And Asking Her to Lie to Federal Investigators May Well Have Been Illegal

Yesterday, I posted a story over at The BRAD BLOG (where I’m a guest contributor while Brad Friedman is traveling) about Judith Regan’s allegation in a lawsuit that an executive with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation urged her to lie about her affair with former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik in order to protect Kerik’s BFF Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential aspirations.

“Roger Ailes is so clearly part from page one of this complaint. He is clearly the person she is referring to as this senior executive who made all these suggestions to her that she not come clean on Bernie.”
– Wayne Barrett

(If you haven’t read about this brewing scandal, check it out. In the annals of GOP adultery, it is a doozy. Kerik was seeing another woman while he and Regan were “dating” — and while all this was going on, his wife was pregnant.)

But until last night on MSNBC’s “Countdown,” no one had gone public with the identity of the NewsCorp executive who tried to convince Regan to keep quiet. The name was revealed in an interview Keith Olbermann did with Wayne Barrett, the author of a biography of Giuliani titled “Grand Illusion.”

According to Barrett, it wasn’t just any NewsCorp exec. It was the head honcho at Fox News, Roger Ailes:

BARRETT: The funny thing about Judith Regan‘s complaint is that she doesn‘t refer to Roger Ailes by name for the first 16 pages, right? She refers to the senior executive of the company who insisted that she not come clean on things that might affect Bernie Kerik and Rudy Giuliani. And she doesn‘t refer to him by name but when she first refers to him, she doesn‘t even give him a title. She just says Roger Ailes, whereas when she first introduces Rupert Murdock it‘s CEO of News Corporation. But Roger Ailes is so clearly part from page one of this complaint. He is clearly the person she is referring to as this senior executive who made all these suggestions to her that she not come clean on Bernie.

OLBERMANN: All right. So that secret‘s out.

And here’s the clincher, since Ailes was asking Regan to lie about her relationship with Kerik to federal investigators vetting Kerik for the post of secretary of Homeland Defense, the request was quite probably illegal.