Word: mcgreevey
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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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...
...others pointed out, McGreevey's act of revelation also functioned as an act of concealment. "McGreevey did a good job saying 'I'm a gay American' and making a hero of himself," says one of his former advisers, "but that's not the story"--at least not the whole story. The whole story is found not just in the Governor's inner turmoil but in the slosh and intrigue of New Jersey politics...
...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...
...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...
...After McGreevey won the election, he blundered his way through the beginning of his term, and has presided--to this day--over an administration beset by ethical lapses. McGreevey's commerce secretary, chief of staff and state police director have all departed under various conflict-of-interest charges. And Kushner was recently charged in a bizarre sex scandal; he allegedly sent his sister a tape of her husband having sex with a prostitute in an effort to gain leverage over his brother-in-law, who was cooperating in an investigation of Kushner's finances. Finally, McGreevey was caught...