I was going to write today about the housing crisis. I have some insights into the matter and a non-traditional view that might surprise some of you given my previous position as President of the NYC Housing Development Corporation (HDC). But instead, I am forced once again to respond to a scurrilous media accusation.
Since this blog has an international readership, I will have to explain some of the background and players to the New York Times' story yesterday. To those of you from NY this might seem obvious and elemental.
Hank Morris is a political consultant. A very successful one. He is now under a 143 count New York State indictment. Hank was the political guru to a NY politician named Alan Hevesi. Hevesi was a long-time NYS Assemblyman and then NYC Comptroller during the Giuliani years. He ran for Mayor in 2001 and lost badly in the Democratic primary. After that he ran successfully for NYS Comptroller. When he ran for re-election, successfully, certain facts came to light regarding fiscal impropriety involving a state driver for his wife. He eventually resigned.
NYC and NYS have unusual state pension funds in that the Comptroller is the sole trustee and decision maker regarding investment firms and placements. After Hevesi left office, investigations commenced into his management of the NYS pension fund and Hank Morris's ties to certain pension activities for which he was allegedly paid millions by firms seeking business with the fund. I won't go into whether or not what Hank Morris did was legal. I am not entirely sure myself. One more thing as background. My father, Ray Harding, was a long-time Hevesi backer and friend of Hank Morris. He too is under a criminal complaint regarding third party middlemen and the pension fund.
The New York Times ran a story yesterday by their in-house political scandal monger, Mike McIntire. Not Michael, by the way, but Mike. I guess it gives him some street cred to use the diminutive. Maybe R.W. Apple should have used Johnny in his byline and that way people would have taken him seriously.
The story had to do with Hank Morris's many business holdings and how they inter-connected with pension placements. One aspect of the story is that Hank Morris owned a graphic design firm called Curran&Connors. The story suggests Bear Stearns hired Curran&Connors in order to curry favor through Morris with the then NYC Comptroller, Alan Hevesi. On page two of the story it says, "Mr. Morris is also credited with getting annual-report contracts with the New York City Housing Development Corporation." In case you are missing it, McIntire means me. He's saying that I gave Hank Morris business. Presumably to help my father or something. He can only be referring to me since HDC never did business with Curran&Connors until I took over.
The first question I have is 'credited' by whom? This is one of those cheap journalist tricks. Throw in a serious, confirming sounding word like 'credited.' You will gloss over the fact that he provides no detail to back that claim up. And he in fact provides none. Let me tell you how nearly a decade ago another more responsible journalist investigated this claim and found it baseless.
In the late summer of 2001 Alan Hevesi was running for Mayor. Ray and the Liberal Party had endorsed him. I was President of HDC. One day Luke Cusack, my trusted aide and Senior VP, came into my office and told me he had returned a call to me from Bob Hardt of the New York Post. Hardt called to say he was working on a story for tomorrow regarding HDC having hired and paid tens of thousands to a Hank Morris owned firm. I asked Luke what the fuck he was talking about. Luke explained that Hardt was saying that Morris owned Curran&Connors, the graphic design firm that HDC used to do its annual reports, design its website and create its logo. "You're telling me that Hank Morris owns Curran&Connors?" I asked Luke. "I'm not. Bob Hardt is," Luke responded. I asked out loud, "Why in the world would Hank Morris own a graphic design firm? It's crazy. Hardt must be mistaken." I got Bob Hardt on the phone and asked him if he was sure about this. "Yes", he told me, "Hank Morris is listed as chairman." How did you know we were a client of Curran&Connors?" I asked him. "They list you in their annual report," he answered. I explained to him that I had no idea Hank Morris owned Curran&Connors and we had used them for years. We did not just recently hire them because of any Hevesi-Liberal Party connection, which was obviously the allegation in all this.
"Do you have any documentation? Anything that confirms your long-standing relationship with them or any bids you may have done to hire them?" He asked. I told him I would check and get back to him. Fortunately I had a great staff at HDC. Luke returned with a thick file folder full of our history with Curran&Connors.
HDC was not a city agency and as such we were not bound by the City's procurement rules that required that everything from bridge repairs to pencil erasers be triple bid. But in this instance we had triple bid the contract and had all the documentation to back it up. Including that Curran&Connors had been the low bidder. Further, Luke had some paperwork from EDC (NYC Economic Development Corp.). When I became Exec VP of Corporate Communications at EDC Curran&Connors was already doing work for the corporation. I liked the work they did for us and when I went to HDC I had Luke include them in the mix of companies who were sent our RFP (Request for Proposals).
I read the file. It was great. I told Luke to send him everything. "Everything," he asked, "there are internal notes in there." "Yes," I told him, "that's the point." The staff member who had done the review had taken copious, contemporaneous notes. Anyone could see that Curran&Connors was clearly the best firm. And the lowest bidder.
I called Hardt back and told him I was having this walked over to City Hall, where he had a desk in Room 9. There was some debate as to whether we should formally make him FOIL this, but I said fuck it. I didn't want him writing this story since it had no foundation in fact and if this would acquit us, just give him what he wants. So what did Bob Hardt do? I'll tell you in a minute.
Most NYC reporters upon receiving a file like this would have responded thus: "This is great. I am writing the story but will print your quote denying any connection and mention all the documentation." And this fictitious NYC reporter would be absolutely convinced that he was being very fair, maybe even doing me a favor. But of course there was no story there. Anyone looking at the file knew that. You'll just have to trust me when I tell you that most - over 90% - of reporters today would write that story. Figuring there's enough smoke to let the reader see fire and getting another byline in the process.
What did Bob Hardt do? He called me back and said, "I'm not going to write the story. This was clearly on the up and up - you didn't know." That, my friends, is real professional journalism. He could have written the story, maybe even a sexy story, but it wouldn't have been fair and in the main, not true.
Now what about Mike McIntire. He could have written, "The Hank Morris owned firm had HDC as a client." He could have even written, "The firm, owned by Hank Morris, had as one of its clients HDC, then run by Russell Harding, son of Morris's political pal and Hevesi ally Ray Harding." He could have written that. I believe it would have been inherently unfair but it would have all been technically true. But he didn't do that. Having attended the Tom Robbins School of If It's Not There Make it Up Journalism, McIntire just invented the link between me and Morris and the awarding of the contract. He is in fact alleging something that at a minimum, I did something unethical and at most criminal. It is outrageous behavior for a New York Times reporter.
It is one thing when the Times prints the Andrew Cuomo allegation that Ray Harding needed the money from his alleged illegal activities to pay my legal expenses and doesn't even bother to contact me to see if I have a comment or if the allegation is true, which it is not. That in my view is bad enough. But when their reporters now gratuitously, out of the blue, make shit up, that is intolerable from a newspaper like the New York Times.
The reason the Times takes Jason Blair and Judith Miller seriously is that all they have at the end of the day is their credibility. It is hard for non-New Yorkers to understand the power and prestige of the NYT. No paper in any city in the world has what the Times has. You may or may not believe something in any other paper, but if it's in the Times it has to be true. I was brought up believing that as gospel. Once they lose that then they're ordinary and no longer The Paper of Record. So they take fabrications seriously.
I am claiming this putz McIntire is a lazy, unprofessional, dishonest journalist. That's my opinion, you don't have to share it. What we can all agree on is that this putz McIntire is unbelievably stupid.
I grant you the man has not been our Senator for a few years. But he was Senator throughout all the 1980's and most of the 1990's. He was a Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. He was for many years a major player in shaping the state Republican Party and gave us Gov. Pataki. So you think it would be too much to expect this putz McIntire to know how to spell Alfonse D'Amato's name? I guess so. Don't they have editors over at the Times who slap the kid reporters on the head and say, "Hey stupid, that's not how you spell a major player's name." It's not like he was a Senator in the 1870's. Although, I would still think the august New York Times would spell Roscoe Conkling's name correctly if it came up in a story. I suppose this putz McIntire was too busy inventing his facts to take time out to check the spelling of a name even grade-schoolers can spell properly. And remember, I used to get the man's mail so I know.
I end where I began. This putz McIntire claims that Morris is credited with the HDC contract. I am not asking for an apology or a correction, although I am surely due both. I am asking his editors to have him prove to them that he has some evidence of this statement and show it to them. What call did he make or receive to lead him to this 'fact.' I do not think I am asking too much. I do not think it is too much to ask as much from the Times,if not more, than I received from the NY Post. Even felonious scum deserve better treatment than this at the New York Times.
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