nyc.general

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign on
Wednesday dismissed a report that New York City taxpayers footed the
bill for expenses incurred in a Long Island resort as the then-mayor
began an extramarital affair with current wife Judith Nathan.

"These were all legitimate expenses incurred in protecting the mayor,
and his police detail covered him wherever he went, 24/7," Tony
Carbonetti, Giuliani's chief political adviser, said in an interview.
"You just do what you do and the police go with you. That's just a
fact of life when you're the mayor of New York."

Aides, however, offered no explanation for why the tens of thousands
of dollars in costs, which they say were routine expenses for
protection for the mayor, were billed to obscure city agencies.

Giuliani's affair with Nathan, while he was married to second wife
Donna Hanover, has become common knowledge.

But the suggestion, true or not, that he was hiding expenses for
liaisons with Nathan in little-known city accounts, could open him up
to criticism, remind voters of his three marriages and infidelity and
tarnish his good-guy image from the aftermath of the September 11. The
report surfaced just five weeks before voting begins.

The online publication, The Politico, obtained documents under New
York's Freedom of Information Law that it says shows the expenses
incurred while Giuliani visited the Hamptons had nothing to with the
functions of little-known city offices that were responsible for
regulating loft apartments, helping the disabled and providing lawyers
for indigent defendants.

Weeks after Giuliani left office, The Politico reported, the city
comptroller criticized the practice of transferring the travel
expenses of Giulaini's security detail to the accounts of obscure
offices. In a January 2002 letter to current Mayor Michael Bloomberg,
City Comptroller William Thompson described $34,000 in mayoral
expenses from fiscal year 2000, which covers parts of 1999 and 2000,
to the Loft Board, as part of a preliminary investigation by auditors.

"They were unable to verify that these expenses were for legitimate or
necessary purposes," Thompson wrote in the letter that The Politico
obtained. He said the mayor's office refused to explain the accounting
to city auditors, citing only "security."

The Politico said American Express bills and travel documents it
obtained detail hotel, gas and other travel expenses for Giuliani's
New York Police Department security detail during 11 trips over three
summers of visits to Southampton, the Long Island town where Nathan
had a condominium.