Abducting The Tragedy

Jimmy Breslin

February 10, 2002

The Twin Towers Fund has enough money in it, tens of millions of donations that were decently given and are being handled with motives so miserable as to cause suspicion, that it now becomes a mirror as big as a wall that shows the character of this Rudolph Giuliani.

This time, he imposes on widows.

The Twin Towers Fund is for the families of firefighters and cops. It has $70 million and suddenly in December it stopped sending any money to widows.

Giuliani announced he wanted to transfer the money from a city-run nonprofit organization to a private organization, headed by I, Giuliani.

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I am told that the new mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said, "You're not going to embarrass me on this."

And Giuliani answered, "Never!"

Of course he will. The first thing he does is put his girlfriend, Judi Nathan, on the payroll at $100,000 or so [CORRECTION: Judi Nathan is an unpaid director for Rudolph Giuliani's Twin Towers Fund.

The projected annual cost of operating the fund after the proposed transfer of its assets to Giuliani's control is $1.168 million to $2.255 million, according to a filing with the state attorney general's office.

Sunday's Jimmy Breslin column misstated Nathan's status by stating she is paid and was imprecise on the fund's projected administrative costs. pg. A02 ALL 02/13/02].

She arrives with two friends. The cost of administrating the fund goes to $2 million a year. If the fund remains with the city, the cost of running it will be zero.

Bloomberg has opposed Giuliani so often, particularly on Giuliani's proposed new baseball stadiums, that he might let the funds be transferred. He sure shouldn't.

Giuliani wants this fund so much that he seems crazier than usual. He says he must control it because friends of his made donations and said that they trusted nobody but him. In the whole world.

He obviously neither understands nor cares about what it looks like to put your girlfriend and her friends on the payroll.

Once before, we've seen something like this. Joe Pledge, a bookmaker who owned a bowling alley in Astoria, fell in love with a beautiful young woman who wanted to be a singer.

Joe Pledge then tore down the bowling alley and turned the place into a nightclub. Nobody came to the place.

Pledge didn't even notice. He was the lighting director for his girl's act. Each night he would be behind these great spotlights that he turned on her as she sang out into the empty club.

A friend said to him one night, "Joe, she can't sing."

"Isn't she beautiful?" Pledge said, turning so much light on her that she was a blaze with a bad voice.

Of course the nightclub busted out and the girl left and Pledge went off into the mists of the penniless and heartbroken.

Giuliani can't see anything happening to him out of Sept. 11. Even Ms. Nathan and friends, instead of being on the pad, could provide a real service.