The Confession (37 page)

According to Bill, he began the conversation by reiterating my innocence of these crazy charges, and added: “What are your client's goals? Whatever they are, I think I can demonstrate to you that filing a lawsuit for some unspecified claim against the governor of New Jersey is not the way to achieve them.”

For the sake of argument, Bill had come up with many different decision trees regarding Golan's self-interest. If Golan needed money, a lawsuit was not the way to get it because the state is judgment-proof; no matter what I had done, the state was not on the hook for it. On the other hand, I was judgment-proof, too, because I had no money. Even if Golan were to win a court battle, which he wouldn't, he'd walk away with nothing.

If Golan's goal was to vindicate his reputation, filing a lawsuit wouldn't serve that end, either. By the summer of 2004, only a small number of people remembered who Golan was, whether or not he saw himself as an important public figure. “He may think, as he strides down the street, that everyone's whispering, ‘Look, there's Golan.' But it's not the case,” Bill told Lowy. “At best, if he files suit he'll be seen as a greedy, grasping, spurned lover. At worst, a blackmailer. Either reputation is worse than the one he's got now. What I'm saying is, What motivates Golan? What does he care about? Let's talk about that.”

Lowy replied by hinting that Golan had claimed I sexually assaulted him in the back of a van on the way to Washington, DC, before an audience of three state troopers, a ridiculous lie. “And he tried to get rid of Golan. He had all sorts of people offer him jobs. Even the mayor of Tel Aviv offered him a job.”

Finally we had something to respond to. “Mr. Lowy, even if that's true, how is it a bad thing to recommend someone for a job?” Bill answered.

“The governor is running for reelection, and this is life-and-death for him,” Lowy said. “The governor needs to pay my client for the damages he has suffered. He has treated my client terribly and tried to get rid of the evidence—the evidence being Golan. And although we think we will get fifty million dollars, we'll take five.”

Bill told me this with a laugh. “As your lawyer, I think I'm doing a great job,” he told me. “Because already I've carved $45 million off the top.”

Bill told Lowy he needed to see any evidence to determine if $5 million was a reasonable price to keep this quiet.

“You name it,” Lowy said. “Photos, sexually explicit notes, eyewitnesses—I have evidence.”

That can't be true,
I thought. Nobody could have taken photos of us, we made sure of that. And we were always careful never to write down anything incriminating. I even signed all my birthday cards to him “Love, Jim and Dina.”

Nor was it likely that we'd been seen by anybody. Bill called up the troopers who were in the van the one day Golan and I drove to DC. Nothing happened in that van. But this was in the early days of my administration, before I'd switched out Whitman's drivers; none of these three men were my fans, and I worried they might be collaborating with Golan in some way. One of them told Bill, “If I could say something bad about Jim McGreevey, I'd be happy to.” But when presented with an open-ended question—“Do you recall anything out of the ordinary happening during that trip?”—none of them mentioned anything like a sexual assault.

“Let's see it,” Bill said. “Produce your evidence.”

Lowy shook his head no, closed his book, stood and walked out of the meeting.

Bill repeated all of this for me and Jamie, huddled around the speakerphone in our makeshift war room. “He's totally cocky,” he reported. “The scenario he's describing is inherently incredible: he's got evidence he won't show about an assault that nobody remembers, and he thinks it's worth five million bucks.”

I know Jamie's reaction was to strategize, to map out a new counteroffensive. I just wanted to die. The shame and humiliation I felt talking about this with Bill and Jamie was paralyzing. For forty-seven years I had managed to avoid discussing my sexuality with anyone. Now my top advisers were wading unemotionally through the mess of my life, picking through my secrets for something they could use to our advantage. In my shock, I wasn't thinking clearly.

Jamie interrupted Bill. “Where does Lowy live?”

Bill dug out an address. We all reacted in stunned silence. It was the same Columbus Circle building as Golan's, apartment 44C compared to Golan's 24B.

“Listen to me,” Jamie said. “They met in the elevator. That's gotta be what happened.”

 

AFTER LEAVING THE LOWY MEETING, WHICH AGAIN TOOK PLACE
in Bill Lawler's New York offices, Bill had paid a visit to Dan Tishman, whose headquarters also happened to be in that Columbus Circle building. I'd authorized him to talk to Tishman about Golan. Ostensibly we wanted to know what Tishman knew, if anything, about his employee's circumstances—if he was experiencing emotional or financial trouble, for instance.

But our main goal was to see if we could create a back channel to Golan. Any insight Tishman could offer us would be valuable.

Of course, we knew paying such a visit could have other consequences. Tishman, who does considerable business in New Jersey, wouldn't be thrilled to know that one of his employees was threatening the governor. We hoped he'd reprimand Golan in the sternest way possible. Without a job, he would be forced to leave the country. Of course we didn't say anything of the kind to Tishman, merely asked that he look into the matter.

I think that all Bill told Tishman was that Golan was making a false claim about an “inappropriate relationship” between the two of us. “We just want to see if his head is screwed on right,” Bill said. “Maybe he's being used in some way.” (For months thereafter, some engaged in wild speculation about this, naming Israel or the Mossad as possible culprits. But that never made sense to me—destabilizing the government of New Jersey hardly seemed like something that would be high on any foreign power's priority list.)

Tishman had the reaction we were hoping for. “I'll call him up and tell him I want to talk to him,” he told Bill.

A day or two later, after leaving many messages, Tishman reported that Golan had finally returned his call, but refused to take a meeting. This caused me great concern. In the Jewish community, Tishman and his family are enormously influential.
Golan is walking away from everything,
I thought.
This isn't good.

 

AROUND THIS TIME, I ALSO CALLED RABBI YOSEF CARLEBACH,
who runs the Chabad House at Rutgers. A Lubavitcher Jew, Carlebach was an old friend of mine who also knew Golan. I told him about my affair, knowing that his Orthodox sect wasn't particularly known for liberalism on the subject. But he saw immediately the danger of Golan's actions and understood my need to talk to him. He agreed to act as an intermediary.

That night, at about eight, the rabbi drove to Golan's apartment building in New York. A doorman said Golan wasn't in. Carlebach returned at 9:30, but was told Golan hadn't returned. “I'll sit,” Carlebach said. “I know he's in town. I'll wait.”

On a bench in the lobby, he opened a copy of
Letters from the Rebbe
, the collected writings of Menachem Schneerson, who members of the Lubavitch faith believe was the Messiah. Ninety minutes passed. According to Rabbi Carlebach, a man dressed in black approached him and grabbed his elbow. “We know who sent you,” he said. “We know who you are.”

This unnerved the rabbi. “The more you talk, the more concerned I am about Golan Cipel's welfare,” he said.

“And for
your
physical well-being, I suggest you leave the building,” the man said.

With that, the man brusquely escorted the rabbi to the sidewalk. Before heading back to New Jersey, Rabbi Carlebach wrote a note to Golan, saying in Hebrew, “We need to talk.” He slid this into his book, which he handed to the doorman. “Here is fifty dollars,” he said. “Please see that Mr. Cipel gets this book. It is very important.”

Unfortunately, Golan didn't respond to the rabbi's entreaty.

 

IN A DAZE, JAMIE, JIMMY, MICHAEL, AND I RETURNED FROM
Boston to New Jersey that Saturday. I remember counseling them to keep a strong game face. I said something like, “We can't show weakness or vulnerability.”

But there was little to feel good about. We'd made almost no progress. With every passing day I felt my grip on Trenton growing more tenuous.

So after dropping Dina and Jacqueline off at Drumthwacket, I did what
I'd often done when my career seemed doomed: I called my old friend Ray Lesniak. Many months had passed since Ray and I last spoke. I hoped he wasn't holding a grudge. For a fourth time, I needed his help in salvaging my career.

I reached him at the Metedeconk National Golf Club, down on the shore, and he didn't hesitate one second before agreeing to see me at his beach house at Curtis Point. I got there in just over two hours. If he hadn't already figured it out, he could tell from my face my visit was urgent.

“Salena,” he said to his girlfriend. “The dog needs a walk, sweetheart.”

We stood in awkward silence as Salena gathered the leash, slipped on shoes, and headed out the front door with the dog. When she'd gone from view, I told him about Golan, our affair, and his extortionate demands.

He looked at me serenely. I hadn't realized until now what an impact his new spiritual mien had had on his life. He was a changed man from the political boss who marched me through Essex County backrooms years ago. Sitting across his dining room table from me, his blue eyes radiated only friendship and concern.

“What are the facts?” he asked. I told him everything. He had a good lawyer's mind. “It's fact-sensitive, not clear-cut,” he said. “But I think we can legitimately get rid of this for a lot less than five million, and a confidentiality agreement. This kind of stuff happens.” He laid out a plan for a legal defense fund into which we could easily raise enough to settle this dispute. “It's not perfect, but you can justify it,” he said.

I was lucky to have him back in my camp.

 

BILL LAWLER, MEANWHILE, HAD LEFT TOWN TO REPRESENT A
client in rural Marion, Indiana—the birthplace of James Dean—but he agreed to a telephone conference with Lowy in mid-afternoon on Tuesday, August 3. It didn't go any better than their previous conversations. Lowy, in his steady voice, wouldn't take no for an answer. He wasn't dissuaded by my own lack of money, either, demanding that I reach out to my legendary fundraising network to meet Golan's demands.

Immediately after hanging up, Bill called me.

“I told him, ‘The only settlement we could ever do is a legal settlement. I can't settle an extortion.'” He paused. “I might be influenced by the fact that I'm standing at a pay phone in the rain beneath an eight-foot billboard of James Dean, but I'm coming to the conclusion that this can't be resolved in a rational way,” he told me.

I told Bill about Ray's plan to set up a defense fund. He said it was perfectly legal and common, but he disagreed with the notion. “Not to be disrespectful to Ray,” he said, “but paying this guy off is a stupid idea. You pay an extortion demand and it's going to come back at you, one way or another. Also, how are you going to raise money? People who have supported you politically and personally and have that kind of money are smart, successful people, and when you go to smart, successful people and say, by the way, ‘I'd like to borrow two hundred thousand bucks to pay off a blackmailer,' they're going to look at you like, ‘What? Are you out of your mind?'”

I knew he was right. As I kept reminding everybody, most of all myself: I had never committed any sexual assault or harassment—this was only a love affair I never should have allowed myself, in a world that wouldn't understand it, with a man who was betraying me. But we pushed forward on both tracks anyway, just in case.

 

BILL LAWLER AND MICHAEL DECOTIIS MET WITH LOWY ONE LAST
time, on Monday, August 9, at the Manhattan offices of Vinson & Elkins. Bill had requested that Golan attend, but he didn't show. Unfortunately, things only got weirder. Lowy said things like, “I recognize you don't represent State Street Partners,” the firm where Jimmy Kennedy had hired, then fired Golan, “but they treated my client badly as well and we want money from them, too. This can go away if you give us four million and we get a half-million from State Street.”

Bill stated the obvious, that only State Street could speak for State Street, and he reiterated his own inability to discuss a settlement without first talking to Golan or reading his claims in a legal filing.

“Let me tell you what will happen if you pay us,” Lowy countered. “Golan will go away, he will disappear—at least until after the next election.
He will not have a mailing address or a telephone, his credit card bills will be forwarded to me. I won't tell you where he'll be, but he won't be in Israel.
He will disappear.
”

The implication—that my team wanted Golan to “disappear”—angered Bill, a former assistant U.S. attorney who'd represented high-profile clients including the former head of the FBI hostage rescue team who was called to testify before Congress about Waco and Ruby Ridge.

“Listen, I don't want him to go away, Lowy,” Bill said. “I don't need him to go away. If he has a claim that he can prove, we'll settle it, but I'm not paying for someone to go away in the sense that you're talking about. I'm not buying silence.”

Later, Bill told me that he suspected Lowy might be recording him. But he asked the question outright, and Lowy said no. “It's not the kind of question I would normally ask a colleague, but nothing about this was normal.”

Recording or not, he said that his client's demands were coming dangerously close to extortion. It was the only time Lowy every raised his voice. “Don't use that word,” is all he said.