Opinion: The Sunday shows: Tough questions for Giuliani

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It was former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s turn in Tim Russert’s hot seat Sunday, but the front-runner (in national polls) for the GOP presidential nomination managed to stay cool.

The host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” is inviting the leading presidential candidates for one-on-one hour-long interviews; Giuliani is the 10th to appear since the “Meet the Candidates” series started in January with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Russert does his homework: He asked Huckabee, for instance, about the Arkansas parole board’s decision to parole a convicted rapist who went on to commit another rape and murder (the subject of Richard A. Serrano’s article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, which quoted parole board officials as saying that Huckabee was more involved than he initially described). Last month he pressed Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the current Democratic leader in Iowa, about his relationship with an indicted Chicago developer who had supported his campaigns and from whom he purchased part of a vacant lot adjacent to his Chicago home.

Russert’s initial questions to Giuliani were relatively gentle -- current poll numbers and foreign policy. Then he moved to the tougher stuff, ...

including Giuliani’s connections with the consulting firm and the law firm that both bear his name; his recommendation of former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik – now indicted on corruption charges – as head of the Department of Homeland Security, and his use of New York Police Department officers to provide security -- including dog-walking -- for his then-mistress (and now third wife) Judith Nathan.

Giuliani laughed aloud when asked about his law firm’s representation of Citgo, the Texas-based oil company that is the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil company. The head of Petroleos de Venezuela SA is the country’s president, Hugo Chavez, who has attacked President Bush as “the devil” and “a genocidal murderer.” Bracewell & Giuliani represented Citgo “just in Texas,” Giuliani said. “And then they stopped representing them.”

He appeared somewhat more defensive when discussing his security consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, and its controversial relationship with the government of Qatar. Members of Qatar’s ruling family, Russert said, have been accused of allowing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who went on to become the chief plotter of the Sept. 11 attacks, to live in the country during the 1990s even though he was known to have terrorist ties -- and in 1996 they even tipped him off that the FBI was after him, allowing him to flee. According to a former CIA terrorism expert, Russert said, “you are taking money from the same accounts that protected Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.”

‘That’s, that’s just totally wrong, and, and it’s completely, it’s completely distorted,” Giuliani replied.

He was also asked about -- and dismissed as inconsequential -- his firm’s reported connections with a Hong Kong businessman with ties to North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader,’ Kim Jong Il.

Given the questions that have been raised, Russert said, Giuliani’s law firm and consulting firm could just release their client lists and end the speculation about what other embarrassments might erupt. No way, Giuliani said, citing confidentiality agreements.

As for Kerik, whom Giuliani plucked from the police ranks to serve as New York City’s correction commissioner and NYPD commissioner before recommending him for the country’s top security post, he said: “The reality is I made a mistake. I made a mistake in not vetting him carefully enough.’

And the NYPD dog-walking for Nathan? She had received threats, he said.

“The reality is that it all came about because of my public position,” he said. “And the New York City Police Department has rules; they applied the rules, they applied them in exactly the same way as they always apply them. I did not make the judgment. I didn’t ask for it. Judith didn’t particularly want it, but it was done because they took the view that it was serious and it had to be done this way.” (It was his pal Kerik, by the way, who approved the security detail.)

Giuliani kept his temper under control -- although it was, perhaps, not the best day for the man who rode his 9/11 reputation to a commanding lead among the GOP candidates, then has seen that lead erode amid reports on the controversies over his personal judgments and business decisions. The Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary are less than a month away, and candidates want voters to focus on their visions for the future, not their past doings.

But he can be comforted by this: Next Sunday it’s former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s turn in Russert’s hot seat.

-- Leslie Hoffecker