Bernard Kerik, the former New York Police Commissioner, former interim interior minister of Iraq, and onetime nominee to be secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has started a new blog using the free Google Blogger service at bernardkerik.blogspot.com.
“It’s all national security and terrorism stuff related to some of the threats we face, things that I think we should be looking at,” Kerik, reached by phone Thursday at his Franklin Lakes, New Jersey home, tells TPMmuckraker of the new blog. He posted Monday on “the unfortunate reality of friendly fire” in response to the Wikileaks video of a U.S. helicopter killing a Reuters photographer in Iraq.
The blogspot site will also back up writings from his old site, thepillarofstrength.com, in case it goes offline.
Kerik, a longtime TPMmuckraker favorite, is also taking full advantage of other online communication tools before his four-year prison term starts next month. He pleaded guilty in November to charges of tax fraud and lying to the White House during vetting for the DHS job.
Kerik recently tweeted the Web address of the new blog, and he’s been active in recent weeks on Facebook and Flickr, where his BernardKerik2001 account features newly uploaded pictures of the Sept. 11 attacks, Kerik rallying police Ground Zero, and Kerik being introduced by President George W. Bush at the White House in 2004 before his nomination to lead the Department of Homeland Security foundered amid charges that he hired an illegal immigrant nanny.
The blog’s header doesn’t shy away from highlighting that nomination. It reads:
“Bernard B. Kerik was the 40th Police Commissioner of the New York City Police Department and in command of the NYPD during and in the aftermath of the attacks on America on September 11, 2001. He later served as the interim Minister of the Interior of Iraq and in December 2004 was nominated as the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.”
The links section of the blog directs readers to Fox, Drudge, Breitbart, Newsmax, the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, and Kerik’s own Facebook page.
The favorite quotes section of Kerik’s Facebook page features one item from Kevin Costner, one from Teddy Roosevelt, and two from Kerik himself. (“Desecrating or displacing the symbols of 9/11, is a contemptuous assault on the patriots that died on that day – and in the war since.”)
Asked if he will continue posting to the blog from prison, Kerik says he has “no clue.”
