Exclusive: Brooklyn businessman/arsonist endangered NY firefighters, but AG nominee Mukasey offered to tout the felonious goniff's "remarkable character" before sentencing

In a previously unreported episode, U.S. Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey praised the "remarkable character" of notorious Brooklyn businessman Nat Schlesinger after Schlesinger was convicted of arson in a blaze that nearly killed a New York City firefighter.

After having stood up as a federal judge for a convicted arsonist who reaped millions of dollars from his crimes, Mukasey is on tap to become the country's top law-enforcement official. His hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee has contained no mention of the Schlesinger case.

This isn't part of Mukasey's dim past; it happened last year. And Mukasey wasn't the only prominent person to stand up for Schlesinger. Israel's current prime minister, Ehud Olmert, used his government stationery (when he was merely a deputy prime minister) to plead on behalf of the powerful Brooklyn businessman, as my colleague Tom Robbins reported on August 1, 2006.

Mukasey was prohibited from directly volunteering a written testimonial because he was a sitting federal judge on New York's Southern District bench. But he scooted around that technicality, and Schlesinger's lawyers bandied about his name — and what he would say about the arsonist — in their June 30, 2006, presentencing memo, which Robbins obtained.

The arsonist's lawyers made no bones about it, salting their memo to federal Judge Arthur Spatt of New York's Eastern District with Mukasey's name. They titled a section of the memo with this:

And Schlesinger's lawyers wrote:

There's no evidence that Spatt made such a request, which would have been highly unusual, to say the least. But the memo had practically the same effect because it clued in Judge Spatt that one of his colleagues vouched for Schlesinger.

Robbins noted at the time that Schlesinger was convicted in 2005 on "charges of arson, mail fraud, and — a particularly tough count under federal law — using fire to commit a felony."

The case was broken by fire marshal Bernard "Buddy" Santangelo, sparking a lengthy investigation of suspicious fires and a successful prosecution under U.S. Attorney Roslyn Mauskopf. Judge Spatt was swamped with glowing testimonials from Schlesinger's fellow Jews, many of them Orthodox, as is Mukasey.

Mukasey's own status as an Orthodox Jew has been an issue before — and in Jewish publications, as I pointed out this past September 24 in an item about his presiding over a terrorism trial at which he clashed with William Kunstler over whether Mukasey would be able to fairly judge Muslim defendants.

In the Schlesinger episode, the arsonist didn't exactly have a clean track record. As Robbins wrote last year:

Schlesinger faced up to 22 years in prison in the arson case, but it wasn't only his fellow Orthodox Jews who played the religion card. Schlesinger himself played it. Robbins wrote:

That apparently didn't faze Olmert. In a letter dated September 11, 2005, Olmert (at the time Israel's vice prime minister of industry, trade, and labor) pleaded with Judge Spatt to show Schlesinger "mercy, compassion, and understanding." (Again, see Robbins's "Burn Job," August 1, 2006.)

The only hot air that counted, however, was what a New York City firefighter endured because of Schlesinger's felonious behavior. As Robbins wrote:

In the end, Schlesinger was sentenced 15 years in prison. Schlesinger's lawyers have appealed. An e-mail to Mukasey at his law firm elicited no reply.

Bad karma: Pitcher's wife gave cash to Bush campaign.

After the worst performance of his career personally guaranteed the worst collapse by a team in baseball history, New York Mets pitcher Tom Glavine was practically blasé — he talked about "we" this and "we" that.

Glavine told the Bergen (N.J.) Record's Steve Popper:

His refusal to stand up and personally take at least some of the blame is reminiscent of George W. Bush's well-known refusal to personally admit mistakes, even in light of the Iraq debacle.

Why be so oxymoronic as to bring up Bush? Back in 2004, Glavine's wife, Christine, gave $500 to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Federal records show that it's the couple's only contribution to any candidate.

That's nothing but bad karma.

Yankee fans had better beware. Alex Rodriguez is another Bush supporter. Records show that star third-baseman A-Rod gave the Bush-Cheney campaign $2,000 in August 2003.

We'll see whether A-Rod comes through in the playoffs and, if not, whether he'll take the heat.

We already know that Glavine, like Bush, is not a stand-up guy. As the Record's Bob Klapisch wrote:

Contrast Glavine's reaction to that of San Diego Padres relief pitcher Trevor Hoffman, also a sure-fire Hall of Famer, whose miserable performance Monday night gave a playoff spot to the Colorado Rockies. Hoffman was all over the news this morning, saying:

Mets manager Willie Randolph, whose job is now in jeopardy, had no problem standing up, as the Record's Popper noted:

Glavine, though, had already cleaned out his locker on Sunday night and was headed home to his mansion in Alpharetta, Georgia — Atlanta's most exclusive suburb — where he's protected in the gated community of Country Club of the South. (His celeb neighbors in Alpharetta have included Jeff Foxworthy, Usher, Morris Day, Greg Maddux, and Damon Stoudamire.)

Glavine won his historic 300th game this season. Mission accomplished. An avid golfer, he'll stroke himself all winter and then possibly return to the Braves, with whom he spent his entire career before joining the Mets a few seasons ago as an aging baseball mercenary.

But it's up to Glavine. He was paid $7.5 million this season and has an option to return to the Mets for $9 million in 2008 — yes, that's a 20 percent raise after pitching the worst inning of his career in the biggest game of the season.

We New Yorkers have probably seen the last of Glavine's TV commercials on behalf of union workers. A leader of baseball's players union last decade, Glavine has earned lavish praise by the AFL-CIO for standing up for his union brothers in other, less glamorous, trades.

At some point, at least, Glavine was a stand-up millionaire guy.

Still secret: Corruption in the White House.

Over at Secrecy News, the indefatigable Steven Aftergood has posted a heretofore secret study of Iraqi government corruption.

Even though the Nation's David Corn already wrote about the study, I can't say it would be much of a surprise anyway: The investigating agency, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, knows a lot about corruption.

Anyway, the report notes:

Sounds like the White House. U.S. congressmen and various public-interest groups got nowhere when they tried to probe Dick Cheney's "energy task force" early in the Bush regime.

And the White House has continually tried to call a halt to the excellent investigative work by Stuart Bowen on corruption in Iraq.

It took a British NGO, Christian Aid, to break the news a few years ago that Jerry Bremer, the Barney Fife of Baghdad, couldn't explain why $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenue was missing.

Besides that oil-for-slush scandal, we're still waiting to see those millions of White House e-mails the regime is withholding that relate to various scandals. Then there are the missing-weapons scandal and the various KBR scandals — you get the picture.

In any case, this new report on corruption inside Iraq's puppet government is still worth reading. It turns out that we really have planted a seed of our own form of democracy over there.

Among the people and corporations lining up to sue the ass off of Conrad Black, you won't find Seth Lipsky, founderer and editor of the New York Sun.

Falling far short of even the minimum menschmarks of journalism, Lipsky called his staff together yesterday and launched into a passionate defense of financiopath Black, who was convicted by a jury the other day of felonious business activities.

Future jailbird Black abandoned his Canadian citizenship to buy a lordship in England, but he didn't have to do that to ensure the fealty of Lipsky, who wouldn't have even had the Sun to run if not for Black's money.

I've been part of captive audiences for some top goniffs' newsroom performances — many of them staggeringly, insanely, laughably bad — but Lipsky's paean must have been priceless, especially when he told his staff that "Conrad Black was cleared of the charge that he ran Hollinger as a 'kleptocracy.' "

As I suggested yesterday, just read former SEC commissioner Richard Breeden's Hollinger Report about schnooks Black, his warmongering board member Richard Perle, and others before you hop aboard the bandwagon that Lipsky's trying to whip into motion.

Luckily, Lipsky's ego prompted him to reprint his name-dropping speech in his weakly daily. Read it here. In the finest journalistic tradition, Lipsky closed his speech with this:

Yes, the honor is yours. We insist.

How about the entire city of New Orleans? Look at the Corps of the matter.

So Senator Dave Vitter screwed one person in New Orleans and won a million headlines. No one noticed when he, his fellow war supporters in Congress, and the White House repeatedly screwed the city's entire (former) population before and after Hurricane Katrina hit.

In early September 2005, Vitter entered the official White House photo album by pointing out flood damage in Louisiana to President George W. Bush. But as I pointed out at the time, Vitter was gesturing in the direction of Iraq, which was soaking up funds diverted before Katrina:

In June 2005, the Corps budget for New Orleans was slashed by $71.2 million, the heaviest cut the flood-prone city had ever experienced.

Two months later, Katrina hit, and water flooded into New Orleans. The Bush regime, with the support of Vitter, who was on the House Appropriations Committee before he became a senator in 2005 and was more ardent about big missiles than big levees, had been blowing its load of money on flood protection in Iraq. The Corps even established a "Gulf Region," but it was the Persian Gulf, not the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bush regime poured billions into building hospitals and health clinics in Iraq while letting New Orleans hospitals die.

What a drag. And that's what Rudy Giuliani's aides are thinking. As Time pointed out July 10, Vitter is the Southern campaign director for Giuliani's presidential bid. An outspoken social conservative closely tied to the Family Research Council, Bible-thumper James Dobson's D.C. arm, Vitter combined with Giuliani to make "strange bedfellows," as Gambit Weekly's Jeremy Alford noted this past April.

Until Vitter was exposed as a brothel client, he had been obsessed — except when it came to New Orleans — with preventing the release of precious bodily fluids.

Pushing hard for abstinence education, Vitter has been quite the missionary. In a letter to the Senate Finance Committee leaders just three weeks ago, Vitter pleaded for the re-authorization of $50 million to spread abstinence education to the nation's youth. Vitter wrote:

No doubt a person will pay a higher price for sexual conduct without such negotiations.

Vitter's letter added:

Or at least the rest of his term as a senator.

He co-wrote the letter with Kentucky senator Jim Bunning, the former Detroit Tigers pitcher. Quite a battery of pitcher and catcher.

Speaking of which, the moralists should say an extra prayer of thanks that Vitter was involved with the D.C. Madam instead of being just another AC/DC mister like so many other rigid right-wingers. Unlike evangelist Ted Haggard, Vitter is being criticized for screwing a woman.

To top it all, Vitter was escorted into Congress by someone else's peckerdillo, and Hustler's Larry Flynt was the key figure in that episode as well as in outing Vitter's hypocrisy. As Think Progress noted July 10:

Vitter wants to clean up such messes? Pass the Kleenex.

Paul Wolfowitz's rapidly nearing exit from the World Bank may lack grace, but at least it will be as peaceful as the dethroning of his pal Suharto nearly 10 years ago.

In other words, Wolfowitz will leave just before people grab him by the seat of his pants and bum-rush him out the door.

Wolfowitz's long-time dance with Suharto and the ruthless Indonesian military is instructive. But first let's look at how Wolfie is planning to leave before he's thrown out.

Wolfowitz's lawyer, Robert Bennett, has figured out a clever ploy: Have Wolfie strongly attack the charges against him that involve gal pal Shaha Ali Riza, but strongly hint that if the allegations are dropped, Wolfie may quit.

(Umpteenth tiresome reminder: I broke the story back in September 2005 that Wolfie was shipping Riza to the State Department to work with Dick Cheney's daughter Liz.)

As Richard Adams of the Guardian (U.K.) writes this morning:

Okay, that's Wolfie's exit plan — if the World Bank and other countries stop attacking him and drop their investigations, he'll finally leave. But why bring up Suharto? Back in May 1997, Wolfowitz, the former ambassador to Indonesia, told a House subcommittee about Suharto's "strong and remarkable" leadership. In May 1998, massive protests by Indonesians forced Suharto and his "New Order" government to step down. Oops.

In case you've forgotten, Suharto was the all-time biggest kleptocrat of all the world's dictators, according to the aggressive watchdog Transparency International.

Wolfie's wrongheaded support of Suharto — laid out well by Joseph Nevins in an Indonesia Alert piece from 2005 — showed how clueless the World Bank president was about international politics back then, just as he was clueless as the Pentagon's war architect about Iraq. And just as he screwed up his sweet gig at the World Bank with his ham-handed tactics on behalf of his girlfriend.

Go right to the source by reading Wolfie's 1997 testimony about Indonesia, and you'll see the seeds of the wrongheaded decisions that plunged us into Iraq.

Bush has one economic adviser who understands which numbers really count.

Last May 5, MIT economist Kristin J. Forbes contributed $5,000 to the 2003 President's Dinner Committee, one of the GOP's most powerful fund-raising tools. This was Forbes's first-ever campaign contribution to any presidential or congressional candidate or committee, according to FEC records. But her timing was good.

Ten days later, Bush announced the appointment of the 33-year-old Forbes to his three-member Council of Economic Advisers, the supposedly independent thinkers who serve at his pleasure䴊and who, by the way, almost never give campaign contributions to the people they serve.

Six days after that, on May 21, came the $2,500-a-plate dinner in D.C., which raised a staggering $22 million for GOP congressional campaigns. Nobody's reported her campaign donation until now, and Forbes, the youngest ever CEA member, hasn't replied to our request for comment.

Slate's Daniel Gross nailed Forbes's particulars last year when he noted that her most prominent journal article argued that income inequality was good for a country's economic growth. So when Forbes and her colleagues, Chair Greg Mankiw and Harvey S. Rosen release a statement saying, "The economy appears to have moved into a full-fledged recovery," as they did on February 10, check your wallet.