Now his double affair laid bare: Kerik cheated on wife with Judith Regan and correction officer...and now this (updated)

[Louis Cypher]

BY RUSS BUETTNER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER


Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik conducted two extramarital affairs simultaneously, using a secret Battery Park City apartment for the passionate liaisons, the Daily News has learned.

The first relationship, spanning nearly a decade, was with city Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero; the second, and more startling, was with famed publishing titan Judith Regan.

His affair with Regan, the stunningly attractive head of her own book publishing company, lasted for almost a year.

Dramatically, each woman learned of the existence of the other after Pinero discovered a love note left by Regan in the apartment.

The revelations about Kerik's private life come as repercussions over his suitability to be nominated for the post of secretary of homeland security. Kerik, 49, married with two children from his current marriage, withdrew his name from consideration in a sudden and unexpected call to the White House on Friday night.

Kerik said that questions about the immigration status of his family's former nanny and failure to pay taxes prompted his decision to walk away from the job. But speculation has continued that there were deeper and more controversial reasons.

Yesterday, The News reported that a six-month investigation showed Kerik had accepted thousands of dollars in cash and gifts without proper disclosure, and had ties to a construction company that investigators believe is linked to the mob.

Now revelations about his private life also cast a shadow on his suitability for one of the administration's highest-profile cabinet positions.

Asked about the affairs and the secret love nest yesterday, Joseph Tacopina, Kerik's attorney, said Kerik and Regan had denied the affair in the past.

Tacopina said Kerik's "friendship" with Pinero ended in 1996.

He would not comment on the apartment.

Regan could not be reached for comment.

But sources with intimate knowledge of both affairs painted a picture of passionate, and sometimes volatile, liaisons.

The tumultuous Regan-Kerik romance carried on for months, through the writing, publication and promotion of his autobiography, "The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice," which Regan's company published.

The two worked out together most mornings at the New York Sports Club in Rockefeller Center and often dined at Fresco restaurant in midtown, according to sources.

Kerik visited Regan's Central Park West apartment almost daily, and occasionally stayed the night, with his police detail camped outside.

They became so close that Kerik's two nieces stayed with Regan while the commissioner's sister was hospitalized, one source said.

Regan visited the Battery Park apartment several times, the source said, but apparently never knew that his actual residence at that time was an apartment on E. 79th St.

Furnished corporate rentals similar to the unit Kerik used, according to the sources, are advertised at monthly rents from $3,150 to $6,200. Representatives of Milstein Properties, whichs owns the Liberty View, could not be reached yesterday.

After one encounter, Regan left a romantic note, which was later discovered by Pinero. The two later spoke on the phone.

"She wanted to know if Judith was still seeing him," the source said. "She told Regan about their affair and Regan told her she was shocked."

Many close to Kerik in the mid-1990s assumed that someday he would marry Pinero, a career correction officer described as spirited and attractive by friends, a close friend and a former high-ranking Correction Department source said.

The relationship continued after Kerik married Hala Matli, a hygienist in his dentist's office whom he met in mid-1996 and wed in November 1998, according to multiple sources close to Pinero and Kerik.

Kerik's affair with Pinero is at the center of two lawsuits against the city, both brought by correction employees who claimed Kerik retaliated after they crossed her.

The city settled one last year for $250,000, The News reported at the time.

The second suit, in which Pinero and Kerik were deposed last week, was filed by former Deputy Warden Eric DeRavin 3rd, who claims Kerik quashed his promotion after he reprimanded Pinero. The city demanded a gag order on both depositions.

Pinero declined to comment.

But sources with whom she has spoken said that on her trips to the Battery Park City apartment, Pinero was shuttled in through a side service door.

"She's going to be my wife for as long we live. I support her 100%," said Pinero's husband, who asked that his name be withheld.

Yesterday, Kerik remained at his $1.2 million home in Franklin Lakes, N.J.

After announcing his decision to withdraw his name from the top homeland security post, he remained at the house over the weekend, emerging only twice to talk to media.

On both occasions, he stressed that he had made the decision to withdraw his name from consideration solely on the basis of problems with the family nanny.

He said he had realized on Wednesday evening that there were issues with the woman's immigration status and tax status.

He added that he wanted to avoid any embarrassment to the President, with whom he had stood side-by-side at a press conference announcing his nomination just a week before.

Kerik, who had a national profile after the events of 9/11, had been one of Bush's most enthusiastic public supporters during the election campaign.


With Nancy Dillon



Originally published on December 13, 2004

[Louis Cypher]

<<<Yesterday, The News reported that a six-month investigation showed Kerik had accepted thousands of dollars in cash and gifts without proper disclosure, and had ties to a construction company that investigators believe is linked to the mob.>>>

Nice job Bernie!!!

LC

[Louis Cypher]

NY TIMES

Beyond the Disclosure About Kerik's Nanny, More Questions Were Lurking

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and KEVIN FLYNN

Published: December 13, 2004


While serving as New York City correction commissioner in the late 1990's, Bernard B. Kerik spoke to the city's Trade Waste Commission on behalf of a close friend who was helping a company suspected of mob connections try to get a license from the city, according to a former commission executive.

The conversation was part of a web of relationships Mr. Kerik developed with officials of a New Jersey construction company long suspected by New York authorities of connections to organized crime. The company, Interstate Industrial Corporation, hired Mr. Kerik's close friend Lawrence Ray, the best man at Mr. Kerik's wedding, to help with its licensing problems. Mr. Ray said yesterday that he gave Mr. Kerik more than $7,000 in cash and other gifts while Mr. Kerik was commissioner of correction and the police. The gifts were first reported in The Daily News yesterday.

Interstate also hired Mr. Kerik's brother, Donald Kerik, after the conversation with the Trade Waste Commission executive, Raymond V. Casey, then head of enforcement at the agency, although there is no indication that the hiring was in return for the conversation. Both Mr. Kerik and one of the owners of Interstate, Frank DiTommaso, acknowledge that they were friends, but said there was no effort to inappropriately influence the licensing process.

Mr. DiTommaso said his company did not have ties to organized crime. But in January of this year, city regulators recommended denying the license, citing what they said were ties to organized crime over many years.

Mr. Kerik says he does not remember the conversation with Mr. Casey - a top official of a city agency set up to weed out the influence of organized crime from the hauling industry - and Mr. Casey says he cannot recall who initiated it. Nonetheless, the story of Mr. Kerik's relationship with Interstate was almost certain to be one of a mounting number of details from his past that would have been fodder for Senate committees deciding his suitability to be secretary of homeland security, the post to which he was nominated by President Bush last week.

Mr. Kerik withdrew from consideration on Friday evening and said his discovery that he had employed a nanny and housekeeper who appeared to have been in the country illegally was the sole reason. White House officials say that the nanny matter was not disclosed during their background investigation, and that none of the other matters that they were aware of were sufficient to disqualify Mr. Kerik.

But other questions surfaced after his nomination was announced: his ties to Interstate, his huge profits from companies doing business with the Homeland Security Department, accusations that he abused his authority in an investigation of employees working for a Saudi Arabian hospital 20 years ago, the effectiveness of his effort to improve the Iraqi police force.

The accretion of these questions - even if any one of them could be explained away in one form or another - could well have sunk him later, according to several Capitol Hill officials. Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who recommended Mr. Kerik to the White House, now says that even if Mr. Kerik had survived the questions about Interstate at his confirmation hearings, they would have made his task much more difficult as secretary.

"I believe they would have been issues," Mr. Giuliani said yesterday. "I think he would have been able to give a sufficient answer. But I think he would have been under much closer scrutiny once he became secretary."

Much remains unanswered about Mr. Kerik's ties to Interstate, including how much he knew about the accusations that it was connected to organized crime, and who initiated the conversation with the Trade Waste Commission. Nonetheless, Mr. Kerik's involvement raises questions about his judgment as a law enforcement official in playing any role in a matter where a personal benefactor was involved.

Mr. Kerik said in an interview on Saturday that he did not try to influence the company's application for a license, but the lingering questions provide an insight into what he expected to face if the nanny issue had not cut short his nomination. Mr. Kerik and his lawyers were informed last week that both The Daily News and The Times were asking questions about his relationship with Interstate, and Mr. Giuliani said he believed that Mr. Kerik informed the White House of the issue last week. White House officials said yesterday that they could not confirm whether they knew about the Interstate issues, citing privacy rights.

According to a memorandum issued in January by the Business Integrity Commission, the successor to the Trade Waste Commission, Interstate paid more than $1 million in 1996 to buy a debris transfer station in Staten Island from a company controlled by a captain and a soldier in the Gambino crime family, and it then employed organized crime figures at the station and did business with trucking companies owned by crime figures. The memorandum, which recommended denying the company a transfer station license, said the owners of Interstate associated with crime figures and had a cavalier attitude about the integrity of their employees.

"There is ample evidence on which to conclude that Interstate Materials Corp. and its principals, Frank and Peter DiTommaso, lack the good character, honesty and integrity required of a transfer station permit holder," according to memorandum. Interstate Materials is an affiliate of Interstate Industrial, both owned by the DiTommasos. They have not been charged with any crime.

In recent testimony in an unrelated case in Federal District Court in Manhattan, an informant, Anthony Rotondo, has made more direct accusations about Interstate, saying that it has been tied to two crime families for years and that the company paid bribes in paper bags to the DeCavalcante crime family of New Jersey so as to be allowed to use cheaper, nonunion labor.

As the commission was looking into Interstate in 1999, Mr. Kerik spoke to Mr. Casey, then the agency's deputy commissioner for enforcement, about the man Interstate had hired to help with its licensing problems, Lawrence Ray. Mr. Casey said in an interview that Mr. Kerik had told him that he "thought Ray was a good, honest person with a security background that could help the commission alleviate the concerns with Interstate. And that Ray was someone we could work with."

The next year, Mr. Ray was indicted and later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit stock fraud in an unrelated federal case.

Mr. Casey said that after his conversation with Mr. Kerik, he assigned a commission detective to talk to Mr. Ray, along with a supervisor. Mr. Casey said he thought it was "weird" for the correction commissioner to speak up on behalf of an employee of a company under suspicion, but said he did not think Mr. Kerik intended to improperly influence the commission's decision.

In the interview Saturday, Mr. Kerik described himself as a friend of Frank DiTommaso, and said he did not recall having the conversation with Mr. Casey. He defended his relationship with Mr. DiTommaso.

"I do not know of wrongdoing or criminal activity on the part of Frank DiTommaso," Mr. Kerik said. One of Mr. Ray's lawyers, Thomas G. Roth, said that Mr. Kerik distanced himself from Mr. Ray after the stock-fraud indictment.

Mr. DiTommaso maintains that the company has no organized crime connections, and said that a decision earlier this year by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to license his companies to do work on Atlantic City Casinos buttressed that assertion. However, the state's Division of Gaming Enforcement, which has contended that the company does have organized crime connections, has appealed the commission's decision.

On Oct. 1, 1999, Frank DiTommaso sent a letter to the Trade Waste Commission announcing that Donald Kerik had taken over the daily operation of Interstate Materials, which operated the transfer station. "Don is a fine individual and will continue to provide your agency with full cooperation as we at Interstate Materials Corp. have always done," Mr. DiTommaso wrote.

Mr. Kerik said he had no role in any of the hirings, but Mr. DiTommaso, in sworn testimony, said that he hired Mr. Ray, whom he knew and had been dissatisfied with from a previous business relationship, largely because Mr. Kerik had vouched for him. Mr. DiTommaso said he paid him $100,000 a year.

Mr. Kerik has not explained the gifts Mr. Ray has said he gave, which The Daily News said were not reported to the city's Conflicts of Interest Board. City officials are required to report gifts of more than $1,000.


Christopher Drew and Eric Lipton contributed reporting for this article.

[Dell Dude]

That's what you get for granting a favor to Rudolph Rudy Guliano. I don't like anyone from New York - Republican or Democrat. They're all scum.

[ic]

Amazing how anyone, who has a past, even want to be appointed to such a post. Everything you have ever done, will be found out.

[alysheba88]

remarkable that no background check was done originally. Just amazes me. Especially considering the job title.

Not a Dem/Republican thing either. Both parties are totally incompetent when it comes to this kind of stuff

[Tildy]

"Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik"......................"Kerik remained at his $1.2 million home in Franklin Lakes, N.J."


Sorry but some serious alarm bells are going off. If he was rich before, why take this job? Did this job make him rich, or is he riding the housing bubble? Why the fukk is the NYPD Commisioner allowed too live in Jersey?

[Dell Dude]

Better to get this out of the way now. If Bush screws up like this on his Supreme Court Nominee, it's gonna get ugly.

[Louis Cypher]

NY TIMES
December 13, 2004

Strain Is Seen in Giuliani Ties With President

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani had a Christmas dinner at the White House on Sunday night, and he attended with an important goal in mind: to apologize to his host for pushing Bernard B. Kerik as homeland security secretary and then watching as Mr. Kerik's nomination collapsed in legal problems and embarrassed the president of the United States.

That embarrassment has put a new strain on a mutually beneficial relationship that has always been more complicated than mere friendship.

"I feel very bad," Mr. Giuliani said in a telephone interview on Sunday afternoon, adding that he felt somewhat responsible for the nomination of Mr. Kerik, who withdrew his name on Friday because he had failed to pay taxes for a nanny who was in the country illegally.

"Even though there was never a conversation about it, I realize that one of the reasons they did it was because of my confidence in Bernie over the years," he said. "And I feel like maybe I should have involved myself more in it."

Mr. Giuliani added that he did not think the situation would hurt his relationship with President Bush or the White House. "It doesn't and shouldn't affect my feelings toward them, and I don't think it will affect their feelings toward me," he said. "We're friends."

The view at the White House is somewhat different. Although people close to the president say he likes and respects Mr. Giuliani, they say the president has long been leery of him as a man who could not be counted on for the loyalty demanded by Mr. Bush. And while the breakdown of Mr. Kerik's nomination is not lethal to Mr. Giuliani's relationship with the White House, the friends and officials say, it will hardly burnish his credentials with the president.

"It hurts him politically, so therefore by extension it's going to hurt him with the White House," said a Republican close to the administration who has worked for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Giuliani and who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivity of the situation. "Nobody at the White House is saying to themselves, 'Damn that Rudy Giuliani.' It's more, 'Well, he got his licks.' "

In the interview, Mr. Giuliani indicated that he should have known about Mr. Kerik's legal problems because he had named him police commissioner and then had gone into business with him. The former mayor seemed to suggest as much in a phone call on Saturday morning to Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff.

"I said, 'Well, I wish I had figured it out earlier,' " Mr. Giuliani said. "That's what I was apologizing for, that we hadn't figured this out earlier. And Andy said something like, 'Well, Bernie just focused on it you know, this is a very difficult process.' They were very nice about it."

Suzy DeFrancis, a White House spokeswoman, said on Sunday: "I'm sure Rudy Giuliani is held in high respect at the White House and among the American people as well. He's a great supporter of the president."

The invitation to the Christmas dinner, in fact, came well before Mr. Kerik's nomination.

Mr. Giuliani and his wife were also overnight guests during the campaign at the president's 1,600-acre ranch in Texas, an invitation the president reserves for prime ministers, heads of state and his closest friends. The sleepover, Republicans said, was both a thank-you for Mr. Giuliani's tireless campaigning and a reflection of the president's political need to publicly associate himself with the man who rallied New York after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"If the war on terror is your campaign's number one issue, there's no better symbol of that than Rudy Giuliani," said a government official who knows Mr. Bush and Mr. Giuliani and who asked not to be identified because he did not want to be seen as denigrating the mayor's relationship with the president. "But you shouldn't confuse that with closeness."

Mr. Giuliani said in the interview that he could not recall when he met Mr. Bush, but said he first spent significant time with him on a trip to Austin, Tex., in the fall of 1999. Mr. Giuliani, then mayor, was close to running for the Senate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Mr. Bush, then governor, would soon be running in the Republican primaries against Senator John McCain of Arizona.

"I went to visit him because I was trying to decide who to support - John McCain, who I knew really well, who was a good friend, or Governor Bush, who I didn't know as well, but I thought had a better chance of winning," Mr. Giuliani said.

The mayor ended up endorsing the better bet, Mr. Bush. But during the Republican primary in New York the following March, he barely appeared in public at the side of Mr. Bush, who was fresh from his embrace of religious conservatives in the South Carolina primary. Instead, Mr. Giuliani lavished praise on the independent-minded Mr. McCain. Mr. Giuliani's advisers worried at the time that if the mayor made too many appearances with Mr. Bush, he would alienate the Democrats and swing voters he needed to defeat Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Bush's advisers brushed off the mayor's brush-off as a necessity of New York politics.

But Republicans say that Mr. Bush felt little affection for Mr. Giuliani, and that he was particularly perplexed as the mayor allowed his personal life to unravel publicly in the spring of 2000.

"There aren't a lot of people close to the president who have those kind of experiences," said the Republican close to the administration, referring to Mr. Giuliani's admissions of infidelity with the woman who became his third wife and to his bitter split from his second wife, Donna Hanover.

"It's an issue of not understanding it. I've had discussions with him where he's asked, 'What's this guy all about?' "

But on the morning that two commercial airliners flew into the World Trade Center, a new relationship between the two men was forged. People close to Mr. Bush say he considers the mayor a true hero for his actions on that day and developed a bond with him in the aftermath. Mr. Giuliani readily agreed.

"He gave us immediately all the things that we needed," Mr. Giuliani recalled. "We got all the resources of the federal government put at our disposal, mine and the governor's."

Mr. Giuliani added: "He just told them, 'Give him everything he wants and make sure they have all the support that they need and put all your people right there and let's break down all the barriers."'

Since then, Mr. Giuliani has been repeatedly mentioned as a possibility for a cabinet position, although rarely, if ever, by anyone in the inner circle at the White House. Although the White House has noticed that Mr. Giuliani is far less combative than he was during his days at City Hall, a top administration official once noted that the former mayor would be good for any job that didn't require him to get along with people.

Advisers to Mr. Bush add that as Mr. Giuliani contemplates a run for president in 2008, there is virtually no chance he will be named to a position in the administration because he would have, they say, his own agenda.

As for Mr. Giuliani, he said he expected to soon have Mr. Kerik back in the Times Square offices of Giuliani Partners, where they have worked together since leaving city government at the end of 2001. The partnership, which is staffed by many of Mr. Giuliani's top former City Hall aides, will emerge from this debacle largely unscathed, Mr. Giuliani insisted.

Ultimately, Mr. Giuliani said, the most damaging part for him about the turn of events over the last two weeks is not the political implications.

"It is a personal embarrassment," he said. "I don't like making mistakes. This is something that could have been avoided."

[carl kolchak]

The Stunningly attractive Judith Regan????

C'mon-- she looks okay for a 50 year old broad,but stunning????

the reporter must be looking for a job with her publishing label.

What did this dude do wrong? Nothing I wouldn't have done in his positon. A few mistressess on the side, a hot, illegal nanny, and a little chiseling on his taxes? Big friggin' deal. So he 's not a role model for "family values." In France, a far more culturally advanced country than the still-puritanical USA, they expect their politician to have mistresses.
--------------------------
"Living in the USA"-- Steve Miller Band

[carl kolchak]

I love it when Mistress #1 is outraged the guy
"cheats with Mistress #2.

[tony27]

THIS GUY CASHED IN HIS 6 MILLION DOLLAR STOCK OPTIONS


LOL..............only in america

[Tildy]

Tony27, thanks for the answer. I was wondering why the guy was rich, now I know. Taser International.

[stevo]

Originally posted by: ic
Amazing how anyone, who has a past, even want to be appointed to such a post. Everything you have ever done, will be found out.

He heard the Diamonbacks were helping out with the selection process. He thought he was safe. I wonder if he and his friends sit around and Taser each other for fun.

[Louis Cypher]

NY TIMES

Apartment Said to Have Been Scene of a Kerik Affair
By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Published: December 15, 2004


An apartment in Battery Park City that former Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik secured for his personal use after Sept. 11 was originally donated for the use of weary police and rescue workers who were helping at ground zero, according to a real estate executive who has been briefed about the apartment.

After the cleanup had settled into a routine that fall, the executive said, Mr. Kerik, who was still police commissioner, asked to rent the two-bedroom apartment for his own use. During his use of the apartment, Mr. Kerik and Judith Regan engaged in an extramarital affair there, according to someone who spoke to Mr. Kerik about the relationship. Ms. Regan published his best-selling autobiography in 2001.

Rescue workers were combing through the World Trade Center rubble around the clock when Mr. Kerik called Anthony Bergamo, a well-connected vice chairman of the Milstein family real estate company and a police buff, and asked for help finding a place for the workers to rest during breaks, the executive said.

The family owned Liberty View, a 28-story yellow brick tower two blocks southwest of the trade center at the corner of West Street and Third Place.

According to the executive, who knows Mr. Bergamo, the vice chairman arranged for Mr. Kerik to have the use of an apartment there. Several apartments in the buildings had been used by rescue workers on breaks, and by Red Cross staff who were treating them, in the months after 9/11, according to a real estate executive.

Mr. Bergamo, founder of the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation, which raises money to help families of injured or slain F.B.I. agents, is a well-known figure among law enforcement officers for his interest in all things related to policing. He was made an honorary police commissioner several years ago by Police Commissioner Howard Safir.

Mr. Bergamo is licensed by the Police Department to carry a Colt .45 handgun and two Smith & Wesson handguns, a .38-caliber revolver and a 9-millimeter pistol, the police said. He has renewed the license repeatedly over the last decade or so, the police said.

According to the executive, Mr. Kerik "went to Bergamo asking for an apartment for emergency service workers."

It is unclear exactly who used the apartment and for how long, but after the cleanup of the site settled into a routine, the executive said Mr. Kerik "said he wanted to rent the apartment." Mr. Bergamo rented it to him. Mr. Kerik paid for use of the apartment, but the amount was not clear. Many apartments that were available in Battery Park City after the attack on the trade center were rented at well below market rates for months afterward.

After taking the apartment, Mr. Kerik, who is married with two children and lived at the time in Riverdale, the Bronx, began to meet there with Ms. Regan, said the person who spoke to Mr. Kerik about the matter.

That person said that one bedroom faced the pit of ground zero, and that Ms. Regan visited it while Mr. Kerik was police commissioner, meaning between Sept. 11 and Dec. 31, 2001. Mr. Kerik refused to answer any questions yesterday regarding the apartment.

Ms. Regan, like Mr. Bergamo, received an honorary badge on Dec. 31, 2001, this one from Mr. Kerik himself. It was Mr. Kerik's last day as police commissioner.

Questions have been raised in the past about the tradition of bestowing these ceremonial badges, and whether they create the appearance that those who receive them are in debt to those who grant them. Bearers of the shields are not to become involved in law enforcement activities.

Many residents of the apartment tower said this week that they were unaware of Mr. Kerik's presence, although one man who requested anonymity said that he boarded an elevator six months ago with him. "I said to myself, 'Hey, that's Bernie Kerik,' " the man recalled. "It was surprising. But then I thought, well, maybe he keeps a place down here because he's involved with security and 9/11."

Contacted at the annual Milstein holiday party at the New York Public Library on Monday night, Mr. Bergamo declined to comment and had a reporter escorted out of the building.

Several people who know him describe Mr. Bergamo, who once ran the Milstein family's Milford Plaza Hotel, as a police buff, a man who is fascinated by law enforcement officers. In 1987, he was one of the founders of the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation, whose board included Ronald Perelman, chairman of Revlon, and Tommy Mottola, the music executive.

Mr. Bergamo told Newsday last fall that each member must contribute or raise $30,000 for the foundation. Some members, like Mr. Bergamo, Mr. Perelman and Mr. Mottola, were made honorary police commissioners and given badges. The group also issued parking placards like those used by the New York police.

Several years ago, Mr. Bergamo undertook an assignment for his boss, Howard Milstein, in connection with a $100 million lawsuit filed by Mr. Milstein against John Kent Cooke, the former owner of the Washington Redskins, over the developer's failed attempt to buy the football team.

Posing as "Anthony Burke" and using a hidden tape recorder, Mr. Bergamo arranged to bump into Mr. Cooke and the former Redskins general manager, Charley Casserly, during a trip to Bermuda in an effort to elicit damaging information.

He did not obtain any incriminating statements, but he did chalk up over $6,500 in expenses.


Eric Lipton and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.

[Louis Cypher]

NY POST

BAD BERNIE'S LIVID MISTRESS: 'HE'S INSANE & MANIACAL'

By ANDREA PEYSER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 15, 2004 -- WHEN titian-haired publish ing titan Judith Regan took up with former top cop Bernard Kerik, she thought she'd met her match. And vice versa.

But the illicit relationship came tumbling down, a friend of Regan's told me, not when she discovered her married lover had another mistress. It ended horribly after Regan learned Kerik's wife was pregnant.

After that jolting discovery, Regan — as volatile, driven and foul-mouthed as any man — began using other words to describe her lover.

"He's maniacal. Insane," a terrified Regan confided in a pal. Kerik, she said, had Regan followed to Los Angeles. He showed up at her house. Threatened her.

Now that Regan has emerged as the final nail in Kerik's bid to serve as chief of Homeland Security, questions are erupting over whether Kerik's admitted mistakes — he once used city cops to research his memoir — extended into even more intimate areas.

One thing is clear: This man had serious issues with impulse control.

The Kerik-Regan pairing may look unlikely — she's Vassar-bred, he's a high-school dropout. But two friends used almost identical terms to describe the duo. "They are male and female versions of the same people," they said of the "power-addicted" couple.

One friend told me Kerik lured Regan into a relationship with the oldest line in the married man's playbook: "My wife doesn't understand me. I'm in a loveless marriage."

Said the friend, "Judith is smart. I couldn't believe she'd fall for that." But she was also "crazy about the guy."

The yearlong affair, which began as Regan prepared to publish Kerik's memoir, was an open secret in town. Yet Regan used a "beard" — a male friend with whom she pretended to be involved.


Months into the affair, Regan got a call at her office from Kerik's other mistress, correction officer Jeanette Pinero. Until then, Regan didn't know Pinero existed.

Pinero had found a love letter from Regan in the swinging bachelor pad Kerik kept in Battery Park City, and wanted Regan to know she'd been Kerik's lover for a decade.

Fiery Judith shot back, "I don't feel as f---ed as I did before you called. You're more pathetic than I am."

While Regan is said to have "flipped out" over the call — "She's very territorial: 'What's mine is mine. What's yours is mine,' " — it did not kill things entirely.

Then less than a month later, she learned Kerik's wife was pregnant.

"She did the math," said a pal. "She said she wanted to break it off, and Kerik did not want to and he got crazy.

"She didn't take his calls and he showed up at her apartment in person, ranting and raving. Coming home from a night out, he'd be there unexpectedly."

Worse, she said he threatened to poison her relationship with her two children, over whom Regan had waged, and won, an epic custody battle.

"She told him, 'If you don't leave me alone, I'm going to call your wife.'

"They were two crazy people. Who knows what goes on? But this was too much."

Lately, Kerik seemed to have rebounded. Earlier this year, I spotted him having dinner at Fresco's with another, fatter man and a pair of blond twentysomethings in skin-tight jeans and fur coats. Until last week, he was bound for the Homeland Security post.

Regan was at a business meeting when she heard of the nomination. She ran out.

"She was in shock," said one observer. "She couldn't believe it. I think she knew this was all going to come out."

Since the news broke of their affair, said the friend, Regan has been "hysterical."

She's worried about her daughter. Oddly, she's also concerned about Kerik.

"I don't want to see him pulled apart," she said.

Her friend replied, "Why the hell is she protecting him after all this?"

Perhaps there's more.

[stevo]

Perhaps there's more.

Oh I'm sure there is. Now that the media has its sites set on this one I'm sure some entertaining stuff will be emerging.

[carl kolchak]

Publicly she might be outraged and upset.

But privately, i think she is a bit thrilled.People like this live
for the media.It's the real world for them.Now she's a known
face. For a moment anyway.

That's pretty disturbing about the battery park bachelor pad.
Perhaps he played tapes of the planes hitting the building,while
having sex with Judith. Climaxing at the moment of impact.