Master of Disaster

As Giuliani campaigns to protect the country from disaster, he will have to account for calamities from his own past and of his own making. Twice divorced, he has lived a life more to the tastes of New York tabloid editors than evangelical voters in South Carolina. "I can guarantee you that the majority of Southern Baptists will not vote for Giuliani," says Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. "President Truman said he would never hire someone who cheated on his wife, because if a person breaks his marriage oath he could also break his oath of office."

Mindful of Giuliani's vulnerabilities, his campaign has controlled his exposure to the media tightly. He declined to be interviewed or photographed for this story. But with the Iowa caucuses still 10 months away, Republican primary voters will soon learn all about the Real Rudy that New Yorkers know so well. The former mayor's life story is that of a man with a righteous sense of right and wrong who excels when the world presents him with a crisis, and, when left to his own devices, creates crises for himself.

Born in 1944, Rudolph William Giuliani was raised to be tough in moments of peril. On a school trip to Washington, D.C., at the age of 17, he stayed up late with other boys, horsing around in the hallway of the hotel. The commotion attracted the attention of an angry hotel manager. "He said to us, 'Pack your bags, you're out of there'," recalls Peter Powers, a Giuliani friend since childhood. The other teenagers panicked; Giuliani was unimpressed. "He's bluffing," said the future mayor. "I'm going to bed." Sure enough, the manager was never heard from again.

Giuliani was taught to venerate courage by his father, Harold, a man with a complex moral history. In 2000, Wayne Barrett, author of "Rudy!", uncovered court documents showing that Harold had served time for armed robbery in Manhattan when he was 26. Barrett's account also quoted eyewitnesses who claimed Harold had served as an enforcer for a brother-in-law who ran a loan-sharking business out of a Brooklyn bar. But Giuliani, who said he knew only "parts" of Harold's checkered past, still spoke of his father with awe. Powers recalls Harold as a moral pillar: "He would ... tell us, 'Behave, do the right thing'."

Young Rudy adopted a black-and-white sense of justice. After Manhattan College and New York University Law School, he set off on a career as a prosecutor singularly focused on battling evil. He made a name for himself as a young assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, chasing drug rings and corrupt cops. Friends recall an exceptionally driven prosecutor. "Rudy's professional life always took precedence over his personal life," says Jeffrey Harris, a colleague from the Southern District. "If that meant canceling a vacation or not being at home much in order to ensure he ... performed at the highest level, he was willing to make the personal sacrifice." The sacrifice was real: Giuliani's first marriage, to his second cousin Regina Peruggi, ended in divorce. (It was later annulled by the Roman Catholic Church on the ground that the couple hadn't gotten a special dispensation required for blood relatives to marry.) But his star turn earned him an appointment as Ronald Reagan's associate attorney general, the Justice Department's No. 3 position, in 1981.

At justice, Giuliani had a knack for causing a ruckus. Shortly after arriving in Washington, he held a highly unusual meeting with the general counsel of McDonnell Douglas. The aeronautics corporation was under federal indictment on charges of fraud and conspiracy at the time and allegedly applied pressure to Republican lawmakers to get the Justice Department to back off. Informed of Giuliani's backdoor session, the two career prosecutors handling the case dashed off a letter to him claiming he'd created the "appearance that certain influential defendants have access to senior officials." The letter quickly found its way into the press. Enraged, Giuliani called the two prosecutors into his office. "He was raising his hands, screaming, 'How dare we send a note like this!' " recalls Michael Lublin, one of the prosecutors. "I've never seen a public official who behaved like that." The scandal passed, but Giuliani held a grudge. After the McDonnell flap, he was slated to give awards to Lublin and his fellow prosecutor, George Mendelson, at a Justice Department ceremony. Giuliani refused to present the honor, Lublin says. (Giuliani's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)