Bernard B. Kerik easily will bring the most colourful background to an otherwise uniformly button-down Bush Cabinet that runs like a corporate board —— standing in sharp contrast to Tom Ridge, the man he will succeed as Homeland Security secretary, who is a strictly-by-the-books public servant.Kerik, 49, is the son of an alcoholic prostitute who was found murdered in a pimp’s bed, as he recounted in his 2002 autobiography, The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice. He described himself as a troublemaker; by age 16, he said, he was a veteran of countless street fights. A student of martial arts, he dropped out of high school and joined the Army. Assigned to South Korea as a military policeman, Kerik met a woman with whom he fathered a child, and was transferred back to the US. Through discipline and determination, he changed course, eventually earning a bachelor’s degree in public administration from Empire State College in New York. After working briefly as a security guard in Saudi Arabia, Kerik worked his way up the law enforcement ladder. By 30, he was warden of the largest county correctional facility in New Jersey. But he took a 50 per cent pay cut to fulfill a lifelong dream —— becoming a New York City cop. It didn’t take Kerik long to stand out, and he soon joined the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, participating in many spectacular sting operations. In 1991, he joined the security detail of Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. When Giuliani became mayor in 1994, he named Kerik the first deputy commissioner of the corrections department, overseeing what many regarded as an explosive prison system on Rikers Island. In 2000, Giuliani named him New York’s 40th police commissioner. Kerik resigned after Giuliani left office in 2002, then joined the former mayor at Giuliani Partners, a strategic consulting firm, as senior vice president. Kerik finished writing his autobiography on Sept. 11, 2001, just hours before the first hijacked passenger jet slammed into the World Trade Center. Like Giuliani, albeit to a lesser extent, Kerik won broad recognition for his response and leadership in the aftermath of the attacks. And in 2003, President Bush dispatched Kerik to Iraq to help organise a 35,000-member police force. —LAT-WP
