How Rudy 'Turned Around' A Successful U.S. Attorney's Office
Did you know that the nationally respected and historically top-tier U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York was moribund and doomed before a crusading young prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani took it over in 1983? It's true! Rudy said so the other day while defending his criminal BFF Bernie Kerik! And it was news, apparently, to Rudy's predecessor as U.S. Attorney, John Martin. Martin has some crazy idea that Giuliani is taking too much credit for the work of others, though we know the man who single-handedly saved the world on 9/11 and reduced the national crime rate and was so effective as mayor of New York that its much ballyhooed renaissance began before he even took office would never do that. Martin, probably one of those soft-on-crime communist former U.S. Attorneys, went to the liberal New York Times to voice his petty complaints.
Rudy came into the office to "turn things around," in his words, and his first step as U.S. Attorney was to dynamically retain all the key members of his predecessor's staff. "He retained William Tendy, a career prosecutor, as chief assistant, and Lawrence Pedowitz, a former Supreme Court law clerk and partner in the firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, as chief of the criminal division." Cunning!
Of course, Rudy did personally, all by himself, without any help from anyone come up with the idea of prosecuting all the mob bosses in a single RICO Act case. That idea was his and his alone, even though it was suggested by the head of the F.B.I.'s New York office a year before Rudy took office, and Martin had already wiretapped three of the five prosecuted families by the time Rudy was sworn in.
Same basic deal with his securities fraud cases and "the principal case that Mr. Giuliani personally tried during his six-year tenure, that of Stanley M. Friedman, the Bronx Democratic leader accused of corruption." Not that the fact that all of Rudy's major victories in public office were due to continuing and then taking credit for the work of others should take away from Rudy's own accomplishments, like divorcing his wife in a press conference and placing the city's emergency response center in the city's largest terrorism target.
