Trump Card: Part 1

They say the only sex scandal a politician can’t survive is being caught in bed with a dead woman or a live boy.

A few years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a weird story surfaced. The governor of New Jersey, Jim McGreevey, got on TV, with his frowning wife next to him, and told everyone, “I am a Gay-American.” Even back in the pre-gay marriage days, that wasn’t a particularly big scandal, as politicians cheat on their wives all the time, and it’s wasn’t particularly a surprise that some of these guys were “bisexual.”

“We will not skimp on security. We actually brought on a security adviser from the Israel Defense Forces, probably the best in the world.” — Jim McGreevey

Of course, the real implications of this story were played down, kept on the down-low. McGreevey’s boyfriend was an Israeli citizen and McGreevey appointed his boyfriend to be the homeland security adviser for New Jersey. This, at a time when a massive Israeli spy ring was being rolled up, and the infamous “Dancing Israelis” were being deported safety back to Israel, after being caught celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center, posing for pictures in front of the smoking rubble, and driving around with multiple passports, thousands in cash tucked away in socks, and bomb residue in their van.

Usually when people talk about Middle Easterners dancing around celebrating 9/11, they mean Arab Muslims, not Israeli Jews – at least, it’s Arab Muslims they mention on TV.

So apparently McGreevey had taken one of the infamous trips to Israel all politicans seem to make, and while there he hooked up with some Studly Semite. But not leaving well enough alone, he put this foreigner in charge of the homeland security for the state of New Jersey, you know, to protect us from the terrorists that were then plotting another 9/11.

Let wikipedia give you the official story:

In early 2002, McGreevey was criticized for appointing Israeli national Golan Cipel as homeland security adviser even though he lacked experience or other qualifications for the position. Cipel resigned but threats from his lawyers about sexual harassment lawsuits prompted McGreevey to announce, on August 12, 2004, that he was gay and would resign the governorship, effective November 15, 2004. This made McGreevey the first openly gay governor in United States history.

But McGreevey wasn’t the only high ranking politician with a taste for kosher companionship. In fact, 9/11 had interrupted a long-simmering sex scandal of another high ranking Democrat, one who was, in fact, in a key position of responsibility for preventing such attacks. But his sex scandal had sidelined him in the months leading up to the attacks.