KEY POINTS:
NEW YORK - Few thought Judith Regan, the infamous, ribald publisher Rupert Murdoch fired a year ago over O.J. Simpson's quasi-confessional book If I Did It, would stay quiet for long.
Last week, with almost perfect political and media timing, she launched her counter-attack: a lawsuit against News Corp seeking US$100 million in damages, and exquisitely crafted to cause as much trouble - and win as much attention - as possible.
In simple terms, Regan's lawsuit is little more than a claim of wrongful dismissal. Last December, as outcry grew over the propriety of payments made for the rights to Simpson's book, a News Corp executive said Regan had used an anti-semitic slur and claimed that a "Jewish cabal" within the firm was plotting against her.
She was fired; her lawyer claimed that she'd been axed without cause and "on trumped-up grounds".
So now comes Regan's response. She claims she is the victim of a "deliberate smear campaign" instigated by News Corp because she has damaging information about a former lover - Bernard Kerik, who was New York police commissioner during Rudy Giuliani's mayoral administration and who this month pleaded not guilty to a 16-count federal indictment charging him with conspiracy, corruption and tax evasion.
Regan says "it is now widely accepted" that Giuliani's association with Kerik makes him politically vulnerable and that she, by extension, is considered potentially harmful to Giuliani's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination - a campaign, she claims, that is overtly supported by the news division of her former employer.
"The smear campaign was necessary to advance News Corp's political agenda, which has long centred on protecting Rudy Giuliani's presidential ambitions," Regan claims in the suit.
Giuliani undoubtedly has a longstanding relationship with Roger Ailes, the blustering head of News Corp subsidiary Fox News, who managed Giuliani's first run for mayor of New York. And Giuliani has demonstrated his support of Ailes, campaigning to get Fox News included on cable networks when it was launched.
Since Kerik was charged 10 days ago, Giuliani has tried to distance himself from him. But their bonds are not easily broken: Giuliani supported Kerik's campaign to be made head of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002; Kerik is still on the board of Giuliani's private security firm; and both have advanced their careers by reminding Americans of their fear of terrorism.
And there is also some reason to suppose that Regan does hold information on Giuliani - at least of the pillow-talk type. Regan and Kerik were lovers at this period and had afternoon trysts in a flat overlooking Ground Zero that was supposed to be used by weary firefighters working to recover the remains of their fallen brothers.
Regan published Kerik's memoir but suspended their affair when she found evidence that he was entertaining another woman in the same apartment.
Asked if he knew of Kerik and Regan's relationship, the former mayor told reporters on a campaign stop in Iowa: "I think that's a gossip column story, and the last thing in the world you want to do when you're running for President is respond to gossip column-type stories."
To this noxious mix of political power, media influence and salaciousness (Regan claims that her feelings were hurt when she learned that News Corp executives sometimes attributed her success to her "golden vagina"), the publisher of Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star adds a potentially explosive component: allegations that she was encouraged to withhold information from investigators looking into Kerik's business relationships.
Regan claims in the suit that "a senior executive in News Corp" told her "he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani's presidential campaign". This executive advised Regan to "lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik".
The suit also states that another executive "advised Regan not to produce clearly relevant documents in connection with a governmental investigation of Kerik". However, it leaves out details that might give its inferences more substance.
What is clear is that Regan's dismissal, at 53, was a setback in an otherwise flawless media career. The Irish-Italian mother of two from Brooklyn cut her teeth on the National Enquirer before turning her hand to publishing.
In the 1990s she helped to establish the print careers of the brightest stars of the talk radio circuit, including Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern.
Showing an unerring grasp of tabloid culture, her Los Angeles-based ReganBooks imprint made about US$120 million a year for News Corp's HarperCollins division. She published The Gotti Diet: How I Took Control of My Body, Lost 80 Pounds, and Discovered How to Stay Fit Forever, by Frank Gotti Agnello, grandson of convicted mobster John "The Dapper Don" Gotti.
Regan was notorious for her tantrums and for offending people on an equal-opportunity basis.
But O.J. Simpson became her undoing. His confessional book and TV interview (which was never aired) was supposed to establish Regan on a new footing in the entertainment industry. But public outcry over News Corp's dealings with Simpson (in the book, later published, Simpson describes how he would have gone about killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman if he had done it), left Regan without support from the company HQ in New York.
Regan issued a statement explaining that she had sought an interview with Simpson for all women who have ever been mistreated by a man, including herself. Fox stations around the country said they would not air it, and even Fox News political pundits complained.
Offered the chance to show remorse, Regan instead adopted the tone of spiritual mediator. "I made the decision to publish this book, and to sit face to face with the killer, because I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives. Amen."
An apology might still have saved Regan but her allegedly anti-semitic outburst at News Corp lawyers gave the company apparent grounds to fire her - grounds Regan now claims were "completely fabricated" - and form the basis of what could now become a court battle that sheds light on the relationship between political power and those aspiring to it, and some of the most powerful figures in the US media.
- Observer
