Part 1 of 2
Five: A Star Rises on the Potomac
As HE SPOKE TO A GROUP OF FEDERAL PROSECUTORS AT THE DEDICAtion
of a new Manhattan prison one afternoon in the spring of 1975,
Deputy Attorney General Harold "Ace" Tyler noticed a pasty-faced young
man sitting front-row center, "watching me like a hawk." Tyler found himself
glancing again and again, as he spoke, at those fixed, coal-colored eyes. The
man seemed to be processing Tyler's every movement, taking in his every
word-and the second most powerful man in Gerald Ford's Justice Department
thought to himself: This must be Rudy Giuliani.
"I asked Paul Curran who he was," said Tyler. "And it was Rudy. He was a vacuum
cleaner in his ability to absorb everything that might help him." His calculated
stare was also his own brand of introduction.
A distinguished New York Republican, Tyler had resigned a few months earlier
from the Southern District bench to become Attorney General Edward
Levi's top deputy. He was looking to bring a young legal dynamo with him to
Washington as his aide, and the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan was a hive
of candidates.
Rudy applied for the job with the backing of his old mentor, Lloyd
MacMahon. "MacMahon always raved about Rudy," said Tyler. "He kept telling
me to bring him to Washington."
Tyler dallied, but MacMahon's calls kept coming. Soon after meeting Giuliani
at the dedication, Tyler took MacMahon's advice. He hired Rudy as an associate
deputy attorney general, a position that paid $38,000 a year. It was a great job,
putting Rudy at the center of power, where he would help Tyler run the criminal
wing of the u.s. Justice Department. But Rudy also viewed the appointment
as a stepping stone to even bigger, better jobs. "It was a terrific opportunity," he
said. "I thought it would be a seminar on how government works."
Bald, soft-spoken and possessed of a cool equanimity antithetical to the likes of
MacMahon, the six-foot-two-inch Tyler had earned his "Ace" nickname in his
youth by scoring fifteen points in a prep school basketball game. This was not his
first stint in Washington, and he was not unfamiliar with its mercurial currents
and undertows. In 1959, President Eisenhower had appointed Tyler the first head
of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. He was named us. District
Court Judge by President Kennedy three years later in 1962. Now, in September
1975, when Rudy joined him, Tyler's job was to oversee the day-to-day operations
of Justice, a task made all the more onerous by Watergate. Sapped of its morale,
the department's criminal division was so sluggish Tyler billed it a "fudge factory
with 680 lawyers."
"Tyler was very good under pressure," Rudy said. "1 learned from him that in a
pressure situation, the best thing to do was remain calmer than everybody else. I
also learned that it was good to become angry and upset when everybody else is
calm and complacent. It helps to motivate them."
A few other promising young lawyers had clambered their way onto Tyler's
staff, including Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork-two conservative icons who
would eventually be nominated, one successfully, to the US. Supreme Court.
"Nino Scalia was a bouncing Italian," says Tyler. "He played the piano. Rudy and
he got along pretty well."
Rudy did not get along so well with another member of Tyler's staff, a young
black lawyer named Togo West, who handled the deputy attorney general's civil
matters. A tension blossomed between Rudy and West, according to Tyler. "Rudy
was always difficult with West," said Tyler. "Rudy didn't think he was savvy."
Tyler thought West, who had clerked for him, was just too subtle for the headstrong
Rudy. "Togo was a master at the indirect," Tyler noted, a fact that seemed
to completely escape Rudy's notice. fIScalia really liked Togo," said Tyler. "Even
Bork liked him." Only Rudy went to war with him. West went on to a distinguished
career in the Clinton administration as secretary of the army and, later,
secretary of veterans' affairs.
Also detecting a deeply rooted contempt within Rudy for members of Congress,
Tyler thought it wise to steer his aggressive aide away from Capitol Hill. "If you
don't suffer fools gladly," he explained, "you better not try to sell them anything."
One of Rudy's primary tasks was to "keep an eye" on the FBI and US. Marshals
Service. The FBI "considered Rudy their man," said Tyler. The thirty-one-year-old
associate deputy joined his boss at meetings with FBI head Clarence Kelly and
other top law enforcement officials, including the then director of operations for
the Marshals Service, Howard Safir, who would eventually become Rudy's police
commISSIOner.
The "white collar crime committee"- founded by Attorney General Levi in
October 1975 and placed under Harold Tyler's supervision-became Rudy's responsibility.
Charged with critically examining the Department's performance on
white-collar crime and recommending improvements, the committee was established
in response to a group letter sent to Levi that August. The letter was signed
by a number of legislators and consumer advocates, including Ralph Nader and future
New York Public Advocate-and Giuliani nemesis-Mark Green.
When Togo West resigned to return to private practice, Rudy inherited his responsibilities
and was suddenly Tyler's point man on both the criminal and civil
fronts. He became a de facto chief of staff.
In June 1976, Rudy sat in on a meeting Tyler held with Philadelphia's mayor,
Frank Rizzo, the rough-edged former chief cop of the City of Brotherly Love.
Worried that the upcoming July 4th bicentennial celebration to be held in
Philadelphia would become the target of terrorists, Rizzo asked Tyler to order that
15,000 federal troops be assigned to the city. As Rizzo and Tyler spoke, Rudy sat in
quiet awe of the crude Italian-American politician, mesmerized by him.
Rizzo was notorious for his blunt, bigoted remarks. During his first campaign for
mayor, he boasted: "I'm going to make Attila the Hun look like a faggot after this
election's over." An unequivocal racist, Rizzo told an acquaintance during his second
run for mayor: "Forget about the niggers, I don't need 'em." He called Governor
Milton Shapp "that Jew in Harrisburg" and referred to City Councilman Pete
Camiel as "that Polack."
A six-foot two-inch Navy veteran, who had earned nicknames such as "The
Cisco Kid" and "Super Cop," Rizzo was also famous for his Stalinist approach to
policing. He had made headlines in 1970, when, in the wake of the shooting of a
cop, he ordered a raid of the Philadelphia Black Panther offices. With no evidence
against them, fourteen Panthers were arrested and stripped naked in the street. It
turned out another group was responsible for the police killing. In 1973, Rizzo was
caught running a secret thirty-four-man special police unit formed expressly to
dig up dirt and spy on his political enemies.
At the sit-down with Tyler, Rizzo told Tyler that he was especially concerned
about two activist organizations, even though both had already obtained permits to
protest the day's activities. Without troops, Rizzo insisted, chaos would surely erupt.
Tyler recalls Rizzo's request as excessive, if not slightly maniacal. "He wanted to
move the Eighty-second Airborne into combat position!" says Tyler, incredulously.
"He was saying, 'We're gonna be attacked!'"
During the discussion, Rudy's attention remained fixed on Rizzo. "Rudy was
fascinated," said Tyler. "He was staring at Frank like he had stared at me. I was
thinking that he kind of likes this guy's approach."
After watching Rizzo bluster his way through a press conference on the bicentennial
terrorist threat, Rudy told Tyler he thought the Philadelphia mayor was
"masterful." Tyler guessed that the press conference "maybe influenced Rudy."
Ultimately, Rizzo's request was denied. As for what happened in Philadelphia on
the 4th of July, 1976? "Nothing," said Harold Tyler. "Nothing happened."
***
Rudy's lifestyle changed in Washington. After he had decided on a rather
modest apartment and returned to New York to pack, resourceful Regina
discovered a comparably priced palace. Rudy heard her description over the phone
and instantly agreed.
Looming high above the Iwo Jima memorial, stolidly stationed on top of a steep
ridge in Arlington, Virginia, Prospect House looked more like a modern fortress
than a high-rise luxury apartment building. Angular and aerodynamic, it was
shaped like a shallow "W" vaguely reminiscent of a stealth bomber, as if the building
might roar thunderously into the sky. The 268-unit, eleven-story building featured
such amenities as a swimming pool, in-house gourmet restaurant, private
garden, underground valet parking, grocery store and dry cleaning service. The
view from this elite residential bunker was spectacular: a panoramic vista of the
entire D.C. skyline, with the monuments and federal buildings laid out below like
a sparkling miniature city.
Their neighbors at Prospect House included a host of congressmen and other
Washington luminaries, like Larry King. The Giulianis were thrilled with their
new $550-per-month, fifth-floor duplex, replete with a sunken living room, thirteen-
foot-high ceilings, a giant bay window and balcony overlooking the splendor
of the nation's capital. The couple entertained many visitors at their new pad, often
hosting parties on their broad balcony. "The building was so crowded that
when you looked up and down the terrace," said Regina, "you were almost afraid
the building was going to fall over because the whole place had parties." On the
night of July 4th, 1976-the 200th anniversary of the United States of America,
the auspicious day that had had Frank Rizzo so desperately worried-Rudy and
Regina hosted a bicentennial bash for a swath of friends and acquaintances. As the
daylight dwindled, everyone gathered on the balcony to watch the fireworks.
"There were dozens of Justice Department people," Regina recalled. Among them
were former FBI director William Gray and future Attorney General Richard
Thornburgh, then chief of the Department of Justice's criminal division. Rudy
Giuliani was making some very powerful friends.
With the brisk change of scene, the new apartment, and the parties, Rudy and
Regina's marriage was being molded into more conventional shape. Regina, whose
presence was much more evident in Rudy's life here than it had been in New York,
was giving the relationship a second try.
In accompanying Rudy to Washington, however, his wife was also pulling up
fresh but firm roots in New York, leaving a brand-new job she liked almost as
much as Prospect House. On April 1, 1974, she had been appointed a higher education
assistant at the City University of New York's York College in Queens.
Earning a salary of $15,280, she served as the program coordinator for York's
Continuing Education Department, which was run by an affable CUNY professor
named James C. Hall. York was a new college that targeted Queens's growing
African-American community and had drawn a number of black educators. Hall
was one of many black professional colleagues who would become a close friend of
Regina's, nudging her politics in a liberal direction, just as Rudy's moved rightward,
surrounded by his new Republican friends.
After a long job hunt in Washington, Regina was hired as the coordinator of the
Center for Continuing Education and Mental Health, an affiliate of the Psychiatric
Institute of Washington, a local hospital. Her primary responsibilities were organizing
seminars and other programs for the hospital's employees and overseeing continuing
education programs for psychiatrists who needed to renew their licenses.
Tyler met Regina on a handful of occasions, most memorably at two Justice
Department parties in Virginia and Maryland. His wife and children also met her at
the Virginia party, said Tyler, and "thought she was terrific." He added, "So did I."
Rudy's wife, however, was curiously timid. "She was withdrawn," said Tyler.
"She wouldn't react. She was extraordinarily quiet, pushing everyone away."
***
After a year and a half at Justice, Rudy suddenly had to look for work. Gerald
Ford had lost his re-election bid to Jimmy Carter and the musical-chairs
flurry of fresh political appointments was about to beset Justice. The most seductive
voice whispering in his ear was Harold Tyler's. Rudy's mentor suggested that
they present themselves as part of a five-lawyer package deal to high-powered
New York law firms. Also part of the package was another Tyler protege, a black
attorney named Richard Parsons. In early 1977, Tyler signed on with the oldmoney,
Republican firm of Patterson, Belknap & Webb; his name was quickly appended
to the firm's already lofty, but somewhat stale, triumvirate of names. Rudy
was initially offered an associate position, but after persistent protestations and a
little pouting-no partnership for Rudy and Rudy walks-the firm relented. Rudy
even got a stake of less than 1 percent of Patterson's profits.
From offices in Rockefeller Center, Patterson's attorneys, most of whom had Ivy
League degrees, represented a roster of corporate clients and worked on estates,
trusts and taxes. It was an unequivocally stodgy outfit where few cases went to
court.
Tyler was brought in as a rainmaker, a big-name attorney who could lure
clients with deep pockets. At first, Rudy found himself replicating his Justice
Department role. "Essentially, I served as Tyler's chief of staff," said Rudy. "He'd
bring in the business and I'd work on the cases."
Emboldened by the hubris of Washington, Rudy soon came to be viewed as an
iconoclast of sorts at the staid, buttoned-down Patterson. Renee Syzbala, who
had joined the firm shortly before Rudy, said the new partner would often flout
the office's rigid code of conduct. "No one could know what anyone else was
making," said Syzbala. "Rudy would tell you who was fighting with who, what
so-and-so was making. Rudy would take people out on the firm .... I wasn't
happy until Rudy got there. When Rudy came, the place got to be fun."
Rudy's mild insubordinations earned him the loyalty of a group of associates,
including Syzbala, who worked and played with him. Known as "Rudy and the
Rudettes," the upstart clique would regularly meet after work for a few rounds
of scotch. The social outings often became late-night affairs that might start at a
bar or restaurant and end up at a disco joint in the early hours of the morning.
On some occasions the Rudettes stayed out so late that they would eat breakfast
together. "Rudy was a cigar smoker, a heavy drinker," said Renee Syzbala.
"Completely un-health conscious."
Spurred by a spontaneity seldom seen in his later public life, Rudy was famous
among the crew for his hijinks. After one night of reveling, he climbed
into the public water fountain in front of the Seagram Building and splashed
around, daring his colleagues to join him. And so they did, wading in the fountain,
splashing each other.
When Syzbala first met Rudy in January of 1977, she said he led her to believe
that he and his wife had already been separated for a period of several years and
that he was a free man. Rudy even went on a few dates with Syzbala's cousin,
whom he had met at Renee's wedding. Syzbala said years later that she thought
her night-clubbing pal was single all of the four years he was at Patterson. Jeff
Harris, Rudy's friend from the U.S. Attorney's Office, said of the marriage that "it
was clear by the time he was at Patterson Belknap that they were not together."
Harold Tyler, who knew Regina from Washington, said he never saw her again
after Rudy joined Patterson. "1 knew something was going on," he said. "But
that was more intuition."
In fact, Rudy was not only still married; he lived with Regina for all of the
first three years at Patterson.
The fun-loving fountain jumper once staged a practical joke on Syzbala that revolved
around the perception of him as a wild man. One morning Syzbala heard
a knock at her door. It was a partner, Mike Mukasey, who was also a friend of
Rudy's. Mukasey was worried. He told Syzbala that Rudy hadn't come into work
and wasn't at home. Then he blurted out that their friend had been arrested by an
undercover police agent the night before for soliciting a prostitute. Mukasey convinced
Syzbala that the two of them would have to break the news to Tyler. "Mike
pushed me in front of him," said Syzbala. "I knocked on Judge Tyler's door." When
she opened it, Rudy was sitting in the office, laughing. "I didn't truly believe
Mike, ... but it was believable that it could happen."
The bulk of Rudy's work at Patterson involved contracts, real estate and libel
suits. Since two of his and Tyler's major clients were the Tribune Company, which
owned the Daily News, and Dow Jones, which owned the Wall Street Journal,
much of Rudy's early litigation experience involved First Amendment work.
Though he had earned a reputation as a capable trial attorney in the SDNY, he
tried very few cases at Patterson, none of them criminal.
One of his handful of civil trials involved Dow Jones. The company was being
sued in March 1977 by Robert Nemeroff, a Manhattan dentist, who alleged that
one of its publications, Barron's National Business & Financial Weekly, had used
its columns to depress the price of a listed stock he owned. In the spring of 1978,
after a round of motions, counter-motions and other legal maneuvers, Nemeroff
dropped the charges. But the settlement allowed Rudy to pursue Nemeroff for
Dow's costs and expenses and he did. He submitted a fifty-one-page memo of law,
calling Nemeroff's suit "an attempt to silence the press" and "circumvent the First
Amendment." Dubbing Nemeroff's action a malicious lawsuit that had been "filed
either with the knowledge that counsel had no adequate basis to sustain the allegations
or in reckless disregard of the fact that proof of the charges was not available,"
the judge ruled in Rudy's favor. He ordered that Nemeroff and his attorneys
reimburse Dow Jones for $50,000 in legal fees incurred in fighting these "unsupported"
charges.
Rudy made the claim, many years after his stint at Patterson, that, as a private
attorney, he was exceptionally picky about his clients-rejecting anyone with a
sleazy profile. Definitely no mob guys, he had decided. Anyone Rudy Giuliani represented
would have to be a "legitimate" individual, he said, who had "redeeming
social value."
A reasonable definition of "redeeming social value," however, would have to be
drawn and quartered to apply to Albert Terranova, the frumpy head of a New
Jersey job training program called National Training Systems Corp. In 1977,
Terranova, his staff assistant and his company were all indicted by the U.S.
Attorney in Newark on thirty-five counts of bilking the government by filing
false records. Two years later, after hiring Giuliani as his personal attorney,
Terranova entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of "knowingly and willfully"
stealing federal funds. His company pled guilty to felony charges of conspiring
with Terranova and his assistant to defraud the U.S. government. The
judge said that the only thing keeping Rudy's client out of jail was the fact that his
wife was gravely ill.
Five months later, Terranova and his wife acquired a Brooklyn vocational school
and renamed it Adelphi Institute. Rudy helped Terranova draft the incorporation
papers for Adelphi and notarized his application for a New York vocational school
license. The school was dependent on the same sort of vocational school funding
Terranova had already stolen in New Jersey. But loyal Rudy went even further for
his convicted client-in August of 1980, he wrote a letter to state officials on
Terranova's behalf, stating that "Adelphi's management is experienced, dedicated
and responsible." The letter did not mention that Terranova was currently serving
probation-in a deal Rudy had worked out himself.
Rudy would later insist that "there was nothing else I could do as a lawyer,"
adding, "1 would have had to want to gratuitously hurt my client to have added
facts concerning his misdemeanor conviction."
Adelphi Institute secured its license and, over the next eight years, harvested
more than $80 million in federal vocational funds. In the summer of 1986, the
Terranovas bought a $1.9 million house in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. A year
later, Adelphi went bankrupt. In July 1989, Terranova was arraigned on charges
that he stole more than $63,000 in tuition funds from Adelphi students as part of
a nation-wide multimillion-dollar fraud scheme. In September 1989, the incorrigible
thief pled guilty. He got a $150,000 fine and was later forced to pay a $1.3 million
settlement.
Terranova, who still lives in Arizona, has remained friendly with Rudy over the
years. When Rudy remarried in 1984, and when his son was born in 1986,
Terranova sent gifts.
The Terranova matter, like the draft deferment issue, also made it into the "vulnerability"
study that Rudy's campaign commissioned when he ran for mayor in
1993. The study's authors warned that Giuliani could be accused of "being sneaky
and hypocritical" when he wrote the Terranova letter. The study's "rebuttal strategy"
recommends: "If asked about Terranova, Giuliani should rebuke him in harsh
terms for breaking the law. Beyond, that, the best answer to this rather frivolous
charge might be 'no comment.'" The authors also noted that in the 1989 campaign,
Giuliani "made the mistake of discussing the particulars of the case which
forced him to claim he could not remember facts and prevaricate." This, they cautioned,
"is a bad strategy."
Terranova wasn't Rudy's only conspicuous client at placid Patterson. Elliot
Cuker, an eccentric, bow-tie-wearing proprietor of a Greenwich Village Rolls
Royce limousine service, hired Rudy to represent him in the late 1970s in a tax investigation
stemming from an IRS audit of his business. After coaxing his client
into paying back taxes and interest, according to Cuker, the resourceful Rudy even
helped him set up a computerized accounting system.
Cuker, who would forge an enduring friendship with Giuliani, was a savvy businessman
with a tendency toward the garish. A late 1970s billboard advertisement
for his limo service showed Cuker in a chauffeur's outfit, leaning nonchalantly
against an old Rolls-Royce, a glass of champagne glinting in his hand. Below his
photo, as one friend recalls it, was the smug slogan: "Poverty Sucks."
After graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York,
Cuker struggled through the 1960s-mostly unsuccessfully-to find work as an
actor. He purchased a pair of 1954 Bentleys, though, and began renting himself out
in the mid-1970s as a driver. Affecting a British accent, Cuker told his clients:
"Your chauffeur's name is Elliot. please make sure you give him the proper gratuity."
Within three years, he was running a limo service with a fleet of thirteen
cars. By the time Rudy met him, Cuker's business had grown into a highly successfulluxury
classic car dealership.
When he settled the tax probe, Cuker sold or gave Rudy a vintage white
Porsche. It was one of four cars the quirky entrepreneur would convey to Rudy
over the years, all of which Rudy would wind up returning. Of Cuker, who eventually
became one his closest personal advisors, Rudy would say in 1998: "1 really
love him."
***
Rudy's biggest case at Patterson landed squarely in his lap, courtesy, not of
"Ace" Tyler, but, rather, of that crusty old U.S. District Court judge with the
bushy eyebrows: Lloyd MacMahon. Aminex Resources Corp., a coal-mining company
in Kentucky had been plunged into bankruptcy due to the looting of more
than $1 million by two executives, and in March of 1978, MacMahon appointed
Rudy as its legal receiver.
MacMahon had to wrest jurisdiction away from another federal court to deliver
this prime patronage cut to his protege-who had never been a receiver and had
no background in bankruptcy cases. "Rudy didn't have any experience," said Tyler.
"MacMahon knew Rudy didn't know anything about this."
Further stretching the legitimacy of MacMahon's decision to appoint Rudy was
a simple matter of geography: The Aminex mines were located in the forlorn backwoods
of Kentucky and Patterson was situated in an antiseptic honeycomb of offices
at Rockefeller Center in New York City. A Kentucky firm certainly would
have commanded a more intimate understanding of the local issues affecting
Aminex and its employees.
Nonetheless, Rudy went south. For three years, he, fellow Patterson partner Joel
Carr and a team of six other attorneys kept Aminex above water and finally managed
to right it back to its feet. For a period of nine months, Rudy claims he spent
an average of three days per week in Kentucky, overseeing efforts to ensure
Aminex's prompt coal deliveries to an Ohio utility. By Rudy's account, his time
was split between the company's offices in Lexington and its mines in a remote
town called Hazard-although, years later, two Aminex executives told Newsday
that they couldn't remember Rudy making many visits to Hazard.
Kentucky, as the antithesis of New York, had an exotic appeal for Rudy: the
beautiful though sometimes desolate landscape, the Southern twangs, the giant
mounds of coal, the ubiquity of shotguns and chewing tobacco, the rugged, unadorned
texture of everyday life. It was also a place which perhaps reminded the
young attorney of his freshly well-heeled status, a place that captured his curiosity
the wayan inner-city slum initially entrances a kid from the suburbs. He
was also quite taken with the local racetrack and spent many weekends there
with a colleague or two from Patterson. "Rudy got a big kick out of going to
Kentucky," said Tyler, who added that the Aminex case was "one of the best parts
of his life."
In 1981, in an arrangement Giuliani and Carr negotiated, Aminex was sold for
$15.1 million, and creditors were repaid 100 cents on the dollar. Patterson drew
$2.4 million in legal fees and sought an additional $500,000 bonus for "spectacular
results" in salvaging Aminex. Attorneys for the company's new owners opposed
the bonus on the grounds that "Giuliani and his firm [have] already been
rewarded for their excellent legal services." Bankruptcy Court Judge Joel Lewittes
concurred in part, approving only a $200,000 bonus.
Rudy's self-described single-handed bailout of the Kentucky coal-mining company-
frequently cited as evidence of his "CEO" prowess in both his 1989 and
1993 mayoral campaigns-was another example of his penchant for hyperbole.
Joel Carr, who was portrayed by some newspapers as Rudy's loyal sidekick, "was
really running the show," said Harold Tyler.
The Newsday piece also cast doubt on Rudy's rescue role by reviewing his work
days in Kentucky and discovering that he was a "distant manager who did not run
the day-to-day affairs of the mining operation, preferring to delegate most of the
work to subordinates." When Rudy resigned as Aminex receiver in March of 1981
to leave Patterson for a new Washington post, MacMahon named fellow mentor
Tyler as the replacement receiver. Tyler stayed on as receiver until the pre-negotiated
sale of the company was completed later that year.
***
While Rudy enjoyed his man-about-town days during the Patterson,
Belknap years, Regina found a new life on the York College campus,
where she returned to work after their Washington stay. She and Rudy continued
to live together in the five-and-a-half-room apartment they jointly owned on the
fourth floor of their sixteen-story West End Avenue building, but it was an increasingly
chilly home, with distant partners sharing the same refrigerator. With
two bedrooms and attached baths, the apartment seemed designed for people who
walked through its French doors in the foyer and went in different directions.
The garrulous Jim Hall, twelve years older than Regina and the dean of the
adult and continuing education department, was becoming a more and more important
figure in her life. Tall and stocky with a mustache, ex-marine Hall was a
commanding figure when he entered a room. He talked endlessly, slipping often
into philosophical tangents. While getting his graduate degree at NYU, he co-authored
a book published by Vantage, a vanity press, called Damn Reading! (A Case
Against Literacy), which railed against the teaching of reading as a socioeconomic
"screening process" and a cause of psychological distress. He saw literacy as a stigmatizing
weapon used against black youth and called for "discarding literacy, as
we know it, from our educational system." A leader of black students and faculty
at York, Hall was a thorn in the side of York's white administrators and attempted,
at one point, to mount a campaign to become president himself.
Regina shared a small office with Hall and wrote the proposals that kept the
adult program percolating. One of her biggest-in the early '80s-won federal
funding for a project targeting the thousands of new Haitians arriving in New
York, refugees from the Duvalier tyranny. Hall was part of a City University-wide
underground railroad of black professionals-especially those running adult education
departments-and Regina became part of that network as well. Hall's
Damn Reading! co-author Jim Gibson was the assistant director of the York de-
partment. Gibson, Hall, Regina and another woman in the small unit began hitting
after-work bars in Manhattan together. Hall was already in the middle of his
second divorce, leaving his wife and Staten Island home by the summer of 1979,
and moving into Manhattan.
In February of 1980-according to divorce papers filed more than two years
later-Regina left Rudy and began a twelve-year relationship with Hall. It's unclear
exactly when she moved in with him. Property records indicate that she lived
with him at 75 Livingston Street in Brooklyn-a new co-op building that he
moved into soon after it opened in 1982. Records also show they bought a house
together in 1985 on Lincoln Road-near the D' Avanzos' old Hawthorne Street
home in what had become an almost entirely black section of Brooklyn. Finally, in
1989, after their Lincoln Road home was burglarized, they moved into a large
apartment building with a capped doorman, overlooking Grand Army plaza and
Prospect Park.
Hall's connections helped Regina become the top aide to Augusta Kappner, who
ran the adult programs on all twenty-one City University campuses, and move
into the university's central office by 1984. A few years later, she replaced
Kappner, who became a college president, and became Hall's boss, directing the
citywide program. In 1990, Kappner was vice chair of the board at Marymount
Manhattan College, when Regina was named its president. But two years later,
Hall, at the age of sixty, dropped dead while he and Regina vacationed in Maine.
Hall's close friend Solomon Goodrich, the executor of his will, said the main
reason the two were never married was because "Jim was scared of Rudy."
Goodrich recalled: "1 said, 'Why don't you marry the woman?' He said the whole
Rudy factor was one of the impediments to that. Jim didn't think Rudy liked him
being black." Of course, Rudy was in two powerful law enforcement posts during
most of Hall's years with Regina-associate attorney general and U.S. Attorney.
Rudy had never been much of a presence in Regina's York life during the years
they were together. Secretaries remember that as late as 1979, Helen Giuliani
phoned more often than Rudy. Colleagues recall Rudy coming to the wedding of
one York friend of Regina's, but otherwise, Hall and Regina were usually together
at campus events. Regina made the final decision to leave their apartment
in 1980-a decision Rudy would not make. With Harold Giuliani already seriously
ill, neither Rudy nor Regina made a move to turn their latest separation
into a divorce. Harold was now Regina's champion. "Being Catholic, divorce is
not supposed to happen," Giuliani said in an unpublished interview in the late
1980s. "But when you separate for the second time, the handwriting is on the
wall. It just wasn't working out."
InNovember of 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, making the White
House once again an elephant's fortress. A month later, on December 8, 1980,
Rudy Giuliani, the once outspoken Kennedy fan, switched his voter registration to
Republican. His political metamorphosis was now complete. Rudy's switch coincided
with the handing out of new political appointments by the Reagan administration.
And Rudy, whose former Patterson colleague, Richard Parsons, was on the
Reagan transition team, knew he had a shot at one.
Rudy's mother confirmed that her son's registration switch was designed to
snare a Reagan job. "He only became a Republican after he began to get all these
jobs from them," said Helen Giuliani in an unpublished 1988 interview. "He's definitely
not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn't. He still feels
very sorry for the poor." In a simultaneous interview, Regina recalled that when
she split with Rudy in early 1980, she had still considered him to be liberal
Democrat. "He generally won't do things unless he believes them," said Regina,
adding, "but he's not a saint, and he will do things that serve his interests."
While Regina was always a Democrat, Helen Giuliani was herself no stranger to
party hopping. Twenty-four years earlier, she and her husband had bolted the
Democratic Party when the family relocated to conservative Garden City, Long
Island. They later switched back when they moved to moderately liberal North
Bellmore. As far as his voter registration records indicate, Harold remained a
Democrat at least until his late sixties. Helen, however, would switch again back to
the Republican Party by October 1988.
Unlike his parents' party hopscotching, Rudy's political journey had been a
slow, steady trek from left to right. He parted with the Democratic Party years before
becoming a Republican, registering independent by designating his partly affiliation
box as blank. He claimed in subsequent interviews to have registered as an
independent in 1973 while at the u.s. Attorney's office. He said he did so to avoid
any perception that his public corruption prosecutions were politically motivated.
The earliest voting records available at the New York City Board of Elections,
however, indicate he registered as an independent in 1977, when he returned from
Washington.
Harold Tyler recalls Rudy's registering as an independent-perhaps from his
Virginia address-during his first stint at the Department of Justice in 1975.
"When Rudy was with me, he registered as an independent," said Tyler. "He
changed his registration."
In early 1981, a month after his party switch to Republican, Rudy was to be appointed
the NO.3 man in the Reagan Justice Department, the associate deputy attorney
general under Attorney General William French Smith and Deputy
Attorney General Edward Schmults. Since neither Smith nor Schmults had any
background in criminal law, they both wanted an experienced criminal prosecutor
at their side.
But it was more than Rudy's criminal experience or the fact that he knew someone
on the Reagan transition team that opened the door at Justice: The old mentor
network had revved back into action. Harold Tyler had spoken with both Smith
and Schmults and "told them Rudy was a very good man."
The nomination was a crowning achievement for Rudy. Casting a shadow; however,
over the sweetness of the moment was the rapid deterioration of his father's
health. Prostate cancer had spread mercilessly throughout much of Harold
Giuliani's body, guaranteeing constant pain. A pacemaker had also been installed to
keep his troubled heart beating. Since moving to Bayside, Queens in 1978, the stubborn
champion of toughness had worn down into a groaning, crumpled form under
hospital blankets. Now Rudy was forced to confront his hero father, confined to a
bed, robbed of all his hubris, his mortality as bare and fragile as his body.
As his father's condition worsened, Rudy had moved him from Northshore
Hospital in Queens to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. With
his Senate confirmation looming, it was a busy time, and the rising Republican star
made frequent trips between New York and Washington, trying to fit hospital visits
in between.
Further crowding the clock was a matter from Rudy's days as Tyler's assistant in
the 1970s that had stubbornly clawed its way into the present. In March 1976, the
Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility had asked Giuliani to assign
"a lawyer under your supervision" to review allegations brought by a
Pennsylvania building contractor named Jack A. Nard. Nard charged that several
Justice Department officials, including Rudy's friend Richard Thornburgh, had covered
up their failure to prosecute officials of an Iowa-based meat-packing company,
Armour & Co., for committing perjury in two civil suits in the late 1960s. As a result
of the suits, Nard and his partners had been ordered to pay Armour more than
$800,000. Nard produced a footlocker of documents for review; and Rudy assigned
his subordinate, Mary Wagner, to examine the materials. On July 26, 1976, Wagner
wrote Nard a letter informing him that, due to a lack of evidence, his case was being
dropped.
Four years later, in late 1980, Rudy became one of several targets of a Senate
Judiciary Committee investigation into the Justice Department's alleged submarining
of politically sensitive public corruption cases, including the Nard probe.
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah, who had formerly represented Nard as
a client, and Democratic Senator Dennis DeConcini from Arizona, began pushing
for an investigation of the department's handling of Nard's allegations.
In April 1981, while Rudy worked as a Justice Department consultant pending his
Senate confirmation, he admitted in the Federal Times that when the Nard case was
under review, "1 had a close working relationship with Thornburgh" and considered
him a "personal friend." His primary involvement in the case, he said, was advising
Wagner on routine questions such as whether to issue subpoenas. He also said that
Wagner's review of the Nard case took "several weeks."
Congressional investigator Peter Stockton, who reviewed the Nard documents for
the Senate Judiciary Committee in the fall of 1980, claimed, however, that Wagner
had admitted she only spent one day looking into Nard's allegations. In his report,
Stockton wrote that he had found evidence of an "inefficient and possibly corrupt
operation by the Justice Department." He described the Wagner investigation as fIno
investigation at all."
"The Nard case was a major priority before and during the time that Rudy's
confirmation was pending," said Robert McConnell, then assistant attorney general
for legislative affairs and the Justice's point man for all its nominees facing
confirmation.
McConnell was ordered to conduct an investigation into Rudy's relationship with
the case. Without formally interrogating Rudy, McConnell concluded that a review
of the records found no proof Rudy was involved in the decision to spike the probe,
nor any evidence that he wasn't. "1 then told Hatch that it would impossible for me
to prove a negative," McConnell says.
In March 1982, McConnell wrote what he now refers to as a "stop this" letter that
cleared Giuliani. A close friend of Rudy's, McConnell would sit on the dais of Rudy's
1993 inaugural, visit the mansion and ask Rudy to be his daughter's godfather.
The Nard investigations ultimately resulted in a three-month delay in Rudy's
Senate confirmation. When he testified on the matter before the Senate Judiciary
Committee, the crackerjack trial attorney widely reputed to have a steel-trap memory,
insisted that he had "virtually no recollection" of the case. McConnell said with
a laugh that Rudy was "absolutely worthless" as a witness. "He couldn't remember
a thing."