A few more Rudy stories:
There was the Prince of the City, the Giuliani whose policies dramatically reduced crime, transformed 42nd Street from a seedy porno district to an urban Disney attraction, slashed welfare rolls, cut taxes, turned a deficit into a surplus and tamed a government bureaucracy that many experts had said was untamable.
Then there was the Prince of Darkness, the ego-driven, thrice married, mean-spirited, always combative Giuliani, who saw enemies everywhere, couldn't share the spotlight, had little patience for the plight of the city's poor and turned a tin ear to African-American complaints of overaggressive police tactics even after three violent, high-profile incidents.
"He's an oversized personality who can capsize a ship in calm waters," said Fred Siegel, a professor at New York's Cooper Union and the author of "The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life." "The good comes with the bad. It's a package - you can't separate one from the other."
Nine days after registering his presidential exploratory committee last November, Rudolph Giuliani appeared in Singapore to help a Las Vegas developer make a pitch for a $3.5 billion casino resort.
Though the bid ultimately failed, and there was nothing illegal about the involvement, it drew Giuliani into a complex partnership with the family of a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government.
Interesting revelation. Crime and Rudy connected? No, couldn't be. Ever heard of Bernard Kerik?
Giuliani's participation as a security consultant in the Singapore gambling venture illustrates the challenge he faces while attempting to win the Republican presidential nomination with a law-and-order message while maintaining a far-flung, international business portfolio, an unknown portion of which remains in the shadows.
Even today, more than a year after the former New York mayor signaled his intention to run for the presidency, it remains impossible to fully evaluate Giuliani's business dealings because he has declined to list all of the clients in Giuliani Partners, the consulting firm he founded and heads.
Questioned during a campaign appearance Tuesday in Chicago, Giuliani said that, "all of Giuliani Partners' clients, maybe with one or two exceptions, I'm not even sure that's right, are public. ... At least the ones that I was familiar with."
Confidentiality agreements prohibit disclosure of an unspecified number of clients, Giuliani said, "but somehow I think you -- you meaning the press in general -- have been successful in discovering. I'd have to check if it's every client. But just about every single client of Giuliani Partners. You'll have to check with them."
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