Kerik's Love Nest Angers Residents Of Liberty View

Residents at the Liberty View apartment building in Battery Park City, some of whom were left homeless for months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had reactions of outrage, skepticism, and even admiration to reports alleging that Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik was using one of the building's unrented units for an extramarital trysts.

"That is so sleazy," one resident, Jason Lerman, said.

"While I think that is really wrong, you have to judge someone by all of his deeds, and while I lost a lot of respect for the man after learning about this, I still do have some respect for the way he behaved after 9/11," the 25-year-old insurance underwriter said.

"What a bastard is all I can say to that," said Steve Zimmel, a Wall Street trader and Australian native.

Mr. Zimmel has only just moved to America and into the Liberty View, but he said his feelings for ground zero and New York are strong.

"There are good people here, and it is like any race or people, you can find bad mixed in with the good," he said.

Newspapers have carried reports, which Mr. Kerik has not denied, that he had romantic liaisons with a prominent publisher, Judith Regan, in an apartment at Liberty View. Some unrented apartments in Battery Park City were set aside by Milstein Properties for use by rescue workers and cleanup workers in the period after September 11.

At Liberty View, some residents seemed unmoved by the irony of the police commissioner's taking up with a lover in an apartment overlooking the site of the World Trade Center at a time when many of the building's permanent residents were still struggling without belongings or a home.

"I say good for him - Nice job, Bernie," Jamie Calvo said. "People got to do what people got to do."

One tenant, who said he viewed the Liberty View on November 9, 2001, and moved into an apartment in the building two months later, wondered about the feasibility of carrying on an affair in an apartment there at the time.

"The condition of the building and of the apartments was horrible," said Mike Serdiouk, 34, a computer teacher. "There was dust up to the waist, it was impossible to breath, and the smell was unbearable. I don't know how Mr. Kerik possibly could have done anything there. It is just unbelievable."

The building's doormen, several of whom worked during the time in which Mr. Kerik kept an apartment in the building, maintained they did not see him with a woman.

"I never saw Mr. Kerik with a woman, he was always very serious, very focused," one doorman said. That employee said he has worked at the building for five years but requested anonymity for fear of losing his job.

Calls to the Milstein company were not returned.

In related news, Newsweek magazine reports today that Mr. Kerik tried to distance himself from his affair with Ms. Regan, with a Kerik associate warning her that he might attempt to mischaracterize their relationship in a background check as merely "brother-sister," rather than a sexual affair, as Ms. Regan had been characterizing it. According to Newsweek, Ms. Regan is claiming an associate of Mr. Kerik contacted her, around the time of his nomination for the Cabinet post of secretary of homeland security, to convey that message.

The magazine also reported that Rudolph Giuliani is distancing himself from his former protege, saying Mr. Kerik's role in the Giuliani Partners firm represents "less than 5%" of its business and is largely limited to an offshoot division for security-related work, which is known as Giuliani-Kerik.

"He's not part of Giuliani Partners," Mr. Giuliani said in an interview with Newsweek.

In trying to explain why Mr. Kerik's title is "senior vice president" on the Giuliani Partners Web site, according to Newsweek, the former mayor said: "Senior vice president of the group is what Bernie was when we started. I think that remains his title, but that's not the way we primarily relate to him. As you know, he does some work for a few of our clients."