Word: cipel
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...this pageant of alleged malfeasance, Golan Cipel was the first sign of trouble. The day McGreevey took his oath of office--Jan. 15, 2002--he quietly named Cipel his special assistant on homeland security. Although it was just four months after 9/11, Cipel did not undergo an extensive background check. Cipel had served as only a low-ranking officer in the Israeli navy and had no counterterrorism expertise. Despite his thin qualifications, he received a $110,000 salary. When reporters started asking questions, McGreevey refused to order a full vetting of Cipel and wouldn't make him available for interviews...
...McGreevey met Golan Cipel (Pronounced Tsi-ple, rhymes with ripple) on a junket to Israel in 2000, when McGreevey was mayor of Woodbridge, N.J. At the time, McGreevey was a rising Democratic star--mayor of the state's sixth largest city and the man who had three years earlier come within a whisper of unseating Governor Christine Todd Whitman. Among the stops on the tour, sponsored in part by the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest, New Jersey's biggest Jewish philanthropy, was the city of Rishon le-Ziyyon, south of Tel Aviv. Cipel then worked as the city's spokesman...
They hit it off immediately, says former New Jersey Jewish News editor David Twersky, who later became friends with Cipel. In the late 1990s, Cipel had worked as a press officer at the Israeli consulate in New York City. Gideon Mark, who was Cipel's boss there, says Cipel handled both national and New Yorkarea news outlets, which would have given him some familiarity with New Jersey. "He was talented but not brilliant," says Colette Avital, the consul general at the time. Another person who worked with Cipel back then says he "was the kind of guy who was politically...
...chance to do so with McGreevey, who "saw something in me," Cipel would later tell Twersky. Within months, the Israeli had relocated to New Jersey to work for McGreevey's gubernatorial campaign as liaison to the state's Jewish community. "It was a strange choice," says someone who held a senior position in the campaign. "He was an Israeli and obviously a Jew, but that didn't mean he knew anything about the Jewish community of New Jersey." Cipel's relocation to New Jersey was facilitated by real estate impresario Charles Kushner, a top contributor to McGreevey and the Democratic...