1115.org

The story thus far: Rudee is determined to keep his client lists secret:

Rudee on disclosing to the American public what kind of people he has been in bed with the last few years through his law firm and his security firm:

Well, first of all, I couldn’t do that. I mean, I couldn’t put out a list of all my clients. There are confidentiality agreements that surround the relationship that businesses have with law firms, in particular, in some cases with security firms. So I can’t do that.

Golly, no, he can’t, of course. Can’t expect the man to breach confidentiality agreements.

Except that Rudee wasn’t exactly giving us the whole truth above:

Giuliani’s first defense is that he cannot divulge his clients because they asked to sign confidentiality agreements. In fact, Giuliani Partners, not its clients, is the party that requests confidentiality.

Imagine that. It’s Rudee, not his clients, who’s desperate to keep his client list secret. That’s because the less Americans know about it, the better off Rudee’s presidential prospects are. That, in turn, is because it’s not a list that can be filed away in a folder. It’s more like a list that must be buried away in a closet. A closet that’s the size of a small house. Or maybe not so small.

Some of Rudee’s clients, regrettably, we’ve already heard about:

Rudee Giuliani’s recent clients have included:
• “someone who helped Khalid Sheikh Muhammad”
• “Hugo Chavez, the head of Venezuela”, that is to say “Citgo, which is run by Hugo Chavez”
• “a Las Vegas developer … who had a close relationship with a Hong Kong billionaire who was close with Kim Jung Il”

Rudee bravely decided to put the best face on it when he appeared on Meet The Press on December 9. (Apparently you do that by speaking untruths. At least if you’re Giuliani, you do.)

“Just about every single client of Giuliani Partners, which is my security company, has been discussed, has been examined, certainly every significant one,” he said.

So it’s kind of funny, isn’t it, that the NYT put in their thumb into Rudee’s business affairs and pulled out this plum: Purdue Pharma, the good folks who brought us OxyContin.

Over the past few weeks, Mr. Giuliani’s consulting business has received increasing scrutiny, at times forcing him to defend his business as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination.

But his work for Purdue, the company’s first and longest-running client, provides a window into how he used his standing as an eminent lawyer, a Republican insider and a national celebrity to aid a controversial client and build a business fortune.

A former top federal prosecutor, Mr. Giuliani participated in two meetings between Purdue officials and the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency investigating the company. Giuliani Partners took on the job of monitoring security improvements at company facilities making OxyContin, an issue of concern to the D.E.A.

As a celebrity, Mr. Giuliani helped the company win several public relations battles, playing a role in an effort by Purdue to persuade an influential Pennsylvania congressman, Curt Weldon, not to blame it for OxyContin abuse.

Despite these efforts, Purdue suffered a crushing defeat in May at the hands of (United States Attorney John L. Brownlee) when the company and three top executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges.

Mr. Giuliani, who declined to discuss his work for Purdue for this article, has refused to talk in detail about his firm’s clients. He has said that he is no longer involved in the day-to-day management of the firm, which still represents Purdue.

I guess it falls to me to break it to Rudee. Dude, it’s still your firm. You still have your name on it. You still own the profits. You’re still, you know, responsible. (Yes, go look up that word, by all means.)

But continuing:

In the OxyContin case, Mr. Giuliani’s supporters suggest that as a cancer survivor himself, he was driven by a noble goal: to keep the company’s proven pain reliever available to the widest circle of sufferers.

“I understand the pain and distress that accompanies illness,” Mr. Giuliani said at the time. “I know that proper medications are necessary for people to treat their sickness and improve their quality of life.”

To drive OxyContin’s sales, Purdue, beginning in 1996, set in motion what D.E.A. officials described as perhaps the most aggressive promotional campaign for a high-powered narcotic ever undertaken. It promoted the drug not only to pain specialists, but to family doctors with little experience in treating serious pain or recognizing drug abuse.

As a result of the expanded access, critics charged, OxyContin wound up in the high schools and street corners of rural America where curious teenagers crushed the pill, defeating the time-release formula, and ended up addicts, or in some cases, dead.

Dennis Lee, the Virginia state prosecutor for Tazewell County, an area hard hit by OxyContin abuse, said he was stunned several years ago to learn that Mr. Giuliani was working for Purdue. He had a favorable impression of Mr. Giuliani, he said, and a poor opinion of the company, which he said had played down and dissembled about its drug’s problem.

“I was shocked,” Mr. Lee said, “that he would basically become a mouthpiece for Purdue.”

As Rudee likes to say:

Everything I did with Giuliani Partners has been totally legal, totally ethical. They are a very ethical and law-abiding business … There’s nothing for me to explain about it. We’ve acted honorably, decently,…

Or maybe you prefer this one:

A year ago, the senior managing director for Rudy Giuliani’s consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, said, “We bend over backwards and are very careful about who we do business with, for the most obvious reasons — from the beginning, Rudy’s brand of integrity and ethics always had to be preserved.”