More On State-Sponsored Adultery

"My" Hometown Paper -- the Daily News:

Judith Nathan got taxpayer-funded chauffeur services from the NYPD earlier than previously disclosed - even before her affair with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was revealed, witnesses and sources tell the Daily News.

"It went on for months before the affair was public," said Lee Degenstein, 52, a retired Smith Barney vice president who formerly lived at 200 E. 94th St., Nathan's old building.

"It was going on longer than anybody thought," added Degenstein, who, along with others in the neighborhood, said they often saw Nathan hopping into unmarked NYPD cars in early 2000, before the affair was revealed that May.

When pressed by The News Thursday, aides to the Republican presidential hopeful conceded that Nathan got police protection "sporadically" before December 2000 - the previously acknowledged beginning of her taxpayer-funded detail.

Then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said in January 2001 the NYPD assigned Nathan round-the-clock protection the month before because of an unspecified threat against her on a streetcorner near her home. He insisted at a news conference she had no guards until then.

Thursday, Giuliani aides changed their story. They said Nathan had received previously undisclosed "threats" earlier in 2000, and that protection was provided at those times.

They refused to provide dates, describe the nature of the threats or confirm - as witnesses and a law enforcement source now contend - that the protection began before she was publicly identified as the married mayor's girlfriend in May 2000.

That would make the threat justification all the more puzzling, because she wasn't a public figure.

"Mayor Giuliani and some of those close to him were provided security that NYPD professionals determined was necessary at any given time," said Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor. "It was not something any of us wanted."

Ed Hartnett, the former deputy chief of the NYPD's intelligence division and now Yonkers police chief, added in an e-mail from the Giuliani campaign that Nathan's protection was at first sporadic and did not include a full-time, round-the-clock detail.

But former neighbors of Nathan's, as well as a law enforcement source, describe a full-scale valet service at Nathan's beck and call well before the affair became public.

"I saw guys coming here to pick her up," said Alexei Moncayo, a manager in the garage adjoining Nathan's building where her NYPD escorts often idled. "Maybe a couple of months later I found out she was dating the mayor."

A law enforcement source familiar with mayoral protection said Nathan got bodyguards as far back as 1999, shortly after the affair began.

"If she had to go shopping, errands, that's where you went," the source said.

Other residents at the building said they often saw Nathan coming and going with two well-dressed drivers, who occasionally toted her packages.

"She was always coming back with shopping bags from the different well-known stores in New York," said Jacqueline Elman, a building resident for 12 years who walked her dog regularly and often spotted Nathan, who became the third Mrs. Giuliani in 2003.

Degenstein said he doesn't remember the exact date that cops started showing up for Nathan, but he's certain the rides started before May 10, 2000. That's the day Giuliani dramatically informed his wife, Donna Hanover, via a news conference, that he wanted a separation.

"It was prior to this whole thing with Donna Hanover," Degenstein recalled.

Degenstein, a self-proclaimed police buff, said it wasn't hard to identify Nathan's city-funded wheels as an unmarked police car.

"The windows were all blacked out, it had several antennas affixed to the trunk and of course had the orange E-ZPass stuck in the front windshield," said Degenstein, referring to the special colored toll devices affixed to city cars.

Degenstein is no critic: He said he voted three times for Giuliani during his runs for mayor and says he'll do so again if the alternative is Democrat Hillary Clinton.

"I'll close one eye, but I'll do it," he said.

The law enforcement source said that Nathan eventually had as many as seven detectives assigned to her, and that like any protected person, they took her wherever she wanted to go.

"Whether it was to take her shopping or business - you can't say 'We are not going there,'" the source said. "[If you did] you'd be walking a foot post in the seven-five [Brooklyn's 75th Precinct] somewhere."

And how does Mr. 9/11 respond when caught with his petty thievery?

He shows that he is a man of principal worthy of being a modern GOP president:

Rudy Giuliani tried to ride out new questions Friday over taxpayer-funded chauffeur services that witnesses and sources said were provided to Judith Nathan before her affair to the former mayor was revealed in 2000.

The Republican presidential candidate, asked by a Daily News reporter after a campaign event in Chicago about Nathan's city-funded wheels, nonanswered "Thank you," and later "Have a good night."

Until this week, Nathan's police escorts were thought to have begun in December 2000, after then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said she was threatened near her upper East Side home and needed around-the-clock protection.

But Team Giuliani, when pressed by The News on Thursday, conceded that Nathan received "sporadic" protection prior to that, due to earlier threats they revealed for the first time but refuse to further describe.

The admission came after numerous eyewitnesses and a law enforcement source said Nathan was regularly ferried by plainclothes cops to and from her home in 2000 before public revelation of the affair that May.

How Nathan could have become the target of a threat before she became a public figure has not been explained.

Giuliani advisors yesterday insisted that eyewitnesses may have in fact been seeing Giuliani's own bodyguards drop off Nathan, meaning she did not have her own detail and was only riding along with the still-married mayor.

"Even though your story quotes one of her former neighbors as saying the windows in the car 'were all blacked out,' " said former Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, "he couldn't possibly have identified who else was inside the vehicle."

The witnesses told The News, however, that the the car would idle for hours outside the building rather than making a quick dropoff or pickup.

Experts said yesterday that Giuliani likely faces more political than legal grief from the revelations that refocus attention on his messy personal life.

"This isn't what you need when you are running against a Baptist minister," said Republican political consultant Dan Schnur, referring to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Giuliani's surging GOP rival.

State law prohibits public officials from using their office to obtain a private benefit, as former state Controller Alan Hevesi found out the hard way last year in a case that also involved government-paid drivers.

Hevesi pleaded guilty to one charge of defrauding the government after investigators accused him of providing taxpayer-funded chauffeur services to his ailing wife, even in the absence of a credible threat.

"If Nathan was provided police protection prior to their being a security-threat assessment, it probably was an illegal use of city resources," said Dick Dadey of Citizens Union.

But Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and others said that the state law's five-year statute of limitations would make impossible any prosecution for actions in 2000.