Former NJ Governor's New Book

Is the former governor of New Jersey so hard up for money that he wrote this book?

Jim McGreevey shockingly admits that before he became governor of New Jersey, he'd have anonymous gay sex at Garden State highway rest stops.

"All I knew was that my behavior was getting crazier and crazier," McGreevey says of his torrid truck-stop trysts in an upcoming book that details his tortured life of lies and sexual repression.

"With each new encounter, I was getting nearer and nearer to being caught - which surely would have generated headlines, especially after I became executive director of the state parole board" in the mid-1980s.

We think we have it bad here in Wisconsin. At least Governor Doyle is merely screwing taxpayers as governor.

Of course the actions of his (now former) parole board chair have been much worse...

McGreevy was not forced to resign because, as he said in his farewell speech, he was a 'Gay American.' His transgression was the hiring of a foreign national with no law enforcement experience to serve as his homeland security advisor.

When McGreevey was elected governor in 2001, he quickly appointed Cipel to a cushy $110,000-a-year homeland security job - even though Cipel was an Israeli citizen who couldn't sit in on sensitive security briefings.

Like most Israelis, Cipel had served in the military, but he was a paper-pusher in the Israeli Navy.

"He wasn't a warrior or anything," said an Israeli source.

Critics denounced McGreevey for treating a vital post-9/11 position like a patronage post. But McGreevey stood by his man, shifting him to an undefined "special counsel" job at the same high salary.

New Jersey newspapers hinted at a closer relationship between the two men, noting they had traveled together, and hounded both men to explain why Cipel was paid $110,000 a year to do nothing.

In 2002, the Star-Ledger of Newark detailed McGreevey's unusual effort to help Cipel get an apartment near the governor's Woodbridge home. "McGreevey took time out from his transition plans to accompany Cipel on a last-minute walk-through of the townhouse," the Star-Ledger reported.

The same article quoted Cipel as saying he "wanted to have a place that was in close proximity to where the governor was because he was a personal adviser on call 24 hours."

Cipel eventually left the state payroll to work for two public relations firms with close ties to McGreevey. But both let him go - one after just a month - because he did not show up for work enough.

While the homosexual relationship may have made 'good copy,' the outrage for NJ taxpayers centered around the fact that Cipel was pulling down $110,000 for a post in which he was clearly not qualified.

That's McGreevey's shame.

I can't believe he wrote this book.