his rapid and unexplained departure from Baghdad.
Indeed, that’s only a partial list of Kerik’s several serious problems. White House officials would now have us believe that they knew about all of this and still wanted Kerik to head the Department of Homeland Security? I know the “we were duped” tack has its flaws, but wouldn’t it be far better under the circumstances?