Giuliani's Client List Worries

Rudi Giuliani and the consulting firm he founded, Giuliani Partners, have been tight-lipped about their clients, but one has been revealed as a Middle Eastern government that may have indirectly abetted the 9/11 terrorists.

The Republican presidential candidate has not disclosed that his firm was hired to provide security advice to the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. But Chase Untermeyer, who ended a three-year term as President Bush’s envoy to Qatar in August, told the Wall Street Journal that a subsidiary of Giuliani Partners signed a security deal with state-run Qatar Petroleum around 2005.

In 1996, the FBI went to Qatar to arrest al-Qaida operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who was under indictment for a plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners.

But Mohammad escaped, apparently tipped off by an al-Qaida sympathizer in the government of Qatar, American officials told the 9/11 Commission. Mohammad would later mastermind the 9/11 attacks.

Qatar is considered a U.S. ally, and officials there have denied that they tipped off Mohammad.

But the Qatari government has also rebuffed pressure from the Bush administration to rein in the anti-American rhetoric of Al-Jazeera, the TV station based in Qatar.

Giuliani’s connection with Qatar could prove to be a “potential political pitfall for a candidate pitching himself as an uncompromising foe of Islamic terrorism” according to the Journal.

Other “potentially controversial dealings” involving Giuliani Partners include the firm’s work for Purdue Pharma, which hired Giuliani’s company in 2002 to help with a federal probe into overdose deaths possibly caused by the drug company’s OxyContin painkiller, and New York nuclear power plant operator Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the Journal reported. More recent Giuliani Partners clients are not known.

Giuliani earned more than $4 million from Giuliani & Company — the umbrella company of Giuliani Partners and related entities — between January 2006 and May 2007. He also receives at least $1 million a year from his law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, which opened an office in Qatar in June.