Affidavit: Fox News Director, Roger Ailes told colleague to lie to protect Rudy Giuliani

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Back in 2007, it was hard not to enjoy the muddy brawl between publishing diva Judith Regan and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., her former employer. It featured the best cast of conservative bad guys around -- George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Giuliani's former bodyguard, police commissioner (and Regan lover) Bernie Kerik, plus those lovable guys who bring us Fox News, Murdoch and Roger Ailes. The former allies fell apart, you'll recall, when Murdoch fired Regan, News Corp. claimed she was an anti-Semite who had blamed her troubles on "a Jewish cabal," and the brassy Regan sued.

Among Regan's many charges against her old employer was the claim that a top News Corp. executive told her to lie to federal investigators about her affair with Kerik, when he was (unbelievably) being vetted to head Bush's Department of Homeland Security in 2004. (He dropped his bid when legal troubles came to light, and he's currently in prison for tax fraud.) The exec told her to lie, Regan said, to protect Giuliani, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and a close friend of Roger Ailes. Fox-haters speculated the "high executive" was Ailes himself, given the fawning coverage the former New York mayor got from Fox, but Regan settled the lawsuit for a cool $10.7 million payment from News Corp., and the matter seemed to end there.

Today the New York Times reveals that it was in fact Ailes who told Regan to lie about Kerik – and the paper says Regan had tape recordings to prove it. Fox isn't even bothering to deny it; where in 2007 a News Corp. spokeswoman told the paper "the company saw no merit in the filing," Wednesday a spokeswoman said only that News Corp. had a letter from Regan "stating that Mr. Ailes did not intend to influence her with respect to a government investigation," adding, "The matter is closed." (News Corp. officially retracted its claim that Regan was anti-Semitic as part of its settlement.) Regan's lawyer insists News Corp. is misrepresenting Regan's official statement, but he declined to say more.

http://www.salon.com/news/fox_news/index.html?story=%2Fopinion%2Fwalsh%2Fpolitics%2F2011%2F02%2F24%2Failes_told_colleague_to_lie