Did Giuliani lie about being involved with the Leon Klinghoffer murder investigation?

Yes, it looks like he did in a speech to bubbes and zaydes in Florida. According to Wayne Barrett in the Village Voice ("Rudy's Five Big Lies About 9/11"):

"As United States Attorney, I investigated the Leon Klinghoffer murder by Yasir Arafat," he told the Jewish audience, referring to the infamous 1985 slaying of a wheelchair-bound, 69-year-old New York businessman aboard the Achille Lauro, an Italian ship hijacked off the coast of Egypt by Palestinian extremists. "It's honestly the reason why I knew so much about Arafat," says Giuliani. "I knew, in detail, the Americans he murdered. I went over their cases."

On the contrary, Victoria Toensing, the deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department in Washington who filed a criminal complaint in the Lauro investigation, says that no one in Giuliani's office "was involved at all." Jay Fischer, the Klinghoffer family attorney who spearheaded a 12-year lawsuit against the PLO, says he "never had any contact" with Giuliani or his office. "It would boggle my mind if anyone in 1985, 1986, 1987, or thereafter conducted an investigation of this case and didn't call me," he adds. Fischer says he did have a private dinner with Giuliani in 1992: "It was the first time we talked, and we didn't even talk about the Klinghoffer case then."

The dinner was arranged by Arnold Burns, a close friend of Fischer and Giuliani who also represented the Klinghoffer family. Burns, who was also the finance chair of Giuliani's mayoral campaign, was the deputy U.S. attorney general in 1985 and oversaw the probe. "I know of nothing Rudy did in any shape or form on the Klinghoffer case," he says.

Well...he can defend himself by parsing his statement as not referring to THE investigation, just AN investigation. The fact that his investigation may have involved reading the files prepared by the REAL investigators may lead a skeptical mind to believe that Giuliani is attempting to deceive voters by overstating his role. Hard to believe that he would stoop to that level, but it looks like he did.

Giuliani owes those Jewish grandparents, and more importantly the Klinghoffer family, an apology.

What does Giuliani have in common with CAIR?

Both want to impose blasphemy laws in the name of stopping "hate crimes".

Back in 1999, Rudy Giuliani asserted that the Brooklyn Museum, in their "Sensation" exhibit, committed a "hate crime" by displaying Chris Ofili's painting "The Holy Virgin Mary" which featured elephant dung as a design element. In response, Giuliani filed suit against the museum and witheld legally mandated city funding from it. After U.S. District Court Judge Nina Gershon ruled against him in no uncertain terms, Giuliani was forced to settle his lawsuit against the museum, after getting several months of press concerning the issue, which was in fact his true motivation. By the way, Hilary Clinton opposed Giuliani on constitutional grounds. (More here.) Although he wasn't honest about his motives, Giuliani was attempting to punish blasphemy in the name of preventing a "hate crime" against the Catholic community of New York.

In the Pace University Koran desecration case, CAIR, Pace University and its Muslim student associations, are doing essentially the same thing. (In this case, a student was charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief (vandalism), but the charges were then raised to felony level because they were defined as "hate crimes". He is subject, under these felony laws, to several years in prison if convicted.)

If desecrating a holy book or portraying saints in a way considered inappropriate were crimes, then that crime would be blasphemy, regardless of what other name is given. But blasphemy is not a crime in this country, and shouldn't be. That would run counter to the American system in which religion gets no special protection in the marketplace of ideas. The general public or a particular constituency may not approve of Koran desecration as a means of expression, but it is clearly protected speech. It is an act protected by another book -- the book the government is forbidden from desecrating by exceeding its authority and violating the rights of its citizens -- the Constitution. In this case, that would be the true desecration.

Check out what Eugene Volokh has to say: "The Perils of Hate Crime Laws". And read what Christopher Hitchens has to say about this and other instances where free speech (from the sublime, like Rushdie, to the ridiculous, like the Danish cartoons) is suppressed in the name of preventing "Islamophobia".

Let's leave blasphemy laws in the Middle Ages where they belong...

On Youtube... you can view a debate on this subject...

Gosh darn it! Giuliani just FORGOT that Kerik was getting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the mob.

Meanwhile, Gonzo remembers it, but thought it was okay...

White House Looked Past Alarms on Kerik - washingtonpost.com

Those darn forgetful Republicans!!

Giuliani Says Ties to Kerik May Hurt Him With Voters - New York Times

...Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty last year in a New York State court to two misdemeanor charges, admitting that he illegally accepted $165,000 in free renovations of his apartment from a contracting company, Interstate Industrial Corporation, which city regulators suspect of having ties to organized crime.

The Times reported on Friday that Mr. Giuliani, testifying under oath in April 2006, told a grand jury that the former city commissioner of investigation remembered briefing him on some aspects of Mr. Kerik’s relationship to Interstate in 2000, before he named Mr. Kerik as police commissioner.

Mr. Giuliani had previously said publicly that he had not known of those connections until years later.

Mr. Giuliani said he did not recall any of the briefings remembered by the chief investigator, Edward Kuriansky. He suggested that perhaps he had forgotten them because Mr. Kuriansky had cleared Mr. Kerik to be elevated to the post.

He said appointment calendars kept by Mr. Kuriansky do not show that he was briefed on Interstate. But partially redacted copies of the calendars, which were provided to The Times by New York City, list one meeting of a kind that Mr. Giuliani typically attended at which a former Interstate employee, who was also a close friend of Mr. Kerik, was listed as a topic for discussion...

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Those forgetful Republicans!

Rudy claims that he forgot that he was told that his Police Commissioner (and future choice to head the Homeland Security Dept.) was taking hundreds of thousands from his mafia friends.

Giuliani Testified He Was Briefed on Kerik in ’00 - New York Times

Does anyone actually believe all these convenient claims of faulty memory made by politicians like Rudy, Scooter, and Gonzo?