On Countdown last night, Wayne Barrett laid out some more howlers from Rudy:
OLBERMANN: There is also the question of whether Pat Robertson has now by endorsing Rudy Giuliani endorsed torture? Asked his views of waterboarding over the weekend, Mayor Giuliani telling Al Hunt of Bloomberg News that not only does he support the technique but also that he used, quote, “Intensive questioning” as a federal prosecutor in New York to elicit information from the mob.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUDY GIULIANI, ® PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If I didn‘t use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of mafia guys running around New York right now and crime would be a lot higher in New York than it is. Intensive questioning has to be used. Torture should not be used. The line between the two is a difficult one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: Intensive investigating—enhanced interrogation—any way, right about now, David Chase has got to be thinking he took the sopranos off the air once he‘s do soon. Let‘s turn to Giuliani biographer, Wayne Barrett, author of “Grand Illusion: The untold story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11.” He‘s also senior editor of the “Village Voice” in New York. Thanks again for your time tonight, sir.
WAYNE BARRETT, GIULIANI BIOGRAPHER: Great to be here, Keith.
OLBERMANN: Though, there would seem to be only two options here. Either in his days as federal prosecutor in the southern district of New York, Rudy Giuliani waterboarded suspects in prosecutions of [RICO] cases or he‘s making all this up. Which one - as a guy who studied this man, which seems more realistic to you?
BARRETT: I think he might have been referring to the questioning he got when he got home from Donna (ph). He certainly, as a federal prosecutor, let‘s look at his big mob cases. His biggest mob case was the commission case. It was a tape case, Keith. He got some of the tapes. Mostly the FBI and even the state prosecutors in New York got tapes. They didn‘t flip a member of the commission. They had a bug in the home of Paul Castellano, the head of the Gambino crime family and the head of the commission. That‘s how they made those cases. There wasn‘t any serious interrogation. Not only that, assistant U.S. attorneys and FBI agents questioned witnesses. Not the United States attorney for the southern district of New York. Now, when he was a young prosecutor in the early 1970s, at the start really of his career, then he did make cases from the ground up. And he made himself famous, really in New York, by cross-examining a congressman who he indicted in 1974 named Burt Podell and he has claimed ever since that that cross-examination resulted in the middle of the cross-examination of Podell suddenly deciding to plead guilty. Well, in our books, both books, really, we examine his interrogation history and, clearly what happened, is that they had already reached an agreement—Rudy and the defense attorneys on the terms of a plea for Burt Podell. But they had to wait for the plea agreement to be approved in Washington. So the cross-examination proceeded and at the lunch break, Rudy walks up to the attorneys - and this is all supported in the transcript of the case, by the way. Rudy walks up to the attorneys and says “I‘ve got approval. Let‘s sign the agreement. Let‘s settle the agreement.” They get together in a conference room. They come back and the guy pleads guilty. Rudy attributed that to his cross-examination which was described in the news accounts as very—not very spectacular at all. Pretty mundane.
OLBERMANN: So, it‘s less waterboarding and more watercress sandwich that do that one. But to begin with, no New Yorkers ever going to believe there is a room in bowels (ph) of the Federal Court house in Brooklyn where made men was strapped down with the towel stuff in their mouths and noses and they were drenched with water and Giuliani supervised or had reports sent back to him. But, you know, he is not trying to convince New Yorkers who got on to his act a long time ago but does this not just play into this Giuliani fiction, this white knight idea on the national level, this idea that he single-handedly tamed godless, lawless, mafia-run New York and turned it into the shining Disney attraction it is today and he has merely updated the metaphor now for fans of the sopranos?
BARRETT: Certainly he has a decent record as a mob prosecutor. He happened to prosecute the wrong head of the Genovese crime family which was then the largest crime family in the city. He indicted fat Tony Salerno, the head of that crime family and it was subsequently established that John Gotti was the head of that crime family. So, he got the wrong head of one of the five crime families. But no one can take away from him he is a federal prosecutor successfully prosecuted important mob cases. You can‘t take that away from him. But it doesn‘t say anything about his ability to interrogate individuals in any kind of a setting. . . .
Rudy is a inveterate, serial, pathological liar.
But for your "liberal" Media, he is a straight shooter. Go figure.
