Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani did not take criticism lightly in his days at the Justice Department.
When two federal prosecutors openly complained about his meeting with a defense lawyer in a sensitive corporate fraud case he was overseeing, he slammed back.
"Immature petulance," he said of them, calling their charges "dangerous."
The pair saw special commendation awards they were due to get suddenly held back.
Papers released by the National Archives on Wednesday show Giuliani was a master of terse memos as associate attorney general. But get under his skin -- say, with an unfavorable story in the press or a challenge from a subordinate -- and he was in their face.
In one instance, he wrote a four-page, single-spaced letter telling a columnist why he had done nothing wrong in having a US marshal bring him a seat from old Yankee Stadium for his Washington office.
Before he became an international figure as the mayor of New York during the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Giuliani was the Justice Department's No. 3 official at the dawn of the Reagan administration in the 1980s and built a reputation as a solid professional in that politically charged transition from the Jimmy Carter years. He went on to serve as US attorney in New York before becoming mayor.
The papers shed light on his two years in the department -- and occasionally, on his short fuse. The documents are drawn from the files of his special assistants at Justice, Ken Caruso and Robert Bucknam, and from those of Jeffrey Harris, deputy associate attorney general.
Giuliani knocked heads with department prosecutors in the McDonnell Douglas case, a closely watched test of laws to restrain US corruption abroad. The aircraft maker had been indicted for making more than US$1 million in payoffs to Pakistani officials and defrauding Pakistan's airline by adding that cost to the price of the planes it was selling.
In May 1981, he and Caruso met the company's lawyer to discuss the case, which was expected to go to trial that fall. They touched on the possibility of a settlement, according to a memo. When the trial attorneys Michael Lubin and George Mendelson heard about it, they were livid.
They cited their superior's "conspicuous failure" to tell them he was meeting with the opposing side in a case he controlled, and said such actions eroded public confidence in the justice system.
Those were fighting words.
"Messrs. Lubin and Mendelson displayed a disrespect for the facts and an immature petulance that gives me pause as to the judgments they may have made during their period of service in the department," he said in a letter to the criminal division chief. "It is dangerous, to say the least, for prosecutors to shoot from the hip without checking the accuracy of their charges."
He said he saw no wrong in listening to arguments against proceeding with the case, and no need for the trial attorneys to attend. The department, he said, "is vitally interested in hearing from all sides."
Three months later, Giuliani dropped criminal charges against company executives in return for McDonnell Douglas' guilty plea to wire and mail fraud and making false statements. The company was fined US$55,000 and settled a civil suit for US$1.2 million.
An internal investigation cleared Giuliani of wrongdoing. Files on that investigation were among documents held back from release because of their sensitive nature.
The files on next year's presidential contender were released at the request of researchers.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS