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Giuliani Stole
Public Records:
Bloomberg , Koch
Troubled

by Robert Lederman
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
January 26, 2002

(Editor's note: If you would like Lederman's thoughts on this story, please scroll down the page or Click Here.)

Daily News 1/25/2002

Mike Troubled by
Rudy Locking Up His Papers

Rudy Giuliani's power grab of all of his papers from his eight-year term isbeginning to attract criticism from various fronts - including MayorBloomberg. But the new mayor, whose election was solidified by the formermayor's endorsement, was unwilling to take a clean shot at his predecessor -even as his aides hinted that they were uncomfortable with Giuliani's movebecause it could restrict public access to the documents. "Anything thatmakes it more difficult to get information is unfortunate,"Bloomberg saidyesterday...Idilio Gracia-Pena, who was the city's archives director for 12years, said by allowing Giuliani to take the originals, "the city has nocontrol...They don't know what they have, so they won't know what they'llget back,"she said. "It's something that shouldn't have been done,"saidJohn Manbeck, chairman of the city Archives Advisory Board, who called foran investigation. "We have eight years of documents that are notaccessible."

January 26, 2002
NY Times Editorial

City Papers Belong to the Public

A week before he left office, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani quietly worked out a deal with New York City's records commissioner to move his papers to a private storage facility in Queens, where they now reside. This unprecedented and self-serving contract gives him the right to choose an archivist to catalog a roomful of city documents and to initially determine what is public and what is not. Mr. Giuliani's people have described this as an effort to help the city by financing and thus speeding up the archiving process. Not coincidentally, it will help Mr. Giuliani maintain control of his image and get quick access to material he needs to fulfill a $3 million book contract to write about his days as the city's mayor.

The idea of a high elected official controlling his own documents troublesmany historians, archivists and journalists, harking back to the days whenRichard Nixon left the White House with truckloads of papers and tapes. Mr.Giuliani left office under far different circumstances, but the former mayorhas a long record of refusing to allow access to public documents concerninghis administration. While the contract makes it clear that Mr. Giulianicannot legally shred or delete documents without city approval, his ownhistory does not breed confidence that his hand-picked archivists would erron the side of openness.

As it stands, most of the work will take place out of the city's reach,overseen by Mr. Giuliani's new nonprofit Center for Urban Affairs Inc. Thecity is supposed to have a say on how matters work at the Queens warehouseand what documents get shared with the public. But in reality, theoverworked city archivists and the busy corporation counsel are not going tobe able to spare the time to oversee the Giuliani staff's day-to-dayactivities.

While speed in organizing the papers may be important to Mr. Giuliani andhis publishers, the top priority for the city is keeping all the materialsecure so that a complete record will eventually be available to historians.The Giuliani forces are supposed to come up with an archiving proposal bythe end of next week, and the city's advisory board on archives plans todiscuss this hijacking of documents at a meeting next month. Both occasionsoffer opportunities to make certain these papers are catalogued andcontrolled by someone whose first responsibility is to history, not to Mr.Giuliani.

If speed is Mr. Giuliani's concern, then he should be allowed to helpunderwrite the cataloguing so that archivists can do the job more quickly.But the original documents should be returned to the city's direct controlfirst. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has defended the contract, must rethinkhis position. The mayor has the right to cancel the agreement within 90days. He should do so unless Mr. Giuliani is willing to renegotiate.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information

January 25, 2002
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Giuliani's Papers Go to Private Group, Not City

For most former mayors of New York City, the trip into the dusty files of history began with hundreds of boxes of mayoral papers and artifacts being carted from City Hall across Chambers Street to the Municipal Archives in the old Surrogate's Court. There, city archivists undertake a long, slow process of sorting and indexing.

Aides and friends of Rudolph W. Giuliani, however, decided that he deserved better. So, on Dec. 24, just a week before leaving office, Mr. Giuliani's staff hammered out an unusual agreement with the city's Department of Records and Information Services, giving custody of all of his mayoral papers and artifacts to a private nonprofit group that Mr. Giuliani will control.

All of the records from Mr. Giuliani's eight years in office — thousands of files from City Hall and Gracie Mansion, appointment books, photographs, audiocassettes and other relics — are now stashed in a rented storage facility in Queens called the "fortress,"and a private archival consulting firm is drawing up plans for how to showcase them.

But the transfer of these items, which remain city property, into the custody of the nonprofit group, the Rudolph W. Giuliani Center for Urban Affairs Inc., has drawn the ire of some archivists and historians, who fear that Mr. Giuliani will try to filter history to bolster his image. And some worry that access to these documents could be restricted, a practice they say would be in keeping with the Giuliani administration's style at City Hall.

"It's particularly a terrible idea, because the Giuliani administration had a very dismal record on making information accessible to the public,"said Michael Wallace, a historian and co-author of "Gotham: a History of New York to 1898."

He added, "So we have no reason whatsoever to assume that under his own personal auspices, we would be more likely to get good access."To Anne Phillips, the president of the New York Archival Society, the former mayor "has circumvented the procedure."

"First,"she said, "everything is scrutinized by the archivists and what's deemed of historical value is then sent to the archives for permanent storage. He didn't do that. He just took everything out."She added, "We don't know what he's going to keep."

The organizers of the Giuliani Center for Urban Affairs, including former Deputy Mayor Anthony P. Coles, envision something along the lines of a presidential library — part mayoral archives, part urban think tank — that will pay homage to Mr. Giuliani. The contract with the city, they note, prohibits the destruction or disposal of documents.

"The center should be wonderful,"said Saul Cohen, a lawyer and longtime friend of Mr. Giuliani who is president of the nonprofit group. Mr. Cohen said the Giuliani center might become part of an existing library that will "reflect what we think is the very important legacy of the mayor and the admiration that people have for him throughout the country."

Mr. Cohen said the group planned to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in private contributions and would base its decisions on the recommendations of the Winthrop Group, the private archival consulting firm working on the project.

"You retain experts; you listen to the experts,"he said. "You get the thing done in a professional manner."

The plans for a mayoral library and archives center were first reported in The Daily News this month, and the debate accelerated this week after terms of the contract were disclosed in The Village Voice, including a clause giving Mr. Giuliani the right to restrict access to any document in which he has a "personal interest."

Mayors typically retain control over their personal papers. Former Mayor Edward I. Koch, for example, donated his private papers to La Guardia Community College but has restricted public access to them until Jonathan Soffer, who is writing a book about the Koch administration, is finished using them.

But Mr. Koch and other critics said Mr. Giuliani should not decide what is public and what is private. "I think everything that you do when you are in the office as mayor is the city's,"Mr. Koch said, noting that he took no public records with him when he left office.

"There is no fine line,"he said. "It seems to me that the line is bright red. I don't see how the city could give physical possession of records to Giuliani, which it seems they did, and give them physical control of them so that people can't see them."

The city can terminate the contract with 90 days' notice, but the Bloomberg administration said it had no plans to do so.

At Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's news conference at City Hall yesterday, Gabe Pressman, the veteran WNBC-TV reporter, suggested that Mr. Giuliani's plans might "thwart historians."But Mr. Bloomberg disagreed, saying he believed that Mr. Giuliani would abide by the city's freedom-of-information laws.

"I think that anything that makes it more difficult to get information is unfortunate,"Mr. Bloomberg said. "But some of these documents are documents that the mayor has a right to have, and I am sympathetic if he would prefer that you didn't look at them. The law is clear. You have a right to get those documents under the freedom-of-information law, and Mayor Giuliani would certainly comply with that law."

Idilio Gracia-Penã, a former city archivist and commissioner of records, said the transfer of the Giuliani papers disregarded procedures that had been in place since the modern city archives were created in 1950.

Mr. Gracia-Penã said that while some mayors donated their private papers — John V. Lindsay gave his to Yale University and David N. Dinkins gave his to Columbia — public City Hall records always remained in the archives, even if outside archivists were brought in to help work on them, as when staff members from the La Guardia and Wagner Archives at La Guardia Community College helped index Mr. Koch's records.

Rather than creating a separate Giuliani library, Mr. Gracia-Penã suggested increasing funds for the Municipal Archives. "The archives has never been funded properly,"he said.

Mr. Wallace, the historian, seconded the idea. "I have great regard for the Municipal Archives,"he said. "It would be great if Rudy would push even now for a bigger budget for the Municipal Archives so we could do all of these things properly."

Rudy Giuliani quoted in
NY Times 12/31/99 and Daily News 2/11/2000

"That's right, I'm a big crook."

Here are Lederman's comments:

Hear that sound of paper
shredders working overtime?

No, it's not Arthur Anderson destroying more Enron evidence. It's Giuliani Partners, a newly-formed subsidiary of Earnst & Young - the world's largest accounting company - selectively shredding eight years of records owned by the people of New York City.

Has "America's Mayor", Rudy Giuliani, just committed a felony crime? A growing number of New Yorkers think he has and are asking the NY State Attorney General to file criminal charges against the former Mayor.

NY State penal law lists stealing public records and abuse of one's position as a public servant while stealing property to be felonies, namely grand larceny in the fourth and second degrees.

Immediately before leaving office on January first, Giuliani had all the records of his and every aides' - including appointment books, phone logs, letters, memos, emails, recordings and bills - illegally removed from City property and taken to a secure warehouse space he rents in Long Island City New York. By NY law every single one of these documents belong to the people of NYC, not to the Mayor.

No one questions Giuliani's right to make copies of these documents - a right shared by anyone with the 15 cent per page fee who shows up at the Municipal Library across from City Hall. There's also no question that Giuliani knowingly violated established criminal law by taking the originals. Destroying even a single document compounds the potential criminal counts he could be charged with. Here's the law to help you decide for yourself if Giuliani is a criminal.

NY State Penal Law 155.30(2), 155.40(2)(c)

The complete text of the law is available by Clicking Here

S 155.30 Grand larceny in the fourth degree.

A person is guilty of grand larceny in the fourth degree when he steals property and when:

• 1. The value of the property exceeds one thousand dollars; or
• 2. The property consists of a public record, writing or instrument kept, filed or deposited according to law with or in the keeping of any public office or public servant

S 155.40 Grand larceny in the second degree.

A person is guilty of grand larceny in the second degree when he steals property and when:

• 1. The value of the property exceeds fifty thousand dollars; or
• 2. The property, regardless of its nature and value, is obtained by extortion committed by instilling in the victim a fear that the actor or another person will (a) cause physical injury to some person in the future, or (b) cause damage to property, or (c) use or abuse his position as a public servant by engaging in conduct within or related to his official duties, or by failing or refusing to perform an official duty, in such manner as to affect some person adversely. Grand larceny in the second degree is a class C felony.

Why would Rudy Giuliani risk his newly-created false reputation as "civic-saint"to engage in an Enron-style orgy of document destruction?

These documents are the detailed evidence of eight years of crimes, cover-ups, falsification of statistics, politically-motivated false arrests and corruption by the Mayor and his top aides. Thousands of these documents are already being sought in numerous criminal and civil cases now pending before the courts.

Every reporter and investigator in NYC wants to see them as well - before they've been censored and sanitized. See my article, "Giuliani Begins New Year by Organizing a Massive Cover-up of His Record"(Click Here) for details on what Giuliani may be hiding.

Also see Wayne Barrett's article below for quotes by City officials on how Giuliani violated the law to obtain the documents.

If you're one of the thousands of people who over the years have expressed an interest in seeing Giuliani indicted here are some contact numbers and addresses. Let your voice be heard. This is not about settling old scores. "Hero"Giuliani may be Bush's Vice President on the 2004 Republican ticket and failing that will almost certainly run for Mayor again in 2006. As a convicted felon he could never run for any public office again.

Aside from a criminal investigation and the formation of a grand jury to charge the former Mayor, it's most urgent that all the documents be immediately returned to their proper location in the Department of Records. The longer they illegally remain in Giuliani's possession, the less of them there will be.

CONTACTS:

NY State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer

120 Broadway
New York City, NY 10271
(212) 416-8000

NY State Attorney general's

CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS division
120 Broadway
New York, New York 10271
(212) 416-8750

PUBLIC INTEGRITY UNIT
Albany:
Agency Bldg. 2 - 9th Floor
Albany, New York 1224-0341
(518) 474-4095

Mayor Mike Bloomberg

NY City Hall
New York, N.Y. 10007
212 788-3000

Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver

New York State Assembly
LOB 932/CAP 349
Albany, NY 12248
Phone: 518 455-3791
speaker@assembly.state.ny.us

Governor George Pataki

Executive Chambers - State Capitol
Albany , NY 12224
Phone: 518 474-7516
gov.pataki@chamber.state.ny.us

In a one paragraph letter (if you want it to be printed you must include your address and phone for confirmation) let the media know you want Giuliani charged with grand larceny. Remember the ARTIST group's motto as seen in hundreds of television and newspaper images over the past eight years:

ARREST GIULIANI!

letters@newsday.com
letters@nytimes.com
voicers@edit.nydailynews.com
letters@villagevoice.com
letters@nypost.com

Rudy Heists City Archives
to Shape His Own Legend

Village Voice Week of January 23 - 29, 2002
by Wayne Barrett

Hijacking History

Out in Long Island City, near the Queensboro Bridge and just off the East River, is a block-like, two-story, concrete structure called the Fortress. Located in an industrial area peppered with abandoned factories, the Fortress describes itself as "the leading museum quality storage and service company in the world,"chosen by "personal collectors and corporations as a guardian for their precious objects."

Customers pay to store antiques, fine arts, and other collectibles in 100- to 4000-square-foot vaults that are both climate-controlled and protected by "state-of-the-art"electronic security systems, including motion sensors in every wall. With facilities in three cities and an 18-year history, Fortress's packing, transport, storage, and management have earned it, according to the company's brochures, "the coveted Highly Protected Risk (HPR) rating from the worldwide insurance industry."

Inside the Fortress are the records of the eight years of Rudy Giuliani's City Hall, transferred there at the end of December. Included are the ex-mayor's appointment books, cabinet meeting audiotapes, e-mails, telephone logs, advance and briefing memos, correspondence, transition materials, and private schedules, as well as his departmental, travel, event, subject, and Gracie Mansion files. In addition to the mayor's records, those of his chief of staff and every deputy mayor, together with their chiefs of staff, have all been secured at the warehouse, which charges $3430 per month for the use of 1000 square feet.

Even Giuliani's "World Trade Center files"and "Millennium Project files," together with 6000 files of photographs, 1000 audiotapes, and 15,000 videotapes, are stored there. So are "200-250 feet of gifts such as plaques, awards, personalized clothing, and other items presented to the mayor and deputy mayors, as well as World Trade Center-related materials."

Virtually everything at the Fortress is public property, hijacked by the mayor in a secret agreement signed by George Rios, the city records commissioner he appointed. The agreement was executed amid a flourish of stadium and movie studio transactions for friends-on December 24, one of the final, busy days of an administration that departed with just as little regard for the law as when it governed. The 12-page contract was also signed by lawyer Saul Cohen, a longtime friend of Giuliani's, who lists himself as the president of the Rudolph W. Giuliani Center for Urban Affairs Inc., the institute incorporated on December 6 that now controls these records. The Voice obtained a copy of the agreement under the freedom-of-information laws after the Daily News reported the records transfer early this month.

Calling the "official papers"of Giuliani a matter of "great historical significance"and "unique value,"the agreement acknowledges that "the documents are the property of the City"and that "under the City Charter," the Department of Records "is ultimately responsible for the preservation and organization"of these materials. Yet the contract conveys the records to a Giuliani nonprofit so new it has no board, no director, no site, and no identifiable archivist, permitting the center to catalog, organize, and "permanently"maintain them.

The purpose of the arrangement, according to the preamble of the contract, is to "properly archive the Documents"so they "may be conveniently available for scholarly research and general public access,"a goal the city records department managed to achieve on its own for every other mayor. Indeed, Chapter 49 of the City Charter requires that "records retained for historical or research purposes be transferred, upon the request of the commissioner of records, to the municipal archives for permanent custody."

Citing that and other provisions, Idilio Gracia-Peña, who was the agency's archive director for 12 years before serving as commissioner from 1990 to 1994, said he found the Giuliani actions "disturbing"and inconsistent with the charter. "Commissioners have to take orders from the mayor,"said Gracia-Peña, a professor at Hunter College. "But I wouldn't have done that one myself. I would say it's time for me to go. Rios didn't, and I don't understand that."

Ann Phillips, the head of the New York Archival Society, said she was "very distressed"about the Giuliani deal. "Who's to say he won't censor the papers, that he won't destroy some of them?"she asked. The contract provides that the city's "prior written approval"is necessary before the center destroys any documents, but Phillips and Gracia-Peña point out that without any on-site records-department supervision of the screening of the documents, shredding "is a possibility."

"Rios should've said no,"echoes Phillips, who once chaired the city's 15-member Archives, Reference, and Research Advisory Board. "He obviously was appointed by the fellow and wanted to please him."Vowing to "make every effort possible to get the papers back,"Phillips said her organization would petition Mayor Michael Bloomberg and possibly "test the issue through legal means."

Even John Manbeck, who was appointed by Giuliani to chair the same board, said his group planned a February 13 meeting to discuss what he said was a "totally unprecedented"deal that "disturbed"them. A former Brooklyn borough historian and college professor, Manbeck said the arrangement "came as a complete surprise to me, the advisory staff, the municipal archives, and the new commissioner,"adding that the records were "probably moved in the middle of the night."Manbeck said that Brian Andersson, the assistant commissioner under Rios who was named by Bloomberg to take over the agency, was contacted around January 2 about the move-after it occurred. Andersson, who refused to talk to the Voice, then notified the Advisory Board.

"It is a signed agreement, but that does not make it a legal document,"said Manbeck. "I would think as a lawyer that Giuliani would have done it legally."Gracia-Peña pointed out, for example, that Ed Koch managed to get many of his records into an archive at La Guardia College legally. "The administration sent a note, asking that the files be transferred directly to La Guardia. I said no, but I supervised the microfilming and copying"of the Koch records, ultimately sending "personal"originals and "copies of the official papers"to the college. "My credo was that any records of government belong to the government. Make sure they're not destroyed."

Gracia-Peña said that in the past when administrations changed, he and his staff "physically went to the mayor's office and collected the papers, packing and sorting them ourselves."

In addition to charter violations, the deal allows private citizen Giuliani to screen the documents and gives him veto power over what to make public, an apparent violation of state freedom-of-information laws (FOIL). "Whenever Rudolph W. Giuliani has a personal interest or right in a Document separate and apart from the interests and rights of the City,"the contract says, "his approval shall be required before any such document may be released or disclosed to the public."

Indeed, in the first clause of its first article, the agreement even grants the center a role in determining the availability of documents without a claimed Giuliani "personal interest."It permits the center to "determine" if any record "is not a public document,"requiring Giuliani to contact the city about any records it decides are not public. "The Parties shall reach a determination as to the proper treatment of such a document,"the clause concludes, implying that unless both agree it's a public document, it will not be released.

Robert Freeman, the director of the state's Committee on Open Government, cited three court decisions countering the terms of the Giuliani deal, including a unanimous Court of Appeals ruling that reversed a decision protecting the so-called "personal"papers of former Albany mayor Erastus Corning. Finding that any archival records maintained by a government agency are public, the court blasted "an unreviewable prescreening of documents"by a public agency-much less a private individual-as creating the opportunity for "an uncooperative and obdurate"official "to block an entirely legitimate FOIL request."The decision also found that documents need not "evince some governmental purpose"to be covered by information laws.

"Rudy Giuliani's feelings about what's public don't matter,"said Freeman when confronted with a copy of the mayor's records contract. "The law-not a private party-determines what's public. An individual has no legal standing in terms of requiring or prohibiting disclosure."Freeman, who has run the office for almost three decades, said he "does not know of any precedent" for the Giuliani contract in state history.

Pointing out that the city charter obligates the records department to "prepare retention schedules for papers, mandating that they can't be disposed of until certain time periods are reached,"Freeman said, "We can't shred documents because we don't want them around anymore."The Giuliani deal, Freeman added, "tends to represent"the department's "relinquishing of its authority."

Rudy Giuliani has spent a lifetime dictating his own legend. When he was U.S. attorney in Manhattan, he abruptly ended the longtime practice of publishing annual reports, making reporters and others utterly dependent on his version of how productive the office was. And now, while peddling the story of his mayoralty for millions to publishers and moviemakers, he's gained exclusive control over a public record ordinarily available to all.

Gabe Pressman, the city's greatest television newsman, did an op-ed piece in the Times last week celebrating Bloomberg's destruction of Giuliani's eight-year stonewall. As accurate as this piece may prove to be about Bloomberg, it failed to note that the wall around Giuliani's public life has only relocated to a fortress in Queens. Giuliani does not trust the Bloomberg administration to resist FOIL requests for him, nor does he trust the charter to safeguard his myth. He will shape it himself for profit, laundering the people's papers through his own cadre of mercenaries and true believers, leaving for the public eye only what he sees fit.

N.Y. Post 10/15/98

NY State Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer

. . . the current mayor thinks he's a dictator and does not have sufficient respect, not only for other branches of government, but also for the citizenry and its opportunities to speak out and be heard.

[Note: Gabe Pressman is the pre-eminent reporter in NYC.
He's seen on the local version of NBC each night and is considered to have been the first television reporter in the City.
He is also chairman of the freedom of the press committee of The New York Press Club.]

NY Times January 15, 2002
By GABE PRESSMAN

Bloomberg Frees the Press

For New York journalists, the administration of Michael R. Bloomberg shows promise of being a liberating experience. We have never had a tougher time than under the authoritarian rule of Rudolph W. Giuliani. When I say that the Giuliani administration was the most repressive regime for the press in the city in half a century, I am speaking from experience. I have covered City Hall since 1949. Fortunately, we see signs that Mayor Bloomberg will lift restrictions and restore the freedoms we have lost over the last eight years. Under Mr. Giuliani, the police set up what they called "pens"to control journalists. The pens appeared everywhere there was a story of public interest. And the press cards issued by the Police Department became a kind of mark of Cain. If you wore one of these placards proclaiming that the bearer "is entitled to pass police and fire lines wherever formed,"you were immediately herded into a pen and left there while, often, the general public had greater access.

This happened at crime and accident scenes, at parades and other public events. It happened during the World Trade Center disaster. For weeks, the local press was kept on Canal Street. Television stations had to rely largely on videotape furnished by the federal emergency management people. Our local journalists were kept away. The nightly video pictures at ground zero were shot by government photographers.

There were exceptions. While photographers and reporters were barricaded on Canal Street, City Hall gave Hollywood celebrities police escorts to ground zero and tours with the mayor.

Under the Giuliani administration, police often yanked press cards off the necks of journalists who they believed were misbehaving by covering stories too aggressively and, sometimes, officers put their hands over camera lenses to prevent photographers from shooting scenes deemed inappropriate for the public to see.

Only after a coalition of journalists around the city prepared to file a federal lawsuit did Mr. Giuliani relent. An agreement was reached under which Police Commissioner Howard Safir would no longer use pens except in extraordinary circumstances and would tell police officers not to interfere with news coverage. For a short time, there was a slight thaw in police- press relations, but soon the old pattern resumed. Ultimately there was little change. The mayor had, in his regal jargon, allowed for "availabilities"when the press could question him. Nearly all police and governmental news was filtered through him. Commissioners were essentially barred from talking to reporters without the mayor's office clearing their comments first.

There are indications that these restrictions will now be eased. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has agreed to change police-press relations in the streets. You could sense this at Mr. Bloomberg's inauguration, where journalists were allowed to move around freely. And these days, at City Hall, the mayor, his commissioners and staff and the police seem less quick to use "security"as an excuse to curb the press.

During the Giuliani years, we in the press were forced to spend enormous amounts of energy trying to get public records from city departments. Sometimes, the requests for information took years to be adjudicated. The courts invariably supported the news organizations but those delays made it hard for the public to know what was happening in city government. Mr. Giuliani changed the city in many ways. But as far as the press is concerned, not for the better. We can hope that his successor will quickly undo this harmful legacy."

Newsday January 23, 2002

[Giuliani, Moses, Jesus, David, Abraham and Caesar. Which name does not belong in this list?]

Television producers option rights
to book about former mayor Giuliani

NEW YORK (AP) * A film company has purchased the rights to a biography of New York's former mayor Rudolph Giuliani for a possible television movie. The company, Five Mile River Films, bought the screen rights to "Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City,"by New York 1 political correspondent Andrew Kirtzman, for an undisclosed amount.

Kirtzman was with Giuliani on the morning of Sept. 11 as the then-mayor searched for a location for an emergency command center. He updated the book, published in 2000, with a final chapter about the terrorist attacks. "We are talking about a drama based on fact that will give people an understanding of who this man is and how he brought us through a terrible time,"Russell Kagen, a partner at Five Mile River, told the Daily News for its Wednesday editions. The company has produced a TNT miniseries about Julius Caesar and several television movies about Biblical figures, including "Abraham,""Moses,""David,"and "Jesus."

To a Directory of Mr.Lederman's Essays

Robert Lederman is an artist, writer and activist and is also the President of the street artist advocacy group, A.R.T.I.S.T.
Click here for an archive of A.R.T.I.S.T. related news articles on the Freedom Forum website

His essays and Op-Eds have appeared in hundreds of alternative publications as well as the Daily News, Penthouse, Africa Sun Times, Street News and The Shadow.
Lederman was falsely arrested 41 times for his anti-Giuliani activities and was never convicted of any of the charges. As a result of the arrests, he's won four Federal lawsuits and overturned three laws.
He is best known for having created hundreds of paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator which were carried in demonstrations throughout the eight years of the Giuliani administration. Images of his paintings and articles about his arrests and lawsuits have appeared on all of the major television networks hundreds of times as well as frequently appearing in the NY Times, Daily News, NY Post, Newsday, Newsweek, People, The Washington Post, LA Times and NY Magazine.

Robert Lederman,
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net

For a detailed exposition on the West Nile issue
http://www.nospray.org/
For an article on the Manhattan Institute go to
http://www.konformist.com/2000/rudyg.htm

If you would like to help oppose the spraying,
please write to the
No Spray Coalition
PO Box 334
Peck Slip Station
NYC, NY 10272-0334
or call the No Spray hotline at (718) 670-7110.

Any funds you can send to help continue the lawsuit
and this work are greatly appreciated.

Important Note:
Mr. Lederman has explained that his articles posted here are not to be taken as official statements by the No-Spray Coalition of which he is a member or of the "No-Spray" lawsuit in which he is a plaintiff.

Blue Collar Pundit Essays

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It's All Part of the Plan!

Turning the World Wide Web Into
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